The Constable Booked the Assassin Every Night novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Booked Till Dawn
Shouzhi booked the pipa player for the twelfth night to prove he was nothing, slept in his hands for the first time in months, and woke to a ninth body wearing his kind of string.
Madam Hui wrote "till dawn" in her ledger and didn't bother to hide her smile.
"Upper Room Three," she said. "The same player, charged to the Six Doors."
"It's an inquiry," Shouzhi said.
"Of course it is, Constable."
"It's the twelfth night of the inquiry."
"And he has such an interesting case," she said, and held the stairs open for him with a flourish.
Tan Shouzhi climbed with his iron cuffs knocking at his belt.
For three months he had slept two hours a night, if that.
He had nine murders in a file, a Prefect who wanted the Crow's head by the Lantern Festival, and fourteen days left to get it.
At noon Prefect Ding had said so in front of the whole Hall.
"Fourteen days, Tan," Ding had said, chewing a candied plum, "or I give the Doors' budget to men who can do more than count bodies."
He had called Shouzhi "Tan the dog" for years, and he enjoyed it a little more each time.
Shouzhi had said "Yes, Prefect," and had meant to go home and work.
Instead he had walked to the Willow Canal, because there was only one room in Shuangjiang where his head went quiet.
The room smelled of tea and pear wood.
Yan Qinghe sat cross-legged on the cushion by the window with a pipa across his knee, tuning the fourth string.
He was short and broad through the shoulders, with close black curls and a silver hoop in one ear.
His skin was warm brown, and his robes were layered indigo and ochre.
There was a gap between his front teeth that showed whenever he laughed.
He didn't look up.
"You're late, Constable."
"I was working."
"You're always working. That's why you look like a coat on a hook."
"I came to ask about the string."
"You asked about the string last night, and the night before that."
"It's an ongoing inquiry."
"Mm," said Qinghe. "Sit."
Shouzhi sat on the mat across from him, straight-backed, hands on his knees.
The pipa is a Kucha instrument, and the best silk for its strings comes from that same far town.
The Crow tied a Kucha silk string around the left wrist of every man he killed.
Only two shops in Shuangjiang sold that silk, and the Plum Lantern's player bought from both.
That was why Shouzhi had come the first night, with his questions and his badge.
Qinghe had answered every question.
Then he had played a piece called Spring River at Night, and Shouzhi had stopped asking.
He knew what he was doing.
He had walked into a possible witness's room eleven nights in a row.
He had listened to music there until he fell asleep.
He told himself that was surveillance.
"You haven't eaten," Qinghe said.
"I ate."
"A rice ball at your desk doesn't count."
Qinghe set down the pipa and poured tea from the pot at his elbow, and Shouzhi looked at his hands.
They were thick-fingered and quick, with hard calluses on the pads.
"Your shoulders are up at your ears," Qinghe said. "May I?"
"May you what?"
"Fix you."
Nobody had touched Shouzhi in years, unless you counted the Doors' physician.
"It's an inquiry," he said, which wasn't an answer.
"I'll take that as a yes."
Qinghe got up on his knees, came around behind him, and set the pipa in his lap.
"Hold the neck."
Shouzhi held it.
"Not like a sword. It's not going to run away."
Qinghe took Shouzhi's right wrist and eased his fingers off the wood.
Then he pressed his chest against Shouzhi's back, warm through two layers of cloth.
He slid his arms along Shouzhi's arms until his hands covered his hands.
Shouzhi stopped breathing.
Qinghe's breath was on his ear, and it smelled of tea and mint.
"This finger here," Qinghe said, softly. "Press down. Harder than you think."
His thumb lay along the back of Shouzhi's hand.
Shouzhi could feel the callus there, and a slow pulse that wasn't his own.
"Now pluck."
Shouzhi plucked.
The string sang.
It was one low, round note, and it went through his ribs and out the other side.
"There," Qinghe said, right at his ear. "That's you."
Shouzhi did not trust his voice.
"That's the pipa," he said.
"Mm. Are you sure?"
Qinghe's mouth was close enough that Shouzhi felt it move on the words.
He sat very still.
He thought, in an orderly way, that a constable ought to move away from a suspect.
He thought that, and he didn't move.
"Again," he said.
Qinghe laughed under his breath, the sound going through Shouzhi's shoulder blades, and guided his hand again.
Somewhere around the fifth note, Shouzhi's eyes closed.
He woke on the mat with a quilt tucked up to his chin and a hard gray light at the window.
He had slept.
He had slept so deeply that his mouth was dry and his cap had fallen off.
He felt almost cheerful, which was a feeling he'd forgotten.
Qinghe sat by the window with the pipa, tuning, his back to the room.
"I woke twice," Shouzhi said, hoarse, because it seemed important to say. "At midnight, and again near the fourth watch. You were there both times."
"I was."
"Then I'm a poor guard."
"You're a very good sleeper," Qinghe said, "when you let yourself."
Qinghe's sleeve was damp.
Shouzhi noticed only because the morning was dry.
The cuff was dark with water up to the wrist.
Under the mint in the air there was a cold green smell.
"It was foggy last night," Qinghe said, following his eyes. "The window leaks."
Feet pounded up the stairs before Shouzhi could answer.
A Doors runner, a boy of eighteen with his cap crooked, burst in and stopped dead at the sight of them.
"Constable," he panted. "Willow Bridge. It's the Crow."
Shouzhi's whole body went cold.
"Who?"
"The ferryman, sir. Face down against the pier. The ninth." The boy swallowed. "There's a string on his wrist."
Shouzhi was on his feet with his cap on before he knew it.
"Kucha silk," the boy said. "Like the others."
Shouzhi turned for the door, and his eyes passed over the pipa in Qinghe's lap.
The fourth string was new.
It was bright and glossy.
It was not the string that had been on the neck last night, when Qinghe put Shouzhi's hand on it.
He stood there with the runner staring at him.
Half the musicians in Shuangjiang played Kucha silk, he told himself.
A man who tied his own string to the dead would have to be a fool.
He told himself this twice, down the whole length of the stairs, and he did not look back at the pipa.
Because if he looked back, he would know.
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