The Constable Booked the Assassin Every Night novel · Chapter 10 of 24
Chapter 10: Loose Ends
The Eastern Ferry is a rotting jetty at the end of Salt Lane.
The east river slows there, and the fog sits on the water.
They reached it a quarter hour before midnight.
Shouzhi had brought his lantern, his cuffs, and the Crow.
Qinghe walked at his side in his plain indigo coat, with his pipa on his back.
No one in the lane looked at them twice.
Qinghe had asked, quite seriously, if Shouzhi wanted him in the iron.
Shouzhi had said no, and he'd been astonished by how much he meant it.
"Hui said the third skiff," Qinghe murmured. "Tied up under the willow."
"I see it."
"There's no light."
"I see that too."
The skiff rocked on the black water with its mooring rope drawn tight.
Shouzhi jumped down into it, and his lantern swung, and the light fell on a heap of dark cloth in the stern.
It was a man.
He lay on his back with his eyes open, in a fine gray coat gone black at the chest.
He was long past needing a constable.
Qinghe came down beside Shouzhi without a sound.
"The steward," Shouzhi said.
"Yes."
The wound was in the ribs, low on the left.
It was a single deep stab, made with a short blade by someone standing very close.
There was no thin red line across the throat.
There was no wire.
But tied around the left wrist, in a loose, lopsided bow, was a loop of pale thread.
Shouzhi crouched and lifted it.
It had been white once.
It was coarse and a little furred, and it caught the lamplight in a way no Kucha silk ever had.
"Look at this," he said.
Qinghe looked.
His whole face changed.
Shouzhi had seen him smile, laugh, cry and kill, and he had never seen him angry.
"Cheap Hu hemp," Qinghe said. "Dyed white. I wouldn't use that to tie a parcel."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Constable Booked the Assassin Every Night are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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