The Constable Booked the Assassin Every Night novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: In My Keeping

Twenty of the Prefect's men came for the pipa player, so Shouzhi wrote him into his own keeping and put his iron cuffs on him in the street.

Shouzhi had only a moment to decide whether to be a good man or a useful one.

The captain of the Prefect's guard was already in the doorway.

He was a thick-necked man with a lamp in one hand and a warrant in the other.

Behind him the stairs were full of lanterns.

"Yan Qinghe," the captain read, in the voice of a man who enjoyed it.

"Pipa player."

"By order of the Prefect, to be taken to the Prefecture cells on suspicion of the Crow murders."

He looked at Shouzhi, at his crooked collar and the cap he'd put on backward, and he smiled.

"Constable Tan. Come to question him personally, have you?"

Qinghe stood very still beside the couch.

His hair was damp at the temple, and he held the pipa strap in one hand.

"He's already in custody," Shouzhi said.

"What?"

"Under Rule Four of the Six Doors."

Shouzhi took out his badge and held it up, the bronze door-ring catching the lamp.

"A suspect first taken by a constable of the Doors answers to the Doors for ten days."

"He stays in the constable's keeping, not the Prefecture's."

"I have a warrant."

"It's a good warrant."

"It's the Prefect's."

"This is the Doors' rule, and the Prefect can read it in the Hall tomorrow in front of the Chief."

The captain's smile began to go.

Shouzhi took a booking slip from the stand by the door, the kind Madam Hui used for her rooms.

He wrote across it with the brush she kept by the ledger.

His hand was steady, and he was astonished by that.

"Booked into the keeping of Constable Tan Shouzhi, to answer to him alone, until the Crow is taken."

He signed it and pressed his badge to the wet ink.

"Twenty men," he said, "and none of you will lay a finger on him until the Chief says otherwise."

"Or you can write to the Prefect that you dragged a suspect out of a constable's hands in front of the whole street."

The men on the stairs shifted.

Nobody in the Prefecture liked to stand against the Doors alone.

The captain looked at Qinghe, then at Shouzhi, then at the paper in his hand.

"The Prefect will hear of this."

"I'm counting on it."

Qinghe let out a very slow breath behind him.

"Then do it properly, Constable," he said, and held out his wrists.

Shouzhi stared at them.

"A man in your keeping wears iron in the street," Qinghe said, with a dimple Shouzhi didn't have time to look at.

"Or the captain won't believe it."

He was right.

Shouzhi's hands felt like someone else's when he unhooked the cuffs from his belt.

They were cold black iron with the Doors' ring stamped on the lock, and he had put them on forty-one men.

He closed them on Qinghe's wrists, and the click was very loud.

Qinghe didn't flinch.

He looked down at the iron, then up at Shouzhi, and his lips parted a little.

Shouzhi felt Qinghe's pulse jump against his thumb, and felt it again in his own throat.

"Walk," he said, hoarse.

They went down through twenty men and out into the street.

The shops along the canal were shuttered, with faces behind the shutters.

Shouzhi walked half a step behind with a hand on Qinghe's arm.

Qinghe walked like a man being led to a party.

Shouzhi's lodging was in the courtyard behind the Hall, up two flights, one room.

It held a cot, a desk, a lamp, a basin, and a wall covered with nine murders in black ink.

He shut the door and put his back against it.

Qinghe turned around in the middle of the floor with his wrists held out in front of him.

"I'll take those off," Shouzhi said. "I'll find the key."

"Not yet."

"What?"

"Not yet," Qinghe said.

His voice was lower than Shouzhi had heard it, and the gap in his teeth showed.

"I want to see what you do. You've got a man in your keeping, Constable. What are you going to do with him?"

Shouzhi had been giving orders for ten years.

He'd given them to drunks and thieves and a scalded cook, and his voice had never once shaken.

"Kneel," he said.

It came out rough.

Qinghe went down at once, smoothly, with his cuffed hands in his lap and his eyes on Shouzhi's face.

Shouzhi realized he was shaking.

Qinghe saw it.

"I haven't done this for anyone in a long time," Qinghe said. "I'll be bad at it."

"Then be bad."

Shouzhi sat on the edge of the cot because his legs required it.

Qinghe shuffled forward on his knees and put his bound hands on Shouzhi's thighs.

His thumbs pressed in.

"Undo your trousers, Shouzhi."

"You undo them. You're the one with the mouth."

"My hands are busy."

He lifted them, and the chain clinked, and a sound came out of Shouzhi that he wasn't proud of.

He undid his trousers himself.

His cock was already hard, so hard it ached, and it jumped when the cool air touched it.

Qinghe looked at it.

"Oh," he said. "You're very..."

"What?"

"Orderly," Qinghe said, solemnly.

Shouzhi laughed once, helplessly, and then Qinghe leaned in and licked a slow wet stripe from base to tip.

The laugh broke in half.

"Qinghe."

"Mm?"

"Don't talk."

"You said be bad."

"Be bad with your mouth shut."

Qinghe took him in.

It was hot and tight and wet, and it hit Shouzhi in the spine.

Qinghe didn't take very much of him at first.

He bobbed shallowly, his tongue sliding along the underside, and he made a muffled noise around Shouzhi.

Shouzhi's hand went into his curls, and he held on.

"Like that," he said. "Yes. Slower. You're doing it right. Don't stop."

Qinghe's eyes came up, grey-green and glossy, and he moaned.

"Look at you," Shouzhi heard himself say. "On your knees in my iron. You like that."

Qinghe shuddered and took him deeper, until the head of his cock bumped the back of his throat.

He choked a little, pulled back, and caught his breath.

Then he went down again.

Shouzhi didn't decide to be tender.

He stroked Qinghe's hair.

He said "good" and "that's it" and "so good for me" in a voice he had never heard come out of his own mouth.

Every time he said it, Qinghe's hips rocked forward.

Shouzhi had found out something about both of them, and he was never going to be able to put it back.

"I'm going to come," he said. "Qinghe, I'm..."

Qinghe didn't pull away.

He sucked harder, one cuffed hand sliding up Shouzhi's thigh to grip him.

Shouzhi came down his throat with a broken groan, white light behind his eyes, his fist locked in Qinghe's hair.

Qinghe swallowed, coughing, then lifted his head and wiped his mouth with the back of his bound wrist.

"Was that bad?" he said, hoarse.

Shouzhi laid his forehead against Qinghe's.

"No," he said. "It was the best thing that's ever happened in this lodging."

"That's what I said about the teahouse."

"It's only been a night."

"Then I'm doing well."

Shouzhi found the key, finally, and took the cuffs off, and kissed the red marks on Qinghe's wrists one at a time.

Qinghe went quiet.

Then he climbed onto the narrow cot beside him.

Shouzhi pulled the blanket over them both and, for the second night running, fell asleep before he'd finished a thought.

He woke at the fourth watch to a cold cot.

The blanket beside him was thrown back, and the window latch was loose.

He lay listening to the empty room with his heart in his ears.

Then the door opened, quietly.

Qinghe stood in it in his shirt, with his boots in one hand.

They were soaked to the ankle, and a thin line of water ran from them down his wrist.

"Couldn't sleep," he said, and smiled the gap-toothed smile. "The river's loud tonight."

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