The Enforcer Hunting My Pen Name Reads Every Chapter novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Doors Open
At dawn in the Sword Hall two juniors read the banned storybook aloud and Shen Zhiheng, who wrote it, lets them finish; the new Chief Enforcer walks in and asks him before everyone whether he has read it, and he answers with a rule and volunteers as the hunter's guide. That night the printer hands him a receipt: someone bought every copy of the last chapter and signed Mo Chengyan.
At the fifth bell, two junior disciples were reading the newest chapter of a banned book aloud in the Sword Hall.
Shen Zhiheng had written every word of it.
They stood behind the weapon racks at the east end, where the morning had not reached yet.
One held the folded sheet, and the other held the lamp.
"The Prince's brother lifted one finger," the reader whispered. "It was the twenty-third, he said, and it did not rain."
Shen stood at the sword rack with his back to them, wiping a blade that was already clean.
A full class of disciples had come to practice that morning.
All but two of them had drifted to the west wall, and the floor around the Sword Saint was empty.
Nobody stood within six paces of him. Nobody ever did.
Nobody stood behind him either, because that was his first rule, and he had stated it once, eleven years ago, and never needed to again.
The reader turned his sheet toward the light, saw that the Sword Saint had stopped wiping, and lost his place.
His mouth hung open, and the lamp-bearer forgot the lamp.
Shen did not turn around.
"Continue," Shen told them.
"Saint, it's banned," the boy whispered.
"A reading, once begun, is finished in the Sword Hall. That is the rule."
There was no such rule.
He had made it up on the spot, in the flat voice he used for the real ones.
The boy swallowed and found his line.
"The Prince's brother lifted one finger," he read again, louder.
Shen listened to his own sentence in a stranger's mouth, and he corrected the boy's stress in his head.
It was the first time in a month he had enjoyed anything.
Then the cold arrived.
It came down the length of the hall from the east doors, a thin clean draft that smelled of wet stone and old ink.
Every lamp on the wall leaned the same way.
Behind the draft came a sound, and Shen knew what it was before he allowed himself to know.
A belt buckle was undone, and a blade was laid into the hands of the door warden.
Nobody carried steel over the Sword Hall's threshold but the Sword Hall.
One set of boots crossed the yard and stopped at the stone sill, and did not touch it.
Shen kept his eyes on the blade in his hands and let the silence finish.
A low, level voice spoke from the sill.
"The Discipline Hall asks the Sword Hall's leave to enter."
Shen set the blade in its rack.
Then he turned around.
The man on the sill was tall, with a pale quiet face and a grey Discipline coat.
There was ink on his right cuff.
Thirty-eight disciples were bowing at the west wall, and the reader let the sheet drop.
It landed face up on the floor between them.
The man looked at the sheet, and then at Shen, and for the length of one step he did not look away.
"Leave granted." Shen kept it flat. "This is the Sword Hall, and I am its head."
"Mo Chengyan. Chief Enforcer for nine weeks."
The man bowed exactly as far as the rule allowed.
"I am told you do not like to be asked twice, Sword Saint. So I will ask once, and before everyone."
He turned to the hall.
His voice did not rise, and every disciple heard it.
"By order of the Sect Master, the Discipline Hall is finding the person who writes this book."
"I will ask each Peak Lord one question. Has he read it?"
He turned back.
"Sword Saint Shen. Have you read the book?"
The lamp-bearer made a small sound, and the reader studied his own feet.
Shen looked at the ink on the man's cuff.
It was a dry, flat black, and it was not Pine Smoke. It was cheaper.
Shen answered without hurry.
"I do not read what I write."
Nothing in the hall changed.
Everyone knew the Sword Saint wrote a report on the sword forms every season, and that nobody read those either.
Only Shen heard the joke, and it was a lonely one.
The Chief Enforcer's eyes did not move, but one corner of his mouth did.
"That is a rule worth keeping." The Chief Enforcer inclined his head. "I will make a note of it."
Shen spoke before the silence could turn into anything else.
"Under the Guest Rule, an officer from another hall walks this mountain with an escort of Peak rank, or he does not walk."
"I know the rule."
"Then you need an escort." Shen did not blink. "I will be of use."
Behind him, thirty-eight disciples did not move at all.
The Chief Enforcer considered him for a long moment.
"The Hall accepts." The Chief Enforcer's voice was even. "I begin at the first bell tomorrow."
He took his blade back from the warden and went out, and the draft went with him.
The lamp-bearer found his voice. "Saint, did you just volunteer?"
Shen did not smile.
"Ten laps. East wall. Both of you. Reading is not permitted in the Hall."
The reader's voice shook. "But you said it was finished, Saint."
"The reading is finished. The laps are not."
That night he went down the mountain by the north stair, in a plain scholar's coat.
His apprentice followed him, carrying a pickle basket.
It was three thousand and nine steps to the town of Cress Ford.
The Three Pines Press stood at the end of the lane.
It was a narrow shop with the shutters closed and a line of lamplight under the door.
Liang Baosheng, the mortal printer, let them in and bolted it behind them.
He was a heavy man of fifty-eight with ink to his elbows, and he did not look pleased.
He put a stack of damp pages on the counter.
"Proofs for two hundred and five. And this."
It was a slip of stiff paper with a red seal.
"Someone bought the whole stock of two hundred and four."
Liang's voice was tight.
"Six hundred sheets, this morning, all at once, at triple the price."
"Who?" the apprentice blurted.
"He paid in silver and took a Discipline Hall receipt."
The apprentice's basket slipped, and a jar of radishes rolled across the floor.
Nobody picked it up.
Shen turned the slip toward the lamp.
At the bottom, in a small exact hand, the buyer had signed his own name.
Mo Chengyan.
Shen read the name twice, folded the slip, and put it in his sleeve.
"Print two hundred and five on its day." Shen laid the proofs flat. "Every line as it is. Change nothing."
"Master," the apprentice whispered, "he is going to read it."
"Yes." Shen turned toward the door. "I want to see what he does."
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