Chapter 4: Within Arm's Reach

The Sword Pavilion had three rooms, and by midnight only one of them was dry.

Mian had spent an hour moving a bucket from leak to leak.

"The east corner of the middle room," he announced. "That's the dry part. Everything else is a rumor."

Shouyi stood in the doorway with a rolled blanket under one arm.

He looked at the room, the cot, the single dry corner and the Inspector's brand-new order pinned to the door.

"Arm's reach," he said, as if the words tasted of tin.

"You can have the cot," said Mian.

"No."

"It's a good cot. It has a dent shaped like me."

"A guard does not sleep."

"The Inspector said sleep. It's in the rule."

"The Inspector said within arm's reach," said Shouyi. "He did not say a word about sleep."

He set the blanket in the dry corner and sat on it with his back against the wall and his sword across his knees.

His spine did not touch the wall.

Mian lay down on the cot and looked at the ceiling.

A drop landed in the bucket, then a second one, then a third.

"Senior Yan?"

"Sleep."

"You're going to sit like that all night?"

"Yes."

"Does it hurt?"

"Song Mian."

"Yes, Senior Yan."

"Sleep," said Shouyi, and he opened his ledger.

Mian slept for what felt like four minutes.

Then he woke because someone was staring at him.

It was not Shouyi.

Shouyi was reading, in the light of one small lamp, with his eyes on the page.

But Mian had been watching him through his lashes for a while now, and he had noticed something odd.

Each time Mian looked at him, Shouyi's chest stopped moving.

It stopped completely, and his shoulders went up by the width of a finger.