I Was Sent as Tribute to the Prince I Shot novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Free to Go

The captain told it in a wine cellar under the Orchid Court, with a lantern between them and his bad hand wrapped in Jiang's sleeve.

The Marshal had given him one arrow, taken off a dead Yan archer at the ford, and had stood behind him on the stern deck.

"Wait for the prince to turn his head," Cen had said.

"Then it was Yan's shot, and no one will ever ask."

"You aimed for the heart," Lin said.

"For the back of it.

I loosed, and the barge rolled, or I did."

The captain would not look up.

"I have been a bowman twenty years.

I have never missed.

I think I made myself."

Lin was silent a long moment.

Then he said, "Your wife will be at the east door of this court within the hour, with your son.

My secretary is fetching them."

The captain's shoulders folded.

"I'll tell it," he said, "but not in that hall.

Every man in it owes the Marshal his post.

Put me before the soldiers of the ford, who have the most to lose by his lie.

I'll tell it to every one of them."

That was the plan.

Jiang did not like how far off it was.

The Council sat on the seventh day, and Lin used everything he had.

He laid the snapped halves of the arrow on the floor in front of forty old men.

He set the two notched shafts beside them, and the barge roll, and the empty line where the Marshal's captain of archers should have stood.

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