The Enforcer Hunting My Pen Name Reads Every Chapter novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Cabinet Opens

The Discipline Hall sat on the saddle between Cold Peak and Ember Peak.

It was a grey building with a bell in its roof and no ornament anywhere.

Shen walked into the front room and stopped at the long desk.

The Deputy Enforcer looked up from a ledger.

"I am the one you are looking for." Shen's voice carried to the walls. "My apprentice carried a basket. He knows nothing. Release him."

The Deputy's pen stopped in the air.

"Sword Saint, I do not."

"Not here," Mo Chengyan said from the door. "Deputy, go to the Summit gate. Bring me the boy and the order they hold him on."

"Chief, the Master's guard has him."

"The Hall holds the prisoners of an open inquiry. It is in the rule, Article Six. Take my seal."

The Deputy went out at a run.

Mo crossed the room, and for the first time Shen saw him walk faster than his own pace.

He opened a door at the back, and a narrow stair went up into the dark.

"Come up. The front room has ears."

Shen did not move. "I have said what I came to say."

"Yes. And if you had said it once more in that room, I would have been obliged to write it down."

Mo's voice stayed even, but his hand was tight on the doorframe.

"Please."

Shen climbed.

The last flight was a steep ladder.

Mo went up first and held the trap open with his shoulder, and he did not look back until Shen's foot was on the boards.

The bell loft was square and plain, with a single lamp, a table and a stool.

Along the north wall stood twelve oak boxes with iron corners.

Shen counted them as he came in.

He could not help it.

Twelve.

Mo went to the first box without a word.

He unfastened the clasp, lifted the lid, and stepped aside with both hands visible.

Inside lay a stack of folded sheets, laid flat, in order.

The top sheet was yellowed at its edges, with a red date stamp in the lower corner, twelve years old.

It was the first thing Shen had ever printed.

He knew it by the fold, and by the third line from the top.

He knew it by a smudge on the margin where Liang's thumb had touched the block while the ink was wet.

The room was cold.

"How long?" Shen asked carefully.

"I have read every sheet the day it was printed, for twelve years."

Mo stood with his hands at his sides.

"I have known who wrote it since the third week."

"You have known." Shen stared.

"Yes."

Shen's voice dropped.

"The ink. The bridge. The sill."

"Yes." Mo did not look away.

"The press, the receipt, the signature I gave you in my own hand."

Shen heard his voice climb and could not stop it.

"You stood in that lane and let me do it."

"Yes." Mo bowed his head.

"You let me fish."

"You were enjoying it." Mo's voice was quiet. "I did not want to be the one who stopped you."

Frost ran across the table.

It started under Shen's hand, a thin white fern on the grain of the wood.

It spread to the stool and the corner of the nearest box.

The lamp dipped.

The air smelled of iron.

He had not lost his temper since he was twenty-eight.

"You read me for three weeks."

His voice cracked in the middle.

"You let me bait you. I wrote you a Warden. I put you in a chapter."

He could not finish.

Then he found the rest of it, and it was worse.

"And on the stair. You knew who I was, and what I had done to you for three weeks, and you stood against that arch and let me."

"Yes."

"You said goodnight."

"I said I would not begin." Mo's face did not change, but a flush had climbed under the pale skin. "I did not say that I did not want to."

Shen put his palm flat on the ice, and his hand shook.

"Then tell me why."

His voice shook with it.

"Why did you buy six hundred copies? Why seal the press? Why do you keep the whole of it in a box under a bell?"

"To keep it." Mo's answer was plain.

"A Hall that keeps evidence keeps it to use. I am in your box, Chief Enforcer. I have been in it for twelve years."

He swallowed.

"You have my hand, my hours, my ink and my signature."

"You will take them to the Master the day it suits you. That is what an archive is. It is a collar."

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