Eunuch Quan and Nie Liang looked at each other and said it together.

“An imperial command can’t be disobeyed!”

Ning Chen smiled bitterly and could only mutter inwardly that serving a prince is like keeping a tiger.

“Here we are!”

Ning Chen was trailing along behind the two of them with his head down when Nie Liang said it and stopped.

Just as Ning Chen was wondering whether a little frame like his could take a caning, Nie Liang pushed open the door of the room beside them.

He looked at Ning Chen. “Young Master Ning, come in.”

Ning Chen turned his head and looked into the room. “What is this place?”

“Where the guards of the imperial presence rest when they come off watch.”

“You’re going to beat me in here?”

Nie Liang and Eunuch Quan said nothing and went in.

Ning Chen gritted his teeth and did the thing, and followed them.

Nie Liang pointed at the table at the side. “Eunuch Quan, Young Master Ning, sit down. I’ll go and make tea!”

“Hm?”

Ning Chen looked at him strangely. Tea before the caning?

“Commander Nie, don’t imagine a cup of tea buys me… I hold a grudge a long time. If you dare lay it on hard in a minute I will never forget it.”

Nie Liang began to laugh. “Sit down and be easy! Nobody is going to beat you. We were joking with you.”

Ning Chen looked at Eunuch Quan in astonishment.

Eunuch Quan’s smile was pure cunning.

“Christ!!!”

“You two sly old bastards have been frightening me?”

Ning Chen ground his teeth.

Eunuch Quan said, smiling, “I thought Young Master Ning feared nothing in heaven or on earth. I never expected there was anything you were afraid of.”

“Of course I’m afraid. Who isn’t afraid of a caning? I gave Chen Lezhang thirty strokes and he couldn’t get out of bed for a month or two.”

“With a little frame like mine, thirty strokes and I’d be off to see the King of Hell.”

Ning Chen said it with an edge in his voice.

“You were interesting just now, being frightened like that!”

Eunuch Quan laughed like a eunuch.

No — he was a eunuch to begin with.

Ning Chen glared at him. “Old Quan, I haven’t offended you, have I? What did you want to frighten me for?”

“The chance doesn’t come often. All this time we’ve watched you make a fool of everybody else… Can’t we make a fool of you once?”

Ning Chen glared at him. This ball-less thing is no damn good after all.

“Old Nie, I always thought you were an honest man. I never expected you to be such a quiet one about it, standing there frightening me with Eunuch Quan.”

Ning Chen turned his head and said it to Nie Liang, who was coming over with the teacups.

Nie Liang laughed. “No harm in it, no harm in it… You looking frightened out of your wits really was very interesting.”

Ning Chen gave him a flat look.

Then he asked, curious, “You really aren’t beating me? Not even for show?”

Eunuch Quan waved a hand. “No need. This is the imperial palace of the Great Xuan. How could His Majesty really punish you for an outsider’s sake?”

Nie Liang sat down with his teacup. “All the same, what you did at court today frightened even me!”

“Weren’t you afraid the Nanyue State Preceptor would open your throat?”

Ning Chen was contemptuous. “Look at the front the man puts on. Anybody can see he has soft bones. He doesn’t have the nerve.”

Eunuch Quan set his cup down. “This eunuch’s legs went soft with fright at the time, and His Majesty’s face changed color.”

“Young Master Ning, next time there’s anything of the kind, could you give this eunuch a look first?”

Ning Chen drank his tea and gave a low laugh. “It was all off the top of my head. There was no script… I didn’t know myself how the plot was going to run. How was I supposed to give you a look?”

The three of them talked for a while.

Eunuch Quan set down his cup. “That should be about long enough. This eunuch has to go back and report to His Majesty.”

Ning Chen asked, “And me?”

“Young Master Ning may do as he pleases!”

Ning Chen said oh, and yawned, and made ready to go and catch up on his sleep… He had not rested well last night and he had been up too early this morning.

He left the palace and rode back to the courtesans’ quarter… and slept until evening.

He ate something with Yudie waiting on him, and then rode to the Hall of the Four Barbarians.

As the officer appointed to receive them, he had to show his face.

And on the way he could laugh at the Fourth Prince of Nanyue, who had taken a kick from him of the kind that ends a man’s line.

He came to the Hall of the Four Barbarians.

The Nanyue party glared at him when they saw him.

Ning Chen ignored their fierce looks entirely.

“Where is your Fourth Prince?”

Kang Luo’s voice came from inside one of the rooms. “Ask Ning the Silver Coat to come in!”

Ning Chen was on his way in when the door of the room opposite opened and Li Hanru and Shen Min came out.

The Hall of the Four Barbarians was built as a square ring around a courtyard, and Li Hanru and Shen Min were living here for these few days.

By rights Ning Chen ought to have been living here too.

Li Hanru waved him over.

Ning Chen went across.

The two of them pulled him quickly into the room, shut the door, and looked him up and down.

“Ning the Silver Coat, you… you weren’t caned?”

Ning Chen smiled. “I was. Very hard. My backside is in flower. Would you like to see?”

Li Hanru and Shen Min had nothing to say to that, and their foreheads filled with black lines… We are not perverts. Who wants to look at your backside?

Besides, if he had taken thirty strokes, would he still be leaping about like this?

So His Majesty had only said it. He had not punished Ning Chen at all.

His Majesty spoiled Ning Chen far too much. Today he had even had him stand in the Left Chancellor’s place.

And before this, His Majesty had proposed making Ning Chen a marquis.

It seemed that before long the Great Xuan would have either an Idle Marquis or a Chancellor Ning.

Shen Min frowned. “Ning the Silver Coat, you dare come here at a time like this? Aren’t you afraid the Nanyue people will see you weren’t caned?”

Ning Chen smiled coldly. “And what if they do? Would they dare go and question His Majesty about it?”

“If they dared, I’d give every one of them a foot up into the crotch.”

Li Hanru and Shen Min had nothing to say. A favorite really does have nothing to be afraid of.

Still, Ning Chen was worth His Majesty’s favor.

Accomplished in letters and arms both.

Any poem or lyric he cared to write was a song for the ages.

The first time he ever led men into a war he cut clean through the North Royal Court and took the King of the Left Court alive.

He had cut down the Empress’s brother for the people of Chongzhou, and the common people loved him for it.

There had never been anything like it before, and there would never be anything like it after.

Anybody else with what Ning Chen had done behind him at fifteen would have swelled up past all bearing.

A young man of that kind of talent — never mind the emperor’s favor, they liked the look of him themselves… and only wished he were a son of their own.

Ning Chen talked with them idly for a while, then went out and across to Kang Luo’s room.

Kang Luo and the Nanyue State Preceptor were sitting facing each other with several sheets of paper in their hands, their eyes bright, praising one poem and one lyric after another.

The Nanyue State Preceptor’s eyes were red with envy.

Any one of these poems was enough to make a man’s name overnight.

Kang Luo glanced at him. “The State Preceptor need not take it so. Some men are born with talent in them, and envy does nothing about it.”

“A name and a standing do not have to be built on poems… What is built on the point of a weapon lasts longer.”

Kang Luo’s thinking, as it happened, ran along exactly the same line as Ning Chen’s.

Another country does not fear you for a few poems. Real weight is built on the point of a weapon.

When Nanyue was weak, coming before the Xuan Emperor, it would gladly have gone down flat on the ground before him.

Now, grown fast with the Great Xuan’s help, it no longer had to abase itself like that.

Hearing the knock, Kang Luo said offhandedly, “Come in!”

The door opened and Ning Chen came in.

The Nanyue State Preceptor looked at him coldly.

Kang Luo’s face was calm and his smile was mild.

“Ning the Silver Coat, please sit!”

Ning Chen walked over, sat down square and at his ease, ran his eye over the papers on the table and smiled. “The Fourth Prince has men out looking into me?”

Kang Luo was smiling as well. “I thought Young Master Ning would not ask. Just as I did not ask how a man who took thirty strokes of the rod can walk in here on his own feet.”

“Very well. Take it that I never asked.”

Kang Luo poured him a cup of tea and then said, “I truly had no idea Young Master Ning’s gift for letters was so far out of the common run… Yesterday we were showing off our own in front of Ning the Silver Coat. It is shaming to think of.”

I have no gift for letters. I got all of it for free, Ning Chen said inwardly.

“Never mind! It is how people are. A frog at the bottom of a well sits and looks at the sky… Until he climbs out over the rim he never knows how big it is.”

When he had said it, Ning Chen looked at the Nanyue State Preceptor, whose face had turned ugly, and said seriously, “Don’t take it personally. I didn’t mean you.”

The Nanyue State Preceptor’s face twitched, and a stab of pain went through his chest, as though somebody had put a blade into him where he couldn’t see it.

Kang Luo smiled. “In letters we are beaten… With these few poems and lyrics of Ning the Silver Coat’s out in the world, I doubt anybody under heaven will dare write another.”

Ning Chen gave him a sidelong look. The bastard is trying to praise me to death.

“The Fourth Prince doesn’t know enough about our Great Xuan.”

“Oh? How so?”

Ning Chen said, “Our Great Xuan runs deep. It is a country that makes fine men out of its own soil, and talent comes up in every generation… There are a great many men better than Ning here, and good poems and lyrics past all counting.”

“By the way, is the Fourth Prince married?”

Kang Luo blinked. Ning Chen’s talk was a hammer here and a stick there, and he was having some trouble keeping up.

“Not yet!”

Ning Chen smiled. “Why not stay in the Great Xuan? I’ll find you a girl from a good family and you can marry into her father’s house and live there… Get to know our Great Xuan properly.”

Before Kang Luo could speak, the Nanyue State Preceptor said coldly, “How would a woman of the Great Xuan be fit for the Fourth Prince of Nanyue?”

“I hear Ning the Silver Coat’s woman comes out of the courtesans’ quarter — a woman of the wind and dust? Our Fourth Prince is of high birth. He cannot be as unparticular as Ning the Silver Coat and take any woman at all.”

Ning Chen’s face went cold at once, and murder flickered at the bottom of his eyes.

Shk!!!

The long blade came out of the sheath without a moment’s hesitation and cut straight down at the Nanyue State Preceptor.

The Nanyue State Preceptor froze stiff with terror all over his face.

Kang Luo’s eye and hand were quicker. He flicked his wrist, and the teacup went out of it on a hard wind and struck the flat of the blade.

There was a ringing note of metal on metal!

The cup broke apart, and Ning Chen’s blade was knocked off its line.

At the same moment Kang Luo caught the Nanyue State Preceptor by the shoulder and flung him backward. The State Preceptor went flying, hit the floor and rolled several times before he stopped.

Ning Chen’s cut fell on nothing and took a piece out of a stool.

Kang Luo slipped back a step and snatched the sword off the rack.

Ning Chen made a cold sound in his nose and went at the Nanyue State Preceptor like lightning.

Kang Luo drew and threw himself into the way.

Clang!!!

Blade met sword and the sparks flew.

The strength in each of them numbed the other’s arm, and both fell back a few steps.

“Let Ning the Silver Coat’s anger cool. This is not a sensible thing to be doing.”

Ning Chen smiled coldly. “Ning here is a brute to begin with. I never hold a grudge. I settle it where I stand.”

Kang Luo said, “Ning the Silver Coat is fierce and doesn’t fear dying. But if you kill the State Preceptor it stops being your own affair. It touches the whole relation between Nanyue and the Great Xuan.”

Ning Chen brought the long blade level and said flatly, “The Great Xuan is sovereign and Nanyue is subject… You can’t even keep sovereign and subject straight, and you talk to me about relations?”

Nanyue had come this time for the Thirty-Mile Corridor. They wanted the Great Xuan to cut land off and hand it over.

They had a second purpose too, which was to find out where the Great Xuan stood.

If the Great Xuan talked terms this time, they would only go further afterward.

The two countries falling out, and coming to blows, had been settled long ago.

The harder Ning Chen came on, the better it was for the Great Xuan.

“A pellet of a country. You come to another man’s house as a guest and you can’t keep your mouth clean? It looks like one day without fucking your mother and you forget who your daddy is.”

“I’ll tell you now. You want our Great Xuan’s Thirty-Mile Corridor? Go on dreaming. The Great Xuan does not give up an inch of ground. If you don’t like it, come and fight.”

“Whoever offends our Great Xuan will be put to death, however far he runs! When spring opens next year I will lead an army south myself, and let you learn how sharp the weapons of the Great Xuan’s soldiers are.”

Kang Luo held Ning Chen’s eyes and said it the same way, one word at a time. “Then Kang here will await Ning the Silver Coat’s coming on the battlefield!”

“Ning the Silver Coat is accomplished in letters and arms both. I’ve had my lesson in the letters. I wonder about the arms.”

That kick up into his crotch at court today had cost him every scrap of face he had, and he had not forgotten it… He wanted to take the chance to teach Ning Chen something and get some of it back.

Ning Chen said flatly, “Would you like to find out?”

Kang Luo said, “I ask Ning the Silver Coat to instruct me!”

“Good. As you wish!”

(End of Chapter 187)