“I greet the crown prince!”
Ning Chen bowed over his clasped hands.
The crown prince’s face was all smiles. “You looked like a man with something on his mind just now. Has something happened?”
Ning Chen looked at him and shook his head. “Nothing! It’s only that there’s been no word at all of the Left Chancellor. Who knows where the bastard has run to?”
“I thought you were worrying about the Nanyue embassy… The Left Chancellor stood high and held a great deal of power. A man like that had a road out laid for himself long ago. Where he is now, I doubt anybody knows.”
Ning Chen inclined his head slightly. “That’s true enough!”
The crown prince asked, smiling, “By the way, what do you make of the terms Nanyue has put?”
Ning Chen shook his head. “I’m one small silver coat. What I make of it doesn’t matter… What matters is what His Majesty and the officials make of it.”
“Don’t be modest. Who in the Great Xuan doesn’t know Ning the Silver Coat now? You stand higher with the common people than I do, and I am the crown prince.”
“My father sent me your couplet with the Nanyue State Preceptor yesterday. He called me a blockhead and told me to learn something from you.”
“Ning Chen, since you turned up, the number of times my father scolds me has gone up sharply.”
The crown prince smiled bitterly.
Something flickered in Ning Chen’s eyes. “A beating is affection and a scolding is love. You are His Majesty’s son. A father scolding a son is the order of heaven and earth.”
“I’m only a subject. His Majesty can hardly scold me every day.”
Then Ning Chen said, as though it were a joke, “The crown prince wouldn’t be jealous about that, would he? And then quietly do away with me over it?”
The crown prince’s expression stiffened a little.
“That is not a joke to make. Your ability is a piece of good fortune for the Great Xuan and I am glad of it… And besides, do I look like a jealous man to you?”
Ning Chen looked at him for a while, then smiled. “You do.”
The crown prince spread his hands.
“Ning Chen, do you have time? Let me buy you a drink.”
Ning Chen shook his head. “Not just now, I really don’t. I have to go and see the Nanyue envoys.”
The crown prince nodded. “Very well, go and see to it… I’ll buy you that drink when you’re free.”
Ning Chen nodded. “Then I’ll be off!”
The crown prince made a sound of assent. He watched Ning Chen’s back, and his eyes narrowed, and his face went cold and ugly.
“Have you found something out?”
The crown prince said it under his breath.
And just then Ning Chen turned his head and looked back.
The crown prince’s face had no time to change. He turned without thinking and walked off toward the inner palace.
Ning Chen’s brows drew in slightly. That cold, ugly look on the crown prince’s face was something he had never seen there before.
So the crown prince was nothing like as simple as he looked.
He could not help remembering what Ning Ziming had said. The Second Prince dropped dead without warning, and the crown prince gained more by it than anyone.
Ning Chen shook his head and smiled bitterly. Could the crown prince and the Left Chancellor really be in it together?
If they were, this was going to be trouble.
The Left Chancellor stood high and held power, but in the end he was an outsider… The crown prince was the Xuan Emperor’s son, the heir apparent, the future master of the Great Xuan.
If the crown prince came after him, how was he to answer it?
It looked as though he had better make his preparations early, in case.
Crown prince, crown prince, I hope you don’t do anything stupid. You may be the heir apparent, but Ning Chen is not a pushover either.
Ning Chen took his eyes off him and left the palace.
Elsewhere, the crown prince went to the Hibiscus Palace.
“Your child pays his respects to the Empress his mother!”
The Empress was the mother of the country. She was not the crown prince’s own mother, but he still had to call her mother.
And as crown prince he had to know the forms better than anyone, and come and pay his respects to the Empress often.
The Empress was turned out as richly and as vulgarly as ever.
She had gold and silver trinkets from head to foot and rich clothes on her, but with the face and the shape she had, she still looked from every angle like a monkey in a cap.
She set her teacup down and asked flatly, “What brings the crown prince here today?”
“Your child saw Ning Chen outside the imperial study just now.”
The Empress’s eyes narrowed, and she turned to the old eunuch beside her. “You may go.”
“Yes!”
When the old eunuch had withdrawn, the Empress’s eyes went cold. “What did His Majesty summon him for?”
The crown prince shook his head. “I don’t know. Something to do with the Nanyue envoys, perhaps.”
“I hear he beat the Fourth Prince of Nanyue yesterday?”
The crown prince made a sound of assent.
The Empress’s eyes were vicious. “That little piece of garbage. Every day he knows less law and every day he is harder to touch.”
The crown prince nodded. “He has a campaign to his credit now, and my father’s favor on top of it. Moving against him will not be easy.”
The Empress glanced at him and said coldly, “If you had moved earlier, it would not have come to this.”
“Your child begs the Empress’s pardon. When my father first recommended him to your child, your child thought talent ran over in him and that he could be used… I never expected the man to act on nothing but his own likes and dislikes. He truly cannot be controlled.”
The Empress made a cold sound in her nose and fixed her eyes on the crown prince. “Is the crown prince nursing some other thought?”
The crown prince started and said quickly, “Your child would not dare!”
The Empress said coldly, “The crown prince had better not forget. The Second Prince dropped dead without warning and you and I both had a hand in it… We are grasshoppers on one string. You cannot get away and neither can I.”
The crown prince’s face changed all at once, and then he looked around him in alarm, terrified of being overheard.
“Let the Empress be easy. Your child knows how he came by the place he holds. He would never dare think of anything else.”
The Empress smiled coldly. “As long as you know it!”
“The Left Chancellor has reached Mangzhou safely. He is our last road out.”
“The crown prince should make his preparations. When spring opens next year my father will come home from the frontier, and that is when we rise.”
The crown prince was shocked. “The Grand Tutor is coming back?”
The Grand Tutor was the Xuan Emperor’s own teacher, learned in letters and in war, and his standing was no lower than Old General Chen’s.
That the Empress had become the mother of the country at all she owed to this father of hers. With the face she had, she could not otherwise have been shown in decent company.
She sat secure on the Empress’s seat because she had a good father.
The Grand Tutor was close to seventy, but for years now he had held the frontier and kept down the Wu Kingdom, which borders the Tuoluo Kingdom.
The men of Wu were bloodthirsty and fond of war. They fought the Tuoluo Kingdom on one side and the Great Xuan on the other, a war on two fronts at once.
And the ruler of Wu was a woman. It seemed to be in the blood there, because this woman emperor was no ordinary ruler. She often took the field in person, and gave as good as she got against the Tianxuan Army under the Grand Tutor, and beat larger forces with smaller ones again and again.
In the old days, with Old General Chen leading the army, Wu could still be held down.
Since Old General Chen was crippled, the Grand Tutor had barely managed to fight Wu to a draw.
After several hard years, Wu could not match the Great Xuan in strength and chose to talk terms.
When spring opened next year, the Grand Tutor would march his army home.
The Empress nodded, and then said coldly, “Before my father comes back, there is one more man we have to be rid of.”
“Who?”
The Empress’s eyes were cold and dark. “Old General Chen.”
The crown prince went white with shock.
The Empress smiled coldly. “I don’t have to tell you what Old General Chen’s standing in the army is. Not even my father comes near it… He is crippled and he no longer leads, but the standing is still there.”
“A great many of the commanders in the army now are Old General Chen’s old subordinates. While he is alive we can hardly rise and succeed.”
“So if the thing is to be done, he has to die!”
The fear on the crown prince’s face was past hiding.
Old General Chen was a pillar of the state. Killing him was no small business, and if it ever came out… it would nail them to the pillar of shame forever.
“Old General Chen may have stepped back from affairs, but the men around him are all his old subordinates, and every one of them is a hard fighting man. Moving against him will not be easy.”
The Empress smiled coldly. “Be easy. In this capital, matching force against Old General Chen would be plain suicide.”
“I have it planned already. Kill Old General Chen and lay it on Ning Chen… Two birds with one stone.”
“When the time comes, this empress will tell you what to do.”
The Empress looked at the fear all over the crown prince’s face and smiled coldly. “What is it? Frightened?”
“His Majesty is in the prime of his strength. If we do not move, how long will it be before you take that seat?”
“If you mean to wait for His Majesty to die before you sit on it, think how many years you will have left to sit.”
The crown prince was about to speak when he suddenly saw a pair of feet showing below the curtain of the inner room… a man’s feet.
The Empress had a man hidden in the palace?
The crown prince held the shock down as hard as he could and bowed. “Your child leaves it entirely to the Empress!”
The Empress was well satisfied with the crown prince’s manner.
“Enough. It won’t do for you to stay here too long. Go back.”
“Your child withdraws!”
Once the crown prince had gone, the curtain of the inner room was lifted and a middle-aged man came out, wearing a short beard, a little fat about the body, but with something of the Xuan Emperor about his brows and eyes.
This was no one else. It was Prince Fu.
Ning Chen had once mistaken the Xuan Emperor for Prince Fu.
Prince Fu went to the door, looked out, then came back and stroked the Empress’s big pancake face with love all over his own.
“The boy really is stupid enough. Just like his father… Does he actually think he’ll ever sit on that throne?”
“Sister-in-law, have you missed this younger brother?”
The Empress slapped his hand away with a show of coyness. “This is the palace. Don’t let anyone see.”
“This is the Empress’s own Hibiscus Palace. What is there to be afraid of? Besides, I have my imperial brother’s leave to come and pay my respects to the Empress.”
“My imperial brother works hard at the business of state, so let his younger brother ease his burdens for him and water the Empress properly.”
Prince Fu’s face was all lechery, and he put out his arms and picked the Empress up.
He did not get her up on the first try. On the second he put his back into it and just managed it, the veins standing out at his temples and his legs shaking under him.
Of the two of them, each was fatter than the other and each was weaker than the other.
“Don’t be foolish in broad daylight. It will be a disaster if anyone sees. You can’t stay here long. People will talk.”
That was what the Empress said, but she put both arms around Prince Fu’s neck.
“It won’t be long.”
Prince Fu carried the Empress unsteadily toward the inner room on shaking legs.
On this point Prince Fu had told no lie at all. He was a man of his word. He said it would not be long and it was not long… The battle was hastily concluded in under ten minutes.
Looking at the Empress’s aggrieved face and the hunger in her eyes, Prince Fu’s scalp crawled.
The heart was willing and the strength was not!
“Rest yourself, Sister-in-law. Your younger brother will come and see you again in a few days… And I don’t imagine it will be long before this creeping about in the dark comes to an end.”
Prince Fu put his clothes on and left as though he were escaping.
The Empress’s eyes were aggrieved, and then she let out a small sigh… and comforted herself that something was better than nothing.
The Xuan Emperor had not favored her in years. It was all thanks to Prince Fu coming into the palace now and then to see her right.
Prince Fu left the Hibiscus Palace on unsteady legs and set off toward the imperial study.
He held no real power, but he was a prince for all that, and His Majesty’s own younger brother… so he came into the palace often, sat and talked with the Xuan Emperor, then went to pay his respects to the Empress and eased the Xuan Emperor’s burdens by watering his sister-in-law while he was there.
What Prince Fu did not notice was that after he had gone, the crown prince came out from around the corner.
He stood frowning at Prince Fu’s back.
Could the Empress and Prince Fu— The crown prince’s scalp crawled.
He was sure his guess was right. If there had been nothing between them, why would the Empress have hidden Prince Fu? There was no need for any of it. Prince Fu paying his respects to the Empress was the order of heaven and earth, and there was no reason on earth to hide.
And more than that: the Empress had known perfectly well that Prince Fu was hidden in there, and had gone ahead and spoken of killing the Second Prince and of killing Old General Chen without a moment’s hesitation.
So this coupling of theirs was not a matter of a day or two.
Perhaps it was Prince Fu who had been directing all of it from behind.
The cold sweat came out on the crown prince’s back. He was surer and surer that he was nothing but a piece on the board.
He had asked the Empress once why she did not back the Third Prince instead of him.
Her answer at the time was that the Third Prince had been raised by her but was not her own, and that his nature was rash and stupid and unfit for an emperor.
Looking at it now, the Empress had never meant that throne for him either… She had been keeping it for Prince Fu.
Now he finally understood. If the thing succeeded, the throne went to Prince Fu or to the Third Prince… If it failed, they would put the whole weight of it on the crown prince and save themselves.
Either way, there was no good end in it for him.
The crown prince’s face turned slowly savage. “Since you won’t play fair, don’t blame me for playing dirty… We’ll see how this goes.”
(End of Chapter 190)