The carriage was going a little slowly.

The five fast horses ahead were nearly out of sight.

Ning Chen urged him on. “Brother Dazhuang, faster!”

“Right, Fourth Young Master. Hold on to something!”

Chai Dazhuang raised the whip — and instead of bringing it down he pulled on the reins and let the carriage slow.

Ning Chen frowned and was about to ask why, when Chai Dazhuang said, “Fourth Young Master, there are men ahead.”

Ning Chen lifted the curtain and looked hard into the moonlight.

The five horses ahead had stopped too, because a body of men had come up from the other direction, silver fish-scale coats shining in the moonlight.

Men of the Inspectorate, and Geng Jing himself at the head of them.

Geng Jing had come out of the palace, gone back to the Inspectorate, gathered his men and ridden straight for the prince’s residence.

His luck had been good this time and heaven had been kind to him. He had actually taken the Medicine King, and it had gone easier than he had expected.

They were about to bring the Medicine King back to the Inspectorate.

“Geng Jing. Hear the command.”

Geng Jing looked over the eunuch and the guards in front of him, thought nothing of it, and swung down off his horse. “Geng Jing is here.”

“His Majesty’s word. The Medicine King is to be given over to us and brought back to the palace, and there is to be no delay.”

Geng Jing’s brows drew together a little, because he did not know the eunuch in front of him.

Still, the man was no longer young, and it was plain at a glance that he had been in the palace a long time. A eunuch with that much service behind him would generally have scraped together some post or other and be trusted with work.

Eunuch Quan was Chief Eunuch of the Inner Palace and could not possibly see to everything himself. There was nothing strange in His Majesty sending some other eunuch now and then.

And he did not believe the man would have the nerve to counterfeit an imperial edict.

Geng Jing waved a hand. “Bring the man over.”

Two red coats brought the Medicine King forward, manacles on his wrists and irons on his legs.

The Medicine King was dry and thin, his eyes were clouded, and there was something savage about his hooked nose.

The eunuch waved a hand and told his guards, “Take the man back.”

Two of the guards swung down off their horses and were about to go and take the Medicine King away, when a voice came from some way off. “Wait.”

Ning Chen got down from the carriage and came over, limping, leaning on his blade.

The eunuch watched him coming, and his face changed slightly. He barked out:

“Ning Chen, this is presumption. Do you mean to defy an edict?”

Ning Chen smiled slightly. “Eunuch, don’t clap a hat the size of a house on a man at every turn… The point is that this prisoner matters far too much. There are only a few of you to escort him, and I’d be afraid of a slip. Better that we take him under guard together. What do you say?”

The eunuch gave a cold snort and said angrily, “Ning Chen, this is the task His Majesty gave to this eunuch… Ning the Silver Coat need not trouble himself about it. If there really is a slip, this eunuch will carry it himself.”

Ning Chen came forward, and there was nothing in his eyes but attack. He said it one word at a time. “Could you carry it? And even if you could, we are not handing him over to you.”

The eunuch flew into a rage and pointed at Ning Chen. “Ning Chen, you dare defy an edict. Watch that head of yours.”

Ning Chen smiled coldly. “My head need not trouble the eunuch… But there is one thing I wonder about. You are a eunuch of the Eastern Palace. Why would His Majesty pass over everyone at hand and send you the long way around to bring the man into the palace?”

The eunuch’s face changed, and for a moment he stammered and could not get a word out.

Geng Jing looked at the eunuch too. The man was of the Eastern Palace. Had he seen that something was wrong here?

He set his men to watch the Medicine King, came over, drew Ning Chen aside and asked in a low voice, “What is this?”

Ning Chen hesitated, and then decided to tell Geng Jing the truth after all.

Geng Jing was loyal to His Majesty to the bone, and was worth trusting.

Ning Chen dropped his voice. “I came out of the palace tonight, and I was barely in my own door before a secret edict from His Majesty arrived behind me… putting the musket battalion under my command.”

“His Majesty sending an edict down in the dead of night, and a secret one at that — it seemed to me something was wrong, so I went to the palace. And I was stopped outside on the grounds that there were assassins loose in it.”

“And now a eunuch of the Eastern Palace comes running out to snatch the prisoner away from us… It seems to me something is wrong.”

Geng Jing’s brows locked tight.

“Something is wrong. His Majesty has Nie Liang and Eunuch Quan beside him, and the first-rate men of the inner palace, and the imperial guards. Taking one assassin would not call for shutting you out at the palace gate.”

“Ning Chen. What do you make of it?”

Ning Chen glanced at that eunuch of the Eastern Palace. “It isn’t clear yet what the situation is. But the Medicine King absolutely cannot be handed over to them.”

Geng Jing inclined his head slightly.

He looked at the eunuch of the Eastern Palace. “Eunuch, I would like to know why His Majesty left the men about him unused and sent you instead, when you are of the Eastern Palace.”

The eunuch stammered a long while, and then said, stiff-necked, “How should this eunuch know? Perhaps the men about His Majesty are not to be trusted, and that is why he sent this eunuch.”

The answer had so many holes in it that both Ning Chen and Geng Jing were laughing.

His Majesty might not trust other men, but he would never doubt Eunuch Quan’s loyalty.

And besides, there was no need for all this trouble to get the man into the palace. Somebody had only to say the word and Geng Jing would have brought him before His Majesty himself.

Yet this eunuch would have it that he must take the Medicine King back on his own.

Geng Jing said heavily, “I am not handing the man over to you… Either I come with the eunuch and we bring him before His Majesty together, or I take him before His Majesty myself.”

The eunuch stared at Geng Jing. “Does Lord Geng mean to defy an edict as well?”

Geng Jing said, without any warmth, “I am thinking of the prisoner’s safety, no more. If His Majesty lays it at anyone’s door, Geng here will carry the whole of it.”

There was a sullen anger in the eunuch’s face, and he stared at Geng Jing and Ning Chen for a while.

“Very well. This eunuch will tell His Majesty the whole of it as it happened. You may wait for His Majesty to punish you.”

With that he threw up a hand and said angrily, “We are going back.”

The eunuch took his guards and rode off at a gallop.

Ning Chen and Geng Jing looked at each other, and the same bad feeling rose in both of them.

“It seems something has happened in the palace.”

Geng Jing’s expression changed a little, and he nodded.

“Ning Chen, I’ll have the Medicine King sent back to the Inspectorate. Shall the two of us go to the palace again and see how things stand?”

Something moved in Ning Chen’s eyes. He shook his head slightly and dropped his voice. “If something really has happened in the palace, the Medicine King is not safe locked up in the Inspectorate.”

Geng Jing glared at him. “Do you have that little faith in our Inspectorate? Nobody but His Majesty would dare take a man out of the Inspectorate.”

“Has Lord Geng forgotten Chen Lezhang? The Left Chancellor got out of the Inspectorate, which proves the Inspectorate is not a single slab of iron… And if the Medicine King dies in the Inspectorate, that is real trouble.”

The corner of Geng Jing’s mouth twitched. The Left Chancellor escaping the Inspectorate, Chen Lezhang turning traitor — every one of these was a disgrace of his own.

“Then what do you say we do?”

Ning Chen said quietly, “Hide the Medicine King first. Once we know what has actually happened in the palace, we decide the next step.”

Geng Jing nodded slightly, but then dropped his voice again. “With this many pairs of eyes watching, taking the Medicine King away like that would take some explaining.”

Ning Chen said a few words in his ear.

Geng Jing looked at him with nothing to say. “You suppose they won’t know my build?”

“That doesn’t matter. What matters is that the man really is lost.”

Geng Jing sighed, seeing no help for it, and said loudly, “Ning Chen, take men and bring the Medicine King back to the Inspectorate under guard… Pan the Gold Coat comes into the palace with me.”

Geng Jing took Pan Yucheng and left.

Ning Chen took men and brought the Medicine King back toward the Inspectorate under guard.

Halfway there, two men in undershirts and drawers came bursting out of an alley at the side of the road.

The skill of the two of them was of the first order. They went into the crowd as though there were nobody in it. The men of the Inspectorate could not stand a single move against them, and went down, every one, to a single move.

The two did not stay to fight. They picked up the Medicine King and were gone, and vanished into the alley.

By the time the men of the Inspectorate came to themselves, there was no sign of them at all.

They all looked to Ning Chen, waiting for the order to give chase.

Ning Chen went to the mouth of the alley, took a look, shook his head, and said, “They came prepared. Don’t press a cornered enemy, or we walk into an ambush.”

The foreheads of the Inspectorate’s men filled with question marks. Those two just now had been very strange. Coming to take a prisoner in undershirts and drawers?

And more than that, there had been something familiar about the look of them. Almost like Geng the Purple Coat and Pan the Gold Coat.

(End of Chapter 224)