The magnificent carriage rolled slowly on.

Ning Chen looked out through the curtain over the carriage's little window. "This is not the road to the palace."

Mingzhu, driving the carriage, answered, "We aren't going to the palace."

"The child is being kept outside the palace?"

"My lord will understand when we get there."

Ning Chen asked no more.

An hour later the carriage stopped at the back gate of a large house.

"My lord. We have arrived."

Ning Chen ducked out through the carriage door and got down from the carriage, and looked at the house in front of him. "What is this place?"

"Prince Qing's residence."

Ning Chen nodded slightly. He knew of Prince Qing — the Third Princess of the Wu Kingdom, and the woman emperor's third elder sister.

In the Wu Kingdom, women of the imperial house may hold office.

It seemed that after the woman emperor came to the throne she had enfeoffed this Third Princess as Prince Qing.

"This way, my lord."

Ning Chen followed Mingzhu in through the back gate, and saw nobody the whole way.

It seemed the servants of the house had been sent away.

Half an hour later Mingzhu brought Ning Chen to a room.

The room was very large and open, and richly furnished.

There were two people in it. One was the woman emperor.

Today the woman emperor wore a pale yellow gown, with a gold pin in her hair, and she looked much softer for it.

The corner of Ning Chen's mouth lifted. The gold pin in the woman emperor's hair was one he had given her.

The other had a noble bearing and was thirty or so, a few years older than the woman emperor, but very beautiful too, and there was something of the woman emperor about her brows. This would be Prince Qing.

Prince Qing looked Ning Chen over with interest.

"Sword brows and starry eyes, and a fine figure of a man... Your Majesty's eye is as good as it always was."

Prince Qing said it smiling.

Ning Chen cupped his fist. "I greet…