Ning Chen said his goodbyes to Old General Chen and rode for the Inspectorate.

Ordinary people are not allowed to ride inside the imperial city, and certainly not in the inner city.

The Inspectorate absolutely may. It is like turning out to a crime — how do you chase a bandit without a horse?

He reached the Inspectorate and led the horse to the stable.

There were men there whose whole work was feeding the horses, and the horses ate prepared feed.

He asked his way along and came to the door of a room.

This was where Pan Yucheng worked.

The Inspectorate had eight gold coats, which meant eight departments.

Some handled surveillance and arrests, some studied weapons and machines, others looked after medical care and supply. Every man to his own work.

The team Pan Yucheng led were the equivalent of detectives, and they were the first rank of them.

The guard at the door went in to announce him.

Pan Yucheng came out shortly.

“Come on.”

He did not say what he was taking Ning Chen to do.

Ning Chen knew perfectly well that Pan Yucheng thought nothing of him, so he didn’t ask. There was no sense inviting a snub.

Pan Yucheng took him first to register his particulars, then to draw a crossbow.

The crossbow was far too heavy, it sent one bolt at a time, and reloading took so long that against a real fighter there would be no time at all.

Ning Chen studied it for a while and decided that when he got the chance he would rebuild it into a Zhuge repeating crossbow, which sends ten bolts at once.

He had been a soldier, and he had studied firearms and a good many of the more lethal weapons that need no powder. Rebuilding it would not be difficult.

The Inspectorate had a department that did nothing but study machines. Once he had settled in he would pay them a visit.

Then Pan Yucheng took him to a very large room.

A dozen or more silver coats were at work inside it.

“Pan the Gold Coat.”

“Pan the Gold Coat, sir.”

The silver coats made their bows.

Pan Yucheng nodded without any expression at all. “Everyone stop a moment. There’s a new man to introduce.”

They looked Ning Chen over, curious.

The Inspectorate takes new men at a fixed time, at the start of spring… and the selection is severe. Anyone who wants in must pass through layer after layer of examination and testing.

It was winter now. Not the season for taking anybody on… So this one came in through the back door.

The Inspectorate belonged to His Majesty alone, but now and then His Majesty granted a favor and let the sons of ministers who had served long and hard come in to be toughened.

Men like that were there to be gilded, of course, and never stayed long.

First, those young gentlemen could not stand the work.

Second, the Xuan Emperor would not permit a minister’s son to stay in the Inspectorate for any length of time.

The Inspectorate was his alone, after all. Nobody else got a hand on it.

Pan Yucheng glanced at Ning Chen and said, “His name is Ning Chen. A silver coat named by His Majesty. The son of Lord Ning, the Minister of Rites.”

Every face in the room said I knew it, and the way they looked at Ning Chen was full of contempt.

There was nothing they hated more than a young gentleman of that kind. No use to anybody, forever ordering people about with a lift of the chin, pointing and directing, and getting in the way.

Ning Chen’s brows drew together slightly. He had meant to explain that his getting into the Inspectorate had nothing whatever to do with Ning Ziming, and then he gave it up… Even if he explained it, who was going to believe him?

He understood these men, as a matter of fact.

Back in the army he had hated the rich boys in uniform himself. Not a scrap of ability among them and every one of them looking down his nose at the world.

Pan Yucheng went on. “Ning Chen. I won’t introduce them to you one by one. Get to know them yourself.”

“This is only some of them. The rest are out on assignment. Meet them when they come back.”

“Gao Ziping. Find Ning Chen somewhere to work.”

A big man of about thirty, dark-skinned and rough with it, bowed over clasped hands. “Yes, sir.”

Pan Yucheng nodded once and left.

Gao Ziping looked at Ning Chen and pointed at a long table in the corner, neither warm nor cold about it. “You’ll handle your business over there.”

Ning Chen nodded. “All right.”

After that Gao Ziping took no further notice of him.

Ning Chen walked over, sat down at the table, and smiled at the situation, because not one person was paying him any attention at all.

Gao Ziping and the rest were gathered together, apparently discussing a case.

“The coroner has examined Squire Zhang’s body. It’s as we guessed. The killer stands about five foot eight.”

“And the weapon is what we guessed too. A dagger. The wounds run upward, which says the killer was shorter than Squire Zhang, and there are seven of them, none deep, which says he isn’t strong.”

“But Squire Zhang’s son and his concubine both saw it with their own eyes. When the killer got away he went over the roof with one light jump, which says he’s a real fighter.”

“A real fighter needs seven cuts to kill a man?”

Gao Ziping said, “There’s one possibility. It was the killer’s first time… Or he never meant to kill anybody at all. He came to steal, Squire Zhang caught him at it, and he panicked and struck.”

“Has anybody been over the roof?”

“I have. The tiles are whole… And the trouble is we had a winter rain a few days back. Anything that was there has been washed off.”

They went at it a long while and got nowhere, and after a time the room went quiet.

“This Squire Zhang you’re all talking about. How old was he?”

Ning Chen couldn’t help asking it.

They gave him a flat look, every one of them, and nobody answered.

Ning Chen rubbed his nose, embarrassed.

“I only wanted to help… And there’s one thing I should explain. I’m not the kind of young gentleman you take me for.”

“I have not spent my whole life in the Ning residence. Until I was seven I lived with my mother. After she died I was on the road begging, and I wasn’t taken into that house until I was twelve.”

“So when it comes to how cold and warm people can be, and to what a man can swallow of hardship, you may not have had as much of it as I have.”

They stared at him.

They did not believe a word of it.

And even if what Ning Chen said were true, getting on in this place meant showing what you could actually do, not comparing whose life had been saddest… The world is full of people to be sorry for.

“The case file is on the table. Read it yourself if you want to know.”

In the end Gao Ziping did give him that much.

Ning Chen went over, opened the file, and read the whole of it carefully.

Gao Ziping and the others started up again, hard at it.

“What if this killer you’re all hunting doesn’t exist at all?”

One sentence from Ning Chen, and the whole room went silent.

Their eyes came around onto him, full of contempt.

You’re a young gentleman raised soft. What do you know about working a case?

The way they saw it, Ning Chen was playing to the gallery… a clown, and nothing else.

Gao Ziping thought about it, and still couldn’t stop himself asking. “Ning Chen. What did you mean by that?”

Ning Chen said it flatly. “Have you looked into Squire Zhang’s son?”

One of the silver coats laughed without any respect in it and jeered, “You mean to say Squire Zhang’s son killed Squire Zhang to get his hands on the estate?”

“Don’t embarrass yourself. Anything you can think of, we thought of a long time ago… Squire Zhang got a son late in life and had only the one, and he doted on Zhang Mingjie. Squire Zhang was old. The whole estate goes to Zhang Mingjie when he dies anyway. Why would he need to kill anybody for it?”

Ning Chen didn’t hold the jeering against him. He said it calmly. “Hear me out first. What I mean is that Zhang Mingjie killed his father, and not for the estate.”

“Not for the estate. Then what for?”

Ning Chen said, smiling, “You said it yourself just now. Squire Zhang was old, and his body was going with it… But his concubine is only thirty, which is the age when a woman is all wolf and tiger. And Zhang Mingjie is twenty-five this year, and in his full strength.”

Every man there had worked cases for years. Ning Chen’s words went off behind their eyes like a light coming on… and at the same time they found it hard to credit.

(End of Chapter 44)