CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
It took a guard several strokes of his sword to cut through the chain on the cell door.
The Third Prince kicked the door open and walked in.
The few rats scattered in fright and ran in every direction.
Ning Chen’s face was perfectly calm. “Third Prince. Gently. Don’t frighten my pets.”
The Third Prince’s face was dark and there was something vicious in his eyes.
“Ning Chen. Are you truly not afraid to die?”
Ning Chen shrugged. “I’m already under sentence of death. Does being afraid of it get a man out of dying?”
“It’s the Third Prince I’d wonder about. I haven’t been tried yet, no charge has been fixed, and this is the Inspectorate. Is the Third Prince sure he wants to kill me?”
The Third Prince laughed coldly. “A little silver coat. Killing you would be no more to this prince than pinching an ant dead. What of it if I do?”
“Third Prince. This is the Inspectorate. His Majesty’s Inspectorate.”
The Third Prince was contemptuous. “What of the Inspectorate? If I kill one little silver coat, is Father Emperor going to kill me for it?”
“Ning Chen. You killed my uncle. You have left my mother washing her face in tears day after day… If I don’t kill you today I am no son at all.”
“Today this prince kills you with his own hands, and takes your head to lay before my uncle’s spirit.”
The words were not out of him before the long sword in his hand flashed cold and sharp and came down at Ning Chen’s neck.
Ning Chen was starting to move aside when a bolt came whistling through the air. There was a ring of metal, sparks flew, and the sword was knocked out of the Third Prince’s hand.
The Third Prince grunted. The shock of it had split the web of his hand and it was bleeding.
His guards had the look of men facing an army. Their swords came out of the scabbards and they closed around the Third Prince.
“Geng Jing.”
The Third Prince ground his teeth and stared at Geng Jing as he came in.
Geng Jing put the crossbow away and bowed. “Geng Jing greets the Third Prince.”
“Geng Jing. What is this? Do you mean to offend against your superiors? Do you think I won’t lay it before Father Emperor and have you cut down along with him?”
Geng Jing said, low, “There was no help for it just now. I ask the Third Prince’s pardon.”
The Third Prince pushed the guards in front of him aside, walked up to Geng Jing, and said angrily, “Are you protecting him?”
“Third Prince. Ning Chen has not been tried and no guilt has been fixed… If Ning Chen dies in here I have no answer to give His Majesty.”
“And if this prince means to kill him today regardless?”
Geng Jing said, low, “While I am here, the Third Prince cannot.”
“The Third Prince is hurt. Please return to the palace and have it seen to.”
The Third Prince’s anger was past holding. He fixed his eyes on Geng Jing.
“Good. Very good… Geng Jing, we shall see about this. You dared wound me. When I have laid it before Father Emperor you can go down to hell with Ning Chen.”
“We’re leaving.”
The Third Prince knew that with Geng Jing there he could not kill Ning Chen.
On his way out he said it again, savagely. “Ning Chen. Geng Jing… Both of you will die. We shall see.”
Geng Jing looked at Ning Chen. “Are you all right?”
In fact Geng Jing was still shaken himself, now that it was over. The red coats below had not dared stop the Third Prince at all. All they could do was send word to him.
He had not dared lose a moment when he heard it and had come straight over… One step later and Ning Chen would have been a corpse.
His Majesty trusted him, certainly. But with the favor His Majesty showed Ning Chen, if Ning Chen died, his own days as the Inspectorate’s purple coat were probably over as well.
Ning Chen shook his head, then smiled. “I’m fine. That was something, Lord Geng — upright and unbending, no fear of the mighty. My admiration. Truly.”
Geng Jing made a cold sound. “The Inspectorate answers to His Majesty. Nobody else.”
Ning Chen smiled and muttered, “This Third Prince doesn’t seem too bright… Coming to the Inspectorate to kill me. His Majesty’s own Inspectorate. That’s putting a hand on the tiger’s backside.”
Geng Jing’s mouth twitched and he frowned. “Ning Chen. Guard your tongue. Whatever else he is, he is the Third Prince, and there are a great many people behind him.”
“Then the people behind him are stupid. The mud is lying on the ground perfectly happy and they have to go and plaster it onto a wall, and nobody asks the mud whether it wants to be a wall. The salted fish is lying there perfectly happy and they have to go and turn it over… The whole lot of them are so fucking bored their balls ache.”
Geng Jing’s breath caught. The boy’s nerve is past all measure… he actually dares to compare the Third Prince to mud and a salted fish.
If it were not for His Majesty’s favor, that mouth of Ning Chen’s would have got him killed eight hundred times over by now.
“Lord Geng. When am I going to be sentenced?”
Geng Jing: “…”
He said, with an ill grace, “Are you in a hurry to die?”
Ning Chen actually nodded, in complete earnest, and said, “Mm.”
Geng Jing had absolutely nothing to say to that.
“Every day in a place that never sees the sun, keeping company with the rats and Xiao Qiang… I’d rather you just made it quick.”
Geng Jing started and looked to either side. “Who is Xiao Qiang?”
“Ah… Don’t be alarmed, Lord Geng. Xiao Qiang is a cockroach.”
Geng Jing was struck numb, his forehead full of black lines.
Is the boy really not afraid to die? He has the presence of mind to give a cockroach a name?
“Ning Chen, don’t be impatient… The edict should be coming down any day now. I heard His Majesty say he means to have you torn apart by five horses.”
Geng Jing was frightening him on purpose.
“Holy shit!”
Ning Chen was stunned.
Geng Jing watched Ning Chen’s reaction and was privately delighted. See if that doesn’t frighten you to death.
“And don’t you worry, Ning Chen. His Majesty may only have been talking.”
Ning Chen nodded, cold sweat all over his forehead, and laughed weakly. “Of course he wouldn’t. His Majesty is handsome and he is kind. Why would he tear me apart with five horses?”
Geng Jing said, “I don’t think he would either… By the law of the Great Xuan, in a case like yours it ought to be the cauldron.”
The fright drained the color out of Ning Chen’s face.
The cauldron meant a man was thrown into a pot of hot oil and fried to death.
He was not afraid of dying. He was afraid of dying horribly.
He did not want to be torn apart by five horses, or dropped into a pot and fried up like a fritter.
“That’s enough. Sit tight… The edict shouldn’t take more than a few days, and then in eighteen years you can come back and be a man again.”
Geng Jing saw that the fright had drained the color out of Ning Chen’s face, and it did him a world of good… So the boy is afraid of something after all.
Geng Jing walked to the door and came back.
It was plain that the five horses and the cauldron had frightened Ning Chen badly.
And if the boy kills himself to go with his body in one piece, what then?
He took the jailers aside and gave them instructions at length. They were to keep their eyes on Ning Chen around the clock, without a break, and stop him from doing anything stupid.
Geng Jing came out of the cells, had his horse brought, and rode straight for the palace.
The Third Prince forcing his way into the Inspectorate’s cells was no small matter. His Majesty had to be told.
More to the point, the Empress was set on killing Ning Chen… and His Majesty’s head ached over it.
Perhaps this business of the Third Prince forcing his way into the cells could open a way for Ning Chen to live.
That worthless thing Ning Chen. Everything I have done for him… and the boy doesn’t trust me. Worthless to the very last degree.
The palace. The imperial study.
The Xuan Emperor slammed the memorial in his hand down on the floor, and his face was ugly with it. “Another one denouncing Ning Chen. These censors are detestable, the whole pack of them.”
“There is no quarrel between Ning Chen and any of them. Why must they have him dead?”
Eunuch Quan did not dare breathe. He went over with his small mincing steps, picked the memorial up off the floor with great care, and set it on the dragon desk.
The Xuan Emperor glanced at him and said, low, “Quan Sheng. Do you think somebody is behind this, directing it?”
Eunuch Quan bowed his head at once and said, in fear and trembling, “This servant knows nothing of government. This servant knows only how to wait on Your Majesty.”
To have waited at the Xuan Emperor’s side this long? Eunuch Quan was the shrewdest of shrewd men. He knew what could be said and what could not.
(End of Chapter 61)