Feng Qizheng said, “Don’t listen to his nonsense… though His Majesty didn’t reward Ning Chen either.”

Chen Chong let out a breath and swore at him, half laughing. “You nearly scared me to death. I actually thought His Majesty had granted you three feet of white silk… Turns out it was a lie. What a shame.”

Ning Chen, furious, aimed a kick at him.

Chen Chong dodged it nimbly.

“Ah well… looks like the courtesans’ quarter is off tonight.”

Feng Qizheng glared at him. “You sponge off us every single day. Couldn’t you stand a round just once?”

Chen Chong laughed weakly. “It’s not that I’m tight-fisted, brothers. They keep a tight rein on me at home.”

Ning Chen was curious. In this world men are the honored sex, and Chen Chong is kept on that tight a rein?

Feng Qizheng started snickering, gloating all over his face.

Chen Chong was a little embarrassed. He set his teeth as though coming to some kind of decision and said:

“When this month’s salary comes in, I’ll take the brothers to the courtesans’ quarter, whatever it costs me.”

Feng Qizheng said, all mockery, “Better not. I’d rather not watch you get beaten black and blue.”

“Hm?” Ning Chen looked puzzled. “What does that mean?”

Chen Chong glared at Feng Qizheng and said angrily, “Don’t you say it. Say it and we’re through.”

Feng Qizheng ignored him entirely and said, gloating:

“Our Chen the Silver Coat’s wife is his own senior sister in the school… If Chen the Silver Coat doesn’t do as he’s told, he gets beaten black and blue.”

Ning Chen’s eyes went wide.

He had just been thinking Chen Chong was a good man who loved his wife. It turned out he simply couldn’t take her in a fight.

Ning Chen couldn’t hold it in. He laughed until he was squealing like a pig.

Chen Chong, shamed and angry, chased Feng Qizheng around aiming kicks at him. “You and your big mouth. You and your big mouth—”

Feng Qizheng suddenly stopped and turned around. “The courtesans’ quarter tonight. On me!”

Chen Chong’s face opened right up.

Feng Qizheng grinned nastily. “Pity there’s none for you.”

Chen Chong’s expression froze.

Feng Qizheng said, shameless, “Unless… you call me Daddy?”

“Daddy!”

Chen Chong did not hesitate for so much as an instant.

Ning Chen was astounded.

Christ!!!

Where’s the dignity? There’s no floor here at all.

“By the way, where’s Old Pan? I haven’t seen him since this morning.”

Feng Qizheng put on his shameless face and waggled his eyebrows. “Guess.”

Ning Chen probed. “Don’t tell me he’s off to the courtesans’ quarter to see Miss Nanzhi.”

“Ning Chen, watch your mouth… Our boss has gone to the courtesans’ quarter to work a case!”

Chen Chong said it with total seriousness.

Ning Chen rolled his eyes hard.

“Right, of course, a case. And reckoning it out on my fingers, the evidence is bound to be in Miss Nanzhi’s bed.”

“My guess is Old Pan’s procedure goes about like this. First he seizes the two ringleaders up top. A thorough oral examination to start with, deeper questioning saved for later, and by morning the truth is bound to come out.”

Feng Qizheng and Chen Chong blinked, chewed it over for a moment, and finally caught what Ning Chen was saying.

The two of them looked at each other and snickered filthily.

“Great talent, sir. Chen Chong is in awe!”

“The Great Xuan has poets and men of letters past counting, and you, sir, are the bawdiest of the lot!”

The two of them bowed over their hands to Ning Chen, all shamelessness.

“Get lost, you degenerates!”

Ning Chen said it laughing and cursing at once.

Just then Gao Ziping came in.

“Ning Chen’s back?”

Ning Chen nodded once.

Gao Ziping seemed to be in a hurry. He skipped the small talk and said straight out, “Feng Qizheng, Chen Chong, come with me. We’ve got a case.”

Feng Qizheng asked, curious, “What case?”

Gao Ziping said, “A confiscation.”

That got Ning Chen interested. He’d never seen a confiscation.

“Old Gao, take me along?”

Gao Ziping thought about it and nodded.

On the way, Gao Ziping laid out the general shape of it.

Xu Xinjue, Vice Minister of Revenue: embezzlement, taking bribes, and building a faction for private gain… By His Majesty’s edict he was stripped of office and put under investigation, the men of the household exiled, the women sent into the courtesans’ quarter.

Geng Jing had given the matter to Chen Lezhang, gold coat of the fourth department, with Gao Ziping and the others assisting on the case.

They rode to the Vice Minister’s residence.

The place was already under Inspectorate control.

The red coats at the gate took one look at Ning Chen’s party and waved them through.

Walking into the Vice Minister’s residence, Ning Chen could not help remarking, “He really was rich.”

The residence was a four-courtyard compound, with rockeries and a pond, little bridges and running water, extravagant in the extreme — very like a small Suzhou garden.

Feng Qizheng laughed. “Could a Vice Minister of Revenue not be rich?”

They came to the inner courtyard, and from a distance they could already hear weeping.

The household had been taken in hand as well.

The men on one side, the women on the other.

The old, the weak, the women and the children had been frightened badly by the Inspectorate’s people, and were sobbing quietly.

In the center of the courtyard stood one great chest after another, all of them open, full of gold and silver and jewels, of famous curios and paintings and calligraphy, of jade pieces and antiques.

Christ!!!

Ning Chen’s eyes about fell out of his head.

This Vice Minister Xu did a fair amount of stealing.

A tall middle-aged man in a gold coat stood in front of the seized goods with his back to them.

Beside him, a man who looked like a scholar was entering the goods in a register.

Gao Ziping stepped forward and bowed. “Chen the Gold Coat?”

Chen Lezhang turned his head, swept a glance over Gao Ziping and the others, and gave a flat grunt.

“Go wait over to the side… This is only part of it. The goods haven’t all been turned out yet. Once they have, you can check them against the book and go back and report.”

“Yes!”

Gao Ziping took Ning Chen and the others off to one side. They were only here to assist, so they were Chen Lezhang’s to command.

Ning Chen sized Chen Lezhang up. Tall and powerfully built, a face thick with meat, a full beard, three-cornered eyes. A vicious-looking man.

Ning Chen didn’t like him, because he believed a man’s face grows out of his heart.

“Damn it, no gravy to skim here.”

Feng Qizheng muttered it under his breath.

Ning Chen looked at him. “What do you mean? You’d actually help yourselves to seized goods?”

Feng Qizheng lowered his voice. “It’s an unwritten rule of the Inspectorate… On a confiscation it’s mostly stolen goods anyway. Taking a little quietly is fine, so long as you don’t overdo it.”

“If the boss were here it’d be all right. A good thing like this wouldn’t be landing on Chen the Gold Coat.”

Geng Jing and Pan Yucheng had entered the Inspectorate at the same time. Pan Yucheng’s nature was on the closed-off side, and he never pushed or grabbed for anything… so Geng Jing generally looked out for the first department.

The Inspectorate is divided into eight departments, and Ning Chen’s is the first. Each department is led by a gold coat.

Ning Chen was about to ask Feng Qizheng how much he’d pocketed on past confiscations when a scream tore out of the west wing behind them.

Ning Chen started and turned to look.

“What’s happening?”

Feng Qizheng was about to speak when Gao Ziping got in first. “Somebody’s probably putting up a fight.”

Ning Chen shook his head. “That’s genuinely stupid. Fighting back in front of the Inspectorate. And by the sound of it, it’s a woman—”

He had not finished when the door of one of the west wing rooms opened and a silver coat came out hitching up his trousers, a leer on his face.

Ning Chen’s face dropped on the instant.

He started toward the west wing at a fast walk.

Gao Ziping’s expression changed. “Ning Chen, come back!”

Ning Chen might as well not have heard him.

Chen Lezhang looked around. “That’s Ning Chen?”

Gao Ziping said, “Yes.”

Chen Lezhang made a flat, sneering little sound. “He’s quite the famous name these days.”

At the other end, Ning Chen had already gone into the room, and the air was thick with the sharp smell of blood.

He turned his head and looked. And in that instant his face went terribly dark, and murder rose in his eyes.

(End of Chapter 89)