In contrast to our journey out, the weather holds fine on our ride back to the Fort, though it’s very cold.  It feels like coming home.  We send a message to the capital telling them the latest news:  the splitting of the southern alliance and the information that troops are gathering in Xu Yating’s home country.  New Year comes and goes.  The celebrations are satisfying, though the memory of Qiu City looms large in my mind.  Then the everyday routine starts again.  We train the men.  We hunt.  Kong Guanyu imports a new batch of girls.  We wait for the next letter from the capital.  But when it comes, it brings shocking news.

“Jinhai’s been injured!” I exclaim, half-way through decoding the message.

“What?” Shao Ru jumps up and comes over to the table.  “Injured how?  Seriously?”

“Wait – I can’t tell.”  My hands are shaking as I finish the decoding.

“They started the campaign to defame Xu Yating.  Jinhai was hit in the arm by an arrow while he was putting the posters up.  Luckily Yuan Song had hired someone to shadow him, so he wasn’t captured.  When this was written, he was still under Liang Zhou’s care but expected to recover.”

“He’s all right then?”

“When this letter was written, yes.  But you know as well as I do, anything can happen.  Wounds can become poisoned and go black.  He could die.”

He grips my arm hard.  “Ah-Shan, stop.  Ah-Zhou won’t let anything happen to him.  What else does the message say?”

I take a deep breath and look at the letter again.  “They’re calling a halt to the campaign.  They’re going to wait and see what Xu Yating will do and whether the army decides to move or not.”

“That would take a bloody earthquake,” Shao Ru growls.

“They’re still getting over the epidemic.  But the news about the Xu troops will rattle them.  If only we could communicate with the capital without this damn ten-day gap.  By the time the news gets here, it’s not news any more.  And if anything does happen, we’re too far away to react.”

Still very unsettled by the news of Jinhai’s injury, I take the letter to Li Wei.  I decide to stop and inform Kong Guanyu as well, but at the door to his apartment, I hear familiar sounds:  he’s with a woman.  The guards at his door look at me and shrug.  It’s the Young Lord, what can we do?   So I go back to our quarters, my mind half-elsewhere, eat dinner with the others, check in with the guards outside the Prince’s apartment, get a breath of cold air out on the ramparts and then go to bed.

But sleep doesn’t come, because tonight, as on so many other nights, the demons of desire come sidling out to torment me.  It’s only relentless activity which keeps them at bay during the day.  I’m no longer a man of moderate desires.  Jinhai has lit a burning flame and he’s the only one who can quench it.  I want him.  I’m not tempted by the girls that Guanyu teasingly puts in my way, or by boys like Niannian or the young dancers to whom I taught the sword-dance and who vied fiercely for my attention.  I only want Jinhai and he’s far away in time and space.  Ten days there and ten days back.  All I can do is burn, resorting occasionally to what Jinhai refers to, chuckling, as Grandad Mo’s solution.  And since sharing a room with Shao Ru’s extremely inhibiting in that respect, I’m reduced to seeking relief only on those nights when he’s out on the prowl.

So I’m fully awake when suddenly the silence is broken by screams.  I start out of bed, fumble for candle and flint and am beaten to it by Shao Ru.  We stare at one another in the fitful light.  Then we hear a man’s voice, raised in alarm.

“Oh fuck, the Prince!” Shao Ru exclaims.

We grab our swords and dash out, meeting Ren Baiyi and Zi Wuying on the way, undressed and unshod like us, but carrying torches.  The wall-torches in the corridor are dark.  Our torchlight shows the bodies of the Prince’s guards slumped against the wall.  There’s a crack of light from the open door.  We burst in.

Kong Nuan’s sitting up in bed, hands to her mouth, face white with shock.  The Prince is sprawled half across her, his blood staining the quilts.  A woman’s lying in a heap on the carpet, red blossoming on her white sleeping-garments.  Crouching beside her is a person in black, head and face covered, dagger in hand.  As we erupt into the room, the assassin leaps up and turns to face us, dagger at the ready. 

“Oh no, you fucking don’t,” snaps Shao Ru.  His knife flashes from his hand and hits the assassin in the shoulder.  Ren Baiyi and Zi Wuying close in and the assassin’s pinned down and immobilized.  I stride forward and pull off the head covering.

It’s a woman.

“Crap,” says Shao Ru, “This is one of Guanyu’s girls, the new ones.”

The assassin struggles furiously, growling and snapping like a beast.

“Tie her up,” I say tersely.  “Get a doctor, see to the Prince and Princess.”  Then I think, Guanyu!  Cursing, I grab a torch and dash out along the dark corridor to Guanyu’s apartment.  The guards are slumped against the wall in an exact copy of the scene outside the Prince’s door.  Guanyu’s spread-eagled across the bed, naked, face down, motionless.  Still cursing, I feel for a pulse.  He’s breathing, but he doesn’t respond to me shaking and calling him.  Shao Ru appears.  “The Prince has a flesh-wound.  Guards are all dead.  How’s Ah-Yu?”

“Unconscious, but alive.”

“Thank the Gods for that.  I wouldn’t fancy explaining to Lord Kong that his son and heir’s been killed by a tart.”

“How did the guards die?”

“There’s not a mark on them, so I reckon poison.”

“Round up all the girls and put them in prison, separately.  There might be more than one assassin.”

He disappears.  I cover Guanyu up with a quilt and run back to the Third Prince’s apartment.  The assassin’s been removed.  The body on the carpet is that of Jia Ju, stabbed through the heart.  The Princess is kneeling beside her in tears.  A doctor’s already there, binding up the Prince’s arm.

I help the Princess to her feet and guide her to sit on the bed next to her husband, who puts his good arm round her shaking shoulders.

“Can you tell me what happened, sir?” I ask.

He's deathly pale, but in command of himself.  “We heard noises outside the door, so I lit a candle.  I was just getting up when that person burst in.  I was slow to react – I couldn’t believe it – I tried to counter the attack but she got me in the arm.  Then Jia Ju came out of the back room and threw herself in front of me.”

“She saved us,” the Princess says, miserably.

The doctor finishes his bandaging and at my word, goes off to see to Guanyu.  The Prince rises and helps his wife up.  “Come and lie down next door,” he says gently, “You have to think of the child.”

The child?

The Princess allows her husband to lead her into the maid’s room, with a pitiful backward glance at the body on the floor.  As the Prince reappears, I question, “Your Highness?”

He nods.  “Yes, she’s with child.  We wanted to keep it to ourselves for the time being.  How did this happen?”

“That woman was with Kong Guanyu tonight.  She knocked him out, killed four guards and tried to kill you.  Luckily your maid was alert.”

“Jia Ju’s been with my wife since she was a child,” he says, looking down at the bloodstained body. 

Suddenly, the room fills up with people.  Li Wei and Wan Ning come in, both in their night-robes, consternation on their faces.  Ren Baiyi, Zi Wuying and Shao Ru reappear, having rounded up and imprisoned all the girls.  The two young men lift Jia Ju’s body and carry it carefully away.  I look grimly at Shao Ru.  “Get dressed.  I want to see this assassin.”

We're too late.  The assassin’s been chained up in a small interrogation cell.  She’s dead.  Judging by the blood and foam round her mouth, she’s taken poison.  The guards didn’t notice anything.  I don’t suppose they could have done much even if they had noticed. 

“She probably had the stuff hidden inside her body,” Shao Ru says, “That’s what they do.”

“We’ll interrogate all the women tomorrow.  Tonight, we’ll let them stew.  At first light, send someone into town to fetch the woman who runs the brothel they come from."

“Understood.”

“I’d better go and check on Guanyu.”

“If I were you, I’d cut his balls off.  He’s responsible for this.  Who do you think sent her?  Lord Zu?”

I shake my head.  “My money’s on Xu Yating.  The Prince is a threat to her as long as he’s alive.”

Up in Guanyu’s quarters, the doctor’s fussing around with basins and cups.  A smell of vomit hangs in the air.  Guanyu’s still unconscious, propped up on pillows, but his face is a normal colour and his breathing’s steady.

“Young Lord Kong was drugged, but he’s in no danger,” says the doctor, a portly person as much unlike Liang Zhou as it’s possible to be.  “However he won’t be waking up for a while.  I’ll leave my assistant with him till he regains consciousness.  Prince Yan’s wound is minor and there doesn’t seem to have been poison on the weapon.  It’s too early to tell if the shock will affect the Princess’s pregnancy.”

“And the guards?”

He beckons me outside to where the two bodies are still lying and indicates a pin-prick wound on each face.  Then he shows me a small box, which he opens carefully.

“Poisoned darts.  She'll have used a blowpipe.  There may be other darts lying about.  Whatever you do, don’t touch them with your bare hands.”

I take the box and send him off back to bed for what remains of the night, my blood suddenly cold at the thought that we've been running around with bare feet.  Then I go back into Guanyu’s apartment.  There are two cups of wine on the table, one untouched.  Behind the bathing-screen, I find an untidy pile of gaudy garments and cheap jewelry.  There’s a smell of perfume that makes my nose wrinkle.  She drugged Guanyu and changed into her assassin’s clothing.  Then she went to the door and disposed of the two guards.  I follow her steps in the light of the re-lit torches.  She ran along the corridor towards the Prince’s apartment, which is round a sharp corner.  She would have stopped at the corner to check out the situation.  It’s probably from here that she knocked out the Prince’s two guards.  Soldiers are bending over the bodies.  As they lift the first man, we all hear the small sharp sound of something dropping to the floor.  ”What’s that?” says one of the men, reaching out.

At the top of my voice, I bellow, “Don’t touch!” and the men turn, startled.

“Stand back!  Don’t touch anything on the floor.”

They hustle back and stand against the wall, alarmed.  I approach and scan the ground.  There’s a small bamboo cylinder, stoppered up.  But there must be two more darts around. 

“They were killed with poisoned darts,” I say to the bewildered soldiers.  “The darts are here somewhere.  If you touch them, you’re dead.  One of you fetch me some pincers.”

A man dashes off.  I spot one of the darts, still in the face of the man who hasn’t been moved, but where’s the other one? 

“There, sir,” says a young soldier, sharper-eyed than the others, pointing. 

The pincers appear.  Gingerly, I pull out the embedded dart and then, with more difficulty, pick up the one on the floor.  Once they’re safely inside the box, we all breathe a sigh of relief.

“All right, you can take the bodies away, but don’t touch the wounds.”  

Just to be on the safe side, I use the pincers to pick up the cylinder as well.  It rattles.  I’m guessing the blowpipe’s in there.  Before I do anything else, I take the whole lot down to the furnace room where the fort’s water is heated and throw it into the fire.  Then I wash my hands, just in case.  Poison’s a nasty thing. 

Shao Ru greets me as I go back to the Prince’s apartment.  “We’re all sorted.  We thought it might be better to move the Prince and Princess  to another apartment.” 

I run a hand over my tired stubbly face.  “What a fucking mess.  Six dead, two injured, all because Guanyu can’t keep it in his trousers.”

“Could have been worse.  It might have been the Prince.  Shame about Lady Jia though.  She was a nice woman.”

“I’m going to tell Hou He what’s happened.  He’ll have to take over from Guanyu for the time being.  And then I’m going to snatch a couple of hours’ sleep.  You do the same.  Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”