The Eunuch Who Guards the Crown Prince's Bed novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Inspection

There were nine of them in the eunuchs' hall, standing in a line against the wall.

Nine night attendants in dark blue robes and black hats, nine faces trying to look like nothing.

At the far end of the room stood a screen of oiled paper.

Behind it waited a physician from the Royal Infirmary, a grey man in a white coat.

A lady-in-waiting from the Queen Dowager's household sat at his elbow with a brush.

Beside the door, in the Left Councillor's dark green, stood Min's clerk, watching the line.

Seok-woo was eighth.

"Why now?" a boy near him whispered. "Nobody's been inspected since I came."

"Somebody lost a jade comb," said the man beyond him.

"A comb."

"The Dowager says a eunuch is a eunuch only until he's checked."

The first man went behind the screen.

Seok-woo heard cloth rustle, a murmur, the scratch of the brush.

The man came out red to the ears, and the second went in.

Seok-woo's palms were wet.

He stood with his hands folded in his sleeves.

He could feel the empty vial against his wrist and the knife strapped to his thigh.

Four more men.

Three.

Bae Chun-sam stood at the other end of the line with a tray of tea nobody had asked for.

He was not looking at Seok-woo.

"You there," he said briskly to the physician's assistant. "Is the water for the physician's hands warm enough? It is a cold morning. Forgive an old man's fuss."

"It's fine."

"It's cold. I shall fetch more."

He went out, and came back, and spilled some, and sent a boy running for a towel.

He bought Seok-woo four minutes.

The sixth man went in.

The seventh.

"Next," said the lady-in-waiting. "Eighth. Han Seok-woo."

Seok-woo took one step.

The doors at the end of the hall banged open.

Everyone turned.

The Crown Prince stood in the doorway in crimson court robes, the jade pin in his topknot.

The white lock lay cold against his temple.

He held a small black lacquer tablet in his right hand.

Every eunuch in the line dropped to the floor.

"Your Highness," said the physician, scrambling out from behind the screen. "We were not told..."

"No, you weren't."

Hyeon walked down the middle of the room slowly, as though the hall belonged to him, which it did.

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