A Life in Peril
"Eldest Sister, you should go to the palace together with Grandmother. His Majesty might just swallow the excuse the Liang King has prepared for slipping free. If the Liang King has truly been wearing the mask of a weak, bumbling fool, then he is an utterly viperous man. We must be careful!"
Bai Jinxiu spoke to Bai Jingyan in a low voice.
"Second Aunt and I will wait outside the palace. Leave the inside to you, Eldest Sister."
Bai Jinxiu thought it would be safer for Bai Jingyan to enter the palace and confront the Liang King directly. If the Liang King put on another show of hapless incompetence and wriggled out of this affair, and then, riding the momentum, begged the Emperor to make her his principal wife, there would be no rescinding an imperial decree once it had been issued.
"Eldest Sister! We'll be waiting outside the palace, so don't you worry!"
Bai Jindong came up beside her as she spoke.
Every time Lady Dong recalled Bai Jingyan being flogged before the gates of Wude, it felt as though her chest were being torn apart. She was no narrow-minded woman who knew nothing beyond the running of a household, and she understood all too well that Bai Jingyan must never again be the one to step forward and face the palace gates.
The tree that rises above the forest is always the first felled by the wind.
A man of exceptional ability will draw the slander of the crowd.
The Bai family of the Zhenguo Duke Estate had met its wretched end for precisely this reason, and Lady Dong could not stand by and watch her daughter follow in their footsteps.
"Jingyan, you will enter the palace with Grandmother."
Lady Dong spoke slowly and deliberately.
"The inside of the palace I leave to you. The outside, I will see to myself."
Bai Jingyan had already read her mother's and her sisters' thoughts entirely. They believed that the burden of pressuring the Emperor could not be placed on her shoulders again.
Bai Jinxiu was right. The Liang King was a cunning, venomous serpent. Grandmother's affection for the imperial house ran deep as it was — if her resolve wavered for even an instant, or if she struck some private bargain with the Emperor to smooth the matter over, everything Bai Jingyan had laid out on the board would turn to foam.
Yet Bai Jingyan was not without her contingency. If her grandmother's heart truly leaned toward the imperial house, she intended to use the bluntest, simplest method there was. Fire, and blood.
She would kill the Liang King and burn the Liang King Estate to the ground.
But this was a last resort, nothing more. Unless there was truly no other way, she would avoid that move as long as she possibly could.
At the Liang King's side stood a monk of unfathomable martial prowess. And such a method was bound to leave traces. If, before the Liang King's breath was cut short, her family were to fall into his hands, it would amount to dragging the honor the Bai clan had built over generations down into the abyss.
Above all, no one could say what consequences would unfold if the Liang King died. Bai Jingyan could not yet control the situation completely.
The Liang King's men were all old subordinates of the late Imperial Prince, and the late Imperial Prince had kept many capable men around him in his day. In her previous life, when Bai Jingyan had followed the Liang King onto the battlefield, she had seen several of them — and one of them had been Du Zimei.
He was the one who schemed at the Liang King's side. It was he who advised the Liang King to play the fool, who told him to march to war under the pretext of aiding King Xin and quietly pile up military merit — and then, when King Xin and the Heir Apparent tore into each other and both bled themselves dry, to reap the fisherman's harvest, marching in with accumulated glory and winning over the Emperor's heart. Every stratagem had been Du Zimei's.
Bai Jingyan regarded Du Zimei with the deepest wariness.
Besides, even if she risked everything to commit the murder, it would be loyal servants of the Bai clan who paid with their lives — and perhaps even innocent people caught up in the affair.
That means was her lowest, last card, to be played only when no path remained at all.
Bai Jingyan leaned close to Bai Jinxiu's ear and whispered instructions for a long while. Bai Jinxiu's eyes grew bright and clear. She nodded.
"I understand, Sister. Don't worry."
The Emperor clung, almost obsessively, to the desire to be a wiser sovereign than his late father, to leave behind a name that history would praise for a thousand years. What the Emperor pursued was honor in the eyes of the world — and this was his greatest weakness.
Then the people must be made to praise him as a ruler who set aside private feeling and governed the affairs of all under heaven with fairness, one who could bring punishment even upon his own princes for the sake of the righteous path. He must be exalted, loudly and everywhere, as the greatest wise sovereign of the age — one who had dealt cold, impartial justice even to King Xin, his own legitimate son. Bai Jingyan entrusted this task to Bai Jinxiu. It was her sisters who had to stir the people.
If the people were led out into the streets to cry out with one voice, the Emperor would deal with the Liang King — who had sought to frame the Bai clan — according to law, exactly as the law demanded.
The Emperor was not fond of the Liang King to begin with; the man was as weak as water. And once the people's praise reached his ears, would an Emperor who loved empty glory and prized his reputation above all things not cast the Liang King aside with his own hands?
What Bai Jingyan wanted was to place upon the Emperor's head a crown the people had woven for him out of praise and flattery.
Pressure did not have to mean striking the Dengwen Drum and glaring each other down in a contest of nerve. A crown made of virtue — was that not the very hat that turned a man's blood cold at the mere mention of it, and yet could never be taken off?
The Emperor who sat upon the loftiest seat in the world feared the mouths of the common people above all things, and feared the historian's brush more than any man alive.
Bai Jingyan nodded, then bowed with proper ceremony.
"Then I leave it to you, Mother, and to my aunts."
Bai Jingyan watched for a long while as her mother, her aunts, and her younger sisters walked off toward Wude Gate alongside the people of Dadu. Then she climbed into the carriage with the Grand Princess.
The two of them sat inside.
With her hair gone entirely white, the Grand Princess looked as though she had aged ten years in a single span. Her eyes were closed tight, her thin lips pressed together, and her fingers never stopped moving over a string of prayer beads carved from agarwood.
Bai Jingyan sat upright beside her, her face calm, without the slightest ripple.
The Liang King had spent the entire day pacing his residence, unable to sit still. Hours had passed since he sent Dong Ji out, and every time he dispatched a servant to find out what was happening, the answer came back the same — Dong Ji was still waiting outside the side gate of the Duke's estate, and no maid had been seen.
The monk was still holding Yu Huanzhang, but Yu Huanzhang, anxious over his wife and family, had grown desperate. He was on the verge of going out at once to denounce the late Duke Bai Weiting as a traitor who had sold the nation.
All that mattered was that Chunyan carry the letters safely into the Duke's estate. It did not have to reach the old Duke's study — anywhere within the estate walls would do. Add Yu Huanzhang's testimony on top of that, and his imperial father would accept the charge that the Bai family had sold the country as simple fact. His father already feared the Bai clan, and he was all but certain to resent the path Bai Jingyan had blazed of late.
If he let this chance slip, when would he ever have another to shove the Bai family back into the mire?
He had already worked out how to use Bai Jingyan as well. Once the women of the Bai household were seized, he would devise another stratagem and rescue Bai Jingyan and one or two of her maids — and then she would have no choice but to give him her whole heart.
A tangle of emotions surged into the Liang King all at once; he shut his eyes and coughed violently, then pulled his robes tighter around himself.
When he opened his eyes again, they were gleaming with naked ferocity.
If he could only destroy the Bai family's century of honor, it would be as good as avenging Noble Consort Dong and the late Imperial Prince.
His old hunger — to borrow Bai Jingyan's military glory and pave his own road to the throne — had in fact shrunk considerably. The assassins had wounded his heart and lungs, and who could say anymore whether fortune would ever seat him on that seat at all.
And Bai Jingyan had made her loathing of him plain as day. She had declared before the entire city that no matter whom she was wedded to, she would never marry him.
The Liang King could not understand it, no matter how he turned it over. What exactly was it about him that displeased her so, that her manner toward him had turned overnight?
"Your Highness! Your Highness, grave news! Your Highness!"
The steward of the Liang King Estate stood at the entrance to the study and cried out at the top of his voice.
The Liang King frowned.
"Enter."
The steward hurried in, made his bow, and spoke.
"Your Highness — Dong Ji was caught by the madam of the Duke's estate at the side gate, just as he was meeting the maid who serves the Eldest Young Lady. And at that very moment, the funeral procession was returning, so the matter blew up until it reached the Grand Princess's ears as well.
The letters Your Highness sent were opened before the common people — and they are none other than correspondence between the late Zhenguo King and the Nan'yan Commandery King! Among them was a letter said to be in the Zhenguo King's own hand, but when it was examined, it turned out to be the brushwork of Emperor Gaozu himself! And the Bai Eldest Young Lady declared before the people that Your Highness once came to the estate hoping to borrow a military treatise annotated by Emperor Gaozu, and — since she wanted no dealings with you — she instead gifted you a treatise that Gaozu had annotated with his own hand!"
A treatise annotated by Gaozu?
The treatise Bai Jingyan gave me was annotated by Gaozu?
The Liang King's fist clenched. His heart pounded thunderously, and the strength drained from his limbs. He swayed backward.
"Your Highness!"
The steward rushed to catch him.
"Your Highness, are you all right?"
The Liang King's chest felt as though it were being stabbed again and again, his heart hammering like a thing possessed. The wild thrashing of it seemed as if it would burst straight through the wounds that had only just begun to heal.
"And Dong Ji?"
the Liang King managed to ask.
"The Grand Princess has taken the letters, and Dong Ji and the maid besides, and entered the palace to see His Majesty!"
The steward's voice was shaking.
She's gone to the palace?
Stay calm. Think of another way!
It did not matter that it was Gaozu's handwriting. Bai Weiting had always been a careful man — he need only claim that Bai Weiting had imitated Gaozu's brushwork when corresponding with the Nan'yan Commandery King. No, the real problem was that the letters had come out of Dong Ji's hands.
The steward stood there, at a complete loss.
"Your Highness, what do we do now! Someone is clearly trying to frame you! Dong Ji must have stumbled into a trap someone laid! Your Highness, if your body can bear it, you must go to the palace at once and explain yourself to His Majesty!"
The Liang King, who had been wearing a face like a thundercloud, suddenly lifted his head and looked at the steward. Something flashed through his mind, and an excellent pretext crystallized. He seized the steward's hand in a tight grip.
What he had sent with Dong Ji was, without question, a love letter. He had longed for the Bai Eldest Young Lady; he had sent it solely out of his desire to wed her. As for how the letter in Dong Ji's keeping had turned into correspondence between the old Duke and the Nan'yan Commandery King — he knew nothing of it, and would swear as much. All he had to do was stand before his imperial father and play the fool, the startled innocent, the man utterly in the dark.
As for Yu Huanzhang, he would send the monk, with the promise that Yu's wife and family would be spared, and have him go to the Court of Judicial Review and lodge an accusation — that the Zhenguo Duke had betrayed the realm. Yu Huanzhang, knowing he would die, had crawled back nonetheless to see the truth brought to light; and having learned of the Liang King's devotion to Bai Jingyan, it was he who had swapped the love letter in Dong Ji's keeping for those letters. That would be the story.
True, the campaign records had already come to light. But if Yu Huanzhang had braved death itself to return and expose Bai Weiting's "crime," the common folk might think twice, at least once. And from his father's standpoint, this affair might even serve as grounds to reopen the case.
King Xin was his father's legitimate son. His father and the Empress would want to save him too. Yu Huanzhang's emergence was a chance to turn the whole King Xin affair on its head.
Even if his father, for the sake of his name, refused to admit that the decree elevating Bai Weiting to a king had been his own error — even if he had abandoned his own legitimate son! — Yu Huanzhang's appearance would at the very least put a stain on the Bai clan's soaring reputation for loyalty.
The Liang King closed his eyes and thought it through. If he could smooth over this affair, there would still be chances aplenty. As long as he drew breath, he could tear the shell of "loyalty" off the Bai family, shove them down into a dirt pit, and make them the target of ten thousand curses.
The matter was desperately urgent, and he had no time to deliberate long. He gave his orders in a rush.
"Call the guards — now! Quickly!"
"Yes, Your Highness!"
The steward darted out and summoned the guards.
The Liang King walked to the desk, took up his brush, and wrote down a few lines of instruction for the monk. Once the ink had dried, he folded the paper carefully away. Just then, the guards entered.
He pressed the letter into their hands.
"There is no time to explain each thing one by one. Deliver this to the monk, and tell him he must act exactly as the letter says. Not a single mistake — do you hear? If he falters, it will cost us our very lives. Go — now!"