Vengeance
"Bring them in here!"
the Emperor said, his eyes narrowed to slits.
Then Dongji and Chunyan were led inside, bound fast with rope.
Dongji, who had served at the Liang King's side since boyhood, had laid eyes on the Emperor before. Chunyan, however, felt her soul drain clean out of her — one wrong word, she was certain, could cost her her life. Huddled like a quail, she did nothing but tremble. She held back even her tears, so terrified was she that the Emperor might kill her on the spot if she dared to weep.
"Dongji, hurry and tell His Majesty! What manner of letter was it that I gave you? How did it come to be a letter forged in imitation of the Duke's hand!"
"Your Highness, this humble servant does not know either!"
Frightened, Dongji did nothing but weep — looking, at that moment, exactly like the Liang King.
"I truly cannot fathom how that letter came to hold the very words the Bai family's Third Young Miss read aloud!"
Bai Jingyan spoke at last, unhurried.
"After His Highness the Liang King gave you the letter, did you set it down anywhere else? Or meet with anyone... Did His Highness ever tell you to pass the letter to a maidservant of the Duke's estate? If the Liang King has truly been wronged, then only the truth from your own lips can bring the matter to light."
Dongji had to prove his master's innocence, and anxiety made him answer in a rush.
"No — no! I would swear it on my life! After Your Highness handed me the letter, it never once left my person! And I passed word to no one! That night I tucked this letter into my breast and could not close my eyes until dawn — I could think only of how Your Highness was being wronged! Ah — Gao Sheng knows this too! It was Gao Sheng who placed this letter in my hands before Your Highness!"
At the thought of Gao Sheng, Dongji abruptly turned his head toward the Liang King.
"Your Highness! Your Highness, did you not send Gao Sheng ahead to meet with Chunyan? According to the old stewardess who keeps the side gate of the Duke's estate... the cold-faced guard of our estate went looking for her, but Chunyan refused to see him! Gao Sheng is a man of formidable martial skill — no one alive could have swapped the letter while it was in his keeping! It must be Gao Sheng who means to destroy you!"
The longer Dongji spoke, the whiter his face grew. He shrieked through his tears as though certain that Gao Sheng had turned against the Liang King.
"After I took this letter from Gao Sheng's hands, he left the estate and never came back! Did I not warn you long ago? That a man like Gao Sheng must never be kept at Your Highness's side! That wretch has surely fled!"
The Liang King's heart plummeted. Not once had it crossed his mind that Dongji would bring up Gao Sheng.
Gao Sheng had once been a man of the Second Prince, now dead. In those days the Second Prince had led troops in an attempt to storm the imperial palace to save the natal family of Noble Consort Dong — and had died at the Emperor's own hands inside Wude Gate. The Second Prince's followers who escaped had all made their way to the Liang King.
And if the Emperor were to learn that the Second Prince's old men had gathered at the Liang King's side — what would he think?
Bai Jingyan bowed respectfully to the Emperor before speaking again.
"Then Your Majesty must summon the Liang King's guard Gao Sheng and interrogate him properly! We must learn who it is that drives a wedge between His Highness and our estate — or whether His Highness the Liang King truly intends to drive the Bai family to their deaths!"
The Emperor regarded Bai Jingyan, so calm and composed. But before he could open his mouth, the sound of a drum — thud, thud, thud — came rolling in from somewhere far off.
Nearly a hundred years had passed since the Dengwen Drum was set outside Wude Gate. In all that time it had been little more than a symbol, a mere ornament — for until only recently, not a single soul had ever dared strike it.
What ill fortune had taken hold of this year? The holiday had not even been properly seen out, and already the Dengwen Drum had rung twice. How could any sovereign sit still for this?
Rage came to a boil inside the Emperor; irritation piled upon irritation, and his voice climbed.
"Who is it this time, striking the drum!"
"Your Majesty, calm yourself, I beg you. This humble servant has already sent someone to find out. The report will be brought back any moment!"
Gao Demu's spine had gone cold to the marrow.
The Emperor clenched his teeth.
"Send men to the King Yang Estate and bring me this man Gao Sheng! If he is not at the estate, drag him out of the Ministry of Justice!"
Head lowered, the Liang King's mind spun. Gao Sheng must have known he would be summoned to the palace — and so had ordered Yu Huanzang to strike the Dengwen Drum and accuse the Zhenguo King of treason. The plan had not unfolded as intended, but it was no bad stratagem.
Now he and Dongji could wash their hands of this affair entirely.
Watching the Liang King breathe out his relief and ease the stiffness from his shoulders, Bai Jingyan pressed her hands, folded before her in courtesy, just a little tighter. Please — let everything go smoothly.
Outside Wude Gate, Xiao Ruogang pounded the Dengwen Drum as though to bring down the very heavens.
Xiao Ruohai, wounded, had dropped to one knee at the side, glaring holes through Gao Sheng. Taking Gao Sheng alive had cost the Duke's estate six of its masters, and had very nearly cost Xiao Ruohai his left arm. That wretch Gao Sheng was a true master, through and through.
Gao Sheng, captured alive; Yu Huanzang, already dead; and Quan Weijun knelt before Wude Gate, pinned in place by the guards of the Duke's estate.
Quan Weijun ground his teeth. Eyes rimmed red, he stared at Gao Sheng.
"Gao Sheng — Lord Gao! Did you truly mean to kill me?"
Gao Sheng answered with a face utterly devoid of feeling.
"A man already taken is only a complication left breathing. Better to die. Linger on, and you only suffer."
Quan Weijun's eyes flew wide — they seemed about to leap from his skull. Those were the very words the Liang King had once said to him.
On the night the lightning had hammered the earth without mercy, the Liang King had given him his order: shoot dead with arrows the sworn brothers with whom he had shared every hardship and joy. And as he hesitated, the Liang King had told him —
'They are already taken. Keeping them alive only creates complications — better they die. Linger on, and they only suffer.'
Quan Weijun opened his mouth to protest, then swallowed the words back down.
It was the Liang King's unchanging method. If the Liang King could order him to kill his own brothers-in-arms, then he could just as easily have ordered Gao Sheng — whom Quan Weijun had counted a friend — to kill him. It had been foreseeable from the very start.
So the affairs of this world do indeed turn full circle. All of it, karma.
Bai Jindong lifted the letter written in the Liang King's own hand, found on Quan Weijun's body by the Bai guards, and read it out in a ringing voice before the crowd. She feared the Emperor might bury the truth to shield his own son.
"Trouble has broken out. Hold the lives of Yu Huanzang's family over him and coerce him into surrendering himself for confession before the Court of Judicial Review. Make him state before the Chief Minister that the letter in Dongji's keeping was his own doing! The purpose of Yu Huanzang's planting this letter in the Duke's estate is to make certain proof that Bai Weiting sold out the country! Have him repeat, over and over, that he returned to Dadu at the risk of his life to accuse the Zhenguo King in order to win back the honor that was his due!
Should he refuse to obey this command, or threaten to blab about his collaboration with this King, tell him that I will, by any means necessary, send Yu Huanzang's family down the road to the Yellow Springs together with him. If Yu Huanzang asks about the exposed march records, tell him not to worry his head over it — this King is already laying plans for the next move!"
The crowd could not contain its shock at what Bai Jindong read.
"Who is this? He calls himself 'this King'... Don't tell me it truly is the Liang King?"
Bai Jindong could not hold back her fury. Bai Jinchi drove her foot into Gao Sheng's wounded shoulder and sent him sprawling to the ground. Tears welling in both eyes, she shrieked —
"Speak! What did you plot with Yu Huanzang? Is it the Liang King who has been in league with the Junwang of Nanyan? Is that why the men of our Bai family have all left this world — because you sold our country!"
At Bai Jinchi's words the crowd roared, howling that these three deserved to be put to death by a thousand cuts. Thinking of the Bai men who had perished at the Southern Border — and the youngest of them, barely ten years old — their eyes reddened all over again. They wanted nothing more than to seize a blade that very instant and drive it into Yu Huanzang's corpse one more time.
Gao Sheng was a man of stubborn strength. He clenched his jaw and strained to rise — and the weight bearing down on him forced him back onto one knee. Expressionless, he stared straight ahead.
Straight ahead lay Wude Gate. His master, the Second Prince, and the Second Prince's elder brother had all died within those walls.
Before long, one of the Bai guards hurried over and, cupping a hand around his mouth, murmured at Xiao Ruohai's ear.
"The Capital Governor has learned that Yu Huanzang was found in Dadu, and is preparing to present himself before His Majesty and beg forgiveness. The old servant at Chief Minister Yu Zhen's residence tells us that the moment Yu Zhen heard the Grand Princess had set out for the palace carrying the letter — over the Liang King's attempt to frame the Duke's estate — he departed for the palace at once. He should reach the imperial presence any moment now."
Gao Sheng's ears twitched. He turned his head and looked at Xiao Ruohai. Only now did he understand everything. The Liang King had walked straight into the Bai family's snare.
The ramrod-straight line of Gao Sheng's back bowed, just slightly.
The gatekeeper of Wude Gate was called into the great hall to report to the Emperor.
At the sight of the man, the Emperor flared up all over again and barked:
"Who in blazes is striking the Dengwen Drum?"
"Your Majesty — a servant of the Bai family."
At that answer, the Emperor fixed Bai Jingyan with a sinister look.
"What scheme are you brewing this time? Am I not interrogating this very matter as we speak?"
Bai Jingyan lifted her head, and a look of startled innocence spread across her face.
"Your Majesty — is your humble servant not standing here in this hall, rather than at Wude Gate?"
…
Watching the Emperor's face darken by the moment, the Grand Princess drew Bai Jingyan back behind her, shielding her without a thought.
"Did I not ask you what is going on!"
The Emperor vented his fury on the gatekeeper.
"Your Majesty, the Bai family's servants have captured Yu Huanzang and two guards of the King Yang Estate. All three are gravely wounded. Even now they are striking the Dengwen Drum, begging that the wrongs done to the Bai family be set right! They accuse the Liang King of colluding with the enemy to sell out the country — and of scheming to defame the loyal and the martyred!"
Only then did Bai Jingyan's heart finally settle. The hands folded before her loosened, just slightly. Then she turned a blade-sharp gaze upon the Liang King.
"Yu Huanzang?"
The hand wearing the jade ring clenched until the knuckles stood white.
Shaking from head to foot, the Liang King wept and wailed.
"Father, I am wronged! Father, I beg you — believe in your son's innocence! However reckless your son may be, he could never, ever plot such a thing!"
Even as he wailed his grievances, the Liang King's mind whirred.
"Father, your son has never once done any such thing."
Trembling, his face a mess of tears and snot, the Liang King delivered the very portrait of weakness, incompetence, and sniveling cowardice.
"Drag them all in here!"
The Emperor hurled the teacup from the table to the floor.
"Yes, Your Majesty!"
The gatekeeper hastily withdrew.
The Liang King's wailing grew ever more pitiful.
"Father! Your son truly never committed such a crime! Father, you must believe me!"
Just then the summoning official came forward at a quick step and bowed low.
"Your Majesty, the Chief Minister of the Court of Judicial Review, Yu Zhen, begs an audience."
"Show him in!"
The Liang King's wailing was drumming up a headache behind the Emperor's eyes.