How Dare I
The way Xiao Rongyan looked at Bai Jingyan was no longer the mingled probing and uncertainty she had seen last time.
His eyes burned with a will that made itself unmistakably plain — he meant to have her, whatever Bai Jingyan's heart might say.
Now that he had spoken so openly, Bai Jingyan wanted, for her part, to settle the matter between them once and for all.
"Master Xiao, I understood perfectly well what you said to me that day on the boat."
Bai Jingyan set the Jade Cicada down on the stone table and spoke with perfect calm.
"But neither you nor I are people who can afford to idle our hours away trading verses, are we? I must protect my mother, my aunts, and my younger siblings. And you, Master Xiao, must protect Great Yan as it struggles through its hour of hardship. I carry the honor of the Bai family upon my shoulders, and you must restore the splendor that Empress Xi built for Great Yan in her lifetime. And beyond that... someone must bring the whole realm to peace, must they not?"
The faint warmth in Xiao Rongyan's eyes cooled by degrees. Beneath the moonlight, he stared long and deep into the woman's exquisitely carved features — lovely enough to gleam, cold enough to chill a man to the bone.
"In Jin, I barely cling on from one crisis to the next. Is Great Yan not staggering as well among the rival states?"
Bai Jingyan's voice was light.
"The road ahead is pitch black, and we are walking across thin ice. How, then, could I dare let my heart wander elsewhere? How could I dare harbor feelings of love?"
Xiao Rongyan's gaze dropped to the Jade Cicada. He stepped forward two paces and closed his slender, sharply boned fingers around it, then lifted his head to look at Bai Jingyan, who stood barely a step away.
"So you are telling me you cannot even allow your heart to waver."
Bai Jingyan looked into Xiao Rongyan's eyes — deep-set beneath his proud nose and prominent brow — and clenched her fists tight. Then she answered in a sincere tone.
"The Bai family cannot see the road ahead. We stand on precarious ground. We cannot afford to waver."
Xiao Rongyan's grip tightened on the Jade Cicada. Then he closed the distance until they were nearly touching. Bai Jingyan tried to step back, but he caught her wrist, drew her hand toward him, and stared down into her face with dark eyes, his voice dropping low.
"Bai Jingyan. So long as you do not despise me, I still have a chance. Did I not tell you? There are many days still ahead of us."
Bai Jingyan's lashes trembled. At some point, without her having noticed, the Jade Cicada Xiao Rongyan had pressed into her palm was clasped in her hand.
She had meant to refuse, but he held her hand fast.
"Think of it as a talisman that guards your safety. Keep it by your side, and it will keep your peace. And there were precious few in this world who ever understood my mother... You are a kindred spirit to her."
With that, Xiao Rongyan gave Bai Jingyan a smile.
"Rest well. If you ever have need of me, send for me at any hour."
Bai Jingyan watched Xiao Rongyan leave the quaint, cozy courtyard, then bowed her head to look down at the Jade Cicada in her hand. Under the moonlight it glimmered with a cold sheen.
How could Xiao Rongyan possibly know? That no pure maiden's feeling would ever take root in her heart again.
Her chest held nothing but the horrors the Bai family had endured in her past life — the wretched ends her family had met. Even with her eyes shut, the blood-soaked men of the Bai clan still loomed before her.
Her greatest wish in this life was for the Bai family to come through safe and unharmed, and to carry on her grandfather's legacy. Not once had she ever left so much as a crack open for the feeling called love.
Steward Yu, who had been waiting at the entrance of the courtyard, came in at once once he saw Xiao Rongyan off.
"Eldest Young Miss..."
Bai Jingyan slipped the Jade Cicada into her pouch and spoke.
"Tomorrow at first light I am taking Jinchi to the clan's residence. Yu Su, work out a way to make certain that more of the clan becomes implicated in the Heavenly Fragrance Pavilion affair."
Bai Jingyan turned her head to look at Steward Yu.
"And see to it that no local official learns I've come all the way to Suyang and am staying at the Bai ancestral manor — not before daybreak tomorrow."
The whole world already knew that Bai Jingyan, the Zhenguo Commandery Princess, belonged to the Crown Prince's faction. Very well — then she would simply borrow the weight of the Crown Prince's prestige. The moment the local officials learned that the Crown Prince's confidante had returned to Suyang, they would come scurrying to curry favor however they could.
Bai Jingyan was not her grandfather. However furious her grandfather had been with the Bai clan, he had never once been willing to make the family a laughingstock before outsiders.
The next morning.
Before day had even broken, two palanquins stood at the entrance of the distinguished guests' inn. The Prefect, dressed in plain clothes, had hardly stepped down from his palanquin when he spotted the Magistrate taking breakfast with his subordinate officials at a shop directly across from the inn.
At the sight of the Prefect, the Magistrate hastily set down his spoon, wiped his mouth roughly, and hurried over with quick little steps, bowing in salute.
"Your Excellency!"
The Prefect regarded the Magistrate with a face that neither smiled nor frowned.
"Magistrate Zhu, how remarkably well-informed you are. You knew the Commandery Princess had arrived, did you?"
"I heard the news early this very morning. I couldn't so much as finish breakfast before rushing straight here. Her Highness doesn't seem to have risen yet, so I was just filling my stomach. Care to join me, Your Excellency?"
The Magistrate did not so much as pretend to hear the Prefect's mockery.
He thought to himself: everyone here had come prepared to grovel before the Commandery Princess — weren't they all just desperate to win the Crown Prince's favor anyway? What was there to put on such airs about?
The Prefect waved a hand, half in amusement.
"Never mind. Eat your fill, Magistrate Zhu."
With that, the Prefect turned and instructed his men to enter the inn and present a call card, requesting an audience with Bai Jingyan.
But before the Prefect's men could even set foot inside, Bai Jingyan emerged through the front doors of the inn with Bai Jinchi at her side, a retinue of guards filing out behind them.
The Prefect recognized Steward Yu standing beside Bai Jingyan at a glance. He had seen the man once, half a month prior, at the Patriarch's birthday banquet — the Patriarch's son had told him this was Steward Yu. The man darted about so incessantly that the Prefect had laid eyes on him only that once, and had never even managed a proper word with him.
Stepping forward, the Prefect swept a swift gaze over the group and noted the red whip bound at Bai Jinchi's waist. Recognizing the two women's identities at once, he bowed low to Bai Jingyan.
"This humble official pays his respects to the Commandery Princess and the County Princess."
Magistrate Zhu hurried forward as well, bowing with a smile steeped in flattery.
"This humble official pays his respects to the Commandery Princess and the County Princess."
Bai Jingyan put on no airs whatsoever and answered kindly.
"Rise, Your Excellencies."
Bai Jinchi stood behind Bai Jingyan with her eyebrows arched, saying nothing, her face stamped full of arrogance.
"May I ask why Their Highnesses have returned to Suyang so far ahead of schedule? I was given to understand you would return on the first day of the fifth month."
The Prefect asked with a smiling face.
"Indeed, that is just what I was about to say! Whyever did you come without so much as a word of notice? When the Bai clan held the Patriarch's birthday banquet, I even settled it with him — that we would hold a welcoming feast the moment Your Highness returned to Suyang!"
Magistrate Zhu, for fear of being left behind, made a point of hinting at how close he stood with the Bai clan.
Bai Jinchi gave a sneer.
"Expect a welcome feast for my sister from that old codger? Is he trying to anger someone into an early grave?"
"Jinchi."
Bai Jingyan cautioned her in a low voice, glanced once at Magistrate Zhu, and let out a sigh. Then, with the look of one who had much to say but no way to say it in a word or two, she continued.
"There is something I must attend to, so I returned early. If the matter is resolved smoothly, I intend to go back today — that is why I did not inform either of you."
Old codger? Magistrate Zhu felt as though his eyes would pop clean out of his head, and his heart plummeted.
The tone the Gaoyi County Princess had used in mentioning the Patriarch, and the Commandery Princess saying she had come to settle some matter...
The more Magistrate Zhu listened, the more convinced he became that something was deeply wrong.
"Is there anything we humble officials might do to help?"
The Prefect asked Bai Jingyan, calmly steadying himself.
"It is a family disgrace — hardly something I should trouble either of you with."
Bai Jingyan gave a strained smile.
"If things grow big enough that even the two of you hear of it, I will ask for your help then."
Magistrate Zhu's face had gone slightly white. A family disgrace? Grown big enough that we hear of it?
Then... were the Zhenguo Commandery Princess and the clan truly at odds?
But had Bai Qiyun not said that both the former Zhenguo King and the current Commandery Princess held the Patriarch in the deepest respect? That she followed the Patriarch's word to the letter?
Seeing his subordinate bring the horses around, Bai Jingyan spoke.
"I must be off, so I will not keep either of you. Farewell."
The Prefect hastily stepped back and cleared the way. Bai Jingyan mounted with Bai Jinchi, and snapping her horsewhip, the two galloped swiftly away.
"Your Excellency... the clan and Her Highness don't appear to be on good terms?"
Magistrate Zhu wore an expression of the deepest consternation.
"Did the Patriarch's son not say that the Zhenguo Commandery Princess was nothing but a young maiden — that if the Patriarch said one, she would never dare say two? Then why does Her Highness look so plainly set to fight them?"
The Prefect stood with his hands clasped behind his back, eyes narrowed. A rumor he had heard only yesterday came to mind — that the Patriarch's own younger brother was occupying the ancestral manor in the capital, which the Bai family had only recently had repaired.
The Prefect pursed his lips and sneered.
"However grand a tale the Bai clan may spin, the Zhenguo Commandery Princess is making no effort at all to hide her intent to fight them right now. And the Gaoyi County Princess said it to their faces, no less. Magistrate Zhu — watch well which way the wind is blowing. Capsize your boat at the wrong moment, and you will drown!"
Magistrate Zhu was close with the Bai clan. It had been no small number of things he had covered up on their behalf over the years. If the Zhenguo Commandery Princess meant to turn the clan upside down, all of it would surely come to light. And if it did, the man who had hidden those affairs might find not a shred of profit from Her Highness — and might well find his own boat flipped for good.
Magistrate Zhu's face hardened by degrees. He turned and paid the Prefect a deeply respectful bow.
"Thank you for opening my eyes, Your Excellency."
The Bai Clan Patriarch was at breakfast when word came that Bai Jingyan and Bai Jinchi had returned, and he started violently. Then, recalling the chaos raging within the clan over his fifth brother's forcible seizure of the Bai ancestral manor, it flashed through his mind that she must have come on account of that very affair.
The Patriarch set down his spoon and called for a servant to prepare his clothes.
In the Patriarch's courtyard, a boy of seventeen or eighteen knelt on the ground. Whether he had knelt there all through the night, dew clung to his black hair, and his body shivered uncontrollably. His swaying frame was barely holding itself upright; he looked ready to collapse at any moment.
At the sight of the Patriarch emerging, the boy hurried forward on his knees.
"Grandfather, if my elder brothers go on acting so wickedly, the Bai family will one day be finished! Please, Grandfather — step in and punish them severely so they can never steal another person's shop again! Send my brothers to the magistrate's office! Otherwise, someone will go to the capital and appeal before the throne, and every crime they have committed will come to light. Even the Commandery Princess will be unable to protect our Bai family then!"
The Patriarch glanced once at his overwrought grandson — and rage surged up in him as he bellowed.
"Severe punishment? You want me to punish them? You've knelt the whole night through and you still haven't come to your senses? Those are your elder brothers! However great their wrongdoing, they are your own flesh and blood! How can you speak on outsiders' behalf and denounce your own brothers? Sending people secretly to the Prefect's office, no less!
If I had been one step too slow, your brothers would have been thrown into prison. For murder, at that! Do you even understand what kind of crime that is? A-Ping, your grandfather is not dead yet! While I stand here alive and well, how dare you drive your brothers to their deaths?"
Bai Jingping clenched his teeth, the rims of his eyes red, and spoke through his tears.
"It is said that even when the Son of Heaven breaks the law, he shares the commoner's punishment. Even King Xin, the Emperor's own legitimate son, was reduced to commoner status and exiled to Yingzhou! Grandfather — you are the Patriarch of this clan. For the sake of protecting this family, should you not set aside private feeling?"
"Private feeling, he says!"
The Patriarch's eyes blazed.
"Your grandfather is still alive and breathing, and you would egg on a family feud? I send you off to study, and this is what you bring back!"
Bai Jingping clenched his fists and held on, stubborn to the last.
"If you still refuse to understand, then keep kneeling! Never get up again!"
With that, the Patriarch took up his cane and strode out.