The Scheme
But then Lu Yuanfeng had appeared out of nowhere and botched the whole affair, and he himself had taken a thorough beating. Im Shin'an, beside herself with rage, had threatened the Yu residence until they handed over silver taels. And at midday on the second day of the fourth month, someone had slipped into Im Shin'an's home and killed her with a poison pill.
That person had given Im Shin'an's mother instructions: I will pay you in silver, so tell them you cannot read, and go to the students of the Guozijian and beg them to write a petition of complaint for you. The woman was then to go to the magistrate's office and accuse Chancellor Yu's entire household, and the Guozijian students were to be told that official collusion festered everywhere, so they must help her strike the Dengwen Drum.
And she had received one final instruction: when the moment came, she was to declare that Lu Yuanfeng had killed Im Shin'an because Im Shin'an had been stirring up talk of the Zhenguo Commandery Princess's massacre of the Xiliang surrender troops at Fanjuelou. The gist of it was simple — the Commandery Princess had murdered Xiliang's surrendered soldiers, such savagery defied the Way of Heaven, and a woman guilty of it was unfit to occupy a sovereign's seat.
She had been warned that if she did not follow those instructions, she must be prepared to give up her own life.
Her son was already dead, but she feared dying herself, so she had agreed — she had wanted, she said, to secure a path to survival.
The Grand Princess and Bai Jingyan dissected the affair in exhaustive detail. Bai Jingyan told her grandmother that the family of Wen Jingang — the official who had taken bribes in this examination — had lodged for a long time at the Left Chancellor's residence.
Everyone in Dadu knew it, so naturally the Grand Princess knew it too.
"There was quite a stir over it in the capital. Some even whisper that Wen Jingang's wife and Li Mu are... entangled in some way. She's a woman famous for her vicious temper, yet strangely, they say she never once hurled abuse at those who gossiped. Either her purpose in visiting Li Mu must never come to light — or the rumor is true. It has to be one of the two."
Bai Jingyan watched her grandmother turning her prayer beads beneath the lamplight and asked,
"And what is your judgment, Grandmother?"
"A-yeon. Are you testing your old grandmother?"
The Grand Princess kept turning the beads, a smile gathering in the creased corners of her eyes.
"Nanny Zhang. Bring it here."
Having given her instruction to Nanny Zhang, who stood waiting beyond the folding screen, she set her sandalwood prayer beads on the table and took a sip of tea.
Nanny Zhang entered carrying a box and placed it in Bai Jingyan's hands with a warm smile.
The Grand Princess set down her teacup and took up the beads again before speaking, slowly.
"Wen Jingang's wife is a woman who divorced her first husband by mutual consent and then remarried. That former husband of hers was the younger brother of the wife of a certain strategist who resided in Prince Li's manor."
Bai Jingyan accepted the black box without opening it and asked,
"Then Wen Jingang's wife holds a weakness over Li Mu — and that weakness is connected to Prince Li as well?"
The Grand Princess had never once doubted the brilliance of her granddaughter's mind.
"What she holds is very likely the single letter that vanished — the one that was inside this box."
The Grand Princess turned her gaze toward the white phoenix embroidered on the folding screen. In the warm lamplight, the phoenix's eyes stitched in silver thread seemed vividly, startlingly alive. She narrowed her own.
"If that woman has any sense at all, she would have handed that letter to Li Mu. And begged him to spare her husband's life. Or perhaps she threatened him — that unless he did, the remaining letter would go straight to the Court of Judicial Review."
As Bai Jingyan listened to her grandmother's measured words, she opened the box. Inside lay correspondence exchanged between Li Mu and Prince Li.
Sitting calmly beneath the lamp, she swept through the letters at speed — and her pupils contracted sharply. Prince Li had led his soldiers into treason, and Li Mu's hand had been in it.
And Li Mu was the meritorious official who had protected the Emperor...
The Grand Princess's voice drifted through the room.
"Back then, when Prince Li's treason failed, he was confined within Wude Gate. Li Mu caught wind of something strange and, fearing he would be implicated himself, went at once to the Imperial Guard Bureau. He pledged his family's lives as surety to the Commandant of the Guard, begging him to order the Imperial Guards to rescue the Emperor. And while the Guards and Prince Li's soldiers fought their bitter duel, Li Mu quietly led men of his own into Prince Li's manor.
"That night, the Princess Consort Li, heavy with child, hanged herself. By dawn, they say, not a single living soul remained in the manor. According to Li Mu, the household resisted to the very last and refused outright to surrender — so, with no other choice, he swept the manor with arrows. And within it, his men uncovered a cache of secret correspondence, implicating nearly half the ministers of the court."
The Grand Princess's hands stopped turning the beads, and she drew her gaze back.
"For that deed, Li Mu's rank climbed like a rocket. And after that day, no one in Dadu dared so much as breathe Prince Li's name."
Bai Jingyan closed the black box. She bowed her head and tapped it lightly, finger against lacquered wood.
So in her past life, Li Mu had been the final victor all along.
Li Mu had egged Prince Li on toward treason. Though the rebellion had come to nothing, he had not merely kept his own hands out of the mud — he had emerged clutching even greater power.
And later, allying himself with the Liang King, he had manipulated the court at will while secretly coaxing the Liang King toward rebellion as well.
Li Mu, that man... he really is an amusing one.
To occupy so lofty a seat as Left Chancellor and still know no contentment — what, exactly, was he scheming?
But the Bai family held his great weakness in hand. Then... let him sit in the Left Chancellor's chair a while longer. A man whose weakness you hold is far better seated there than a man you cannot read at all.
At that same hour, Yu Zhen too knelt beneath a lamp, sorting through the examination fraud case and the matter of Im Shin'an's death.
In the midst of it, he suddenly drew out a fresh sheet of paper and set down the time and cause of Im Shin'an's clash with Lu Yuanfeng at Fanjuelou. Then he laid out on the page, line after line, the hour of Im Shin'an's death and the time her mother had struck the Dengwen Drum.
He marked separately the words Im Shin'an had spoken at Fanjuelou, the window in which the hidden hand must have instructed her mother to strike the drum, and the accusations that the Zhenguo Commandery Princess was cruel and bloodthirsty.
He also noted that the day Im Shin'an's mother struck the drum fell on the very same day the provincial graduate Xue Renyi had struck it over the examination fraud — and with that memory, he set down the full timeline of the drum-beating in the fraud affair as well.
Then, all at once, a bold conjecture flashed through Yu Zhen's mind.
The Im Shin'an case was closed. And on its face, it had plainly been aimed at the Zhenguo Commandery Princess. But why, after Lu Yuanfeng struck Im Shin'an, had the hidden hand not simply had her killed and blown the affair into a full-blown storm?
Why did it have to happen at the very moment Xue Renyi struck the drum, simultaneous with the examination fraud? Could such a coincidence truly exist?
Had a murder been committed by Chancellor Yu's youngest grandson before the fraud came to light, every eye — in court and among the people alike — would have fixed on that case alone. But erupting at the same moment as the fraud, the gaze directed at that murder was bound to scatter.
Which left a single answer. The hidden hand was playing to catch two rabbits with one stone: to split the public's attention away from the examination fraud, and to drag down the Commandery Princess's renown besides. The schemer had even tried to pull her down from the sovereign's seat itself.
In all of Dadu, who could hate the Commandery Princess so bitterly — and yet so desperately wish to bury the examination fraud?
Yu Zhen narrowed his eyes. He remembered a remark he had made offhandedly, after his wife and daughters returned from the polo tournament on the sixth day of the fourth month: that the wife of Wen Jingang, this examination's bribe-taking official, had been lodging at the Left Chancellor's residence for some time.
Yu Zhen's lips suddenly curled into a cold smile, and he wrote two characters on the paper: Li Mu.
Wen Jingang's wife would have gone to Li Mu to beg his help. But with what, exactly, had she meant to move him?
Yu Zhen wrote two more characters: weakness. He had no interest in which weakness she held over him.
He set down the brush, lifted the paper, and studied it at length. Then he opened the stove lid, fed the paper to the flames, and began drafting the closing memorials for the two cases.
On the tenth day of the fourth month, Li Tianfu, the marital-alliance princess of Xiliang, was married off to the Crown Prince's estate and became his side consort.
The taking of a side consort was a happy occasion for the Crown Prince's household, but not a particularly welcome one for the Crown Princess. Still, as the prince's principal wife, she had no choice but to gather herself and play hostess to the stream of guests.
Fortunately, the previous evening the Crown Prince had made her a promise: even if he took the Xiliang princess as a side consort, he would never hold a woman of an enemy state in his heart. The most important place within it, he swore, would forever be kept empty for her alone. Only then did the Crown Princess feel the knot in her chest loosen a little.
The Bai family was observing mourning, and it was proper for those in mourning to avoid celebratory occasions — weddings included.
Lady Dong prepared gifts of exceptional generosity and sent them ahead to the Crown Prince's estate, along with word that the Bai family could not attend, being in mourning.
By late morning — the final stretch of the hour of the Snake, between nine and eleven — Bai Jingyan was reading in her room when Nanny Dong abruptly swept the curtain aside and handed her a letter.
"Eldest Miss, someone left this letter hanging at the gate not long ago. The gatekeeper passed it to Nuo Ping, and Nuo Ping said it was urgent — that it must be delivered to you at once."
Bai Jingyan closed her book, laid it on the small table, and unfolded the letter.
The Princess of Xiliang intends to assassinate the Crown Prince.
Bai Jingyan's gaze turned to ice.
True or not, the letter was now in her hands — and as one who owed the Crown Prince her loyalty, she had to find some way to carry this warning to his estate.
The contents might well be true. Or someone might have crafted the whole thing with deliberate malice, meaning to destroy her. The Crown Prince and the Emperor were both deeply suspicious men; if this letter led them to doubt Bai Jingyan, every effort she had made until now would collapse into foam.
She tapped the table with her fingertips. And yet — if she went to the Crown Prince's estate, she might walk straight into a snare someone had laid expressly for her.
After long deliberation, Bai Jingyan thought of Zhen Xiangzhi.
She folded the letter with care and had Nanny Dong ready the carriage. Then, accompanied by Nuo Ping, she summoned Zhen Xiangzhi out through the side gate of the Crown Prince's estate.
Hearing that Nuo Ping had come, Zhen Xiangzhi hurried out through the side gate — and found Bai Jingyan standing there.
"Your Highness..."
He offered a cupped-fist salute.
"Master Zhen, there is no need for ceremony."
Bai Jingyan passed the letter to him.
"This is a letter received today by the gatekeeper of the Commandery Princess's estate."
Zhen Xiangzhi hastily unfolded and read it — then recoiled, eyes going round with shock.
"Is it — is it true? Xiliang means to raise a war?"
His mind raced.
Xiliang, crushed in total defeat, had sued for peace. If the princess sent for that marital alliance turned assassin against the Crown Prince, the two nations would become mortal enemies overnight, and war would certainly blaze again.
But Xiliang was being eaten alive by internal strife, barely able to keep its own head above water. Bai Jingyan had put more than a hundred thousand Xiliang surrendered soldiers to the sword — where would they find the strength to stand against Jin?
"Princess Li Tianfu of Xiliang and Liu Chentuo — the man who died at the post station — were no ordinary acquaintances. In truth... it seems the two of them carried feelings for one another."
Bai Jingyan's brow furrowed.
"I am worried that Li Tianfu means to take her revenge for Liu Chentuo."
"For — for a eunuch?"
Zhen Xiangzhi flinched in spite of himself.
Bai Jingyan nodded.
"I am still in mourning, so I cannot set foot in the Crown Prince's estate. Please attend to this, Master Zhen. It would be best to inform the Crown Prince and urge him to heighten his vigilance."
Zhen Xiangzhi nodded and folded the letter away.
"True or false, we cannot afford to let our guard slip. I will inform the Crown Prince this very moment! I know it is an imposition, Your Highness, but I must ask you to look into the letter's origins as well."
"Pingsuk has already dispatched someone. Thank you for your trouble, Master Zhen."
Bai Jingyan inclined her head to him as she spoke.