Over Mountains and Across the Sea
Within two hours, the rumor that the Suyang Bai clan kin had provoked the Grand Princess until she vomited blood had spread through all of Dadu. The common folk could scarcely contain their astonishment at what the Suyang clan had done. To think they had driven the Grand Princess herself to vomit blood.
The moment Bai Jinxiu, at the Jin residence, heard the news, she took a carriage straight to the Zhenguo Commandery Princess Estate.
Only after arriving did she learn there had been nothing to fear. It was nothing more than a stratagem her grandmother had used to bring the clan kin to heel. Only then did Bai Jinxiu breathe a sigh of relief and turn her steps toward Qinghui Garden.
Bai Jingyan was reading over the inventory Nanny Dong had spent days putting in order — the record of what was to be moved from Qinghui Garden to Suyang first.
Seeing Bai Jinxiu arrive, Chun Tao went inside to report to Bai Jingyan, then came out to the gates of Qinghui Garden together with Nanny Dong to welcome her.
Five months pregnant, Bai Jinxiu's belly showed plainly now, yet perhaps because she had once trained in the martial arts, her movements were as nimble as ever.
Nanny Dong helped her inside.
"Second Miss, walk slowly. You're not carrying just yourself anymore."
"Nanny Dong!" Yin Shuang bowed in greeting.
Bai Jinxiu's maid Feicui greeted Nanny Dong and Chun Tao with a smile.
"Nanny Dong, Miss Chun Tao — have you been keeping well?"
Nanny Dong nodded.
"And my sister?" Bai Jinxiu asked.
"She was just going over the things to be taken to Suyang with Nanny Dong." Chun Tao lifted the door curtain for her with a smile.
As Bai Jinxiu stepped inside, Bai Jingyan instructed a maid to serve jujube tea for her sister.
"Sister." When Bai Jinxiu came in, Bai Jingyan set the papers aside and asked, "Did you hear about Grandmother? Is that why you came?"
"Yes." Bai Jinxiu nodded and sat down at her sister's side.
"Eldest Miss!" Yin Shuang bowed to Bai Jingyan.
Bai Jingyan smiled at her. "Rise."
Thinking the sisters might have private matters to discuss, Nanny Dong spoke up with a smile. "Eldest Miss, Second Miss — you two have your talk. This old servant will take Yin Shuang and Feicui off to get some mutton-fat cakes into them."
Bai Jingyan nodded. "Wrap some up for us to take when we leave."
Nanny Dong had been certain Yin Shuang would love the idea. Instead, the girl waved her hands and pressed herself close against Bai Jinxiu's side. "No! I can't be even one step away from Second Miss. I have to protect Second Miss!"
At that, Feicui covered her mouth, laughing. "Eldest Miss, I think you'll have to train this girl all over again! When you told her to stick close to Second Miss and guard her, she took it so to heart that yesterday evening she wouldn't even let Second Miss's husband into the room. She planted herself beside Second Miss's bed like one of the door gods painted on a gate, and then the back—"
"Feicui!" Bai Jinxiu barked, her ears going red.
"What was that?" Bai Jingyan asked.
Before Feicui could answer, Yin Shuang spoke up as though she had done something praiseworthy. "Even when Second Miss went to the privy, I stuck right to her and followed her the whole way!"
Nanny Dong and every maid in the room lost the battle with their laughter, heads bowed, hands pressed over their mouths. Yin Shuang's one eye glittered as she stared fixedly at Bai Jingyan, for all the world like a child waiting to be praised.
Looking at Yin Shuang with a face that could neither laugh nor scold, Bai Jinxiu spoke at last, resigned. "Sister, please say something to her. Thank goodness Feicui is strong. By now there isn't a soul in the Jin residence who doesn't know Yin Shuang guards me on your orders. Even Jin Lang... she won't let him sleep in the same room."
What Bai Jinxiu never managed to spit out was the rest of it — that Jin Lang had become a man she could no longer so much as lay a hand on.
Bai Jingyan, who had faltered for just a beat, finally burst out laughing. Bai Jinxiu was gentle and tenderhearted. However awkward the situation, she must have feared wounding Yin Shuang's pride, and so could neither scold the girl nor send her away.
"Yin Shuang, well done!" Bai Jingyan said, laughing. "But Yin Shuang must follow Second Miss's orders. If you cling to her side every waking hour, you'll wear yourself down. So when Second Miss tells you to go rest, you rest. If you don't, you won't have the strength left to protect her when she goes out. Right?"
Yin Shuang thought it over for a moment, then nodded. "Yes!"
"So Yin Shuang must listen well to Second Miss," Chun Tao put in, smiling.
Yin Shuang nodded. "Got it! When Second Miss goes out, I'll stick right to her. When Second Miss is inside the Jin residence, I'll do as Second Miss says."
"Yin Shuang, you clever thing." Bai Jingyan nodded with a smile.
Bai Jinxiu sat a while longer in her sister's garden, then returned to the Jin residence. She had come out so hastily that the matters piling up there were still unfinished.
Bai Jingyan walked her sister to the entrance, then told Chun Tao to summon Nuo Ping.
Inside the pavilion, Bai Jingyan turned away and, keeping her voice low, gave Nuo Ping his instructions. "The day after tomorrow, Mother will send to Suyang first the things that sat idle in the storehouse — the pieces rarely used at the estate. You will escort the transport yourself, and keeping clear of prying eyes, pass word to Qi Zhengyu. Tell him the wagons raided last time are to be driven toward Songkong Mountain. There will be someone waiting there to receive them — he is to ask no questions and hand the goods straight over."
Nuo Ping bowed his head. "Yes."
Bai Jingyan lowered her gaze, weighed it a moment, and went on. "Ask him too whether Qi Zhengyu is short of anything else. The second shipment of goods will go to Suyang on the twenty-sixth of this month. If he needs anything, I'll have it prepared and sent — tell him to time it well and raid it on the road."
"Eldest Miss, I will see it done without a hitch," Nuo Ping answered with grave courtesy.
Bai Jingyan looked at Nuo Ping, his hair gone gray at the temples.
"Uncle Ping, it will only grow harder once we return to Suyang. So I think it is time you picked out a few loyal, able-bodied people and began training them — people who can be trusted with heavy responsibility. Before long, you will need someone to help you."
People both devoted and capable had already been sent out on one errand after another. More usable hands had to be raised.
Bai Jingyan was short of hands herself, and in time her brother Qingjue, in the Southern Border, would need men brave enough and loyal enough to stake their lives for him. Jindong, the third sister, who roamed from land to land growing the Bai family's fortune, would have to prepare for short-handed days as well. And Jinsu, the second sister, who was to remain in Dadu, would need capable people whom neither the court nor any outsider knew of.
The time had come to look far ahead, and prepare.
Bai Jingyan had originally meant to have Nuo Ping send people out across the land to gather promising talents from every corner against the days to come.
But such a gathering could not be accomplished in a morning — and above all, it would take a great deal of silver to keep such people in her service.
She had gone over in careful detail what remained of the Bai family's assets. Apart from what Bai Jindong had carried away, not much was left. Though several generals of the Bai Family Army at Qingjue's side had stepped forward to petition the court for needed provisions, a store of silver had to be laid aside separately.
And so Bai Jingyan's thoughts returned to the Suyang Bai clan kin.
In these circumstances, pulling the Dadu Bai family out of the clan altogether would only be a loss. Only by driving the leeches out of the clan could those who remained be put to good use.
From of old, the Dadu Bai family — the legitimate direct line of the Bai clan — had set aside half its yearly income to aid the clan and sent it to Suyang. Now it was the clan's turn to do something for the Bais.
The gathering of talent from the regions would have to wait. Raising the private army was a chance to give the Suyang Bai clan — a name that had settled in the people's hearts as something detestable — back its good name. It was not a burden for the Dadu Bais to shoulder alone. Now was the time for the clan to lend its strength.
With the rough outline drawn, she began to see what had to be done.
Xiao Rongyan had said that Liang and Jin would soon be at war. Before returning to Suyang, she would have to order Qi Zhengyu to stage something far bigger. The court, after all, would have no strength left to send men to put it down.
For the time being, the Bai family would be safe. Bai Jinxiu, Bai Jindong, and Bai Qingjue had each found the road ahead.
What lay in store for Bai Qingyun remained an open question — but the fact that he still had the will to seek out Gu Yijian of the Sihai Pavilion on Banna Mountain meant his great ambition and unbending spirit had not yet been broken. Bai Jingyan trusted that her ninth brother had not lost the proud bearing of a Bai son.
On the fifteenth of the fourth month, Dong Changsheng took a wife.
Though the examination-fraud scandal had kept the Golden Board from being posted this year, sparing him the double blessing of passing the examinations and wedding a bride in the same season, a man of true ability does not fear sitting the tests again. Joy shone on Dong Changsheng's flushed face.
Lady Dong and Bai Jingyan had passed the hundredth day of their mourning, but the full three years were still far off.
Dong Qingping, Bai Jingyan's eldest maternal uncle, was not a man to stand on such scruples — but lest Madame Song, his wife, take it amiss, he sent only a gift and did not attend the wedding.
His aunt Lady Dong, however, would not let her nephew take a wife unmarked, and sent Nanny Jin to watch the ceremony and report back; when Nanny Jin returned, she meant to ask what sort of woman Dong Changsheng's bride was.
As a wife of the Jin household, Bai Jinxiu was obliged to keep mourning for Jin Deokso; she too could not attend the wedding, and sent a generous gift instead.
The sons and daughters of the Bai family had not forgotten how, when the Bais were so suddenly struck by great mourning, the Dong family had stood by them and lent its aid out of loyalty.
As the hour of the Goat — the stretch between one and three in the afternoon — drew to a close, a single horse came galloping up to the gates of the Zhenguo Commandery Princess Estate. A striking woman dressed in black leapt down from her brown mount and strode straight into the estate.
The sunlight that day was unusually fierce. Weighted with sandbags, Bai Jingyan had shut the gates of Qinghui Garden fast and was drilling with the Red-Tasseled Spear inside.
Her high-bound hair had come loose in places, and sweat ran from her flushed cheeks and throat as though to drench her whole body.
Her arms, straining at full strength, trembled as though great weights of iron hung from them; she held on by a will that pushed past the body's limits. Each sweep of the silver spear sent a sharp wind whistling up — her movements lithe and quick, yet charged with tremendous force, the spear's icy gleam carving shadow upon shadow.
Chun Tao stood off to one side, holding a tray of teacups. She saw Bai Jingyan like this every day, and still, every time, it wrung her heart.
Thud, thud, thud!
Someone pounded on the gate of Qinghui Garden, and the old gatekeeper scurried on quick steps down the corridor to the garden's entrance and asked in a lowered voice, "Who is it?"
"It's me! Have word passed to the Eldest Miss — tell her Shen Qingzhu has returned!"
At the sound of that voice — calm and crisp, unmistakably Shen Qingzhu's — Chun Tao's eyes went wide and she turned to Bai Jingyan. "Eldest Miss! Miss Shen has returned!"
For an instant Bai Jingyan felt her heart clench. She drew back the spear she had thrust out long and turned around, its cold-gleaming tip drawing a long line across the bluestone slabs.
The gates of Qinghui Garden swung slowly open.
The moment Shen Qingzhu stepped inside, she saw the tall woman standing bolt upright in the garden.
Bai Jingyan held the long spear in one hand, and her thin white robe was soaked through with sweat. The damp fabric clung to her body, tracing her graceful curves; drops slid down the smooth column of her throat and seeped into her white collar.
Beneath the blazing sun, Bai Jingyan, drenched in sweat, seemed to shine from head to toe.
With each ragged breath, the hair clinging to her white neck scattered glints of broken gold. A fierce, battle-sharp air flowed from every inch of her — the sort that made it impossible to hold one's gaze for long.