Taking a Life
The Grand Princess let the tension ease from her once-ramrod-straight back. Leaning against her pillow, she spoke, exhaustion plain in every line of her face.
"Emperors grow more suspicious with each passing year. Look no further than the ones who came before—how many rulers, in their twilight years, made fatally misguided judgments and ruined their own kingdoms? It seems to me far better to seat the Crown Prince on the throne than to keep the current Emperor in his place, forever casting doubt on the Bai family. The Prince trusts you, and more than anything, he made me a promise. He swore to guarantee the safety and peace of the Bai clan."
Before departing for the Southern Border, her grandmother and the Crown Prince had spoken at length. It must have been then that he pledged to keep the Bai family unharmed.
Bai Jingyan lowered her head and said nothing.
The Jin imperial family shared the same blood. The Crown Prince had not yet ascended the supreme seat—now was the time for him to win hearts. He only appeared more magnanimous than the Emperor because of it.
If he ever inherited the throne, the same scene would inevitably play out again. Just as it had when the current Emperor was newly crown prince—just as he had forgotten, the moment he took the seat, the very promises he once made to his grandfather in order to keep it.
The journey to the Southern Border had given Bai Jingyan more than enough experience of the Crown Prince. She already knew him as thoroughly as anyone could. She expected nothing from him anymore.
And yet she no longer wished to argue with her grandmother. Five years would be time enough to raise the Bai family back to its full strength.
"As you wish, Grandmother."
Bai Jingyan nodded.
"Good."
The Grand Princess nodded in return.
She gazed at the granddaughter who had drifted so far from her, then closed her eyes again. The scene at the funeral bier came back to her—Bai Jingyan kneeling in formal obeisance, declaring that she meant to sever their ties. That if they could not cut what needed cutting, a far greater calamity would come waiting.
Blood ties were not so easily severed by a single act of will, and yet her granddaughter's heart had already gone a great distance away.
Not once in her life had the Grand Princess imagined things would come to this. She had married into the Bai family with Bai Weiting and lived a long life of happiness and ease—only to find herself suddenly, unutterably alone in her old age.
She exhaled a long, deep sigh.
"Ayan, go back and rest. You look worn through."
Bai Jingyan rose and left the hall. From behind her came the sound of her grandmother fighting back tears, but she did not turn her head. Head bowed low, she walked out of Longevity Garden.
Her husband, her sons, her grandsons—all of them had lost their lives in the Southern Border. As a wife, as a mother and grandmother, how could hatred not take root in her heart? And yet her grandmother's first duty, as Grand Princess, was to the Jin imperial throne.
She must have longed to ease, even a little, the pain and loathing that had torn at her chest when the Emperor died. Only then, while still guarding the Jin imperial authority, could the wound buried deep within her begin to heal.
The Grand Princess was the legitimate daughter of the late Emperor and late Empress. What she was sworn to protect was not the man who currently sat the throne, but the Jin imperial line itself.
To hold both titles at once—Grand Princess and grandmother of the Bai family—was a crushing burden.
But who in this world lived unburdened? Her grandmother had chosen the Jin throne. And in the end, that meant she could not help but drift apart from Bai Jingyan, sooner or later.
As Bai Jingyan stepped out of Longevity Garden, Lu Ninghua was waiting outside. Perhaps she had been waiting for her all along; at the sight of Bai Jingyan, she came forward at once and bowed.
"Eldest Miss."
"Cousin."
Bai Jingyan returned the greeting with a slight bow of her head.
"I wished to walk with you a while, Eldest Miss."
Lu Ninghua said it with a gentle smile.
Bai Jingyan nodded, and they walked on together.
"Though I am nominally the adopted daughter of Her Highness the Grand Princess, I know full well that I am nothing more than a commoner."
Lu Ninghua's voice was clear and serene.
"But the Grand Princess is my greatest benefactor. I may sometimes speak too freely in front of you, Eldest Miss—please forgive me if I give offense."
"Cousin, say whatever it is you've come to say."
Bai Jingyan's voice was equally calm.
"I don't know what passed between Her Highness and you, Eldest Miss, but it seems to me her affection for you is genuine. Is it not the saddest thing in this world, to wish to show filial devotion and find that one's parents are no longer among the living? I have known that grief myself, which is why I presume to offer you this counsel. No one can know what tomorrow holds, but so long as the elder who loves you still draws breath—please, don't leave yourself with regrets."
When she finished, Lu Ninghua bowed to Bai Jingyan with deep formality.
"I have overstepped my place. I beg your indulgence, Eldest Miss."
"I will keep your words in mind, Cousin."
Bai Jingyan was not much troubled by them.
"If you have no further need of me, Eldest Miss, I will take my leave."
Lu Ninghua said, head bowed.
Bai Jingyan nodded.
Once Lu Ninghua had gone some distance away, Chun Tao stepped up close and murmured with a small laugh.
"From behind, Miss Lu and the Eldest Miss look rather alike, don't they?"
It was not herself she resembled—it was Aunt Shaoqiu.
Bai Jingyan watched Lu Ninghua's retreating back and tightened her fist inside her sleeve.
Yes—her grandmother, who loved her, was still alive. What need was there for the two of them to drain each other's hearts, simply because the roads ahead of them ran in different directions?
Bai Jingyan glanced once toward Longevity Garden, then spoke to Chun Tao.
"Later, have the kitchen prepare something soft and easy on the stomach, and bring it to Grandmother."
She could no longer sit with her grandmother and pour out her heart as she once had—but a snack, at least... Let that stand as a token of her feeling for her.
As for what the Grand Princess had done to Qi Zhengyu, Bai Jingyan still felt as though a splinter were lodged in her throat. It was not an emotion she could simply ignore and pretend was nothing.
On the twenty-second of the fourth month, Nuo Ping returned from Shanyang.
Qi Zhengyu had given Nuo Ping a list of everything he needed. Afraid that buying everything in the capital would draw unwanted eyes, Nuo Ping had dispatched men in several waves, each sent to a different region to make the purchases.
Nuo Ping and Qi Zhengyu were to meet on Mount Niujiao on the twenty-sixth of the fourth month, when the Bai family's second shipment of goods crossed over to Shanyang. At that time, Qi Zhengyu would 'plunder' Nuo Ping's cargo.
He would obtain the urgently needed supplies, and at the same time stage a major bandit raid, manufacturing a pretext for Bai Jingyan to raise troops.
Nuo Ping reported on the situation in Shanyang. Bai Jinchi hurried over as well. She had heard that the clan chief, having exhausted every other option, had gone so far as to seek out Nuo Ping and beg for help—and had even handed over silver. Bai Jinchi was pleased as punch.
"What good does it do, coming crawling back now? It's far too late."
Bai Jinchi gave a scornful snort.
"We took every coin the clan chief gave us and spent it on the supplies."
Nuo Ping lifted his head, clenched his fist, and looked at Bai Jingyan, who wore an expression of perfect indifference.
"And there is one more matter I must report to you, Eldest Miss. After you and the Fourth Miss returned to the capital that day, Lord Zhou had the descendants of the imperial clansmen who caused the incident arrested."
"On the very evening the clan chief's party departed for the capital, several of the clansmen's young men came to Lord Zhou, dead drunk, demanding he release their people. When he refused, they went wild in the streets—smashing goods and shrieking at him to go ahead and arrest them too, lock them up with the rest. The son of one of the Wu family's concubine-born sons shoved a child selling flowers into the road—the child's mother threw herself into the river to save her, and..."
"What happened?"
A chill swept through Bai Jingyan's eyes.
Nuo Ping lowered his voice.
"The child was pulled from the water onto a boat. But the child's mother..."
Bai Jingyan's fist clenched tight. She thought of Anang, the little flower seller she had met in Shanyang City. The child's eyes had been dark and clear—a girl made old too soon by hardship, never once grasping for what was not hers. And so close to her mother, too. It had been plain to see.
"That child—could it be Anang?"
Bai Jingyan asked.
Nuo Ping nodded.
Rage surged up in Bai Jingyan's chest, and a murderous light spilled from her eyes.
"And then? What did Magistrate Zhou do about it?"
"Bai Jingping, the clan chief's grandson, went to the magistrate and urged him to seize the offenders and lock them away, so Magistrate Zhou arrested the clansmen who had caused the trouble. Bai Jingping wanted to bring the girl into the Bai household and care for her himself, but she refused—so he placed her with a neighbor, gave her silver, and asked them to look after her in his stead."
Nuo Ping's voice was very heavy. There was something he did not say. He too had slipped silver to the kind old neighbor woman who had agreed to care for the child. Whatever else might be said, the wrong had been done by the Bai clan, and his conscience would not let him rest easy.
Bai Jingyan's hand closed hard around her teacup. A faint crack sounded through the white jade porcelain.
She pressed the cup down again, harder still. Her fingers had gone white, and the fury boiling in her chest would not subside.
Why were there so many in the Bai imperial clan—creatures beneath dogs and swine?
Bai Jingyan closed her eyes. Choose the wrong clan chief, and the whole family rots from the roots up. That was simply how it went.
"Anang? The girl who sold flowers?"
Bai Jinchi remembered her too—the child who had refused Murong Yan's silver.
The moment Bai Jingyan nodded, fury blazed through Bai Jinchi.
"The imperial clan has truly reached the very summit of arrogance! How can anyone be this thickheaded! Eldest Sister warned Shanyang plainly, and they still don't know their place—they've gone and cost a human being her life!"
"If the clan produced one degenerate, you could call it that man's own failing. Two, and—well, you could still blame the individuals. But when the filth runs this deep, the fault lies squarely with the clan chief."
A venomous light coiled in Bai Jingyan's eyes.
"The clan chief must be replaced. No matter what it takes."
"Grandfather never should have spared the clan chief's face. It should have been any one of them—Second Uncle, my own father, any of our uncles—sent to Shanyang to take the chief's seat. If he had, we could have kept the Bai line whole. The imperial clan wouldn't have rotted down to its roots like this. What in the world are they playing at, behaving like beasts in a sty?"
Bai Jinchi seethed, snorting with anger. It galled her that, stuck in the capital, her whip could not reach as far as Shanyang. She wanted, this very instant, to beat the clan's human-shaped vermin until their own mothers couldn't recognize them.
"The chief's face was one thing, but Grandfather took his promise to the Emperor too much to heart. Because of the Emperor's hypocritical dream of 'unifying all under heaven,' he left the Bai family no slack at all. He carried every one of his sons to the Southern Border to forge them hard, and poured everything he had into delivering capable generals to the Emperor."
As she spoke, Bai Jingyan turned her gaze on Nuo Ping. Quelling the rage churning in her chest, she gave her next orders.
"Pingsuk, send someone to Shanyang at once, and give Magistrate Zhou this message: he is not, under any circumstances, to let the Bai imperial clansmen off lightly. If he shows them private favor, that will mean he stands against me—and I, in turn, will not let it pass. Tell him that if he defies my order, what family he has left will never again hold a single official post."
"Give Anang's mother a proper burial, send people to see that Anang is well cared for. And when I return to Shanyang, I will bring Anang to the ancestral estate myself."
"Yes, Eldest Miss!"
Nuo Ping answered with a cupped-fist salute.