The Plan
Prince Qi shoved aside the guard before him, advanced a step or two, and raised his clasped hands in a respectful bow. "Crown Princess, hand the campaign records over to me, and I will bear these bamboo slips straight to my imperial father!"
Prince Qi lacked any great talent of his own, but he knew the ability of the Duke of Zhenguo, Bai Weiting, all too well. As Xin Wang had wailed in the palace only yesterday, the Duke was absolutely not the sort of man who would defy his sovereign's orders, fly into stubborn defiance, and march his soldiers off to war.
Coveting the glory, Xin Wang had pressured the Duke into taking the field — and then abandoned the common folk and fled. Those two crimes alone were more than enough to bar Xin Wang from the throne!
Prince Qi's heart began to pound faster. From ancient times, the seat of the sovereign had gone to the legitimate son when there was one, and to the eldest son when there was not. Xin Wang was the legitimate son — and Prince Qi was the eldest!
Xin Wang knew perfectly well that he possessed neither the talent nor the breadth to command every civil and military official in the realm, and Prince Qi had no wish to hand this mountains-and-rivers realm over to a man so petty, so given to nothing but pleasure. If Xin Wang hungered for that lofty seat, then let him scheme for it and seize it with his own hands.
Lady Dong, clutching a bamboo slip, felt her blood surge backward until her mind went white. The Prince's words did not reach her at all. Her eyes blazed; the tears would not stop falling. The rage smoldering in her chest seemed as if it would burn her alive.
Second Madam Yu knelt on the ground and read one slip through to the end. Having heard nothing of her husband or her sons, she wept as though her heart were being torn apart, and unfolded yet another campaign record.
Bai Jindong held a bamboo slip with her teeth clenched hard. Suppressing the emotion boiling up inside her, she read the words out as clearly and steadily as she could.
"In the fifteenth year of Xianjia, on the second day of the twelfth lunar month, scouts reported that two hundred and fifty thousand of Xiliang's main forces lay in ambush in the Chuanling mountains, pinning down the forty thousand troops under Bai Qiying. Xin Wang ordered Grand Marshal Bai Weiting to lead every main soldier to the Chuanling ridge and coordinate with Bai Qiying, within and without, to annihilate Xiliang's main army. The Marshal suspected a trap lay waiting there, but Xin Wang, declaring that he was overseeing the battlefield under the mandate of the Son of Heaven, forced the order upon Bai Weiting — and swore that if he disobeyed, the entire Bai clan would be exterminated."
As Bai Jindong began reading the campaign record before them all, the crowd pressed forward, jostling to draw closer, then lifted their heads to gaze up at her standing inside the gate of the Duke's estate, unable to contain their astonishment.
Xin Wang had forced the Duke of Zhenguo to take the field!
"In the fifteenth year of Xianjia, on the tenth day of the twelfth month, Deputy Marshal Bai Qishan was besieged in Fengcheng for five days with his provisions cut off. The Southern Yan army seized five sons of the Bai family alive, stripped and flayed them before the soldiers to heap humiliation upon them — all to force Bai Qishan's surrender. The Deputy Marshal fought the Southern Yan iron cavalry with everything he had, buying time so the people of Fengcheng could escape to safety. Then, swallowing his tears, he shot his five sons dead with his own arrows.
"Deputy Marshal Bai Qishan cried out: 'Any man who is the only son of his house, or who must care for aged parents, step back one pace. Any man not yet wed, step back one pace. Of the soldiers who remain… whoever can lay down his life for the people of our Great Jin — fight the enemy at my side!' At that, the Bai family's seventeenth son, Bai Jingdong, drew his sword and stepped forward, declaring that even if it meant blood and a painful death, he would follow his uncle to war — that he would sooner die for the people than live on like a coward. Moved by the words of a ten-year-old child, the whole Bai army drew their blades and vowed to fight to the last, swearing they would never drag out a base and beggarly life."
Bai Jinchi, sick with grief and fury, strode forward in quick steps and unfolded a slip of her own. Then, breathing hard and rough, she read on.
"In the fifteenth year of Xianjia, on the twelfth day of the twelfth lunar month, General Zhiyong Bai Jingming annihilated a small force of Xiliang cavalry and returned to camp with a thousand soldiers to plead for reinforcements! The camp stood on open ground, and General Zhiyong had rescued ten stragglers… According to those stragglers, a single day earlier, Xin Wang had seen Southern Yan's fifty-thousand-strong army coming, abandoned the camp, and fled with three thousand men. General Jifeng Bai Jingyou, who held the camp, sent five hundred soldiers back to escort the civilians to safety, then led fifteen hundred men forward to meet the enemy. General Jifeng fell. His body was burned."
"Xin Wang! Has that man no shame at all! He fled with three thousand men — three thousand!"
"Damnable! And yet he claims the Duke marched out on pure stubbornness? It was him who forced the order!"
"Shameless beyond bearing! It's only the men of the Zhenguo Estate left to pity now. Every last one of them, thrown away like this!"
The crowd wept and wailed as they hurled their curses, caring nothing that Xin Wang was of the imperial blood, the Emperor's own legitimate son. Grief and fury tangled together until they wanted nothing more than to tear him limb from limb.
"In the fifteenth year of Xianjia, on the thirteenth day of the twelfth lunar month, General Zhiyong held Fengxian against the Southern Yan army's siege. General Zhiyong Bai Jingming declared: 'Millions of common people stand behind us. The Bai family has formed its ranks with its back to the water. We swear we will not retreat one step until the last soldier falls!'"
Here Bai Jinchi's voice broke off without warning.
Then came the sound of bone grinding against bone as her grip crushed down on the bamboo slip. Aargh! Rage and grief tore through her chest and burst out of her in a roar choked with tears. Hatred blazed in her heart, and her tears ran down like blood. Gritting her teeth, she forced the words out one by one.
"Yun Paxing cut off the head of the Bai family's seventeenth son, Bai Jingdong, and slit open his belly, desecrating the corpse. Bai Jingdong's belly was filled with nothing but tree roots and earth…"
Inside the Zhenguo Estate and out, everything fell silent at once. Only the dead stillness remained.
Fourth Madam Wang, hearing the scene of her son's miserable death, stood as though her soul had left her body. The storm of emotion collapsed in an instant — then erupted again as though it would tear her apart. Clutching her own collar in a death grip, she stared at her son's coffin, loosed one terrible shriek, and slammed her head toward it.
"Stop her!"
Lady Dong's cry tore from her wide-open eyes.
The guard at Xiao Rongyan's side moved with startling speed. The distance between Fourth Madam Wang's head and the coffin had shrunk to a mere hand's breadth when he hauled her back.
Bai Jingyan felt as though a chill were crawling over every inch of her skin, as though boiling oil had been poured across her chest. Only after the guard had seized her Fourth Aunt did she slowly unclench the fist she had been strangling inside her sleeve.
Lady Dong caught Fourth Madam Wang in one motion, her voice trembling with tears. "Sister-in-law! You must not do anything foolish!"
"That damned Xin Wang! The heartless, gutless dog! Who does he think he is, doing this to the Bai family! Who does he think he is, doing this to my son! Heaven above, look upon my boy! Why wasn't that wretch cut down on the battlefield! Why was he left alive!"
Fourth Madam Wang had always been tender-hearted — and now her husband and her sons were all dead. There was nothing left in this world to fear. Imperial prince or the Emperor's legitimate son, what did it matter? Once a woman had resolved to die, surely she might be permitted to curse him freely!
"Mother!"
"Mother!"
The Fifth and Sixth Misses came racing over and threw their arms around her legs, sobbing.
"Mother, I have already lost Grandfather and Father! I cannot lose you too!"
Sixth Miss Bai Jinhua spoke through her tears.
Then Fifth Miss Bai Jinshao spoke as well, weeping.
"You didn't give birth to us, but you carried us in your arms from the time we were small. You are our true mother, Mother. If you go and follow Father and our brother, what are my sister and I supposed to do!"
Fourth Madam Wang lowered her head and looked down at the twin daughters clinging to her legs, and her heart clenched tight. All the strength left her body, and she gathered the two girls into her arms and wailed.
When Xin Wang had brought the dead home to Dadu, the Duke and the young masters of the Bai estate had been shut up in coffins thin as sheets of paper. The Bai family's seventeenth son had stood shorter than a horse when he marched out to war — and he had died defending his country. That damned Xin Wang had not so much as sewn the boy's head back on. He had brought the body home exactly as it was, plainly intending the insult. A creature who had handed his conscience over to the beasts, nothing more.
A child of ten had gone to war for his nation and died a miserable death, his stomach full of nothing but earth and tree roots for want of food.
It was the Bai family that had held Great Jin safe, keeping enemy kingdoms from its borders — that was why the realm had known such plenty. What child in any household had ever gone hungry? Even the beggars on the roadside had never once been driven to eat earth and roots.
That imperial prince, that full-grown man harboring so vicious a heart, was base beyond all measure — he had laid every one of his own crimes at the feet of the loyal souls who had given their bodies for the nation!
Shameless and cruel, and on top of it a coward and a selfish one besides — a man who knew nothing of shame at all.
Bai Jingyan clenched her teeth. The first time she had read the campaign records, the pain had been exquisite and she had wept like a madwoman. Yet hearing them read aloud again, hatred blazed up once more in a heart she had believed long since numb — like boiling oil poured over an open wound.
Weeping in silence, she snatched the bamboo slips from the hands of her mother, her Second Aunt, Bai Jindong, and Bai Jinchi, hugged them tight to her chest, and knelt in solemn reverence before the shrine of the Bai family's loyal dead.
When she raised her head again, her eyes were burning with fury. She radiated the killing air of a rakshasa walking out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
With the oath spoken, Bai Jingyan rose swiftly, straightened her back, and walked out through the main gate of the Zhenguo Estate.
Xiao Rongyan narrowed his eyes as he watched her unyielding silhouette through deep, dark eyes. So this was that woman — the one who had ridden a ferocious horse and cut down enemy heads! In all of Dadu, no one but the Eldest Miss Bai could have vowed to make Xin Wang pay with his life.
"Eldest Miss Bai — where do you mean to go with those campaign records?"
Prince Qi's heart was growing anxious.
Beneath the plaque of the Zhenguo Estate, Bai Jingyan's mourning robes rippled in the wind. She turned her head, her jaw clenched tight. "I am going to strike the Dengwen Drum before the palace gates! To cry out the injustice done to the Bai family! To win back justice for my grandfather and father, my uncles and brothers, who died wronged!"
Prince Qi's eyes went round with shock. The Eldest Miss Bai meant to march on his imperial father this very moment!
"Eldest Sister! I'm coming with you!"
Bai Jindong, her face streaked with tears, gripped her sister's hem tightly and crossed the threshold, her expression set hard with resolve.
Bai Jinxi, both eyes red, clenched her teeth and sprang to her feet as well.
"I'm going too!"
"Me too!"
Barely had Bai Jinchi's words fallen when the Grand Princess's voice rang out — a voice like the tolling of a great bell.
"A'yan. Stand where you are."
At her grandmother's words, Bai Jingyan pressed the bamboo slips tighter against her chest. The spaces between her fingers turned cold as ice, and her body began, little by little, to stiffen.
For the sake of blood and kin, a person could become unbreakably strong — or weak beyond all measure. Family was the very thing that could forge a heart hard as steel, and with a single touch bring it crashing down.
But today, standing before the twenty-odd coffins laid out in the Bai family's courtyard, Bai Jingyan would not yield one step, not even for her grandmother.
Even if her grandmother tried to stop her, she would not turn back.
In broad, unclouded daylight, with the people of Dadu watching wide-eyed — could her grandmother, the Grand Princess of the imperial House of Im, truly dare to lock her away in the rear quarters?
And yet the disappointment came all the same, a tide she could not hold back, and the tearing in her chest was beyond her power to stop. To have heard the contents of these bamboo slips, to have seen her husband and sons and grandsons slaughtered so miserably, to know that the seventeenth grandson's throat had been cut and his belly slit open and scooped hollow — and still to be protecting the imperial power of the Im family…