High Treason
The Emperor shattered the porcelain tea bowl in his hand, its surface painted with intertwined-branch floral patterns. Rage surged up in him until he could not sit still, and he paced back and forth for a long while. Yellow tea seeped into the carpet, spreading a stain across it in an instant.
"Unbelievable! The Bai family has lost its mind!"
The palace maids and eunuchs in the great hall dropped to their knees in a rush, stifling even the sound of their breathing. Not a single one dared make a noise.
When the Son of Heaven raged, they said, millions could die!
None of them dared open their mouths before the furious Emperor, fearing they might be dragged into it unjustly. Even Gao Demu, whom the Emperor favored above all others, was crouched low like a quail, kneeling with the rest. He shrank his body down as far as it would go — if only he could diminish himself enough that the Emperor's eyes would simply pass over him.
"Your humble servant will send someone to verify the matter and report back to Your Majesty," the eunuch said. "The servant who went out carrying winter garments to the battlefield, on the Bai family's orders, returned today covered head to toe in blood, and swears on his life that he escorted back six bamboo scrolls. Before the crowd, Eldest Miss Bai read the contents of the scrolls aloud, and the people were so stirred that they followed the Bai household all the way to the palace. Right now they are kneeling outside the palace gates, begging for justice for the Bai family!"
The Emperor, seething with fury, nearly toppled over. Read aloud once at the gates of the Zhenguo Duke Estate, and once again before the palace gates. Was he worried the people might forget? He left not a shred of room to maneuver!
The Bai family... their gall had swollen beyond all bounds!
With one hand, the Emperor bore down hard on the edge of his agarwood table, ground his teeth, and turned to give the order.
"Gao Demu, you go. Go first and escort the Grand Princess in!"
The Grand Princess was the Emperor's own paternal aunt. Once she was placated, the Bai children would follow without any trouble.
Having settled the matter in his mind, the Emperor caught sight of his sleeve, soaked with tea, and flew into a rage once more.
"Why are you all standing about instead of changing my clothes?!"
Outside Wude Gate, Bai Jingyan — kneeling at the palace gates alongside the Grand Princess — watched the chief eunuch Gao Demu come hurrying out at a brisk pace from the Emperor's side.
Gao Demu knelt beside the Grand Princess, paid his respects, and spoke.
"Your Highness the Grand Princess! His Majesty requests Your Highness to come inside!"
Gripping Bai Jingyan's hand tightly, the Grand Princess pressed down on her cane and rose, then smoothed out her robes.
"Eldest Miss Bai."
Gao Demu turned to Bai Jingyan with a smiling face.
"If you hand this campaign record to this humble servant, I shall present it to His Majesty."
Bai Jingyan passed the scroll over with meticulous courtesy, her words measured and clear.
"I have read this record from beginning to end. With every single character I read, it felt as though my heart were being torn apart! I beg Your Majesty to return justice to those loyal souls who gave their bodies for this nation! If he does not, the Bai family will never know peace — and neither will the people!"
Gao Demu unconsciously glanced once at the crowd of commoners kneeling with the Bai family outside the palace gates. The meaning hidden beneath Eldest Miss Bai's words was — to put it a shade more plainly — a threat against the Emperor.
Receiving the bloodstained scroll with careful hands, Gao Demu replied, "Eldest Miss Bai, have no fear. I will convey these words to His Majesty as well."
Back straight, still kneeling, Bai Jingyan watched her grandmother follow Gao Demu in through the gates of Wude Gate.
"Big sister... do you think Grandmother might be talked around by the Emperor?"
Bai Jindong clutched at her mourning clothes, her brow furrowed.
The Grand Princess's attitude had seemed clear enough, yet it was not so cleanly divided as black and white. Bai Jindong had noticed that too.
Watching their grandmother pass through the lacquered red doors, her spine held straight, made the resolve in Bai Jindong's heart feel suddenly fragile.
Bai Jingyan answered lightly.
"If the pressure mounts high enough, neither Grandmother nor the Emperor will be able to stop it!"
"Will the Emperor truly kill King Xin?"
Bai Jindong had turned the question over and over in her mind. In all of Great Jin's history, no prince had ever been executed. Even the Second Prince, who had once been imprisoned, had ultimately taken his own life.
"If the Emperor does not execute King Xin, he won't be able to quell the grief and fury of the people! But even if punishment is all he delivers — coveting glory, giving reckless orders that drove hundreds of thousands of Great Jin's soldiers to their deaths, and then, afraid to shoulder that guilt, laying his own crimes upon the loyal dead — that alone means King Xin will never sit on the throne in this lifetime. He'll be confined to his estates, or stripped down to commoner rank."
Bai Jingyan's voice came drifting, unhurried. A lethal edge flowed silently from her eyes.
"If that's all he gets, it's mercy enough."
On Bai Jinxiu's face there lingered an unusually vicious light. Her tears still had not stopped.
"If the Emperor kills King Xin with a hardened heart, at the very least he'll earn a fine reputation among the people. But if he doesn't... then he's simply handing the people's hearts over to the Bai family on a silver platter. A loyal minister who sacrificed herself for the people was slaughtered in the most wretched way, while a prince cowered and clung to his own miserable life. Right and wrong — the people will judge that well enough on their own!"
Bai Jingyan breathed deep the cold midwinter air and straightened her back.
"A woman has no place in the court. But the hearts of the people make no distinction between men and women. For those of us with no power at court, winning the people's hearts is the only thing we can do!"
"Revenge is the simple part! If only we set our minds to it, we could kill King Xin one day! If the Emperor wins his fine reputation, then good for the Emperor — do you have any idea how formidable it is to hold the mighty blade of the people's hearts in our own hands? King Xin abandoned his people and fled like a frightened coward just to save his own skin — there will be no shortage of people who want him dead. Even if his throat is cut one day on some roadside, outside the imperial house not a single soul will shed a tear for him!"
Bai Jinchi clenched her fists until they ached.
After weathering such calamity, Bai Jinchi no longer acted on whim without a thought. Bai Jingyan was deeply pleased by the change in her.
Within the great hall, the Emperor unrolled the campaign record for the first time.
Every event was recorded there in meticulous detail.
He had known only that this war had ended in wretched defeat. The campaign record had never reached him, so even the circumstances of the dead and wounded had never been tallied.
Before reading the scroll, he had never once imagined that Great Jin could suffer a defeat so devastating.
After the battle at the Southern Border, Jin had lost several hundred thousand troops. For at least the next five years it would be unable to wage war against Xiliang, and the realm stood on the verge of ceding territory and begging for peace.
The Emperor's fury made his very hands tremble. Only moments ago he had been livid at the Bai family's pressure — but in this instant, the person who enraged him most was his own legitimate son, King Xin.
That arrogant, worthless whelp — ignorant to his bones, and still he had dared strong-arm a foe into marching to war? The Emperor deeply regretted ever granting King Xin the golden Tiger Tally.
King Xin was the Emperor's heir. His own flesh and blood — had he truly never known what manner of creature he was?
Yes. It was true that he had sent King Xin to the battlefield hoping the boy might clip the wings of the Zhenguo Duke. But that was the whole of it — he had wanted only to lay a small offense at the Duke's door, to press down a little upon that aura of invincibility they called an unbroken legend.
Would the Emperor of Great Jin truly wish for Great Jin to be crushed in battle?
He would not have shed a tear if the Bai family had died. But the hundreds of thousands of troops were his soldiers. How could his heart not ache?
And that Yu Huanzhang!
The gall of him, to betray the nation!
The gall of him, to lead Great Jin's own army into internal strife!
Traitor! His whole clan will be exterminated! I swear it — his entire clan will be wiped from the earth!
The hand holding the bamboo scroll shook uncontrollably. When he recalled the daughters of the Bai family in mourning white, kneeling at the mouth of Wude Gate, and the commoners of Dadu pressing in upon him — all of them driving him to kill his own heir — his rage boiled hotter still.
He had only one legitimate son.
The Emperor's head throbbed. His hatred swelled and swelled, until he was on the verge of giving the order to slaughter the entire Bai household then and there.
At this very moment, the Empress was pacing helplessly outside the great hall. The Bai family and the people were in full voice outside the palace gates, shouting for the return of justice, for the Emperor to kill King Xin and soothe the hearts of the people!
Having spent long years as the Emperor's wife, the Empress knew his character — his obsession with honor and reputation — better than anyone. If he truly did kill King Xin to preserve his good name...
The Empress could not bear to think any further. The Emperor had many sons. She had only one.
In the great hall, the Emperor studied the Grand Princess's darkened face and narrowed his eyes.
"Aunt, we are family — so let us speak plainly! What, in the end, is the reason you have stirred things to this pass?"
The Emperor's deadly gaze fixed upon the Grand Princess.
"Do you truly, truly wish for me to kill King Xin?"
"You ask me to speak plainly — then I shall tell Your Majesty everything in my heart."
The Grand Princess, her walnuts held fast in her palm, was calm and composed.
"Before I was married to Bai Weizheng, heir to the Zhenguo Dukedom, my imperial father said this to me: the Bai family of the Zhenguo Duke Estate is the pillar of the state and the spine of Great Jin — the imperial house must depend upon them, yet must also stand wary of them! My father was advanced in years by then, with few days left to him, and so he hoped that I would guard the imperial authority of our house in his place, and see to it that the Bai family never raised a banner of rebellion. That day... I swore an oath upon my imperial blood."
Feeling these words were not enough, the Grand Princess tightened her grip on the walnuts and pressed on.
"That year, my father entrusted to me the imperial house's secret guards. They were quartered in the manor I received as my dowry, and not once — not even when the Duke and my sons marched to war — were they ever deployed. Your Majesty... do you understand what it is I guard against?"
The Emperor's expression grew grave as he regarded the Grand Princess. He had never imagined such hidden depths lay behind her dowry.
If she had withheld the secret guards even when her own sons went to the battlefield, then it could only be vigilance — vigilance against a Bai family rebellion no one could foresee.
"It falls to me to protect the imperial authority of our house, so that it suffers no encroachment of any kind. And so, at this moment, I offer Your Majesty my honest counsel: King Xin must die!"
The Grand Princess clutched her agarwood prayer beads within her sleeve, then let out a long, deep breath.
"Set aside the private grievances of the Bai family — look instead at the hearts of all the realm! The campaign record was carried to the Bai family's mourning hall under the eyes of all the world. The people now know every deed King Xin has committed! The grief and hatred of the Bai family and the people pierce the very heavens!
"Your Majesty... water can carry a boat, and it can just as easily capsize it. Surely Your Majesty knows this better than any. Only by following the hearts of the people can the imperial throne endure! If Your Majesty puts King Xin to death, every soul outside Wude Gate will become hearts Your Majesty has won for himself! But if you refuse to kill him — if you do not so much as punish him — then what Your Majesty loses will be far more than the loyalty of the people outside those gates."
Every line the Grand Princess spoke seemed to uphold the position of the imperial house — yet a private wish was plainly woven through her words. She wanted the Emperor to kill King Xin. Only then could she avenge her husband, her sons, and her grandsons.
Her youngest grandson — that sweet, guileless child who was nothing but precious — had been only ten years old!
If King Xin had not threatened Bai Weizheng in his hunger for glory, the tragedy that claimed every man of the Bai family would never have happened.
King Xin deserved to die!
And yet the Grand Princess could not weep and wail like a frail woman, pleading ties of blood and begging the Emperor to kill King Xin. If she showed herself thus, it would only breed revulsion — and defeat her purpose.
From childhood, the Grand Princess had grasped precisely what set men and women apart. To contend with a man, one must first refuse to see oneself as a woman. The measure of men was vast as heaven and earth, while most women were soft of heart, bound by blood ties, and concerned themselves only with the small privileges of the household. When she taught her eldest granddaughter Bai Jingyan, she had passed on these same truths.