Preserving One's Life
When Bai Jingyan had finished reciting the names of the dead, one by one, she folded the ledger and turned to Xiao Ruogang.
"Have you copied everything?"
"Yes!"
Xiao Ruogang held the paper up for her to see. Bai Jingyan examined it, then passed the list back to him and addressed Jin Desuo, who sat confined in his cell.
"This morning, His Majesty issued a sacred edict. He posthumously elevated my grandfather to King of Zhenguo, and my father to Duke of Zhenguo. Yu Huanzhang's entire clan was exterminated. King Xin and his son have been stripped to commoner status — and King Xin himself has been exiled to Ling Prefecture, never to return."
Jin Desuo's throat burned. He ground his teeth together so hard they creaked.
"If I were to present this ledger to His Majesty, what punishment do you suppose he would hand down to the Loyal-Brave Marquis?"
Bai Jingyan rapped the ledger lightly with her fingers. Not a trace of a smile touched her face.
"And if Prince Liang learned that I had met the Loyal-Brave Marquis in the Court of Judicial Review's prison today — that I had obtained this ledger directly from his hands — don't you imagine he would scramble at once to silence you and wipe out your entire household?"
Jin Desuo's eyes flew wide open. How could Bai Jingyan possibly know that Prince Liang stood behind him? Nothing could have been further from his expectations.
Prince Liang had been King Xin's man. But now that King Xin had fallen to commoner status, Prince Liang would stop at nothing to protect himself — that much was obvious.
Jin Desuo remembered the scene when he had ordered the deaths of Yi Samhae and Shim Seoyo. If he had been in Prince Liang's place, he too would surely have killed the man who knew the most, to protect himself.
"The military provisions were in Yu Huanzhang's keeping, far away in the Southern Border — so how did he know there was a problem with them? How, without wings, did he seize on the vanished grain as a pretext to stir up chaos inside the Southern Border Army? Could it be that the Loyal-Brave Marquis had long since conspired with Yu Huanzhang? If so, then Yu Huanzhang's treason is beyond doubt — and what crime, then, has the Loyal-Brave Marquis committed? And if the Loyal-Brave Marquis drags Prince Liang into it as well, what crime do you imagine would fall upon the prince's head?"
Bai Jingyan laid out her reasoning with methodical precision. Her voice spread through Jin Desuo's whole body like a thin, dark river running beneath the ice — carrying fear with it, soundless and inescapable.
"To His Majesty, the deaths of the Bai men must seem a very trifling thing. It may even be that he wished them dead. But what if several hundred thousand soldiers of Great Jin — all of them doomed in the Southern Border by men who schemed for their own private gain — and mighty Great Jin were forced to bow its head and sue for peace with Xiliang and Southern Yan? Ceding territory might seem a small price. But the moment Great Jin admits defeat, the kingdoms of Liang and the Rong tribes will circle like wolves. Consider, then, how His Majesty's heart must sit right now."
Jin Desuo knew the Emperor bore a grudge against the Bai family. He knew it all too well — it was precisely that knowledge which had let him lay hands on the military grain.
Bai Jingyan was right. The Emperor had indeed wanted to drive the Bai family to their deaths. But he had never wanted several hundred thousand soldiers buried in the same grave alongside them.
Jin Desuo clenched his jaw, the rims of his eyes reddening, and stared at Bai Jingyan.
"Lady Bai, I haven't the slightest idea what you mean by all this."
"It doesn't matter whether you do. Prince Liang will be along shortly to explain it to you."
Bai Jingyan had no wish to trade further words with Jin Desuo. She rose from her chair, handed the paper to Xiao Ruogang, and instructed him to place it back in the food case.
"Take care of yourself, Loyal-Brave Marquis."
The moment she was gone, Jin Desuo clenched his fists and shouted after her.
"Lady Bai!"
But Bai Jingyan did not so much as slow her stride. Jin Desuo panicked, his composure crumbling entirely.
He scrambled to his feet, staggering — but all he could see was her retreating back, resolute and unhesitating. Judging by that air of finality, she truly showed no sign of trying to pry anything further out of him, or of threatening him at all.
Jin Desuo gripped the bars of his cell with both hands, shouting in his alarm.
"Bai Jingyan! I am Jin Lang's father — Bai Jinxiu's father-in-law! If anything happens to me, those two will not escape either!"
At that, Bai Jingyan's footsteps stopped. She turned her head. Beneath the flickering torchlight, the corridor stretched away into darkness, its far end swallowed from view.
"You're quite right about that. How fortunate, then, that the Marquis's wife raised such a fuss. How very fortunate that the Bai family went to such trouble to draw Jin Lang and his wife out of the Marquis's household. Once Jin Lang earns the praise of His Majesty and the Empress, and offers up this ledger in the name of forsaking family for the sake of righteousness... ah, and if my grandmother, the Grand Princess, lends her strength as well — then Jin Lang will truly, in name and in fact, become the Loyal-Brave Marquis. I shall be sure to tell my second sister, later, to thank the Marquis's wife for her kindness."
Jin Desuo's eyes bulged with fury.
"Bai Jingyan! You... you venomous girl! You dare to egg Jin Lang on into denouncing his own father? That is monstrous unfiliality!"
"I'm venomous?"
A colder stillness settled over Bai Jingyan's face.
"Have you forgotten who schemed within the ranks for his own private greed — who sent tens of thousands of Great Jin's men to their deaths in the Southern Border? Those men marched to war with burning hearts, believing they would defend their country. And they did not die honorably on the blades of enemy soldiers — they died at the hands of a man styling himself a king and a man clutching a title. The soldiers alone number in the hundreds of thousands. Who will play filial son now to all those tens of thousands of men? Shall I leave that burden to their grandfathers?"
With that, Bai Jingyan led Nanny Dong, Xiao Ruohai, and Xiao Ruogang out of the prison.
Dread closed in on Jin Desuo. He wanted nothing more than to meet Prince Liang's man at once and report everything — and yet he feared that if Prince Liang's man came to find him, it would be to slaughter his household and silence him for good.
He had to reach Prince Liang's people before Jin Lang submitted that ledger. Only then could he save his own life.
But this Prince Liang... the world believed he was the weakest and most useless of the Emperor's sons, yet in truth he harbored a heart more ruthless than anyone's.
It had been Prince Liang who had goaded Jin Desuo into ordering the deaths of Yi Samhae and the others.
Only the dead, Prince Liang had said, keep secrets thoroughly.
Cold sweat soaked Jin Desuo's palms. A shiver ran down his spine.
Even clutching the iron proofs of his own crimes in his hand, there was no way to buy his life back from Prince Liang.
Even if he were murdered here in his cell, no one would ever suspect that half-witted Prince Liang of it — that much was certain.
Had Bai Jingyan come not to ask after the vanished grain, but to take his life?
Jin Desuo closed his eyes and clenched his fists. How was he to survive? How was he to keep this life of his?
At the entrance of the Court of Judicial Review's prison.
Nanny Dong walked out of the prison, the food case in one hand and Bai Jingyan — dressed in black mourning garb — supported on her other arm. After only a few steps her foot caught, and she went sprawling; the food case clattered to the ground, and the brush, ink, and paper inside tumbled out across the stones.
Xiao Ruohai cried out in alarm and snatched up the ink-stained paper in a hurry. He tried desperately to wipe the ink away with his sleeve, but it would not come off. Frowning, he held the paper up to show Bai Jingyan.
Hidden in the shadows, Gao Sheng — Prince Liang's man — watched the scene. He saw the dense columns of writing on the paper, twitched an ear, then closed his eyes again and strained to listen closely.
"Shim Seoyo's name has been smudged. Return to the estate first, my lady, and I will copy it out again and have Jin Desuo press his seal to it."
Xiao Ruohai said.
"No need. It's only a little blotted. Going back in would only raise a needless commotion. Let's go."
With that, Bai Jingyan descended the steps and climbed into her carriage.
Gao Sheng kept his body hidden in the darkness, and only after confirming that the old carriage was well out of sight did he hurry off in pursuit.
Word that the Court of Judicial Review had surrounded the Loyal-Brave Marquis's estate and dragged Jin Desuo off for interrogation had already spread through the city, and the common folk murmured among themselves that it was fortunate indeed that the Bai family's second daughter and Jin Lang had moved out of the Marquis's residence — had they stayed, they would have been swept up in the affair.
According to rumors overheard by a relative with connections inside the prison, the military grain being shipped to the Southern Border front from the prefecture of Zhangcheng had swollen in the rain; when it had been cut open and examined, the sacks were found to be stuffed with buckwheat husks, and a memorial had been submitted to the throne. That memorial had arrived a month earlier — but King Xin had intercepted it in transit. Only late the previous evening, at dusk, had the memorial finally reached the palace hall, whereupon the Emperor flew into a towering rage and ordered a thorough investigation of the grain affair.
Jin Lang, keeping vigil with his wife at the coffin in the Duke of Zhenguo Estate's mourning hall, looked down at Nanny Wu, who was weeping and pleading before him. Hands clasped behind his back, his face betrayed not a flicker of emotion.
When the Loyal-Brave Marquis had turned out his wife Zhang Fengchun, she had begged and beseeched him, weeping as though out of her mind with her son clutched to her breast, to let her trusted Nanny Wu remain behind in the rear compound to look after the children.
Years of marriage counted for something, and Zhang Fengchun's wild grief had moved him; the Loyal-Brave Marquis had decided that leaving behind a single old nurse to mind the children was no great concession, and granted his wife's request.
Then disaster had struck the Marquis's estate. Once the Court of Judicial Review had sealed the compound and barred anyone from leaving, Nanny Wu had racked her brains for a long while before finally slipping out under the pretext of delivering clothes to Jin Lang, borrowing the prestige of the Bai family's name to pass through the guards.
Though Jin Lang had left the Marquis's household and voluntarily stepped down from his position as heir, he was still the eldest legitimate son of that house. The guards surrounding the Jin estate had remembered that he was the Bai family's son-in-law, and reasoned that an old servant merely delivering clothes was a trifling matter — so they let Nanny Wu pass, assigning men to follow and watch her.
"The Court of Judicial Review has the estate surrounded — no one is being allowed out! The young master is so frightened he does nothing but cry, and the two young ladies don't know what to do! Eldest young master — for all the kindness his ladyship showed you all these years, I beg you, save the eldest young master's brothers and sisters!"
Beneath the stone lion at the main gate of the Duke of Zhenguo Estate, Nanny Wu knelt before Jin Lang, kowtowing until her forehead had turned an angry blue.
"Nanny Wu, I am no longer the heir of the Loyal-Brave Marquis's house. I am nothing more than an ordinary commoner now... I would like to help you, truly, but I haven't the power. Rather than making appeals to me here, you would do far better to go to the Zhang family — my mother's own people."
Jin Lang's voice flowed out, unhurried and mild.
"You can help us, eldest young master! You can! His Majesty still holds the Bai family in high regard. If you would only ask the Grand Princess to put in a word with His Majesty, it would help beyond measure!"
Nanny Wu looked up at him with eyes brimming with hope.
At those words, Bai Jinxiu's anger flared and she started to rise — but Bai Jindong pressed her back down into her seat.
"Jindong?"
Bai Jinxiu turned to her, eyes wide with bewilderment.
"This is the Jin family's affair. Brother-in-law will see to it himself. If he can't even resolve a matter with one old servant, and can't even bring himself to refuse a demand this insolent, how is he going to protect you in the future? How is he going to hold on to the Marquis's title at all?"
Bai Jindong said.
Bai Jinxiu recalled what Bai Jingyan had said before leaving, and her heart grew uneasy. Never once had she allowed herself to imagine that Jin Lang might actually sit in the Loyal-Brave Marquis's seat again.
While she sat lost in thought, Jin Lang's sigh drifted across the courtyard.
"Nanny Wu — when those two sisters of mine wronged Jinxiu, my mother stood by and did nothing. Far from offering apology, she didn't even stop at mocking the Grand Princess's most cherished granddaughter, saying she might never bear children. The Grand Princess lost her husband, and then every son and grandson besides — she lies crushed beneath her grief. And now that trouble has come to the Marquis's household, where would I find the face to make appeals to her?"
Jin Lang's words were gentle, but their meaning was unmistakable. He had no intention of pleading with the Grand Princess.
"Our Marquis's house and the Duke of Zhenguo's house are bound by marriage! The Grand Princess ought to say something — anything — for the sake of the rear compound!"
Nanny Wu was a wreck of tears.