Chapter 10

Before dawn broke, Zhao Baiyu went to the pawnshop to redeem the copy of the Book of Songs that Zheng You had pawned there.

No sooner had he stepped out the door than one of Zheng You's men came rushing into the pawnshop, and a moment later ran back out searching for Zhao Baiyu.

Zhao Baiyu brought the Book of Songs back to the residence and turned it over and over, but couldn't find anything wrong with it.

Yanbing said, "You were out all night, and the moment you get back you sit there staring at this book for hours. Are you hoping silver's going to fall out of it?"

"It might, at that," Zhao Baiyu said.

Yanbing's interest was piqued. He picked it up, examined it from every angle, and gave it a shake, utterly mystified. "Fifth Young Master, are you teasing me again?"

"Zheng You said this book was worth his head. If he hadn't been drunk and reckless at the gambling table, he never would have let me walk off with it so cheaply. It has to be something more precious to him than his own life. Let's set it aside for now — it might just save a life when the time comes."

Just then Uncle Wei came in and told them what he'd learned that morning: at the imperial audience, the Crown Prince's faction had struck first, and Prince Qin's faction had been dragged down with them. His Majesty had ordered the Court of Judicial Review to close the case within five days.

"That was to be expected. Right now the one witness who can save my teacher is the Crown Prince's wet nurse — but both the Crown Prince and Prince Qin want her dead. One wants her dead inside the Eastern Palace, the other wants her dead outside it. Whether she lives or dies, either outcome threatens both sides, and neither side can afford to offend the other. It all comes down to what Huo Jingtang decides to do."

"Doesn't this Prince of Lin'an just smooth things over and please everyone?"

"His Majesty put him right over the fire. He has no way to stay out of it."

In the original story there had also been a great purge, but looking back over the history of his past life, such purges rarely happened unless the matter was sweeping and its consequences enormous — and even then, great purges belonged chiefly to the Qing dynasty, when imperial power had been consolidated to its absolute peak. This era was different. The imperial examination system had existed for less than two hundred years, and great clans and enfeoffed princes still held real influence; centralized power hadn't yet reached the heights it would under the Qing. A purge on that scale would need sufficient cause.

A cause severe enough to send Emperor Yuanshou into a towering rage.

The men under the Crown Prince who'd taken part in the exam fraud — the Crown Prince himself probably hadn't known; it had been his subordinates acting on their own.

And Prince Qin? Did he know his faction was profiting from rigging the examinations?

Thinking about it made Zhao Baiyu's head ache. He simply didn't have enough information, and there was no use dwelling on it — knowing too much wouldn't help either, not when he was a minor sixth-rank official who could be crushed to death by any loose brick tumbling off a roof in the Capital Prefecture.

"As long as we have the Crown Prince's wet nurse in our hands, all we need is her testimony that she was used to frame my teacher. Nothing else matters." Zhao Baiyu's eyes were resolute as he stared straight toward the direction of the Imperial City. "I'm going into the Eastern Palace."

The Eastern Palace lay within the Imperial Palace, and entering the palace required an ivory tablet. The tablets were strictly controlled — lose even one, and it cost you your head — and there was no way to forge one outside the palace walls. Even if he managed by sheer luck to slip into the Eastern Palace, the place was thick with patrolling Imperial Guards and countless skilled fighters; the defenses were airtight, and one careless step could still cost him his head.

"There's no other way. If I don't go, there's no other option," Zhao Baiyu said. "As it happens, I have the ivory tablet the wet nurse dropped. Tomorrow Zhao Yuzheng is playing polo out in the countryside, and both Prince Qin and the Crown Prince are certain to go watch him, so the Eastern Palace's guard will be a little thinner."

Uncle Wei disapproved. "You don't know the layout of the palace, and you can't fight. The wet nurse is a crucial witness — there's bound to be someone guarding her closely. Even if you managed to sneak in, you'd never be able to bring her out."

"I'm betting my luck can bring her out safely."

His confidence came from the fact that, by the story's timeline, it wasn't yet time for the villainous male lead to die.

Uncle Wei took the ivory tablet from him. "I'll go."

Zhao Baiyu refused — Uncle Wei had no supporting-character halo protecting him; there was no telling what might go wrong.

Uncle Wei gave him no chance to object. "Trust me. If someone has to go into the palace, it can only be me."

His gaze was so unwavering that Zhao Baiyu couldn't refuse him.

Uncle Wei had been bought by Zhao Baiyu — back when he was seven or eight — from a traveling peddler. He possessed formidable martial skill and uncommonly sharp judgment; Zhao Baiyu was certain he was no ordinary man, though Uncle Wei never spoke a word of his past.

Since he didn't wish to speak of it, Zhao Baiyu never asked.

Zhao Baiyu had also once wanted Uncle Wei to teach him martial arts, but Uncle Wei had said his physical foundation simply wasn't suited to it, and so the idea was dropped.

"All right. But you must put your own safety first. If you can't bring the wet nurse out, it doesn't matter — I'll find some other way to save my teacher."

Uncle Wei nodded.

......

Prince Qin's residence.

A eunuch from the inner palace, dressed in plain clothes, entered Prince Qin's residence and met with him. "The men are ready. Her Ladyship the Consort will make certain the witness dies inside the Eastern Palace!"

Prince Qin let out a breath of relief and pressed a bank note into the eunuch's hand. "My thanks for the trouble, good sir."

The eunuch accepted it with a broad smile.

The moment the man left, Prince Qin brightened at once. "Come — fetch my outdoor clothes. I'm going out."

......

The Eastern Palace.

As the Crown Prince mounted his horse, he gave Zhao Changfeng an earnest, urgent instruction. "Everything rests on you. She must die outside the Eastern Palace! And — try to take a few of them alive if you can."

"This subordinate will not fail Your Highness's trust!" Zhao Changfeng said.

......

The Prince of Lin'an's Residence.

The deputy spoke up. "I've finally worked it out! Whether it's the Crown Prince's faction or Prince Qin's, we can't afford to offend either one — so it's best if the witness dies inside the Eastern Palace. That way it has nothing to do with us."

Huo Jingtang, who was carving a piece of purple wood, didn't even look up. "If the key witness dies, the case becomes unsolvable, and neither the Crown Prince nor Prince Qin can ever be cleared of suspicion. Care to guess whether I could still find another key witness in the time remaining to prove either the Crown Prince's or Prince Qin's innocence?"

The deputy blinked, baffled. "But the case just needs to end with Minister Wang and Vice Minister Chen — oh, and Zheng You too. Both the Crown Prince and Prince Qin had a hand in it, so a light slap on each of their wrists should settle it. Even if it really did implicate Prince Qin and the Crown Prince, His Majesty would only hand down a token punishment — some charge of lax household discipline, brushed off lightly, with the blame dumped on their underlings. He'd never actually execute his own sons."

As the saying goes, there is no affection in the imperial family, and past dynasties are full of emperors who killed their own fathers and sons. But that would never happen to Emperor Yuanshou. Having lived through the suspicion and bloody rivalry among fathers, sons, and brothers in his youth, he placed especial value on filial devotion between father and son and affection between siblings — he had once harshly reprimanded the Crown Prince for the small matter of showing insufficient concern for his ailing younger brother.

That was precisely what made this case so thorny — dig to the very bottom, and the true mastermind would still walk away unpunished, while whoever did the digging would end up despised by everyone, inside the court and out.

"He can't bring himself to strike down his own sons," Huo Jingtang said. "But he may not feel the same about everyone else."

He finished the last stroke of the carved head, blew away the wood shavings, set down his carving knife, and took the damp cloth a servant handed him to wipe his hands. "Do you really think His Majesty knows nothing at all of what goes on beneath him?"

"How do you mean?" the deputy asked.

"The moment Prince Qin joined forces with his ministers to impeach the Crown Prince, His Majesty's patience had already reached its limit."

The deputy still didn't understand, staring at Huo Jingtang in complete confusion, and got nothing in return but a cold glance and the advice to "read more."

......

The Zhao residence.

Under Lady Xie's earnest instructions, Third Young Master Zhao Yuqing and Fourth Young Master Zhao Yuzheng mounted their horses together, took their leave of her, and rode off toward the polo grounds on the city's outskirts.

No sooner had they gone than Zhao Baiyu came out leading an old horse, and found himself face to face with Lady Xie.

It had been two and a half months since Lady Xie last confronted him, forcing him to marry the Prince of Lin'an in Zhao Yuzheng's place. Back then, he'd believed Lady Xie to be merely his eldest brother's mother; now he knew she was his own birth mother in this life, and the knowledge left him with tangled, complicated feelings.

He studied her face closely, and only then noticed how alike their eyes were — both harmless, faintly rounded almond eyes, unlike Zhao Boyong's sharp phoenix eyes, and nothing like Grand Princess Changping's fierce, seductive fox eyes.

The first three Zhao sons all had eyes that resembled Zhao Boyong's. Zhao Yuzheng's eyes looked like phoenix eyes at first glance too, but a closer, more careful look revealed them to be fox eyes after all.

So he and Lady Xie shared this one singular resemblance — the bond of blood between them, unlike anything else.

Zhao Baiyu stepped back, cupped his hands, and bowed deeply.

Lady Xie looked faintly startled. She'd assumed that after forcing that marriage on him, Zhao Baiyu would hate her bitterly — she hadn't expected such deference from him.

Her lips moved as though to speak, but at the thought of Grand Princess Changping, her expression turned cool again, and she simply walked past him into the residence.

Zhao Baiyu straightened his robe and walked away, his expression calm.

If someone were to ask him why, now that he knew the truth of his birth, he didn't seek justice for himself — he would surely answer that in the end, no one truly cared about him. Lady Xie, who had spent over a decade hating him for the near-poisoning of Zhao Yuzheng, had long since grown used to pouring all her maternal love into Zhao Yuzheng alone.

......

Around noon, a company of plainclothes riders arrived and drew to a halt in the middle of the Imperial Street, directly facing the palace gate. The guards on horseback wore official boots, carried Court of Judicial Review waist tokens, and bore military ring-pommel sabers — clearly men of the Court of Judicial Review, and soldiers besides. Only someone who once served under the Commandery Prince could plausibly carry both credentials at once.

They had been ordered to bring the witness out, and they blocked the palace gate as the sun slanted westward, but no one from the Eastern Palace appeared.

Zhao Baiyu watched them from a distance for a while, then lowered his eyes and steered his carriage down a different street, winding through several long avenues until he reached another palace gate entirely.

This was the East Straight Gate of the Imperial Palace, the one nearest the Eastern Palace. Every day, water carts flying dragon banners carried palace water in through this gate, not emerging again until noon.

Just then, a vermilion water cart came rolling out. The gate guards checked it thoroughly as always, and only after confirming nothing was being smuggled did they let it pass. Right behind it came a second water cart, and Zhao Baiyu recognized the driver at once as Uncle Wei — his heart leapt into his throat.

The guards checked beneath the cart, then climbed up and pried open the water barrel lids to confirm they were empty, studied Uncle Wei's face closely, and demanded he present his pass. Only after this thorough inspection turned up nothing did they wave him through.

Zhao Baiyu let out a breath of relief, and at the same time assumed Uncle Wei's mission had failed — that he hadn't managed to bring the key witness out after all.

Disappointed as he was, Uncle Wei's safety alone was already a great mercy.

The water cart wound its way deep into an alley. There, Uncle Wei slid a knife along a seam beneath the cart bed and pried it open, revealing a hidden compartment large enough to conceal two people.

Zhao Baiyu stared in astonishment. "This—?"

Uncle Wei hauled the unconscious wet nurse into the cart, changed his clothes and hairstyle, then hopped up onto the driver's seat. "The cold palace sometimes smuggles out runaway maids or discarded consorts this way, or uses it to sneak out stolen goods for sale — these water carts, with the hidden compartments underneath. It's said some emperor of a previous dynasty wanted to smuggle courtesans into the palace and, having no proper way to manage it, the eunuchs beneath him came up with this scheme instead. Too many people know of it now for comfort — knowing it can cost you your head. It's one of the few secrets kept quietly within the palace walls."

Something told him it wasn't quite as "little-known" as all that — but how did Uncle Wei come to know such a deeply buried palace secret?

Zhao Baiyu didn't ask about the secret. Instead he asked, "Are you hurt?"

Uncle Wei's expression eased at his concern. "I never clashed with them directly — if anything, I got lucky and slipped through a gap. Some men in black had broken into the Eastern Palace and made off with the witness, and the Imperial Guard arrived in time and cut most of them down. I followed close behind and noticed the guards paid no attention to the witness at all — they only wanted to capture the assassins alive. So I took the chance to slip her out."

"Did they take any of the assassins alive?" Zhao Baiyu asked.

"Five were caught. Three took their own lives, and two had their jaws broken to keep them from biting through their tongues."

Zhao Baiyu fell into thought. "So it really was a trap to draw out the snake — Prince Qin's fallen right into it."

Prince Qin was never going to be brought down by the examination fraud alone. Thirty cheating students, even if they were sons and nephews of officials throughout the court, weren't nearly enough grounds for a great purge — unless the inner palace and the outer court had colluded together.

The men in black who'd struck at the Eastern Palace must have come from Duke Zheng's Residence, with the Imperial Consort acting as their inside contact within the palace, letting them walk into the inner palace as though it were an empty house. No matter how merciful the emperor might be, he could never tolerate someone reaching for the very bed he slept in.

All that remained now was one more spark to set the whole thing ablaze.

What would that spark turn out to be?