Chapter 9

Prefect Ji had an Imperial Physician he was on good terms with examine the Ten-Thousand-Year Blood Amber that Zhao Baiyu had presented, and only after confirming it was genuine beyond doubt did he dare place the item in the hands of his mentor, the Tenth Prince.

The Tenth Prince was overjoyed. He had it tested, and once he'd confirmed it possessed a miraculous power to cure gu poison, he carried it personally to the Prince of Lin'an's Residence. Watching with his own eyes as Huo Jingtang used the Ten-Thousand-Year Blood Amber and the color came back into his face—finally looking something like a human being again—he could not help feeling delighted, and turned at once to think of rewarding Prefect Ji.

Prefect Ji dared not claim credit that wasn't his, and told the truth.

The Tenth Prince: "The former Fourth Young Master of the Zhao family, Zhao Baiyu? That's the very nephew I've never once laid eyes on—and my future nephew-in-law!"

What Princess Changping had done back then was so distasteful that even he had never cared to set eyes on Zhao Baiyu; for all these years he had simply left the boy to grow up alone in the back courtyards of the Zhao Residence. Now, forced to marry in another's place with no one to stand up for him, it was not hard to imagine how wretched his life must have been.

"Does he know who the Ten-Thousand-Year Blood Amber was meant for?"

Prefect Ji cupped his hands. "Your student told him only that his mentor was seeking a medicine on behalf of a person of rank. And I myself have only just learned that the person of rank is the Commandery Prince."

The Tenth Prince: "You said he wished to beg a favor for a mentor of his own. Who is this mentor?"

Prefect Ji: "The Vice Minister of Rites, Chen Shidao."

The Tenth Prince sucked in a breath. "Now that is something." He looked across the eight-immortals table to Huo Jingtang, reclining on the couch opposite. "You're the Chief Minister of the Court of Judicial Review, presiding over this examination fraud case. You're his cousin and his betrothed both—why didn't he come to you?"

"He did." Huo Jingtang lay on the couch, his posture careless and unrestrained, his right elbow propped on a bent knee, fingers toying with a string of prayer beads. "I had him thrown out."

"He actually came to you?!" The Tenth Prince slapped the table and roared with laughter. "To save someone, Zhao Baiyu was even willing to trade on the fact that you're his betrothed—it's a wonder he didn't march straight into the Court of Judicial Review flaunting the title of Consort of the Prince of Lin'an!"

When his laughter had run its course, the Tenth Prince grew rather wistful. "Still, in a moment of desperation, it's understandable. These days every official in the Capital gives the Chen residence a wide berth, yet he went straight toward the trouble instead—a rare soul with real heart. And if he truly had no idea who was seeking the Ten-Thousand-Year Blood Amber, no idea whose life the treasure would end up saving, then even Heaven itself is on his side. Heaven won't let you perish, nor Chen Shidao, nor the good heart of Zhao Baiyu."

Huo Jingtang did not answer; the Tenth Prince went on sighing to himself.

"Say—how did the Ten-Thousand-Year Blood Amber end up in Zhao Baiyu's hands, of all people's? We hunted for it four or five years and were always a step too late. The Emperor, my brother, possesses all within the four seas; my own people and trading houses, if not spread across the whole realm, at least keep eyes and ears in a good twenty-some prefectures across ten provinces; and then there's the treasure-vault of your mother's kin at Duke Cui's Residence, riches piled up since Emperor Shengzu's day—and with every one of us searching together, we still couldn't turn up the Ten-Thousand-Year Blood Amber!"

The Tenth Prince pointed at the deputy, whose face was a perfect blank. "You tell me why, young Fu."

The deputy was silent for a long moment. "Because Zhao Baiyu used the General's betrothal gifts to buy twenty singing girls."

The Tenth Prince: "?"

Utterly mystified, he looked to his nephew, hoping to have the riddle explained—only to find Huo Jingtang's eyes brimming with amusement, an indescribable roguish charm all but wafting off him.

"It was an uncanny coincidence," Huo Jingtang said.

The deputy nodded solemnly. It was indeed a coincidence—and indeed uncanny!

Who could have guessed that the Ten-Thousand-Year Blood Amber they'd searched four or five years for had been in the hands of a reigning courtesan of the Capital Prefecture all along?

Right under their very noses!

And all this while they had trained their search on wonder-workers and eccentrics, on high officials and the rich and powerful.

And who could have foreseen that when Zhao Baiyu paid a steep price for twenty singing girls with the betrothal gifts sent out by the Commandery Prince's Residence, he'd done it purely out of kindness, with no selfish motive at all—and that a famous courtesan of the Capital would repay him by making him a gift of the Ten-Thousand-Year Blood Amber?

And it just so happened that the Acting Prefect was the Tenth Prince's protégé as well as Zhao Baiyu's superior—so that after all these twists and turns, the life-saving elixir they'd combed the world for in vain came delivering itself to their door. If that wasn't uncanny, what was?

Call it coincidence—but how could anything be that much of a coincidence?

It was coincidence gone downright spooky!

The deputy still hadn't recovered from it, and had begun to think there was something uncanny about Zhao Baiyu himself.

While the deputy sat there dazed, Huo Jingtang went on smiling that inscrutable smile, as if plotting some new bit of mischief.

"..." The Tenth Prince lifted himself off his seat and quietly edged away from the two of them, master and man.

......

After Prefect Ji returned, all he would say, with a mysterious look on his face, was that the person of rank now knew what Zhao Baiyu had asked for, and that he need only wait patiently for word. No matter how Zhao Baiyu tried to draw more out of him, he refused to reveal anything further.

Left with no choice—and pinning all his hopes on someone else was never his style—Zhao Baiyu took to haunting the gambling houses, singling out the ones run by the Zheng family. He arrived punctually at dusk and left in the small hours, and over three straight days won no less than ten thousand taels of silver, until at last he stirred Zheng You himself into action.

When Zheng You arrived, Zhao Baiyu was in the middle of a game of pai gow. The gaming table where he sat was mobbed so thickly not a drop could have trickled through; the crowd was hollering for the tiles to be turned, the dealer kept mopping his brow and gulping tea, and Zhao Baiyu's side of the table was heaped with fist-sized ingots of silver—every last one of them his winnings.

Gritting his teeth, the dealer laid out his tiles and fixed Zhao Baiyu with a hard stare. "If you please."

Pai gow isn't all that complicated: in their version, four tiles were split into two hands of two and matched high against high, low against low. The first hands were already face up—Zhao Baiyu's Heaven-and-six had edged out the dealer's Heaven-and-five. Now the dealer had turned up a matched pair of Heavens, the equivalent of a pair of aces in a Western deck, and to win, Zhao Baiyu would need the two Ghost-King tiles—a vanishingly long shot, unless his skill at the tables was nothing short of supernatural.

The onlooking gamblers held their breath, more anxious than the man himself, half wishing they could flip his tiles over for him.

Zhao Baiyu was in no hurry at all. "Here I've got eight banknotes of a thousand taels each, plus thirty hundred-tael lumps of silver, every bit of it won off your house these past few days—and now I'm staking the lot. Time to double it again." He gave a smug, cheeky click of his tongue, sprawling across the gaming table and eyeing the dealer sidelong. "Truth be told, I'm not short of money. I came to your establishment to hand money out. All I want is to find a god of gamblers who can beat me. From the day I was born I grew up with dice and dominoes in my hands, and the one thing I've longed for all my life is to stand alone at the peak—undefeated, forever seeking a worthy rival, a very Dugu Qiubai!"

"'Undefeated, seeking a worthy rival'—well said!" Zheng You stepped forward and looked down at Zhao Baiyu. "Brother Zhao—we meet again."

Zhao Baiyu broke into a delighted grin. "Brother You? What luck, running into you here."

The men flanking Zheng You spoke up: "This is the master of our gambling house."

Understanding dawned on Zhao Baiyu, and he looked apologetic. "I had no idea—"

"It's nothing. We keep our doors open for business—anyone who comes is a guest." Then Zheng You added, "Brother Zhao, I'd like to see your tiles as well."

Zhao Baiyu looked reluctant. "That hardly seems right..."

Zheng You: "I'm a man who accepts his losses—I'd pay off my stake even if it beggared me. Turn them over, Brother Zhao."

With no way out, Zhao Baiyu turned his tiles over. Someone beside him craned his neck to see. "A three matched with a two-four—a Monkey-King pair, the Supreme Treasure—he's won!"

The house paid out twenty-two thousand taels. Zhao Baiyu had it all converted straight into banknotes, cupped his hands to Zheng You, and made to leave in evident disappointment, loudly declaring he'd go be "undefeated, seeking a worthy rival" at some other gambling house—only for Zheng You to stop him and usher him into a private room to talk.

"Brother Zhao, your skill at the tables is formidable. Could you—could you perhaps..."

"Teach you?"

"Exactly!"

"But this is my bread and butter..." Zhao Baiyu hesitated a while, then set his jaw. "Fine! After all, you're the one who gave me the way to meet a person of rank—I owe you a great debt for that. But we learn as we play: teaching is teaching, and you still have to eat your losses."

"I'll eat them! Every one!" Zheng You's voice rose, wild with delight, and he hurriedly had all manner of gaming implements brought over to learn from Zhao Baiyu.

At court, Prince Qin's faction and the Crown Prince's faction were locked in a scalding struggle, and silver was pouring out of Duke Zheng's Residence in a torrent. Zheng You had no time even to wince over it: every few days the Capital Prefecture would raid one of his shops or gambling dens.

One raid tied things up for a whole day, and a whole day's takings would vanish with it.

With the ledgers running in the red, Zheng You was on edge and short-tempered. When he heard that someone had been winning for days on end at his most cleverly hidden gambling house, he'd rushed over ready to make trouble—only to run into an acquaintance instead. The gambling itch bored straight into his heart, all ten fingers unbearably twitchy, and he flung every last worry to the back of his mind.

Zhao Baiyu patted his belly. "I'm getting a bit hungry."

Zheng You: "Bring wine and food!"

At once Zhao Baiyu smiled and produced a dice cup. "The other games are either too simple or too complicated. Today I'll teach you a new one—it looks simple, but there's a whole world of craft inside it. Put it to use in the gambling houses under your name, and I guarantee the customers will come rolling in like gathering clouds."

Zheng You looked skeptical. "It's really that miraculous?"

Zhao Baiyu, all earnestness: "Mm."

Zheng You was itching to start playing at once. What Zhao Baiyu taught him was simply the game of shaking dice in a covered cup and casting them to bet on big or small.

It wasn't that this age had no dice at all—but they were usually only an accessory to other forms of gambling, and the elaborate dice games the scholars had dreamed up were far too complicated ever to catch on with the common crowd.

The plain game of shaking dice and betting big or small, by contrast, had swept the world ever since the Ming and Qing dynasties, and remained a fixture—and one of the most popular games of all—in modern casinos to this very day.

Sure enough, Zheng You was utterly hooked. Once the gambling fever took him, he even forgot he'd meant to learn the tricks of the trade; drinking as he played, he soon lost every coin in his purse. Patting himself all over, he fished out a pawnshop ticket. "This is worth more than anyone can reckon—I'll put it down for ten thousand taels!"

Zhao Baiyu turned the ticket over and over. "A copy of the Book of Songs, worth ten thousand taels? Don't try to bluff me, old man."

The wine had gone to Zheng You's face. He made a blade of his hand and chopped it against his own neck with a crack. "It's worth my very head—now you tell me whether it's worth it or not!"

Zhao Baiyu made a show of protesting that he simply couldn't refuse, then took the ticket with feigned misgiving and traded it for a ten-thousand-tael note. Timing his moment, he asked, "You've been fidgety and parched and looking so worried—is something troubling you?"

Zheng You, fiddling with the dice cup, was thoroughly out of sorts. "What else would trouble a man, if not silver?"

Zhao Baiyu: "Even a newcomer like me has heard of your reputation, Lord Zheng—turning stone into gold. If even you claim to be short of silver, wouldn't the common folk have to just starve to death?"

Zheng You: "What do those people understand? However well I earn, I can't feed all those silver-devouring mouths up top! The palace has to be greased, the court has to be paid its respects, the connections out in the provinces all have to be worked loose—where doesn't it swallow silver? Lately there's been this big case, the wind's blowing sharp, and the authorities abuse their pretexts to raid the shops beneath me; if I want to keep my doors open I have to hand over 'tribute.' The takings here in the Capital have dried up, and the takings from the provinces I can't touch—"

"Why can't you touch the takings from the provinces?"

"Touch them and I lose my head—" Zheng You slammed on the brakes, seized the dice cup, and demanded, "Quick, teach me how to call big or small at will—how do the dice obey you so meekly?"

Zhao Baiyu dug out the dice he carried on him and taught Zheng You the cheating tricks handed down by the old masters. Zheng You gasped in wonder again and again, so lost in his fun that he forgot to leave.

Leaving the dice with Zheng You, Zhao Baiyu excused himself to visit the privy.

Zheng You glanced over—Zhao Baiyu's stack of banknotes lay untouched, the pawnshop ticket he'd just handed over pressed beneath them—and, reassured, let him go without a second thought.

When two sticks of incense had burned down and the man still hadn't come back, Zheng You swept aside the ten thousand taels in notes and pulled out the pawnshop ticket—only to find it was a torn-off scrap corner. A sudden chill ran through him, sobering him halfway, and he slammed the table and bellowed, "Quick! Go get that pawnshop ticket back from that Zhao fellow—now!!"

But the instant Zhao Baiyu left the gambling house he changed his clothes, donned a broad bamboo hat, and was spirited off by Uncle Wei to a residence not far away—the very house where the girls from the flower tea house had been settled.

Without waking the girls, Zhao Baiyu slipped away just as the sky was beginning to lighten.

Before he went, Zhao Baiyu wrote a letter explaining that he had used the Ten-Thousand-Year Blood Amber, and, since it was a rare and priceless treasure, promised Li Yiru that if ever she found herself in trouble, she need only come to him for help.

Li Yiru was deeply moved—but that goes without saying.

......

Now let us turn back to the Eastern Palace.

Although the Court of Judicial Review had been ordered to arrest the Crown Prince's wet nurse, they could hardly go storming into the Eastern Palace to seize her; they could only wait for the Crown Prince to deliver her to the Court himself. Two days passed, the officials' memorials piling up like a mountain—and then, in the dead of night, the Eastern Palace suddenly came pounding on the doors of the Imperial Medical Academy.

At the morning audience, the Crown Prince reported that the wet nurse, overcome with shame, had tried to take her own life, leaving behind a blood-written testament accusing the Vice Minister of Rites, Chen Shidao, of deceiving her and using her to frame the Crown Prince. She herself, it said, had sunk deep into gambling, but was grateful it was not too late to turn back, and was willing to offer up her worthless life so that the truth might reach the Emperor's ears and all the world might know it.

Fortunately, the palace servants had found her in time and saved her life; for now, however, she lay unconscious, and would have to recover her strength before she could be handed over to the Court of Judicial Review.

Prince Qin's faction raised the suspicion that the Crown Prince had staged the whole thing himself—after all, the wet nurse was inside the Eastern Palace, and every pose she struck was under his control. The Crown Prince's faction shot back that the Imperial Physicians could testify, that the wet nurse was not dead, and that once she woke she could come to Chuigong Hall and face the Emperor in person.

The Court of Judicial Review had found that half the candidates involved in the fraud were bound by a thousand tangled threads to the Imperial Noble Consort, to Prince Qin, and to certain officials at court. This point, too, the Crown Prince's faction singled out as grounds to impeach Prince Qin, further noting that the Vice Minister of Rites, Chen Shidao, had once served as Prince Qin's first tutor—proof, they argued, that Prince Qin was not only the mastermind behind the examination fraud but had used it to frame the Crown Prince as well.

The court flashed with unseen blades. Prince Qin and the Crown Prince knelt side by side on the floor while their partisans traded accusations behind them, and Emperor Yuanshou sat expressionless, not saying a word.

When they had quarreled themselves out, Emperor Yuanshou pressed a hand to his aching temple. "The civil examinations are a grave matter—they bear on the altars of state and the stability of the court, and now both of my sons are tangled up in them. Well, my lords, how do you think I should handle it? Shall I strip away their titles, or throw them into prison?"

At these words the assembled officials were aghast and hastened to kneel, thrice crying out that they dared not presume.

Emperor Yuanshou: "It looks to me as though you dare a great deal! You give no thought to uncovering the truth, no thought to answering to the scholars of the realm, no thought to how examination fraud might be stamped out. You reflect on none of your own faults—instead you savage one another, brawl like beasts, band into cliques and cabals and conspire together! Right before my eyes you scheme to pin every crime on your political rivals, doing everything in your power to crush my own sons into the ground!"

The officials pressed themselves to the floor, too terrified to draw a full breath.

Emperor Yuanshou: "Huo Jingtang!"

Huo Jingtang: "Your servant is here."

Emperor Yuanshou: "I set you to investigate this case—so what exactly have you turned up? No conclusion at all, only a great fog of doubts that has the whole court eyeing and accusing one another. All these idle years at home have plainly muddled your wits!"

Huo Jingtang: "Your servant is at fault."

Emperor Yuanshou: "You have five days to settle this case. Fail, and you needn't come before me again!"

Huo Jingtang: "Your servant accepts the command."

Emperor Yuanshou's gaze was stern as it swept over the officials one by one. "The Chancellors will remain. The rest of you are dismissed!"

The officials filed out of Chuigong Hall. Prince Qin and the Crown Prince hurried out after them, meaning to keep Huo Jingtang back, but though they looked all around they couldn't spot him; only when they summoned a young eunuch to ask did they learn he was already at the palace gates.

The eunuch added, "Your Highness the Crown Prince, the Prince of Lin'an says the wet nurse is a key witness, and that she is to be delivered to the Court of Judicial Review by tomorrow at the latest, for the Court to hold in custody."

The Crown Prince: "Understood."

A chill ran through Prince Qin's heart, and without a second thought he turned and went to see his mother, the Imperial Noble Consort.

......

Inside the carriage.

The deputy: "Today's little performance has finally dragged Prince Qin and his whole faction into the water. And His Majesty has held you to five days to close the case—it's a near thing. It seems this trial of offending the entire officialdom is one you won't be dodging, General."

Huo Jingtang toyed with his beads and said nothing.

The deputy: "Then again—the Crown Prince's wet nurse is a key witness now, and a scalding-hot potato at that. She's best left in the Eastern Palace: if she dies there the Crown Prince takes the blame, and if she lives it's Prince Qin's turn to suffer. So why go out of our way to take her into the Court of Judicial Review?"

Huo Jingtang: "Tell me—who most wants the wet nurse dead?"

The deputy: "Prince Qin."

Huo Jingtang: "He's one, yes—but he only wants her dead inside the Eastern Palace. Once she's out of it, the person who most wants her dead is the Crown Prince."

The deputy thought it over, then understanding broke across his face. "I see it now! If the wet nurse dies inside the Eastern Palace, it looks like the Crown Prince framing others; but if she dies outside it, she dies with no one left to corroborate her testimony—nothing to do with the Crown Prince, yet certain to be bound up with Prince Qin."

Huo Jingtang, his eyes half-closed: "Which is why, the moment the wet nurse is escorted out of the Eastern Palace, someone will make their move."

"Within the palace walls themselves—who would dare?"

Huo Jingtang closed his eyes, turned over, and went back to reciting his Diamond Sutra.

The deputy: "..."

Huo Jingtang said abruptly, "There should be movement on Zheng You's end soon. Keep a closer watch."

The deputy: "We've got men on all of them."

"One more thing—pick out some of what was discussed at court this morning and let it slip to Zhao Baiyu."

"Why?" The deputy didn't understand. "These are great affairs of state—how could a minor official like him be let in on them? And even if he knew, he couldn't stir up any real waves."

"Consider it repaying him for saving my life."