Before Luowei could speak, he continued: “I came late today because I did not know Your Highness was waiting for me.”
Luowei could not be bothered to respond to this. She looked him over from head to toe and raised an eyebrow: “Last time you came in such a hurry I never had the chance to ask — you steal robes from Zhuque day in and day out and come and go from Qionghua Hall as if it were an empty house. How has no one discovered you? Attendant Li told me that His Majesty dispatched a great many guards to surround Qionghua Hall…”
Ye Tingyan flipped up his hem and lounged onto the daybed by the window: “Your Highness knows full well — why ask me?”
Luowei narrowed her eyes: “What do you mean?”
Ye Tingyan ticked off on his fingers: “After Lu Heng died, the Jintian Guards became entangled in the spring hunt assassination case and completely lost favor. The Three Garrison Offices reassigned them to patrol the streets of Biandu; they scarcely enter the palace anymore.”
“Zhuque has been elevated to the first unit of the Palace Guard, but they have too many matters to attend to at present and simply cannot spare enough men here. Below Zhuque, the left and right Lin Guards are also the main force of the Imperial Guard — but that group is a mixed lot. Among them are people in whom His Majesty places great trust, and in three years within the rear palace, Your Highness has naturally also cultivated people of her own trust… not to mention the other guard units among the two bureaus and three garrison offices.”
Luowei was slightly surprised, but within moments had composed herself and said coolly: “You know rather a lot.”
Ye Tingyan said with an air of innocence: “After this servant came to Biandu to seek his fortune, I cannot say much else, but I have certainly gathered intelligence from all sides. Struggling each day in this sea of swords and blood — if I cannot keep my mind clear, would I not have to go to sleep clutching my fears every night? This servant has no wish to live that kind of life.”
What he had said was likely half true intelligence, half his own deductions.
But to perceive the whole from the smallest detail — that was indeed a broad and penetrating vision.
Luowei was thinking this over as she turned to sit before the dressing table at the side — but without warning, Ye Tingyan suddenly reached out and hooked the jade belt loosely tied at her waist, pulling her back.
She lost her balance and tumbled into his arms.
Ye Tingyan wrapped his arms around her and held her in place: “It is so dark in Your Highness’s hall, and we cannot light a lamp. Please do not sit so far away — I am afraid of the dark. If I cannot see you, I will feel anxious.”
His lies came effortlessly, without so much as a flicker of his expression. Luowei braced herself against his shoulder and, remembering that he had kept his promise and preserved Yan Luo’s life, bore with it. She only asked: “What was the matter with that palace attendant?”
“I went to considerable lengths to find him,” Ye Tingyan said with a yawn, his manner languid. “If you want to keep her alive, His Majesty must believe there is still something to be extracted from her — so find an addled palace attendant, have him murmur something vague and unclear. His Majesty knows something is there but cannot draw it out, and so would Attendant Feng’s life not be preserved?”
Luowei made a sound of acknowledgment: “Then why did you have him name ‘a princess’?”
Ye Tingyan glanced at her sideways: “In truth…”
He shifted the way he held her and said at a leisurely pace: “The words ‘a princess’ were not at my direction. All I did was learn of that attendant’s existence before Zhuque, and seeing that he had already lost his senses, I dared let him be ‘found.’ Truthfully, I had not expected him to supply any information — I only meant to guide him into saying something vague and equivocal. He supplied the words ‘a princess’ himself, which saved me no small amount of trouble.”
He let out a sigh and said in a thoroughly offhand manner: “Hmm — otherwise, how would it be if we pinned this on Princess Imperial Ningle?”
Something stirred in Luowei’s heart, but she said steadily: “You know the attendant meant Shu Kang.”
“Naturally,” Ye Tingyan said, toying with her loosened hair. “At that time the three of you were close friends, and Princess Imperial Shu Kang had not broken with you — it would have been effortless for her. Besides… Princess Imperial Ningle is not the sort of person who would go out of her way to save anyone. Does His Majesty not also believe it was Shu Kang, and wishes to dig deeper to see whether your falling-out was genuine?”
He pinched the tip of her hair and blew on it lightly; the strands scattered and then drifted back down: “So I say — why not frame Ningle for it? If it were her, the account would fit with your testimony. Think on it — at the time, Ningle learned that Qiu Xueyu had begged you and been refused, so she stepped forward and kept her alive, smuggled her into your palace under a different identity, and waited for the opportunity to act against you. Though Shu Kang has broken with you, it is still a stretch to say she wants your life — but if it were Ningle, it would not be impossible, would it?”
Having heard this, Luowei asked: “Do you have some old grievance with Ningle?”
Ye Tingyan smiled: “What old grievance could this servant have with a princess? It is only that this servant knows Your Highness should have an old grievance with her.”
Luowei’s heart gave a small jump. She deflected: “That is a strange thing to say — what old grievance could I possibly have with her?”
Ye Tingyan’s mouth curved in a faint smile. He did not answer, only continued to stroke her hair — smooth as silk — back and forth, as if addicted to the sensation. She had been sleeping in her hall and naturally had not bound her hair up, only tying it with a long crimson silk ribbon.
His hand moved through it, and he could no longer tell whether he was touching her hair or that length of silk ribbon.
Luowei, meanwhile, had been drawn into a reverie by what he had just said.
She recalled many things from long ago — in her youth she had served as companion reader to Song Yaofeng, and had also had dealings with Princess Ningle, Song Zhiyu. But Song Zhiyu kept company with people very different from their circle, and the two had never been particularly close.
If she were to speak of a genuine resentment toward Song Zhiyu…
It was for a poem Song Zhiyu had written in the aftermath of the Thorn of the Tang Case.
At the time, Luowei had originally found it utterly absurd that the court officials were urging her to become Empress and assist in governance — she was the Crown Prince’s betrothed consort; what did she have to do with Song Lan? And even if she were to assist in governance, why could she not do so as a female official? Moreover, the court was full of talented men — why did it have to be her?
But the old officials who had been close to her father refused to relent, one after another coming to call on her.
Fang Hezhi was no longer at court. Of those who remained, the officials of prestige and standing were old. Yu Qiushi had come from the civil examination track, spending years in quiet obscurity in the Hall for the Cultivation of Excellence before — by what means no one knew — winning the late Emperor’s trust, entering the Council of State, and even serving as a military commissioner in addition to his civil duties; step by step, year by year, he had maneuvered his way to where he stood today, with schemes carefully laid and followers spread throughout the court.
No matter whom the pure-stream faction put forward to assist in governance, none of them could be certain this person would have the means to stand against him.
Furthermore, they worried that if they truly cultivated such a person into a position of power, the court might fall back into the endless factional strife that had existed before the Flower-Cutting Reform was repealed.
But with an Empress who commanded the reverence of all under Heaven and possessed an excellent reputation, everything would be different.
They were not the Empress’s maternal relatives and would form no faction with her. So long as she used her reputation for virtue to restrain Yu Qiushi from acting recklessly — handling court affairs while the Emperor was still young, buying him the time to grow — once the Emperor assumed personal rule, the threat of the Yu clan would naturally resolve itself.
With the incident on the imperial boulevard as precedent, no one would be a more fitting choice than Luowei.
Su Zhoudu’s reputation was too illustrious. Luowei had paid her respects to Counselor Gan, the foremost scholar in the realm; she had studied at Fang Hezhi’s academy; she had been invested as Crown Princess Consort; she held Su family’s Sword of the Son of Heaven; she had participated in the campaigns against locusts and in suppressing uprisings. If she could further acquaint herself with governing affairs, she would surely not disappoint expectations.
Through the mouths of her late father’s acquaintances and the officials of good repute at court who called on her one after another, Luowei came to understand, with some delay, that she seemingly no longer had any other choice.
It was precisely at this moment that Song Lan was attacked again. Neither inside nor outside the Forbidden Palace could the attacker be found; this time he was more seriously injured and nearly lost his life. Luowei went into the palace to see him and, there at his sickbed, accepted his proposal of marriage.
To preserve Song Lan’s life from Yu Qiushi’s grasp, and to have greater power and better means to investigate the Thorn of the Tang Case.
To prevent chaos from spreading through the court and the realm, to protect the rare peace achieved since the Mingtai Restoration, she could only place herself high upon a shrine — fashioning herself into a statue that constrained the Chancellor but could never be free.
Not long after Song Lan established her as Empress, the Three Judicial Offices submitted a memorial and identified the culprits behind the Thorn of the Tang Case.
At that time Luowei was still reading night and day in the library, preparing herself as thoroughly as possible for taking charge of government affairs; even the news of this she learned very late — so late that before she could react, the Three Judicial Offices had already moved with lightning force to secure complete human and physical testimony, and had charged the fifth prince, Song Qi, named by the three principal culprits, with the crime of treason.
Luowei was struck as if by lightning, utterly disbelieving.
At the time she had no evidence to prove that the true culprit was not Song Qi. She found every way she could to gain entry to the Imperial Prison to see him once — and was horrified to find that his tongue had already been cut out, his eyes gouged out, his voice destroyed by poison. He could only wait for death.
Song Qi caught the faint scent of wild rose on her and struggled to draw close, writing characters on her palm. Luowei did not dare cry out, but could not hold back — teardrops fell one by one onto the back of his hand, burning hot.
Song Qi wrote ‘not my doing,’ and then ‘Yu is at the center of it.’
In the late spring, the Imperial Prison was as cold as the depths of winter. After he wrote that single character ‘Yu,’ Luowei shuddered violently and broke into a cold sweat instantly.
Yu Qiushi! She did not know what Song Qi had learned — but he was saying that the Thorn of the Tang Case had been orchestrated entirely by Yu Qiushi?
If he were behind it, what was his aim — to place the fifth prince, who was close to the great families, on the throne? But without Yu Qiushi’s backing, no one would have thought of this ordinarily silent and unremarkable prince. The fifth prince was, of course, a more suitable candidate than Song Qi.
If not the fifth prince…
Her heart began to pound, faster and faster, harder and harder. She was only eighteen years old; she had been overwhelmed with grief after Song Ling’s death, and only now, looking back, did she begin to perceive the many things that had not been right.
The faces and words of many people flashed before her in alternation, appearing and vanishing. Song Qi seemed to sense her hands going suddenly ice-cold and trembling, and he gripped them more tightly, mixed with blood.
Luowei looked up. The young man who had once been elegant and at ease, indifferent to politics — his face and body were now streaked with filth and blood, indistinguishable from the ghosts of the underworld.
Who had reduced him to this? Who had done this to him?
She had originally been going to the Ministry of Justice every day to seek her father’s old acquaintances and concerning herself with the hunt for the culprits in the Thorn of the Tang Case. But these days, Song Lan had been with her in the library listening to lectures from the great scholars of the age, and this had caused her to be momentarily distracted — she had had no opportunity at all to protect Song Qi.
Luowei traced her words carefully on his palm, telling him to be at peace — she would spare no effort to expose the true culprit, and afterward clear his name and free him. Song Qi started, then shook his head with a firm but smiling resolve.
He did not answer her words. He only wrote ‘take care of yourself.’
And then: ‘Yu’s power is now at its peak; he will not stop his hand. I fear many more will be implicated.’
As she was about to leave, he seemed to sense that he would never see her again. Unable to hold himself back any longer, he wept like a child in her arms. In the end he wrote: ‘Younger brother Lan is in greater peril — on no account follow my example. As for all those mentioned above — please, elder sister, protect them with all your strength. Qi offers his gratitude as he departs this life.’
Luowei did not dare speak her suspicions aloud to him. She only nodded desperately, and as she turned to leave, she caught sight of the words Song Qi had left on the prison wall, written with a finger dipped in blood.
He could not see; the characters were blotched and disordered, overlapping and entangled, having lost the elegant beauty of his hand that had once spread his calligraphy throughout the realm.
And she read them line by line, her heart shaken to its core, her grief beyond bearing.
One moment it was ‘the man of old has long since departed on the yellow crane’ [1]; the next, ‘the great roc soars and stirs the eight corners of the world, yet midway through the heavens its strength gives out and it falls’ [2]; and there were several lines of his own verse as well — ‘In the smallness of life and death, I lament heaven and earth; when at last we meet again in days to come, may it be among the peach blossoms.’
The day after Luowei’s visit to the Imperial Prison, Song Qi took his own life in his cell.
After she learned that the culprits had named Song Qi, she had originally intended to discuss the matter first with Song Lan — but the more she faced him now, the more questions accumulated in her heart, and the less she dared to speak.
There was no one to talk to, and no time to scheme anything. In the wake of Song Qi’s death, Yu Qiushi immediately submitted a memorial vigorously urging that all those implicated in the Thorn of the Tang Case be dealt with severely.
Luowei no longer dared trust any ‘culprit’ he uncovered. She watched the list of those implicated grow longer day by day in terror.
She took the memorial Yu Qiushi had written for Song Lan and went to the Censorate.
That was the first direct confrontation between Luowei and Yu Qiushi.
Before this, everything she knew had come from books. Though she loved to read the histories of former dynasties and had studied the Treatise on Governance alongside Song Ling and dealt with certain political matters, in the end it had all been theory. When she truly came face to face with a seasoned old fox who had been steeped in officialdom for many years, she was utterly defeated, without the least ability to fight back.
Before the Censorate, Luowei was left speechless by Yu Qiushi’s questioning — the assassination of the dynastic Crown Prince constituted the crime of treason, one of the ten unpardonable offenses. According to law, should collective punishment not apply? She and Song Ling had been devoted to each other for more than a decade — she was seeking justice for him; why did she not harden her heart? Could it be that she herself was implicated?
Her suspicions of Yu Qiushi and Song Lan could not be spoken aloud. The only arguments she could make — over and over again — were that collective punishment and harsh torture went against the principle of magnanimity befitting a great dynasty.
Though she was defeated before the Censorate, the call to exercise restraint in killings still had some measure of support.
It seemed for a moment as though the matter might admit of some turning room.
Then Song Zhiyu wrote a poem that spread overnight to every corner of the land — the ‘Lament for the Jintian Guard’ — and it destroyed in an instant all the painstaking work Luowei had done.