The winter’s accumulated snow had entirely melted away, and the spring rain fell softly, drop by silent drop, nourishing all things without a sound.
By mid-third month, with the Jurchen having finally withdrawn north from Taiyuan, this nation, having endured so much anguish, was at last waking from the sudden blow it had suffered. In Bianliang, the changes taking place at the upper levels of the political scene came in small, steady drops, much like the meltwater trickling forth in this season of thaw, gradually gathering from thin rivulets into a mighty, surging river. With the Emperor’s self-reproaching edict now issued, the various changes and incentives that had been quietly brewing all this while were now finally being put into effect.
The commendations for officials and troops of merit in this war had all been settled and finalized. Both within and beyond the capital, the various forms of preferential treatment and compensation for the many dead were now being announced and implemented, item by item. The capital’s officialdom, having weathered turmoil, was now being brought back to order; certain corrupt and venal officials had already been rooted out and punished. For the ordinary residents of the capital at this time, as well as for the scholarly class, given the suffering brought on by the Jurchen’s invasion, seeing the Wu court now reorganizing and rousing itself to action was, item by item, a source of genuine comfort and emotion.
With the political purge underway, and with the entire capital having endured a full winter under siege, large numbers of merchants and travelers now poured in from all directions, and for a time, the whole city seemed to burst with vitality. The scholars continued to hold their poetry gatherings, though the themes had largely shifted toward the spirit of rousing oneself to action after humiliation, mixed in with poems condemning the Jurchen’s brutality, likening them to beasts, to pigs and dogs. Some of the more eminent men of letters penned sweeping, high-minded essays elaborating at length on the distinction between man and beast, arguing that the Jurchen barbarians were savage by nature, contrary to the natural order and human decency, and destined sooner or later to meet a bad end. These circulated among literary circles, and could not help but stir the blood and quicken the pulse of those who read them, leaving people more than willing to praise the sharp, incisive brilliance of whichever venerable scholar had penned them.
This was how the situation in the capital appeared to ordinary people. But among the upper ranks of officialdom, anyone with a clear eye could see that a tremendous storm had been quietly brewing for some time now, and was about to break—a great struggle over whether the officials who had rendered such distinguished service in defending the city would now rise to the very heights of power. On one side stood the old established powers—Cai Jing, Tong Guan, Wang Fu; on the other, Chancellors Li and Qin, who, after years of being favored by the Emperor, had finally found their best opportunity. Once this hurdle was passed, the power of these two chancellors would truly be secured, making them formidable enough to stand toe to toe with Cai Jing and Tong Guan themselves.
As this storm continued to brew, a great many officials found themselves quietly maneuvering behind the scenes—some seeking self-preservation, others choosing which side to align with. Even minor clerks within the court had, to greater or lesser degrees, felt the impact and understood the gravity of what was unfolding.
Yu Hezhong and Chen Sifeng were two such men.
As friends of Shishi’s, neither had started from a particularly high position; through some family connections or their own efforts, they now held minor clerical posts, one in the Ministry of Revenue, the other in the Ministry of Personnel. Over this recent period, they had found themselves surrounded by no end of insider information about the political situation, some of it concerning Ning Yi as well.
Within the capital, the point where politics and the common world intersected was often found precisely in establishments like the Fan Tower. Officials who came there would occasionally let something slip, which would then travel through the pleasure quarters’ information channels into the wealthy households of the upper class. Much of this information was ambiguous, part true and part false, and Yu and Chen would occasionally stop by to share such tidbits themselves.
“…A couple days ago, outside the city at the Wuchi Battalion, the martial top-scorer Luo Shengzhou went to take over command, and within less than an hour, he’d been badly wounded and sent packing in disgrace. The Ministry of War is handling the matter now, and the Ministry of Personnel has gotten involved too. Others might not know, but I do—that Wuchi Battalion belongs to General Qin Shaoqian’s command, and Liheng is right in the thick of it too… Honestly, going up against those above like this, it’s not the wisest move on Liheng’s part.”
In Shishi’s small courtyard at the Fan Tower, Chen Sifeng lowered his voice as he recounted this. Shishi frowned slightly, pouring him tea. “Has some problem come of it?”
“Luo Shengzhou is Tan Zhen’s man—with something like this happening, how could Lord Tan possibly let it slide? And the mood both inside and outside the capital right now is tense as it is, especially with the Ministry of War becoming the center of attention lately. With something like this happening, they’re bound to investigate it thoroughly. The Wuchi Battalion rendered great service in defending the city and has always been unruly and defiant—even Prince Tong might well get drawn into this.”
Yu Hezhong said, “Liheng, after all, holds no official position. Judging by how he’s conducted himself in the past, there’s always been something of the reckless, chivalrous spirit about him—it’s hardly surprising he’d act without much caution at a time like this. Ah, it’s hard to say how this will turn out…”
The two of them didn’t have much regular contact with Ning Yi. Though, thanks to Shishi, they were technically counted as childhood friends, in truth, the circles Ning Yi moved in within the capital were simply beyond their reach—whether by reputation as the foremost talent of Jiangning, his connections with the Right Chancellor’s household, or his ownership of a commercial network as vast as Bamboo Records. Shishi maintained contact with the two of them out of some personal attachment of her own, but Ning Yi was different; unless truly necessary, he rarely sought out even Shishi herself, let alone Yu and Chen. Which was perhaps why, discussing Ning Yi’s troubles now, the two of them felt something closer to detached curiosity than genuine ill will—though there was no malice in it, to be fair.
Shishi asked, “So what exactly happened with that matter in the camp?”
Chen Sifeng shook his head. “I’m not entirely clear on how Luo Shengzhou got wounded, honestly. But Shishi, you needn’t worry too much—though Liheng has ties to the Wuchi Battalion, he’s not actually its commanding officer. There’s no reason such a heavy responsibility would fall on him.”
He himself wasn’t particularly well-informed about the Wuchi Battalion’s affairs, and having mentioned it might be connected to Ning Yi, upon further thought, he realized that at such a critical moment, surely Ning Yi wouldn’t stir up something of this magnitude. The group then moved on to other gossip—the recent activities of Tang Ke and the other peace-faction officials, Zhong Shidao’s apparent fall from favor, the gathering of Cai Jing’s key allies, and so on.
Shishi, well-informed as she was, could hardly know everything, and hearing this news about the Wuchi Battalion left her with a lingering unease. She could hardly go seek out Ning Yi over something like this, of course. Over the following days, she learned from a few generals that the matter of the Wuchi Battalion had already been resolved—Tong Guan’s trusted confidant, Li Bingwen, had taken over command personally, and this time, thankfully, nothing further had come of it.
As for how Luo Shengzhou had come to be so badly wounded, she eventually managed to piece together the story.
“…That Luo Shengzhou came up through the martial examinations as top scorer, quite confident in his own skill. When he went to take over the Wuchi Battalion, he tried to establish dominance through force, and ended up sparring with someone in the ranks… The first bout, both went in bare-handed, and Luo Shengzhou knocked the other man down. But the second round used weapons, and this soldier from the Wuchi Battalion had fought his way out of a literal sea of corpses and blood—hardly someone to trifle with. Word is, the two exchanged a single strike each, and both ended up gravely wounded…”
The visiting general recounting the incident to Shishi made it sound simple enough in the telling, but it was clearly a hair-raising affair. Then, to her surprise, he added something she hadn’t expected: “As for that Ning Yi you mentioned—from Bamboo Records, was it? I’ve heard a bit about that matter too.”
“Oh?” Shishi’s eyes went wide.
Having a chance to show off before Shishi, the general grew rather pleased with himself. “They say that after Luo Shengzhou entered the Wuchi Battalion, though he’d overestimated himself somewhat and ended up humiliated, he was, after all, a trusted man under Lord Tan’s wing—how could he possibly swallow being bested by some lowly foot soldier? After being gravely wounded, the Wuchi Battalion could hardly keep the man on—but how could Luo let it go, either? The Ministry of War side wanted to punish that soldier severely under military law, and word is Luo Shengzhou himself put it about that he meant to have the man’s life. A few days back, it was that Ning Liheng from Bamboo Records who stepped in personally, running around to pull every string he could, begging favors left and right, appealing to several officials directly, and in the end managed to save that soldier’s life…”
“Privately, I also heard Luo Shengzhou tried some underhanded tactics of his own, but in the end, nothing came of it,” the general went on. “I have to say, this Master Ning going to such lengths for the sake of a single common soldier, and actually seeing it through—there’s something of the ancient knight-errant’s spirit in that. I admire him for it, honestly. With Prince Tong now stepping in to take over personally, I doubt there’ll be much more trouble over this.”
That was how the general had put it. But once Shishi had pieced together the full sequence of events, something about it left her uneasy. Amid the shifting currents in the capital at present, the matter most on everyone’s tongue was whether Left Chancellor Li Gang would rise to greater power, and whether Cai Jing and Tong Guan would move to stop him. Ordinary people naturally loved to see treacherous officials get their comeuppance and loyal ones rise to prominence, and during Li Gang’s years as chancellor, his upright, unbending character had earned him considerable goodwill among the populace, while everyone understood well enough that Cai Jing and his faction operated through cliques and self-interest. In this round of political struggle, though word had spread that Cai Jing and Tong Guan meant to move against Chancellor Li, Li Gang’s thoroughly upright conduct left them with no real opening to exploit—memorials of every sort flew about the court, yet impeachments against Li Gang himself were nearly nonexistent. People spoke of this with no small satisfaction.
After Li Gang came Zhong Shidao, and past Zhong Shidao, it was Qin Siyuan’s figure that had come into most people’s view. Opinion on the Qin family was mixed, with both praise and criticism circulating—but on the whole, given the Wuchi Battalion’s great victory over Guo Yaoshi at Xia Village, and Qin Shaohe’s death for the nation at Taiyuan, the Qin family was, for the time being, still viewed rather favorably. But then… if things looked so favorable, why had it become such a complicated affair for Liheng to stand up for a single common soldier?
Having spent so many years within the capital’s information circles, she had long since developed something of a sixth sense for sniffing out trouble before it fully surfaced. Every major event in the capital, every instance of factional struggle, every bit of court intrigue, might not register accurately in the Fan Tower’s information network the very instant it happened, but amid the chaotic, tangled flow of rumors, if one paid close enough attention, some thread of the truth could always eventually be teased out.
Over the following two or three days, amid all manner of news, her unease only deepened. The Qin family’s eldest son had died for the nation in this Jurchen invasion, and now the second son had just had his military command stripped from him—could it be that, amid all this chaos, the blade was now about to fall on the Right Chancellor’s household itself?
That night, she happened to run into Madame Li Yun, and amid their idle conversation, heard Madame Li say, “That Weaver Swallow Tower of Ning Liheng’s—might as well sell it to me instead.”
Li Shishi froze for a moment. “What?”
Ning Yi had founded Bamboo Records and opened one tavern after another; the Weaver Swallow Tower was one of these establishments in the capital. Li Yun glanced at her. “I’m not entirely sure myself—I only happened to overhear someone say as much, that the Weaver Swallow Tower had apparently been signed over to someone else. Since you don’t seem to know anything about it, perhaps it’s just a rumor. Mm, have you not been to see him lately?”
Shishi’s gaze grew puzzled. “He’s been far too busy—I can hardly keep going to find him all the time. Besides, the Fan Tower and Bamboo Records…” As she said this, she recalled the decision Madame Li had made at the start of the year—that when it came to Bamboo Records’ extensive promotion and collection of stories from the war, Madame Li had chosen not to have the Fan Tower cooperate. Though she hadn’t stopped Shishi and the others from helping on their own, in practice, she had maintained a deliberate distance from the whole affair. Thinking of this, Shishi looked at her and said, “Madame, could it be that you… had already guessed…”
“Guessed what?” Li Yun blinked.
“Guessed… that the Right Chancellor would fall from power…”
“How would I know such a thing?” Li Yun hesitated a moment. “Though, are you suspecting the same thing? I’ve only recently started sensing something isn’t quite right in the air. If it’s true, that troublesome fellow of yours must be preparing to withdraw south already… A pity, though. This old woman always thought he was quite a formidable one.”
Shishi fell silent. Li Yun watched her for a moment, then offered a word of comfort. “You needn’t overthink it too much. The struggles of officialdom are never so simple—no one can say for certain who’ll come out on top until the very end. That Ning Liheng surely knows far more of the inner workings than either of us. If you’re truly curious, why not simply go ask him yourself? There’s nothing difficult about that.”
Shishi nodded.
That night, alone in her room, she found herself turning the matter over and over, thoughts crowding in from every direction. Strangely enough, what occupied her mind wasn’t the Right Chancellor’s potential fall from power at all—the thought that kept circling in her head, again and again, was Madame Li’s remark: “That troublesome fellow of yours must be preparing to withdraw south already.” In the past, if Madame Li had said something like that, she would naturally have had plenty of ways to coyly deflect it. But this time, she suddenly realized just how much the thought actually weighed on her.
Could he really be about to leave?
Thinking back on it, ever since their reunion, right up to the present, the relationship between the two of them had always been rather strange—the more she turned it over in her mind, the more it took on an almost unreal quality. They had known each other since childhood, technically, though even in their youth they’d had little real contact. After their reunion, she had at first thought him a talentless man who had simply married into another family. Only gradually had she come to sense something odd about him—that his poetry and prose were superb, that he was the foremost talent of Jiangning, that his temperament was strange too. Spending time with him never felt quite the same as being with Yu Hezhong or Chen Sifeng.
Later, he had come to the capital, then gone to Shandong, where he had wiped out the bandits of Liangshan, aided the Right Chancellor’s household in disaster relief, and struck down the greedy landowners hoarding grain. He had been hunted relentlessly by figures from the martial world, yet no one had ever managed to succeed. Then, when the Jurchen came south, he had left the city for the battlefield, surviving countless brushes with death, and had still managed to accomplish great things in the end… She still hadn’t quite come to terms with the fact that she had a friend so formidable as this—and now, suddenly, he might be about to leave.
None of this had come without warning. All along, his temperament had always been fairly direct. When the Liangshan bandits had come to his home and killed people, he had gone straight there and wiped out Liangshan entirely. When martial-world figures had come to kill him, he had struck back without mercy. When local gentry and wealthy merchants across the land had hoarded grain to the harm of others, however powerful their networks, he had shown not the slightest fear in confronting them. And when the Jurchen invaded from the south, he had walked straight toward danger rather than away from it. The last time they’d met, discussing the matter of Taiyuan, there had been a note of dejection in his tone. Now, if the Right Chancellor’s household truly did fall from power, it would hardly be strange for him to choose to leave.
But suddenly… he was going to leave…
The political situation in the capital had been shifting so rapidly these recent days that ordinary people could hardly keep track of it, and he had clearly been running himself ragged all across the city. They hadn’t seen each other since the Lantern Festival. That night, hugging her blanket, she suddenly found herself wondering: if he really were about to leave, would he come tell her himself?
And then she realized that their relationship, perhaps, wasn’t quite as close as she’d imagined.
…
The quiet night gradually passed.
While a great many people stood watching from outside the swirling chaos, others were caught within it, struggling desperately amid the difficult circumstances.
The next day was the eighteenth of the third month, in the fourteenth year of Jinghan. At the Right Chancellor’s residence, the various trees and plants were putting out fresh green shoots, flowers blooming, spring in full bloom.
In the afternoon, a large contingent of soldiers and officials bearing an imperial decree entered the Chancellor’s residence. Given the mounting accusations and impeachments at court, and the surging public opinion outside it, Zhou Zhe had no choice but to order a joint review by the Three Judicial Offices of the series of cases from Qin Siyuan’s tenure as chancellor, in order to clear his name.
After some setbacks, command of the Wuchi Battalion had already been taken over entirely by Tong Guan’s faction.
And on this day, Qin Siyuan was thrown into prison.
When Ning Yi stepped into the Chancellor’s residence, there was little sign of excessive mourning within its walls. The Qin family’s elderly matriarch, who had collapsed a few days earlier upon hearing of Qin Shaohe’s death, was now overseeing household affairs herself, directing the servants and relatives in packing their belongings, ready to leave at a moment’s notice. And when Qin Shaoqian, seething with indignation, had wanted to make a scene, it was this same normally gentle old matriarch who had taken up her cane and sternly shouted him down.
To say that the advisors at the Chancellor’s household had done nothing to try to prevent this day’s events would be unfair. Once they sensed the crisis approaching, Ning Yi and the others had already done a great deal quietly, trying to change its course. But once they realized this whole affair originated from the Emperor himself, seated high above them, they had all mentally prepared themselves for the futility of it.
Even the old matriarch had done the same.
“…His whole life, he [Qin Siyuan] has served the nation and its people with a clear conscience. If the Emperor now wishes him to step aside, then we shall go, and go gracefully… The Wu dynasty was founded on the principle of never executing scholar-officials. He has rendered great service to the nation—surely they’ll grant him that much, at least, a path to survive.”
Such were the words spoken by that white-haired old woman.