Boom, boom—
The morning bell rang out across Chang'an. The gates of the towering imperial city swung wide, and great officials and petty clerks in court robes of every color filed neatly along the white stone imperial way into the Taiji Golden Hall at the very center of the realm.
Golden-mace guards stood amid the drifting goose-feather snow, lending the carved and painted Golden Hall a look of solemn austerity.
On any ordinary morning, the civil and military ministers standing in the Golden Hall would hold their breath and wait for the Son of Heaven to emerge from the side hall, at most trading glances to agree on what they meant to report.
But this morning the mood in the Taiji Hall was altogether different—noisy, even.
"Not a shred of conscience! Every last one of you Lis is a disgrace—do you even know what royal law means anymore..."
The furious cursing echoed through the Golden Hall, a rage past all containing, drowning out the whispers of the hundred officials.
The man cursing outright was of course the remonstrance official Qi Xinghan. Qi Xinghan was by nature a frail scholar, but now he had rolled up his sleeves and looked ready to charge over and beat Li Baoyi, Marquis of Loyalty and Valor, standing among the military officials, with the court tablet in his hand.
The remonstrance officials around him all caught hold of him and soothed him—though of course their soothing words were curses on the Li family's villainy all the same.
No one who dared to be a remonstrance official was a coward, and not one of them could bear a grain of sand in his eye. They would curse even the emperor on the dragon throne, let alone some little marquis.
And at the head of the hall, the Chancellor Xiao Chuyang stood with eyes shut, concentrating, showing no intention of stopping it.
Xiao Chuyang had sword-straight brows and a hawk's nose, a look of authority about his brow; he was the backbone of the Xiao clan of Huainan and the backbone of the Great Yue court. Only forty-five, he had been chancellor for twenty years, and in all that time, apart from begetting that Xiao Ting who did his image no credit, there was nothing to fault in him.
Beside Xiao Chuyang, Grand Commandant Liu Pingyang, Minister of Grain Lu Cheng'an and the rest looked on coldly too, making no response.
Li Baoyi's face was flushed scarlet. Head bowed, he endured the scolding of the pack of remonstrance officials, knowing himself in the wrong and not daring to talk back. In the dead of winter he was drenched in sweat, wiping at it with his sleeve from time to time.
Tap, tap—
Footsteps sounded from behind the Golden Hall. The hall fell abruptly silent, and every man bowed.
The seal-holding eunuch, Eunuch Jia, whisk in hand, spoke in a hoarse, duck-like voice:
"Court is convened!"
The voice was not shrill; it was in fact extremely deep and resonant, so that even the petty officials waiting outside the palace gates for summons could hear it.
Through the door of the side hall, the Son of Heaven, Song Ji, in bright yellow dragon robes, strode quickly up the steps above the hall, flicked the hem of his robe lightly, and sat down on the dragon throne, brows tightly knit, his expression somewhat displeased.
Song Ji was only forty, full brother of Prince Yan, Song Yu. Compared with the rulers of earlier Great Yue reigns he counted as rather diligent: after the empress died of illness some years before he had not named another, and did not even leave the palace gates, busying himself with state affairs day and night. In both achievements and statecraft he kept the pack of vassal princes and great clans firmly in hand, and his prestige was high.
"We pay our respects to His Majesty!"
The hundred officials held their court tablets and bowed in unison. In the Golden Hall you could hear a pin drop, and blurred reflections showed on the smooth floor tiles.
Pat, pat—
Sweat dripped onto the floor tiles. Li Baoyi did not stir, not daring even to breathe loudly.
The silence held for a moment; then Song Ji raised a hand:
"What happened at White Horse Manor?"
News of the bloodshed at White Horse Manor the night before had already reached Chang'an. In the middle of the night it had passed through the Investigation Bureau into the emperor's ears.
By dawn, the dozens of wealthy gentry and sons of officials who had joined the gambling had all been hauled back by the Imperial Guard, together with more than thirty incomplete skeletons, five corpses, and the tigers and bears in their iron cages.
In vast Chang'an, with its million souls, no small number of fighting men died in private brawls every day, but this sort of filthy business had happened for the first time. If the common folk of the markets ever learned that the nobles living on Kuishou Street had the poor fight tigers for their amusement, the many officials standing in the Golden Hall would likely be drowned in spit.
Once the emperor had spoken, Xiao Chuyang stepped forward and bowed:
"Your Majesty, yesterday my worthless son heard there was something strange about White Horse Manor, and went with a Wolf Guard of the Investigation Bureau to look into it. They found a cellar built secretly beneath the manor, with a gambling house inside, where men were set to fight beasts..."
Most of what he said was already known; Xiao Chuyang was simply repeating it.
Li Baoyi waited until the Chancellor had finished, then stepped out and dropped to his knees with a thud, wailing:
"Your Majesty, this guilty subject failed to teach his son, betraying Your Majesty's great favor. I deserve ten thousand deaths—I beg Your Majesty to punish me!"
"Punish you?"
Song Ji's brows knitted; he tapped the armrest of the dragon throne lightly. "Nearly forty lives—I'd be within my rights to wipe out your whole clan nine times over!"
The words came down rather heavy, and scared Li Baoyi's face dead white. He knocked his head against the ground and said in a trembling voice:
"Your Majesty, calm your wrath... for the business at White Horse Manor, this guilty subject cannot escape blame, but... but those men were all gamblers, they had already signed life-and-death waivers..."
"Horse shit! You dragged the men in—whatever you wrote, they signed..."
Qi Xinghan's hot temper flared, and he cursed on the spot.
After that the civil and military officials started arguing. The Li family could not escape blame, true enough, but they had still kept some measure: the men they killed were all vermin of the streets with dirty records, and life-and-death waivers were something the court tacitly allowed. To judge strictly by the forty lives and wipe out the Li family, whose ancestors had merit in protecting the throne, was plainly not quite appropriate either.
Song Ji's words had been harsh to make it plain he had no intention of shielding the Li family; after that he said little.
There were no few officials on good terms with the Li family either, and the Li family's eldest son was still holding the frontier; too heavy a sentence would not do.
After a round of heated argument, in the end the Li family was let off lightly. Li Baoyi was fined three years' salary and the White Horse Manor lands were confiscated; his son had committed a grave error but was young and ignorant, and would serve three years of conscript labor and be barred from office for life; the retainers and advisers who had devised the scheme would be beheaded and their heads displayed to quiet the people's hearts. And with that, the matter was settled.
That Li Baoyi could keep his son's life was already more than he dared hope for; how would he dare say one more word? He accepted his punishment meekly.
As for the Xiao Ting who had "astonished the world with one cry" this time, quite a few officials drew their eye to him, heaping praise on him in open court—though in private they were rather puzzled.
Xiao Ting's reputation in Chang'an was known to all: no great crimes, but endless small ones, next to no ability, and the craven habit of running off to cry in front of the Empress Dowager—every great house on Kuishou Street knew about that.
For a good-for-nothing fop to suddenly go to White Horse Manor to champion justice was a bit too abrupt.
When Xiao Ting came back that morning with the Imperial Guard and the Wolf Guard, even the Xiao family assumed he had kicked up a tremendous mess, and fearing Xiao Chuyang would simply leave him to hang, they had sent men straight to the palace to beg the Empress Dowager for help. In the end, once they learned the whole story, no one could quite believe Xiao Ting had done it.
The killing had been too decisive, after all—not Xiao Ting's way of doing things. The Xiao family had retainers enough who could cut down a tiger with a single stroke, but sworn retainers only moved on the head of the family's orders. Given Xiao Ting's temperament, if he had learned about White Horse Manor he ought to have run to the Empress Dowager to claim credit.
But matters had come to this, and the court officials could hardly call Xiao Ting's role into question; they could only privately suspect that Xiao Chuyang had ordered him to pull off this great deed in order to whitewash his reputation as a good-for-nothing.
And the Xiao family, naturally, knew just how much their foolish young master was worth. He could not have managed such a feat, and no retainer had gone out with Xiao Ting yesterday—so there must be an expert behind it, lending him a hand.
But who that expert was, the Xiao family could not work out offhand...