In the back street of Daye Ward, Capital Commandant Gongsun Ming came trotting up to the Fuman Tavern at the head of several dozen Imperial Guards. When he saw his son being slapped across the face, fury blazed up in his chest.
But he had barely opened his mouth when he noticed that the white-robed young gentleman standing in the street looked somewhat familiar.
A man that handsome left an impression on anyone who had seen him once.
Gongsun Ming held the post of Capital Commandant. Last year, when Xu Buling was ambushed and came into the capital, he had led Imperial Guards out and caught one distant glimpse of him; a brief once-over now, and he recognized him.
Gongsun Ming knew that this young prince kept his head down and rarely went out, so that few people in the capital had ever laid eyes on him.
But a man keeping his head down did not mean he was safe to offend.
Who was Xu You, Prince Su, who held the west at Xiliang? The only non-imperial prince in Great Yue with real power, the man who guarded the frontier for the realm. Back when he studied in the capital, he had sat on the roof of the Golden Hall drinking with the present Son of Heaven, and gone with him to the pleasure houses to compare spears…
The heir of Prince Su, in all his grandeur, might not dare offend the imperial house—but kill a couple of ordinary men in the capital, and what consequence would there be? That the Son of Heaven is judged by the same law as the common folk? Hardly.
Gongsun Ming's stomach dropped the moment he saw his son struck. He rushed forward, head bowed and back bent:
"This lowly official, Gongsun Ming, pays his respects to my lord Heir!"
Since there had been killings, the common folk of the back street had all but fled, leaving only a crowd of Imperial Guards and Wolf Guards.
At those words from the Commandant, every Imperial Guard came to his senses and hastily sheathed his blade and bowed.
None of them knew which heir this was, but only the legitimate eldest son of a prince could be styled Heir. Great Yue had just seven of them—six surnamed Song and one surnamed Xu—and either way, not someone a pack of common soldiers could afford to cross.
The venom in Gongsun Lu's eyes froze. The protest he had been about to make went down together with the blood in his mouth. He scrambled up and bowed:
"This wretch has eyes but no sight…"
Smack—
Gongsun Ming's hand shot out and slapped his son to the ground. He pulled an official saber out of an Imperial Guard's grip and roared:
"Unfilial wretch! To dare offend Heir Xu—today I will purge my own house…"
Xu Buling watched coldly, showing not the slightest intention of raising a hand to stop him.
Gongsun Ming held the blade high, but there was no way he dared actually cut his own son. When Xu Buling did not offer him even a word of polite formality, he was left standing there in some embarrassment.
Fortunately the Wolf Guards and Imperial Guards nearby were not blind. They hurried forward to hold Gongsun Ming back:
"Calm yourself, Commandant Gongsun—today was all a misunderstanding…"
Naturally Gongsun Ming let the blade be 'taken' from him, shot Gongsun Lu a few glares with the look of a man whose son would never amount to anything, and said in a grieving voice, "My worthless son has eyes but no sight; I beg Heir Xu to be magnanimous…" Then he looked at the two corpses lying nearby:
"I have heard that Heir Xu was struck by a poison gu, and that barely a tenth of his martial skill remains. This…"
At those words, everyone remembered that part of it.
Last year Xu Buling had been ambushed at the Wei River and poisoned with the Dragon-Locking Gu. In an ordinary man that poison choked the flow of qi and blood and left the limbs strengthless, so that of ten parts of power only one could be drawn out—walking was hard, and he was as good as a cripple.
Yet the scene of Xu Buling killing a man just now had shown not a trace of a cripple.
Under the crowd's puzzled stares, Xu Buling frowned:
"I used to hold off a thousand men; now I hold off a hundred. Is there a problem?"
The whole scene fell silent.
The explanation was all very well—a starved camel is still bigger than a horse, as the saying goes—but this camel was a bit too big!
Gongsun Ming was half convinced at best, but he could hardly walk up and examine Xu Buling's body, so he changed tack:
"Hmm… might I ask how Heir Xu came to clash with the Imperial Guard today? Killing Imperial Guards in the street at the very feet of the Son of Heaven—that will be hard to explain to His Majesty…"
Xu Buling spread his arms and raised an eyebrow. "If it puts you in a difficult spot, Commandant Gongsun, just arrest me according to law and have me beheaded after the autumn assizes."
Gongsun Ming's face went stiff. Where would he get that kind of nerve? If he took it on himself to detain Prince Su's only son without a word from His Majesty, what if the frontier army mutinied? What if Prince Su seized the pretext to rebel?
Gongsun Ming glanced left and right, stepped forward, and bowed. "My lord Heir, please don't make things hard for this lowly official. About the killing of the Imperial Guards—just give me a word to carry, so that I can report it upward."
Only then did Xu Buling lower his arms, his voice flat. "I'd had a few too many and came out for a stroll. I saw this Imperial Guard bullying a girl, so I killed him on the way past."
The two Imperial Guards who had come along with the dead commander stepped up and reported what had happened as well: it was indeed the commander beating a Wolf Guard in the street, and Xu Buling stepping in to stop him, that had set off the clash.
Having heard the whole chain of events, Gongsun Ming's face was not a pleasant sight. He thought for a moment:
"My lord Heir, you had only to give your name. Had that petty commander heard who you were, he would never have dared draw his blade against you…"
Xu Buling frowned. "You mean that if I weren't the heir of Prince Su, he could have drawn his blade and cut me down right there today?"
Gongsun Ming's face stiffened. Great Yue's law was severe: a knight errant who used force to defy the prohibitions was guilty of a grave crime, and no small number of men had been beaten to death by the Imperial Guard for making trouble. By what had just happened, if a common wandering fighter had obstructed the enforcement of the law, the Imperial Guard would indeed have cut him down.
But even if the Imperial Guard was in the wrong, that's no excuse for you to kill a man on the strength of your name!
Of course, Gongsun Ming was not fool enough to argue principle with a prince's heir. He nodded at once:
"My lord Heir speaks reason. I shall report this matter faithfully, and His Majesty will surely see every detail clearly and render a just judgment."
Xu Buling nodded, turned, and left the back street, tossing back over his shoulder, "Just now I noticed a storehouse of smuggled salt behind this tavern. The credit is yours."
What could Gongsun Ming say? The Investigation Bureau's Wolf Guards were standing right there; there was no covering it up. He could only raise a hand in respectful farewell:
"Thank you, my lord Heir."
The Fuman Tavern was a wreck, splintered wood everywhere.
The female constable Zhu Manzhi had watched all of it with disbelief in her eyes.
She had not been in the capital long. These past days she had been keeping watch from the tea stall outside the Fuman Tavern, and listening in the while on the storyteller with the filthy mouth, so she was well acquainted with the name "Xu Buling."
Things like "bullies men and violates women," "forces decent girls to be his wives," "has a taste for married women," and so on.
In her mind, Xu Buling was a lecherous wastrel who stopped at no evil.
But she had never dreamed she would run into Xu Buling this soon—and in this way.
He was arrogant and ruthless, true, but in her eyes each of his kills had been entirely justified.
Peerless in martial skill, incomparably dashing, hating evil as a personal enemy, ruthless and a man of few words…
Standing in the doorway of the Fuman Tavern, the sixteen-year-old Zhu Manzhi watched the figure with the wine gourd dwindle into the distance. That impression, she suspected, would stay with her for the rest of her life…
"Young prince, that girl's sure to remember you now. Once your grounding is up, I'll arrange a chance encounter—you toss out a couple of sweet words, and the thing's half done…"
Out on the ward's street, Old Xiao walked at Xu Buling's side, laying out the next steps.
Xu Buling had just exerted himself far too much; the cold poison in his body had stirred, and he kept pouring wine down his throat to press back the agony of ten thousand ants gnawing at his heart. Set against the results, though, the pain was worth it.
He had killed a man in the street today; by tomorrow morning impeachment memorials would be flying onto the emperor's desk like snowflakes.
The emperor certainly would not do anything to him over such a small thing, but to soothe the censors and remonstrating officials, a verbal reprimand and another half month of grounding were unavoidable.
At the thought of a month or so of peace and quiet, Xu Buling let out a breath and took a swig from his gourd:
"No rush with Zhu Manzhi. I've kicked up a fuss today, so that should hold me for a good while, and Aunt Lu won't be nagging me to go out and make trouble again… Hmm… Go hire a pack of storytellers and have them spread word of my murderous rampage in the street today—quote me out of context, and lay it on thick if you can. Something like:
"Shocking! The Heir of Su actually did THIS in the street…"
"Men fall silent, women weep—what on earth has become of the capital…"
"Screams in the night from the pleasure quarter—so that's what my lord Heir is into…"
Hiding one's talents and fouling one's name, put plainly, meant dragging one's own reputation through the mud and presenting oneself as "shallow, gilded on the outside and rotten within." The doing was not hard; the hard part was making people believe it—making the one in the palace believe it.
Listening to this torrent of explanation, Old Xiao nodded again and again and stuck up a thumb. "My lord Heir's thinking is as thorough as ever. Once this pack of lies gets out, in a few days it'll have the whole city up in arms—Madame Lu will be gratified, I'm sure."
"Naturally…"
As they talked, master and servant passed gradually out of sight.
Elsewhere, in a room of a clinic in Daye Ward, Gongsun Lu lay on the sickbed, his face swollen nearly into a pig's head, and spoke with difficulty: "Father, what do we do about today?"
Gongsun Ming paced back and forth with his hands behind his back, his face dark:
"The Fuman Tavern is the property of Zhu Manlong of Hutai Street. Zhu Manlong has always shown this father of yours proper filial respect, so I ought to look after him a little. But today his two apprentices were killed and his shop was raided—he had the bad luck to run into the Heir of Su. He can only blame his own misfortune, not us."
Gongsun Lu nodded slightly. "The smuggled salt business drags in a great deal. The Investigation Bureau's Wolf Guards were on the spot today; if we try to strong-arm it down, those mad dogs will take a bite out of us for certain. How do we account for it?"
"How else do we account for it? Sacrifice the chariot to save the king."
Gongsun Ming stopped his pacing, hands still behind his back, and sighed softly. "Send word to Zhu Manlong: have him produce a few heads to answer for it. Tomorrow we bring men and make the arrests, and this matter is done with."
Gongsun Lu nodded, then gave a soft snort. "If we hadn't happened to run into Xu Buling, would we have been unable to keep it down?… The heir of a vassal prince, in all his grandeur, flouting the law and killing a man in the street—an Imperial Guard carrying out his duty to the letter, no less. If Father doesn't seize the chance to impeach him, the hate in my heart will never be eased…"
Gongsun Ming's brows drew together. "What use is your hate? Can it take a bite out of Xu Buling? Everyone who holds office in the capital has been sickened by some prince's brat. If they all thought the way you do, half of them would be butchered in the street one fine day."
At that, Gongsun Lu knew the slaps he had taken today had been for nothing, and he bristled:
"Xu Buling happened on Wolf Guards handling a case and stepped in—fine, there's no fault in that. But it's also true he concealed who he was and used the chance to kill a man. A faithful report would be trouble enough for him to swallow. Are we to cover for him as well?"
Gongsun Ming paced with furrowed brows, thinking it over. "An official cannot haggle over a single moment's gain and loss. A faithful report from me would at most put Xu Buling under house arrest for a few days, but it would make us enemies… Xu Buling is Prince Su's only son and will inherit the princedom one day. If a thread of goodwill remains between us, it may serve us yet."
"What does Father mean?"
"Hmm… We say that in the Fuman Tavern salt-smuggling case, it was Heir Xu, out for a stroll, who happened on it and gave the Investigation Bureau the tip. He had not meant to show himself, but the Wolf Guards botched the job and were set upon, and only then did he have to step out and help them out of it…"
"Ah?! That… that way, the whole credit for cracking the big salt-smuggling case becomes Xu Buling's. And if Xu Buling won't admit to it…"
Gongsun Ming frowned, his face that of a man whose son would never amount to anything:
"A fine deed that will make his name throughout the capital—of course Heir Xu will deny it. That is called modesty, and in his heart he'll remember this father of yours kindly…"
"…To hold office in the capital, a man has to know how to read a room…"
And so…
One chapter a day until the contract's signed—bear with me, dear readers, and toss a few recommendation votes at the new book!