Lu Junyi pushed through the crowds at the Bianliang prefectural yamen. Unlike those that did the work of the central government of Empire in the inner Imperial City, this yamen was in the far larger, more crowded outer city streets of Bianliang, overseen by the prefect of the entire region. Lu Junyi had to sheathe her impatience to keep from plowing people aside.
Some of Lin Chong’s techniques would have served her very well in doing so.
Lin Chong, in jail! Arrested! What lies, what shattering injustices. Lin Chong barely drank or swore, would not say a bad word of criticism against government officials even when deserved—and they said she was a traitor. Lu Junyi tasted sourness in her mouth and concentrated on not driving elbows into the jabbering, plodding bodies in her path. Why did they refuse to move fast enough!
Lin Chong wasn’t even the first friend Lu Junyi had come to a yamen or court for, armed with gold and silver, throwing her own slight weight against a justice system of back-scratching magistrates and rusted, failing processes. So many, too many people, acquaintances or friends or friends of acquaintances who came begging to Lu Junyi behind closed doors because there was nobody else, nobody to care. She’d beseeched, bribed, filled palms with silver and promises for more, weathered Jia’s disapproval and gotten partial amnesties granted and exiles reduced to soft penal assignments as far as she was able. Among all Lu Junyi’s other friends, many of whom she’d worried for late into the night, she had never thought she would have to fear for Lin Chong.
It was too much. She felt like her skin would split with it, the injustice of it, the knowledge that Lin Chong could have followed all the rules, every rule, and still die for it, and Lu Junyi might be powerless to stop it.
She’d never tried to fight the pull of an Imperial Grand Marshal. She wasn’t even sure it was possible.
But she’d be damned if she wasn’t willing to give every last piece of herself in trying.
She managed to shove her way through the public front area of the yamen in a less than genteel way, though she did refrain from causing any bruises. Once past, she wound through a back hallway, took a breath, and rapped on a paneled wooden door.
She tapped her fingers against each other, waiting, the nervous energy bleeding everywhere, demanding urgency. The prefecture liked quick executions of traitors and assassins, especially when urged on by a Grand Marshal …
Traitor and assassin. How could anyone even think of those words and Lin Chong’s name in the same breath?
The door pulled open, revealing a man with a gentle, lined face. An ink stain smudged his cheek, and his thinning hair stuck up in places in an absently lopsided manner.
“Lady Lu Junyi!” he proclaimed with a smile that crinkled up to his eyes. “Come in, come in. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Secretary Sun Ding,” Lu Junyi greeted him in return. “I have urgent need of your aid.” She swept into the office—as with every other time she had been here, not a surface was without stacks of paper, loose sheets of densely inked characters along with some pasted and wrapped folios balancing among the chaos. Today, however, she had no eyes for any of it.
Sun Ding’s position as a secretary to the prefect wasn’t why she’d pursued his friendship, after he’d started dropping in at some of her intellectual salons. Her salons attracted all sorts, from eager-eyed students to even occasionally celebrities … the polymath Ling Zhen, for instance, or the poet Song Jiang, who had both been intermittent guests until recently. On one memorable occasion General Han Shizhong had come—those present had been awed to watch him speak animatedly to Ling Zhen on inventions of war and to Song Jiang on poetic literature, as if Lu Junyi’s salon brushed a domain of the gods. Of course, that was before Ling Zhen had been arrested, and before Song Jiang had so famously and mysteriously disappeared from society … likely also thrown into a dark hole of a prison someplace, Lu Junyi thought bitterly. Though she hadn’t become close with everyone who came by, she did have a genuine passion for building relationships of intellect regardless of status, and Sun Ding’s friendship had not been attached to some ulterior motive.
But she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t known his position might serve necessary to her someday.
She’d never thought she would call on him so soon, in a matter of such desperation. Life and death of one of her closest friends. A sisterhood of decades.
She wasn’t even sure how much influence he had. Her other successful interventions had been with district magistrates—if those were puddles, the prefectural court was an ocean. Deep with politics, ready to swallow human lives without a ripple.
“What can I do for you?” Sun Ding asked, returning to sit behind his desk and motioning Lu Junyi to take the stool across from him.
She paused a moment to gather her thoughts. “Are you familiar with the case of Master Arms Instructor Lin Chong? It went before the prefect yesterday.”
Her mind still buzzed with the urgency of getting here in time. She herself had not heard until this morning, when she had arrived for Lin Chong’s daily fight class to find students wandering in disarray. When Lin Chong had made no appearance, Lu Junyi’s aggressive questioning—with some eager volunteer help from the intimidating Lu Da—had eventually yielded answers.
Lu Junyi had not been allowed in to see Lin Chong, even with liberally applied silver. But she’d armed herself with the particulars of the case. The prefect had heard Lin Chong’s statement and, in an unusual move, not yet decided on a judgment. Lu Junyi had met the prefect before, but only once and in passing—she’d known her first, best, and maybe only option would be Sun Ding.
If he would help. If he could help. He would at least hear her out; he had an open mind, he had to hear her out …
More importantly, he was an honest man. A good man. She had to believe that.
“I did hear of the case,” he said now, his expression going troubled. “The prefect is gray with making a decision on it. Marshal Gao Qiu has stated plainly that he wishes a quick execution.”
Even though she’d known, Lu Junyi’s stomach folded over at such a bald confirmation. “Lin Chong is innocent. You must see that. Gao Qiu set her up. Attempted assassination? I know her—it’s not possible. I spoke to people in the Imperial City—they say the guards only arrested her at the orders of Gao Qiu, not because she attempted any treachery. Gao Qiu, you know what he is!”
Sun Ding sighed, his face betraying pained agreement. She hadn’t spoken too intemperately, then, thank the heavens.
She pushed on. “If the prefect interviews the guards, Lin Chong’s innocence will become clear—”
Sun Ding held up a hand. “That’s not the problem, Sister Lu. Prefect Teng has delayed because the case is already very weak. Gao Qiu changed his story with every report—first it was an assassination attempt against the Emperor, then against himself; the guards rescued him in one version but then in another he arrested Lin Chong on his own … it’s clear to the prefect where the truth lies. Unfortunately, as you know, truth is not the only consideration that carries the day.”
“You mean Gao Qiu’s demands of a guilty verdict.” Lu Junyi swallowed. “And his demand for her death.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Brother Sun, please. You know this is wrong. Take me to the prefect. Help me argue the case. Lin Chong is one of my dearest friends—we have known each other since we were barely more than children. She’s the most upright of citizens. You would not find a more moral, upstanding servant of the Empire in all of Bianliang. Please.”
Sun Ding’s face drew into a frown, but, finally, he nodded. “I had a great deal of discomfort with this case as it was. Now hearing she is your friend … we will do our utmost. I can’t promise, but—come with me. The prefect should be retired in his chambers for a midday rest; it’s a good time.”
Sun Ding ushered Lu Junyi with him out of his office and led the way through a warren of corridors among the rear buildings of the yamen. The prefect’s private retirement chambers were out and across a courtyard, separated from the bustle of the offices.
Prefect Teng was a stout man with a round face, and he welcomed them in when they begged his pardon for intruding.
“I always have time for Secretary Sun Ding,” he said jovially. “And Lady Lu, I believe we’ve met before. Such a privilege to see you again.”
Lu Junyi forced herself to nod and murmur the pleasantries back in restrained politeness.
“You may revise your opinion of us in a moment, Prefect,” Sun Ding said. “We come to plead with you on the case of Master Arms Instructor Lin Chong.”
“Ah!” Prefect Teng lowered himself heavily to a couch, gesturing for them to seat themselves and join him. “In fact, if you give me an answer on it I shall be much in your debt. I see no solution but to follow the directives of Marshal Gao Qiu, but I would like a better way out. It is not seemly, executing a woman.”
Lu Junyi bridled at such a thing being his main objection, but with some effort kept her calm in hand. “Prefect, I have known Lin Chong for a great many years. Her character is unimpeachable. This case is a fabrication to injure her—I beg you to show mercy.”
“She’s accused of a great offense,” Prefect Teng answered, even as he nodded. “Marshal Gao Qiu has demanded I wring from her why she entered White Tiger Hall with a sword in hand, if not to assassinate him, and what treachery she harbors against the Empire. Either of these are capital crimes.”
“That’s what he claims?” Lu Junyi could not quite keep her voice from climbing. “Prefect Teng, I was with Lin Chong directly before this incident. She instructed me very clearly not to enter White Tiger Hall with any weapon, and she left her sword with the guards outside. I will swear to it!”
“Prefect, let us speak plainly,” Sun Ding said, quiet and urgent. “You and I know, we all know how Marshal Gao Qiu uses his power and influence. He has sent more than one rival to this court for judgment—not only rivals, but anyone who displeases him. He uses us to dispose of his political enemies for him, and we have turned our eyes from it … he would send a child to prison for pestering him, and demand them locked away or beheaded. Is this yamen to be the private tool of Marshal Gao’s petty grievances?”
“Of course not,” the prefect said. He seemed taken aback, but not angry. “Marshal Gao Qiu has no authority over us, Secretary Sun! You know that. Our mandate is from the Imperial Court.”
“Then let us prove we are not his possession. If you order Lin Chong’s execution, we will have sealed our own servility to him.”
Gratitude welled up in Lu Junyi at his words, along with an exhausting, fearful hope. She had known Sun Ding was a good man—she believed she had known—but to see him so sincere, so blunt, saying things she would have spoken in private but never aired here … she had been right that he was the ally she’d needed. She never could have declared such a speech without consequence, especially not to a prefect. But Sun Ding was known to him; Sun Ding was trusted; Sun Ding could, apparently, gently challenge the very legitimacy of the yamen and its judicial oversight without provoking the prefect’s wrath or endangering their cause.
Prefect Teng kneaded his hands together. “You speak uncomfortable truths, Secretary Sun. I want to agree. But the fact remains … we cannot simply ignore the demands of a man like Gao Qiu. So tell me, how can we settle this matter? Give me a solution, I beg you. I will take any excuse not to execute a woman, particularly one of such good character and innocence, as you have sworn to—frankly, even before that, I believed her statements were the truth of it.”
Sun Ding and Lu Junyi exchanged a glance. “Perhaps some intermediate punishment,” Sun Ding suggested. “A guilty verdict, but a softened sentence. Allow Lin Chong to plead to a lesser crime and live, and show Gao Qiu we do not bow to him, while also not flouting him entirely. He knows his case is lacking. He will have to accept your authority, as long as you do not challenge him outright.”
A guilty verdict was still a grave injustice. But Lu Junyi had moved about the edges of politics enough to know when her position was weak … and right now, every other consideration must pale against preserving Lin Chong’s life.
“I think such a thing could be arranged,” Prefect Teng said thoughtfully. “If, for example, Lin Chong admits to having entered White Tiger Hall with a weapon unintentionally, owing to ignorance of the law … there would have to be lashes, and a branding, but then—a far-off work camp, perhaps, far from the sight of Gao Qiu. Satisfactory to everybody.”
It was not satisfactory to Lu Junyi. Not at all. But she clamped her lips against each other. This was already more than she’d dared hope for.
“Yes, it will take some doing, but I think this can be managed,” the prefect continued, nodding to himself. He turned to Lu Junyi. “There will be expenses to such an arrangement, levied against your friend. Can her family pay them?”
“I will pay.” She would have to give Lin Chong several ingots of silver directly, too, for bribing the guards at the work camp. Otherwise she might not even survive this lesser sentence.
As for Lin Chong’s family … her only family was her two children. Lu Junyi wondered if her friend would want them to know, or if the disgrace would be something she preferred to keep locked away.
Lu Junyi would ask her, once they were permitted to speak. A courier could be sent if so.
If one of Lu Junyi’s loved ones were convicted of a false crime and imprisoned, she would have wanted to be told everything. But Lin Chong was not like her, and neither were her children—raised with a strictness that Lin Chong had always seemed convinced would defy their lack of a father, the siblings were dutiful and hardworking, but each lived far away now. Lu Junyi did not think either had ever returned to Bianliang to visit. In her observation, Lin Chong had always seemed to love them, but rarely smiled on them.
Lin Chong had always been too concerned about the future to take enjoyment in the present.
And this was where it had brought her.
Lin Chong hunched against the cell wall, trying to take any pressure from the wounds on her back and face, and attempting with every fragment of training she possessed to force her mind to blankness.
She could not manage it. Bitterness welled up in her, like bile concentrating itself in her skin and flesh.
She had done nothing. Nothing. Gao Qiu had …
He was power. She was nothing more than a mouse, one to be batted about and then discarded.
She had not truly understood that before now. More fool her.
She’d thought she would be beheaded on the spot, the same day. The jolt of living longer had been only one more burst in the chaos, part of a reality she no longer comprehended. A reality that had turned against her with no warning or remedy.
The prefect’s offer of clemency would have been a shock, if she could still feel shock. She’d almost rejected it, the wild urge filling her to proclaim loudly that she was innocent, that she would not admit to doing something she had not, even if it was a lesser crime. Even if it would stop her from being executed.
She was guilty of one crime, though, one she did not, would not regret. Gao Qiu could have pressed for a charge against her for her assault of him. She did not know why he hadn’t. Embarrassment, that his desired conquest had bloodied him? Perhaps he only thought an assassination attempt more dramatic, and far more likely of gaining him the result he wanted.
Her death.
It was the thought of that—Gao Qiu’s manipulation, his screaming power, his designs on her fate—that convinced Lin Chong to give in and say the words. She would not grant Gao Qiu the satisfaction of her dying. Even if she had no life left. Even if it meant she had to make a false admission, to lie, to act as if she possessed a level of criminal stupidity that had allowed her to accidentally walk into White Tiger Hall armed when she had perfect knowledge of the law.
The confession tasted of ash and sand, but she forced her mouth around the words.
After that had come the lashes, twenty strikes with bamboo that set her back aflame. Blood still trickled down her legs now, half a day later—under her clothes, collecting against the creases at the backs of her knees. Every twitch seemed to wrench the wounds open in the wrong way. The lashes had been followed by her branding: a fast and rough tattoo down her cheek by a rushed, impersonal inker, who’d slashed the characters into her flesh and then sent her back to her cell. It still burned.
She would be forever known as a criminal now. Marked for life.
They’d fastened the cangue around her neck before locking her back in the cell. The wide square of wood and metal yoked her and weighed her weakened body down, multiplying the ache in her shredded back and shoulders. It made relief impossible in any position. As was no doubt its purpose.
None of that was the core of the blackness inside Lin Chong’s souls, however. Pain she could endure. Pain was nothing.
Pain, you should have endured. A quarter of a watch, and it would have been done …
But somehow, the echoing voice of rationality had ceased its power over her. No. No, she should not have endured. She should not have been forced to. Gao Qiu was the villain here—the only one. She would not blame herself alongside him.
She would grant herself that.
Besides, the pain was nothing, not next to her slithering anger. It had reached so deep inside, fetched into corners of her she had not known existed. It dazed her. Never had she known herself capable of such unsteady emotion. The sick rage pulsed through her in an unending tide, swelling and ebbing before swelling up yet again until her skin seemed ready to split with it.
She thought she understood, now, why people were moved to kill.
It was a dangerous thought.
“Sister Lin?”
Lin Chong tried to raise her head. The cangue prevented it. But she got her eyes up enough to see Lu Junyi.
Lu Junyi, her friend, as lovely as ever … now with a face creased in worry. Grief for Lin Chong.
Lu Junyi nodded to the guards who accompanied her. A knowing nod. They stepped back in deference. Lu Junyi hurried to the gridded bars of the cell and knelt in front of them.
“Dear Sister Lin. I cannot bear what they have done to you—it’s not fair…”
Lin Chong had not wept at the lashes, nor at the branding, but somehow tears sprang up behind her eyes at such a blunt statement of fact.
It wasn’t fair.
She managed to shift forward until she could reach through the bars, clumsily turning so the cangue would not block her. Lu Junyi grasped her fingers tightly.
“My dear friend, I’ve brought you some food—and more importantly, gold and silver, for when you reach the camp. The constables who are to take you to Canghu have already been paid. I will send more silver after you—give some to the guards but most to the supervisor, and they will treat you gently.”
Lin Chong’s eyes crept to the guards outside this cell, the ones who had treated Lu Junyi so deferentially. She wondered how much silver Lu Junyi had given them. “This is the way of things, then,” she murmured, in a voice that did not sound like her own.
“I will do anything in my power, pay anything, to see you suffer less,” Lu Junyi said, low and passionate. “Now is not the time for debate. It is a time for survival.”
“I cannot pay you back,” Lin Chong said. It seemed important, somehow.
Lu Junyi was weeping, silently, without sobs or wails of any kind. Only tears, flooding down her face one after another, chasing each other’s tracks in a waterfall Lin Chong was not sure she deserved.
“Oh, my friend,” Lu Junyi said. “Survive this, and it will be payment enough. Now tell me—is there anything else you need? Is there anything I can do?”
“My rooms,” Lin Chong managed. “I don’t have many things there, but if you would take them for me and keep them, before the barracks clear the space…”
“Done,” Lu Junyi said. “Is there anyone I should tell? I can send word to your children, if you wish it.”
Her children.
One of the things in Lin Chong’s room was a box, and inside the box were two items she had kept close for many years now. The first was a toy—a long feather attached to a stick that her son had played with for days on end as a young boy. The other was a poem, a child’s piece, written by her daughter at about age ten.
Lin Chong did not consider herself a sentimental person. These two items were what she kept, and what she used to spark her memory. She would open the box and remind herself that she had raised her son with the skills to gain an examination title and that she’d then secured him a civil service post in the city of Xijing, and that she had found her daughter a marriage to a wealthy landowner some distance to the south.
There had been times neither had seemed possible. She had worked hard, and feared much, in doubt she would be able to make such security come to pass, for two children without a father.
She could close the lid on the box and remember her children as something good, something she had accomplished well. A success in her life that would remain unsullied by the way their parent’s fortune had turned.
Tomorrow, she’d been told, she would depart for the prison camp at Canghu.
“I do not wish to tell them,” she rasped to Lu Junyi. “Let it lie.”