Chapter 121 — Setting the Scheme (Bonus update for 1,200 pink votes)

Dou Yan smiled faintly, the confidence that spilled from the corners of her eyes and the tips of her brows lending her a radiant, glancing charm.

"When I read the histories, I always felt the thing an emperor fears most is a great general who grows too strong and keeps his own troops," she said lightly. "The Duke of Dingzhen was impeached for slaughtering good men to claim their deeds as merit, and for keeping rebels alive to inflate his own importance. Those charges must be grave indeed?"

Surely any educated man would know that much.

Yan Che laughed. "It is a bit of a nuisance, I suppose." His tone was perfunctory.

Dou Yan acted as though she had not noticed. Slowly she went on, "When an ordinary man is wrongly accused, he weeps before the upright magistrate, lays out the facts, presents the evidence, or gathers his neighbors to testify for him."

Yan Che was taken aback; he looked toward Song Yan.

He saw that Song Yan, who had been rubbing the lid of his teacup with his finger, had suddenly stopped, while Dou Yan's clear, bell-like voice continued at his ear: "If the official judges wisely, the truth will out soon enough. If the official is muddled, the man will take his beating and suffer wrong into the bargain. And besides—the emperor is not the one hearing the case!"

Both men found themselves listening intently.

"However sage the Son of Heaven may be, he has his own private concerns," Dou Yan said coolly. "Say you are loyal to the sovereign and loving to the people, and so you are. Say you harbor treacherous designs, and so you do."

That was saying...

Yan Che could not help wiping his forehead with his sleeve.

Song Sui quietly straightened his seat; he had been watching Dou Zhiwei all along, and now a dazzling light flashed suddenly in his eyes, and his gaze grew bright.

Dou Zhiwei's attention was wholly on Yan Che, and she knew nothing of this. Still unhurried, she continued: "Han Xin rested on his laurels and lost all military power; he could no longer rebel, and yet Empress Lü still had him killed. Xiao He held the Han king's treasury and grain and civil affairs in his hand, yet he went about buying land and houses, and the Han king never suspected him. Wang Jian led the whole nation's army on campaign and sent envoys again and again to beg the Qin king for wealth and estates, and the Qin king laughed aloud. But I have heard that the Duke of Dingzhen was diligent in governing and caring for the people, honest and devoted to public duty—a pillar of the state and a mainstay of the court. Is that so?"

Yan Che stared at Dou Yan, his face full of shock.

When the Duke of Dingzhen was called to account, everyone felt he had been wronged. The lady had already contacted some of the Duke's former subordinates to appeal against the injustice.

Others had made suggestions like Dou's, but the lady felt that it would not only stain the Duke's reputation—and what if the emperor truly believed it?

The proposal was quickly drowned out by other voices.

Could it be that they had truly misjudged?

What the emperor cared about was not at all what the censors had impeached the Duke of Dingzhen for, nor what the Duke himself had done, but rather—now that the Duke's reputation grew daily—what would he do to the emperor? To the court?

If those memorials appealing the Duke's injustice were submitted...

At the thought, it was as though he had drunk a bowl of cold water in the depths of winter; a chill seeped through his whole body.

Song Sui bowed his head in thought.

As a child, his mother had often taken him back to her maiden home. His earliest memory was of standing in the Jiang family's drill hall, pushing stone rollers about at play with his cousins.

When his eldest uncle was called to account, his mother had been frantic. She went back and forth through the inner palaces and deep courtyards, and she contacted the noble houses again and again. Because he admired his eldest uncle most of all, his mother feared that if he took part, people would mistake it for his father's intent—that his father would be implicated and called to account, leaving his eldest uncle without even a shelter from the wind and rain. That was why she had decided to have Yan Che escort him south with his fifth uncle's child.

They thought he knew nothing.

In truth, he knew very well.

He had originally meant to hand the child over to the man his fifth uncle had designated, then return to the capital to stir up court and country on behalf of his uncles...

Song Yan gazed at the child Dou Yan had taken from him, and hesitated.

In his youth, his eldest uncle had served as the emperor's personal guard. What sort of man his eldest uncle was—did the emperor not know?

How could he so readily believe the censors' impeachment and call his eldest uncle to account?

Perhaps he ought to think this matter over more carefully.

Chen Yanzhou stared at Dou Yan's smiling, silent face, utterly astonished.

Before Song Yan and Yan Che arrived, she had discussed this matter with him. She had said the only way to break the deadlock was to offer Song Yan a pledge of allegiance.

He agreed with that.

But it was easier said than done.

They might want to offer Song Yan a pledge, but whether Song Yan accepted it, whether he needed it—that was another matter!

So at the time he had proposed a mutual exchange of hostages: "...I will go to the capital on the young lady's behalf. They can send someone to stay at her side and pass him off as a guard. These guards are all hired by you anyway; East Dou would never know if there was one more or one less. As long as the young lady reaches the Dou family safely, she will be safe."

Surely they would not dare lay hands on the Dou family?

And even if the man at the young lady's side meant her harm, that would depend on whether the guards around her would allow it.

Dou countered, "And if the Duke of Dingzhen's household is wiped out, root and branch?"

Then that child would be the last blood of the Jiang family.

She feared that even if she fled to the ends of the earth, Song Yan would kill her.

He was stunned, and for a long while could only mutter, "Surely not?" Yet in his heart he knew: if it had not come to a matter of life and death, why would the Duchess of Yingguo give the flesh and blood of the fifth master Jiang to another to raise, and send her own son to escort them in person...

But Dou Zhiwei's supposition was too alarming!

He could not help saying, "Even so—the Duke of Dingzhen's household bristles with experts and swarms with strategists. The Duke of Yingguo can enter the palace and stand in the court. If they are powerless, what makes us think we can turn the tide?"

Dou Xinxiao said nothing.

Chen Yanzhou, however, knew that she had already made up her mind.

Though Dou Yan occasionally acted rashly, she was never careless or sloppy in her work; so he did not press her further.

He had never imagined that this was the scheme she had in mind!

Simple as the proposal was, and obvious as it might be to everyone, the crux of the matter lay in which choice to make!

To bring a border lord like the Duke of Dingzhen to trial was no longer a simple question of guilt or innocence; it touched on interests on every side and connections from top to bottom. Even the Yingzhen Duke's household had been unable to trace the hand pulling the strings behind the scenes—a measure of how deep the waters ran. Even he, a man who had spent most of his life steeped in the games of power, dared not speak of it lightly, let alone a young girl who had never once set foot outside Zhending County...

At these thoughts he shifted uneasily in his seat.

He could only pray that the Fourth Miss was right!

Otherwise, in this storm of blood and wind, he feared that even she would be dragged into it, her life in peril!

In the silence, Dou Yan was likely the only one utterly certain.