Chapter 90

When Zhuo Huiheng had her brother's reply, she went at once to the Mei residence. Third Aunt, hearing she was coming, took it for an ordinary call, and had a good many of the sweets Huiheng liked made ready. But Zhuo Huiheng sent the servants out and asked her straight. "Third Aunt, I won't hide it from you. I've come because of my brother's letter. He wants to know whether something has happened at the Imperial Academy and the Grand Academy. Uncle Mei and your own brother both hold office at the Academy now, and I thought and thought, and felt this was a thing best asked of you, to be sure of it."

Jiang Wenyao seldom spoke of court matters with her family, but learning it was Zhuo Siheng who asked, she told what she knew without holding back. "I only know that the master hasn't been home three days now. He sent word that business kept him, but what the business was, or how it pressed, I truly don't know. I went to see my brother a few days back, and his brows were knit too, but ask as I might, he'd only say it was official worries, and said no more."

Taken so, something had happened at the Imperial Academy, only it had not yet broken into the open, likely because the palace exam was near and it was awkward to make a noise of it.

Her brother had guessed right. The thing had most likely stirred the emperor to the thought of overhauling education, which was why he had pointedly moved her brother, a year short of his three years in the provinces, to the prefecture's post of Education Intendant.

"Has something serious happened?" Jiang Wenyao, seeing the small frown between Huiheng's brows, asked anxiously.

Huiheng did not want Third Aunt to worry, nor did she mean to keep it from her, and explained the pith of why her brother had asked and why the promotion was so strange, then said with a smile, "The thing's done now, in any case, and I ask only to be sure of my brother's thinking. Since it's not yet out in the open, Uncle Mei and Uncle Jiang can't well speak of it, and once the emperor's judgment comes down I'll call again, and that won't be too late."

Jiang Wenyao, seeing her so composed, was somewhat eased, and said, "They'll both be going with the emperor soon to the plowing rite at the suburban altar, so if you want anything asked, it'll have to wait till they're back."

The spring rites had slipped Huiheng's mind. But since her brother had already guessed it, and had written that there was no need to worry, and that if the emperor had such a mind then a post in the prefecture's education office was all to the good, she could set her own heart at rest.

The plowing rite and the grain rite were the two greatest sacrifices of the dynasty's three spring rites, kept by the emperor and empress between them. The emperor performed the plowing rite, turning the field with his own hands to show that the realm held farming and the people's root first. The grain rite the empress presided over, on an auspicious day a month after the plowing. The empress led the titled, married noblewomen out, and after the sacrifice tended with her own hands the field the emperor had earlier plowed, watering it with water drawn through the sun-dried ears of last year's good harvest.

From ancient times the plowing rite had been kept with the greatest state, and the emperor had always to go in person. In the spring of the sixteenth year of Zhenyuan, the emperor kept the plowing rite in due course, his officials attending, the noble houses and great families going too, and the Yang children were no exception.

The Yang were descended from a founding minister. Yang Lingzhao's father was not of the line that inherited the title, yet his war-merit shone bright. He had once shattered a raid by the Wuliang roving tribes outside West Victory Pass in Rongzhou, and was made General Who Proclaims Our Might. Later, to cover the main force in a surprise strike, he led three hundred crack horse to hold the rear, and fought to the death. At the time the eldest of the four Yang children, Yang Lingzhao, was only twelve, the second, his sister Yang Linghua, ten, Yang Lingxian seven, and the little girl Yang Lingyi no more than three. In his grief Yang Lingzhao took up the elder brother's heavy charge, and the emperor, moved to pity, made a special exception and let him inherit his father's military rank, and showed the Yang house uncommon favor ever after, even granting Tao Nanyun, the only daughter of Commandery Princess Luanping and herself Commandery Princess of Xingcheng, in marriage to Yang Lingzhao. The two were loving and at peace after the wedding, only Yang Lingzhao's heavy military duties kept him long on the border, so that husband and wife met seldom and parted often. The eldest sister-in-law standing in a mother's place, it was of course Tao Nanyun who managed the general's household, and the two sisters and the one brother along with it, and she had brought them all to this plowing rite.

Yang Lingxian loved nothing better than to romp, and to get out of the capital and about made him glad past measure, but Yang Lingyi was not so merry. She trailed along listless the whole way, and nothing could rouse her spirits.

"At your books you're to be still and keep your mind on them, and when you come out for a bit of air you're to make the most of it. Why do you look sorrier than when you're shut up at your lessons?"

Yang Linghua, seeing her sister still coming back to the travel-lodge for the nobles with her eyes and the corners of her mouth drooping, could not help asking.

"Sister, pay her no mind." Yang Lingxian leapt down from his horse and laughed slyly. "I'll tell you why. It's because Xiheng happens to be on his seasonal rest these two days, home at last for once, and our little Lingyi's gone and missed him."

"Don't talk rot!" Yang Lingyi's face was already red as a boiled prawn, and heedless of her manners she caught up her skirts and went after her brother to hit him, the two of them tangling together. Yang Linghua, knowing the reason, only smiled and said nothing.

Tao Nanyun, coming back just then with the Grand Princess, saw the scene and smiled too, but did not stop them, only listened to the laughter and scuffling fade off, the corners of her mouth curving the more.

Tao Nanyun's mother, Commandery Princess Luanping, had been of the same generation as the Grand Princess. In her day Commandery Princess Luanping had been caught up in the case of the treasonous heir and shut away with the Grand Princess in the palace lateral courts, and only when the present emperor took the throne did the two of them see daylight again, so the bond of their shared hardship ran deep. Later the Commandery Princess died of an illness she had taken in those early years, leaving her one daughter, Tao Nanyun, and the Grand Princess begged the emperor to make the girl a Commandery Princess and watched over her all the more.

The Grand Princess doted on Tao Nanyun, and was fond of the Yang children too, so the lodge had put the two households together, and now the courtyard was full of laughter, a world apart from the still, shut quiet elsewhere, and the Grand Princess felt the gladder for it with every day.

"With all the tangled business of late, it's a comfort at last to have children laughing about." The Grand Princess watched the two youngest Yang children and could not help a sigh.

"Is it the Imperial Academy business still?" With no one near, Tao Nanyun spoke low. "Hasn't the emperor already reproved those few students who asked to leave of their own accord? Why does it trouble you still, Grand Princess?"

"Reproved, yes, but the sting of what they said still rankles." The Grand Princess herself could not have said whether it was anger or a sigh, but brother and sister are of one heart, and seeing her brother galled, how could she be easy? "Those few students went too far. They dared make use of the scandal to plead their own case, saying they asked to stop their studies and leave the Imperial Academy only to spare themselves men's gossip. Every one of them is from a titled house. The Jinzhou prefectural school scandal was a local leaking of the prefectural exam questions, with no tie to the Imperial Academy, yet as the case was traced further, an officer of the education office spoke out of turn, boasting he could make friends among the capital's powerful, and that even students who'd had a hand in the scandal and failed the departmental exam could be smoothed into the Imperial Academy or the Grand Academy, and bide their time there."

"Absurd! As if the Imperial Academy and the Grand Academy were places one slips into by pulling strings. The law is plain, and who may enter and study is set by rule. It's no thing for a lawless, insolent officer to talk his way round." Tao Nanyun, hearing it, was uneasy too. "So those few students who wanted to leave the Imperial Academy of their own accord heard of this, and feared the Academy would be dragged in and themselves with it, and that's why they acted so?"

The Grand Princess's cold smile came and went in a flash, but her voice stayed very even. "I don't believe it. More likely they've each found a way into some famous private academy of good name and wide influence, and this business came up just in time to serve as their cover."

Catching the Grand Princess's scorn, Tao Nanyun shook her head helplessly. She knew well enough the state of the Imperial Academy these days, and having been close to the Grand Princess from childhood she spoke plainly, without roundabout ways. "Grand Princess, that the Imperial Academy as it stands now should breed such thoughts in them is really no wonder. Where they went wrong was in seizing on others' wrongdoing in the scandal to slap the emperor's face. But that their hearts should thirst so to study, each looking to his own long road, there's nothing much to blame in that."

"How should I not know it..." The Grand Princess sighed softly too. "If the matter of the schools is to be weighed and weighed and put off again, then three years on there'll only be more holes bored through, each one filthier than the last, and when it comes to that, none of us will have a face left to show."

The children heard none of the two women's gloomy talk, and romped on, merry as ever. Yang Lingxian coaxed his sister a good while before she came round, and remembering that the emperor had bidden the noble houses ride and make sport at the spring suburban pasture next day, thought he would go and pick out a good horse for her to ride, to turn her mind from her brooding and set her to proper play and air. So off he went to the lodge's stables to choose one himself. But he looked over several, and they were either too hot-tempered or too tall and big, none of them fit for his sister, and the groom who went with him said as much. "Most of these horses are set aside for the men who'll ride in the hunt, young master. To find one just right for your sister, that's a thing of pure luck."

"Why not try this one?"

A voice cut in just then.

Somehow Yang Lingxian felt he'd heard it somewhere, though not so very well, and when he turned to look he started, and without thinking made to roll up his sleeve for a fight.

For the one who'd spoken was none other than the youth he and Zhuo Xiheng had met two months back at the open market at the Great Xiangguo Temple. The youth's rude behavior then had made Yang Lingxian burn on Zhuo Xiheng's behalf, and though the youth had only fled the scene and done no ill turn in return for a good one, to his mind it had been the height of rudeness.

But Yang Lingxian had no chance to call the youth to account for that day and what he'd done.

For the groom beside him had already dropped to one knee in salute. "Your servant greets the Crown Prince."

"The... the Crown Prince?"

Yang Lingxian was dumbstruck.

He badly wanted to feel at his own neck, to be sure his head was still on it.

The Crown Prince had always kept close within the palace and never gone about in the world, held to a rule stricter even than his sister's girlhood training. Yang Lingxian had been into the palace a few times and never once seen him, so how was he to know the youth at the Great Xiangguo Temple that day was the high and royal heir, second only to one man and above ten thousand? He could only follow into the salute, and hope his own rashness had not brought trouble on Xiheng.

"You're General Yang's younger brother?" The Crown Prince was mild and easy, and did not stand on the forms to press them. He had both the groom and Yang Lingxian rise before he spoke. "This horse I'd made ready for Princess Qingshan, but she's only just over a fever, and the empress won't have her out of the palace to meet the wind, so it's come to nothing. I heard just now that you were looking for a fit horse for your sister. You're near my own age, so our sisters are likely of an age too. Take it and let her ride it at the hunt tomorrow."

Cold sweat broke out on Yang Lingxian, and he only said he dared not, but the Crown Prince gave an easy smile, as if he understood well enough why the other was so on edge, and sent the groom off first, then said Yang Lingxian should try the horse. So the two of them, one before and one behind, led the horse out of the stable to the trial ground beyond the lodge.

Seeing no one about, Yang Lingxian went down at once on one knee, and begged pardon with a military man's salute. "Forgive me, Crown Prince!"

"I haven't blamed you... That day it was truly I who acted out of keeping." The Crown Prince smiled, his voice softer by some degrees than the spring breeze. "I didn't call you out to pick a quarrel, but... to ask you something."

Yang Lingxian was a blunt, honest sort, but no fool, and he guessed the Crown Prince meant to ask about Zhuo Xiheng. Afraid of bringing trouble on his friend, his words came faster than before. "Crown Prince, my brother meant no offense to you. That day he truly didn't know who you were! It was I who was coarse and ill-spoken. Don't hold it against him. If you're angry, be angry at me! He's the most mindful, well-behaved man there is!"

"You've mistaken me." The Crown Prince lowered his eyes, and helped Yang Lingxian up. "But hearing you plead for him so sets my mind much more at ease."

Now Yang Lingxian was lost. What was it the Crown Prince meant to ask, and what had set his mind at ease?

"May I ask, are you and the fourth young master of the Zhuo house bosom friends?" The Crown Prince's bright eyes were fixed on Yang Lingxian, and he said it slowly, word by word.

"That we are!" Yang Lingxian said, not without pride, for before him a close, quiet soul like Zhuo Xiheng had not had a single friend. "We're true brothers, the two of us. He may be a man of few words, but he treats people with his whole heart, a friend worth opening your breast to!"

The Crown Prince nodded. "Then would you be willing to carry him a word from me?"

"He's home on his spring rest these two days. Why not, when we go back, let me bring him to see you?" Yang Lingxian did not see why the thing had to come round through him so. The Crown Prince had been out of imperial favor in his early years, but these two years he'd gained ground and come through, and the emperor would even keep him by now and then when affairs of state were discussed, and had warmed toward the empress besides, so that though he was still no man of blazing power, he'd lost the old awkwardness of his place, and none dared slight him now. And Yang Lingxian was no sort to fawn on the high and tread on the low. The Crown Prince was the Crown Prince, and if he had a charge to give, of course he'd bring Zhuo Xiheng to wait on him.

But at these words a fear and an urgency came into the Crown Prince's eyes, and he shook his head hard. "No... I can't be seen with anyone of the Zhuo house... But this touches Zhuo Xiheng's eldest brother, Zhuo Siheng. I once had great kindness of him, and can't stand by and do nothing. Only I've no one I can trust to carry it between us... Seeing just now how you shielded Zhuo Xiheng, and took all the blame on yourself, I can tell the bond between you is no false one, and I think I can trust you, and that you'd be willing to help the Zhuo house. Isn't that so?"

The Crown Prince's tone went from urgent to gentle, and at the last the hope in his eyes melted into an earnest smile, which left Yang Lingxian wholly at a loss, so that he could only nod again and again and give his word, saying of course he wished the whole family of his friend safe and well, and that if there were trouble he'd take it on himself, for sure, to carry the word.

Only then did the Crown Prince draw a deep breath, and look round to make certain no one was by, and say low, "Zhuo Siheng's appointment as Education Intendant of the Jinzhou prefecture was settled between the Ministry of Personnel and my imperial father together, and Minister Zheng Jingtang seemed... very keen on it. I fear the Tang house laid a plan long ago to have Lord Zhuo... to have him take this post, though why, I can't make out. I want you to tell Zhuo Xiheng, and have him pass to his brother that this thing was settled in secret between Zheng Jingtang and my father. I may not know the reason, but with his ability he'll surely steer clear of trouble and hold the post in safety."

Yang Lingxian had not thought it so great a matter, and his mind went blank a moment, but the thought that his own brother, were he in such peril, would be his to help without a second's hesitation, together with the bond of his friendship with Zhuo Xiheng, drove him on past all else. A man's word was worth a thousand in gold, and how could he go back on what he'd just promised?

"Rest easy, Crown Prince. I'll carry the word, come what may."

With the thing said, the Crown Prince seemed at last to loosen all through, and looked at Yang Lingxian with his faintly sorrowful eyes, full of trust, and said in earnest, "Thank you, Brother Yang, for your help. Crown Prince though I am, I'm not so free and easy and glad in my life as most people in this world. But to be able to trust a man so openly is a feeling truly too good..."