Li Fei was not surprised by Zhao Bing's request for a private word.
This fellow was an emperor, when all was said and done. However genial his temperament, however highly he thought of her, however great the merit she had earned, his manner today had run just a touch too warm.
She let concern show on her face and asked of her own accord:
"In what matter may this minister serve Your Majesty?"
Zhao Bing worked his lips, but no words came out, as though the matter were too awkward to broach.
Li Fei understood at once, and spoke first:
"Is it about naming the heir? Whatever Your Majesty wishes to ask, please speak plainly. This minister will hold nothing back and tell all she knows."
"I wish to know … if he were to continue my line for me, would it do any harm to his body? And if so, would it leave any lasting affliction?"
Though there was no one around, Zhao Bing still dropped his voice.
— The hell?
Li Fei's pupils quivered, and a headache began to gather behind them.
The question this dog of an emperor had asked was not "how do I persuade Lu Qianfan" or "is there some other way," but "will it harm his body"!
And what did that mean?
Lu Qianfan was willing to bear it!
This turn lay entirely beyond anything Li Fei had foreseen.
She had assumed that an ambitious power-broker like Lu Qianfan could never, under any circumstances, be willing to give up his career to play house-husband. So even knowing this mediocre ruler could never keep Lu Qianfan in check, she had volunteered the scheme anyway, meaning only to disgust him and to sow discord between the two along the way.
More than that, Li Fei had counted on the Song Emperor coming to her for help once he was rebuffed. At that point she could smoothly propose the Surrogate Birth scheme: pretending to have another woman carry the child for them, while in truth that woman would be made to bear Zhao Bing's own blood. And since the imperial house possessed means of verifying parentage, to keep the ruse from unraveling, Nie Yunyi would have no choice but to ambush and kill Lu Qianfan, then flee a thousand li away, completing the perfect one-for-one trade.
By then, with a useless lump like Zhao Bing, wouldn't the imperial physician, deeply favored and holding the Crown Prince in her grip, be free to knead him into any shape she pleased?
In fact, Li Fei had even prepared her follow-up move: some pretext about "mismatched blood types" would be enough to make the dog emperor abandon the idea of tapping a favored consort of the inner palace and go looking for another woman's womb instead. And of course, Li Fei would point straight at Xu Yuzhong's wife, declaring her the only suitable mother-to-be in all of Lin'an, repaying him for the difficulties he had made at the birthday banquet.
And yet, Lu Qianfan seemed to have agreed?
This not only threw Li Fei's plans into disarray, it rendered every scheme she had laid to sow discord, both those already deployed and those readied but not yet used, entirely worthless.
So long as Lu Qianfan carried Zhao Bing's child, his position would be unshakeable; no one could pry him loose.
"Minister Li?"
Seeing Li Fei fall silent, Zhao Bing grew anxious.
Right now he was nothing but a husband desperate for a child and burdened with an unspeakable ailment, while Li Fei was the one obstetrician who could cure him. Her every gesture set Zhao Bing's mind racing and left him on edge.
"Your Majesty … by rights there should be no trouble. But to be safe, this minister must see Lord Lu in person," Li Fei said slowly.
For a single instant she balked, tempted to simply lay the Surrogate Birth option before the Song Emperor, but she held herself back.
After all, with certain things, being begged for them and offering them up yourself led to very different outcomes.
"That's fine."
Zhao Bing let out a breath, then said with a touch of urgency, "I'll take you to see him right away."
"Very well." Li Fei nodded firmly.
"Qiaoqiao, try this pastry."
Su Wen lifted the silk cloth off the basket and brought out a box of green cakes.
Qiao'er took a bite. It was light and sweet, a faint fragrance of green tea lingering on her lips and teeth. Her eyelids trembled, and she said softly:
"Do you like the taste of green tea too, Sister?"
Su Wen's hands paused, an instant of unnaturalness crossing her face before she said, as if nothing were amiss:
"Mm. Lately I've found green tea fragrant and refined, quite pleasing to the palate …"
Do you mean the tea, or the person?
Qiao'er gazed blankly at the poised, otherworldly woman before her, and once again heard the sound of sludge gurgling and welling up beside her ear.
"Qiaoqiao, what's the matter?"
Delicate and sharp-eyed, Su Wen sensed the change in Qiaoqiao and asked.
"It's nothing. I've just been rushing about these past days, and I'm a little tired …"
"Rushing about for what? You may as well tell me," Su Wen said, full of concern.
"It's nothing …"
Qiao'er lowered her eyes and shook her head.
"Since you call me Sister, there's no need to keep me at arm's length."
Su Wen took Qiao'er's wrist, her voice gentle and low. "Qiaoqiao, if you run into any trouble, you must tell me …"
Had Xu Yuzhong witnessed this scene, he would have been all the more certain of his own judgment: that this seemingly aloof and distant Empress was remarkably kind to her own people.
Meeting Su Wen's earnest gaze, Qiao'er stayed silent a moment, then drew a stack of blood-written letters from inside her robes:
"She means to file a petition before the throne."
Without a flicker of expression, Su Wen took the sheets stained with mottled blood. Her eyes swept over the harrowing words, and her face grew ever graver.
These blood letters each recorded, in the first person, the ordeals of different women as they were abused.
Though paper could not speak, Su Wen distinctly heard a throng of ill-fated women weeping out the pasts they could not bear to recall. Though the blood upon the pages had long since dried, in a daze she seemed to see tears of blood still flowing without end.
It was a long while before she set the letters down, closed her eyes to think, and then asked:
"These … were they gathered at the bidding of that benefactor of yours?"
Qiao'er nodded gently:
"Mm."
"Do you know who it is these women accuse?"
Of course Qiao'er knew.
After all, the blood had been bought by her own hand, masked and unseen; the words upon the pages had been written by the female ghosts under Li Fei's own direct guidance; and the villain those fabricated little compositions painted, one who devoured people whole and did not spit out the bones, was Zhao Jingren, the very man who had framed them over two plates of fish.
"A sinner," Qiao'er said.
"Qiaoqiao, Zhao Jingren is Lu Qianfan's adopted son. His power is immense. You mustn't act rashly."
Su Wen sighed and went on to explain Zhao Jingren's background.
"But she told me that when a woman is persecuted, she should not be afraid, should not yield, should not shrink back."
Qiao'er looked at Su Wen with resolve. "We should be angry. We should roar. We should resist."
"It seems that, more than I, this benefactor you've met is better fit to be a model for all the women of the realm."
Su Wen gave a self-mocking smile, then counseled her patiently. "But Qiaoqiao, I don't mean for you to let the matter drop … It's only that Zhao Jingren is an official of the court. If a few letters alone, without so much as a single witness, were enough to fix a crime on him, the court would fall into chaos … So we must plan for the long game. At the very least we need a witness who can confront Zhao Jingren face to face."
A witness, of course, could not be produced. Qiao'er shook her head slightly:
"Even you find the villain too strong, so how could those wronged women dare to accuse him to his face? They too fear retaliation, and so they rage in silence, not daring to speak. That is how Zhao Jingren has thrown his weight around all this time and never been exposed."
"Besides, to speak such unbearable ordeals aloud is no different from tearing open a scar … That they could write these blood letters at all took great courage. It would be wrong to demand more of them."
"I hadn't thought it through."
Su Wen sighed, feeling the weight of the obstacles. "But this way, it will be very hard to win them justice …"
"Your Majesty, you know how the world is now. A woman's chastity is prized above her very life."
Once more Qiao'er trotted out the rhetoric Li Fei had taught her. "Without some grievance or grudge, these women could hardly cast away their good names merely to slander and frame that beast in human skin, Lord Zhao, could they?"
For a moment Su Wen was struck speechless.
"Your Majesty, you needn't trouble yourself over this."
Qiao'er folded the letters. "If she is killed in some villain's revenge, I will take up the petition in her place; and if I follow her to the grave, there will still be thousands upon thousands of women who rise up."
In that moment, Su Wen distinctly saw, behind Qiao'er, the shadow of her father, Zhang Zhicheng.
That seemingly honest, plodding man, who, after finally rising to prominence, had charged alone and without hope of return against a monstrous dragon whose power shook the whole court, unrepentant even in death.
Much as Su Wen admired Lord Zhang's fervor, she could never bring herself to approve of the way her benefactor had thrown his life away for the honor of the Great Song, dragging his family down with him.
Just as Su Wen's thoughts churned, the laughter of the immortal within the mirror suddenly rose in her mind.
In the past, she laughed only when the imperial physician appeared.
— Could she have come?
Su Wen's eyes went instinctively to the doorway, but she quickly came to her senses. The imperial physician had already been called away by the Emperor and could not possibly be here.
She turned her gaze back, meeting Qiao'er's eyes once more.
In her daze, Su Wen felt that Qiao'er's pitch-black eyes bore a strange resemblance to the imperial physician's.
Yet surely one was a sweet, quiet little girl, and the other a woman of a thousand charms, an immortal maiden … Could it be?!
Su Wen's eyelids trembled; a faint suspicion took shape.
She pressed her fingertip lightly against the blood letters Qiao'er meant to take back, and said gently:
"Qiaoqiao, if you trust me, leave this matter to me to handle … I can deliver these to His Majesty myself."
"Compared with filing a petition, having me pass them along is far more convenient. It can be done without drawing eyes, and you needn't fear any villain's revenge."
Su Wen's voice was very gentle, yet it carried a trace of the authority of the mistress of the Empress's palace.
"But, Your Majesty …"
Qiao'er wavered.
"Didn't I say? There's no need to be so distant. Just call me Sister."
Su Wen smiled faintly and tucked the stack of blood letters away.
"Thank you, Sister."
Qiao'er kept her head lowered, as if shy to hand this hot potato to Su Wen.
But the sludge, erupting with a roar, all but drowned her soul.
Oblivious to any of it, Su Wen looked at the sweet, delicate girl and said softly:
"Tell me more about that benefactor of yours …"
Walking along the cobblestone path, Li Fei noticed that her Morality Value had dropped another notch, falling to -35, and that the Blood Demon Scripture in her hand had grown more vivid still, its Spell Damage rising to 52.5%.
This was only to be expected.
On one hand she was scattering radical feminist ideas, toying with people's hearts, and inciting Qiao'er to deceive others; on the other she was plotting a Surrogate Birth scheme that even moderate feminism could never tolerate, a double ruin visited upon a woman's mind and body alike.
A pity, then, that this little-composition ploy had been arranged for nothing … With Lu the Eunuch-Dog willing to bear a child, no amount of sowing discord on her part would come to anything.
Forcing a smile, Li Fei let her gaze skim past the clustered blossoms lining the way as she threaded down the cobbled path, while the sound of a zither, plaintive as weeping, as grief pouring out, drew nearer from afar.
At last she laid eyes on Lu Qianfan.
His crimson robes blazed brighter than red peonies, yet even they could not outshine the beauty of the one who played. Head bowed, he coaxed the strings; his falling black hair swayed like tender willow branches, graceful in its motion. The melody was faintly bitter and mournful, as though a lovelorn soul were pouring out the feelings of the heart.
The melody broke off all at once. The player, of a beauty neither clearly male nor female, lifted his head, and upon seeing Zhao Bing at Li Fei's side, that face lovely enough to shame the fish into sinking and the geese into falling bloomed into a smile, his eyes brimming with tenderness and honeyed affection.
— Big brother, you're supposed to be a power-broker! Don't tell me you and this mediocre ruler are actually in love?
The muttering rose in Li Fei's mind, though her smile never wavered as she cupped her hands. "This humble minister greets Lord Lu."
"'Lord' is more than I deserve."
Lu Qianfan spoke in a tone neither warm nor cold: "The immortal maiden's fame has soared these past days, and her divine powers are vast. I am but a common mortal. How could I be worthy of being called 'Lord'?"
Hearing the barb in his words, Li Fei let her smile fade as well:
"I am now a minister of the Great Song. I ought, of course, to understand the order of rank and station."
"If you truly understood rank, how could you dream of climbing to heaven in a single stride? Even General Nie made a point of returning to Lin'an to smooth the road for the immortal maiden."
A smile surfaced on Lu Qianfan's face, yet there were plainly knives in his words.
"Lord Lu misunderstands. This minister only —"
Li Fei mouthed the polite formalities, though inside she was full of doubt, unable to make out what Lu Qianfan was really scheming.
If he didn't love Zhao Bing, there was no reason he would so readily bear the mediocre ruler a child; yet here he clearly had the inclination, and still he spoke to her, his one and only obstetrician, with veiled thrusts and jabs. Wasn't that simply making trouble for himself?
"Enough now, Qianfan, Minister Li."
Sensing that the mood between the two had gone sour, Zhao Bing hurried to smooth things over. "You are both my left and right arms, pillars of the Great Song. There will be no shortage of chances for you to work together in the days ahead …"
"Your Majesty speaks truly."
At this Lu Qianfan's manner swung a full hundred and eighty degrees. "From now on I'll have to rely on the immortal maiden a great deal."
"Should Lord Lu have any command, this minister will give it her every effort."
Li Fei answered, agreeable as ever.
After a few more empty pleasantries, Zhao Bing suddenly asked:
"That, ah … Minister Li, how do you find his health?"
"This minister must examine him to know."
Making a great show of it, Li Fei asked Lu Qianfan about his height, weight, medical history, and the like, then drew a few drops of blood into a porcelain vial, claiming she needed to take it back for testing.
Lu Qianfan was compliant from start to finish, and only once Li Fei had finished did he ask with a smile:
"By the way, the immortal maiden was in Luyuan County before this, was she not?"
"That's right."
Li Fei nodded.
"Not long ago, a child of mine lost his life in Luyuan County. For those few days, I truly could not swallow a bite …"
Lu Qianfan let the sigh fall, as if by chance, as if by design.
At his words, Li Fei's heart lurched.
Lu Qianfan's adopted son, Lü Zhengchun, had died by her own hand … and there was still a living eyewitness.
If Squire Wang, who had fled to some distant place, were dragged back by Lu Qianfan's men, the Demon Suppression Bureau had no shortage of ways to make him tell the truth. And then the great cauldron of blame for murdering an official of the court would come crashing down, snug and firm, upon Li Fei's head.
For Lu Qianfan to raise the matter now was plainly a warning; he might even already have a fix on Squire Wang's movements, which would be as good as having Li Fei by the throat.
"My condolences, Lord Lu. Be at peace in your grief."
Li Fei knew inwardly this was ill, yet sorrow rose on her face as she set about consoling Lu Qianfan.
"Damn it all!"
Deep in the night, one Fireball after another lit up the darkness beyond the walls of Lin'an, rolling out wave upon wave of heat.
Astride her broom, Li Fei vented her magic without restraint, scorching stone and hill, grass and tree, cheeks puffed with temper.
Her plan to sow discord had gone utterly bankrupt; her notion of The Crown Prince Replaced by a Cat had foundered before she could ever put it into motion. A single trip to the residence of Nine Thousand Years had not only failed to sound out Lu Qianfan's true state, it had left her learning that her own tail might well be caught.
One piece of bad news after another left Li Fei feeling the post of Commander drift ever further from her grasp.
"Enough of it."
At last, standing before a withered tree set ablaze by a Fireball, she murmured under her breath, "In any case, I've already gotten more than my money's worth out of this trip. Worst comes to worst, tomorrow I'll pay my visit to the Demon-Locking Tower, then run off at once with Her Majesty the Empress, back to Loxibrook … and once I've grown stronger, I'll come back and steamroll them all."
For all she said it, blazing firelight leapt in her pupils, mirroring the resentment and ambition within her.
"Would you like to rest?"
Xiao Lian, in her white dress and black hair, pressed close. First she dabbed at nonexistent sweat on Li Fei with a handkerchief, then wound a pair of porcelain-pale, lotus-root arms around her waist, her soft, boneless body nestling tight against Li Fei's, hoping to melt away the restlessness of the one she held with the coolness of her flesh.
"I'm in a foul temper right now," Li Fei said, her face falling.
The young female ghost, wreathed in cold and ghostly air, blinked in surprise, then gave a charming, gentle smile, tucking a lock of hair behind one ear with slender jade fingertips, her clear black-and-white eyes rippling with infatuation.
She crouched down slowly to tie Li Fei's shoelace, only that bloodless, bewitching little face tilted upward, taking in every detail of the small motion of Li Fei biting down on her lower lip.
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