The Marquis of Dingyuan’s study.
Bai Zheng, who hadn’t had a proper rest in three days, still looked bright-eyed as she flipped through the list Lan Xun handed her and listened to his report.
“Miss Bai,” Lan Xun said, “there are three candidates Lord Dingyuan is considering for the vacant vice minister post at the Ministry of War.
“This Liu Zhang is in his thirties—he’s the nephew of Vice-Liu, who used to serve under the late marquis. Sharp, quick-witted, good with people; he can make himself at home anywhere. He’s been aiming for this vice-minister slot for a long time and has already sweet-talked Minister Han to secure his backing. But he started working the angles too early—he’s too clever by half, and I worry whether his loyalty to the marquis will hold.”
“Then there’s Zhang Kui,” Lan Xun continued. “He’s approaching forty. Thanks to family connections he entered the Ministry of War at a young age and knows its internal affairs and personnel like the back of his hand. The problem is he’s one-track—stuck on rules and can’t bend. The higher-ups don’t favor him. After twenty years he’s still stuck in the middle ranks and hasn’t managed to climb to a vice minister’s chair.”
“As for Wang Lin…” Lan Xun paused, and Bai Zheng looked up, catching him with a sharp glance.
A flicker of awkwardness crossed Lan Xun’s face before he went on more carefully. “He’s the youngest of the three. Lacks experience and relies on a bit of cleverness to get noticed by the marquis. I don’t think, Miss Bai, you need to give him serious consideration.”
“Oh?” Bai Zheng arched an eyebrow, amused. “So you’re saying Wang Lin has some talent and managed to fool the marquis?”
“Lord Dingyuan is astute and martial—he wouldn’t be fooled so easily!” Lan Xun hurried to defend, a fervent member of Feng Linyuan’s fan club. “It’s just that the marquis is swamped with matters of state and hasn’t met Wang Lin often, so he doesn’t really know him. It’s easy to be taken in by appearances—”
Lan Xun’s voice trailed, growing lower.
Bai Zheng laughed outright. That he would so brazenly bad-mouth someone—clearly there was history between Wang Lin and Lan Xun. Whatever had happened, it had left Lan Xun eager to smear him in public. But Bai Zheng had little appetite for palace gossip; she was already overwhelmed with the work on her desk. Still, Feng Linyuan’s charge to her before he left tugged at her conscience.
“A charge given is a charge kept,” she thought. Small posts like a third-rank vice minister might seem insignificant, but when the time came the people in those seats could influence the fate of a plan. There could be no mistakes in Feng Linyuan’s path of revenge.
Only after she formally took over the affairs of the Dingyuan household three days ago did Bai Zheng fully understand something she had missed while being preoccupied with her shop and the marquis’s convalescence the past month. Outwardly, Feng Linyuan had seemed to be lying low, his only apparent concern arranging the Tianyi Pavilion to search for Zhou Yuanning. Behind the scenes, however, he had already been putting things in motion.
No wonder—he hadn’t been sure he could find Zhou Yuanning within a month. Knowing his days were numbered, he had accelerated his plans and quietly activated the people he’d planted over the years. While Bai Zheng had been obsessing over her business and his recovery, she had heard her father, Bai Yinan, talk over meals about court affairs—the Chief Justice of the Dali Temple exposed by Prince Feng Jingxuan for corruption and dismissed; the Minister of Revenue forced into early retirement after accusations brought by Crown Prince Feng Jingye about misconduct in educating his son—and simply let these things slide in one ear and out the other.
On the surface, an uninformed observer might have shrugged them off as the latest round in the succession struggle between Princes Feng Jingxuan and Feng Jingye. But when she opened the notebooks Feng Linyuan left, Bai Zheng saw a pattern: the vacancies created by those events had been filled by Feng Linyuan’s own people.
She felt a faint chill. What perseverance and patience the man must possess—seven years to weave an invisible net so tight that, even when he began to draw it closed with a decisive sweep, no one noticed.
Bai Zheng exhaled. Feng Linyuan had handed her seven years of careful work on a platter. If he trusted her with it, she would honor that trust.
She smiled half-ironically and let her gaze rest on the page for Wang Lin.
Wang Lin. Born in the tenth month of the Dinghai year. His grandfather had been a vanguard under General Bai Qiying; his father served as a cavalry captain guarding the imperial parks in Yongding’s southwest suburbs. He’d joined the capital’s Imperial Guards at eighteen and had been there for more than a decade...
Bai Zheng frowned. His pedigree was respectable—his grandfather had indeed served under her own grandfather, Bai Qiying. She knew her grandfather’s temperament: a man of unquestioned loyalty, who served his country without thought for himself. Men who had been chosen to serve as his vanguard were likely cut from similar cloth. As for Wang Lin’s father—the captain of the park troops—that unit, like the Imperial Guards where Bai Zheng herself served, was trusted by Feng Linche to protect the royal household.
Imperial Guards.
An idea struck her. Lan Xun watched her face go from frown to light, his heart thumping with anticipation.
“Miss Bai,” he blurted before she could speak, “you can’t simply trust him because his grandfather served the old general! Blood doesn’t mean—he might be a scoundrel—”
Bai Zheng burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Lan Xun asked, bewildered.
She smiled, eyes crinkling. “Lan Xun, beware—people who speak ill of others behind their backs often find themselves bitten by mosquitoes at night.”
Lan Xun blinked, reflexively retorting, “It’s only March—where would mosquitoes come from?”
“Well, who knows—maybe they’re raised by Wang Lin,” Bai Zheng shrugged, deadpan.
Color rose in Lan Xun’s cheeks as he finally caught the teasing in her tone, but he was too proud to admit it. “I’m a straight-laced man. Mosquitoes won’t bite me!”
Bai Zheng glanced at the sky outside, snapped the booklet shut, and rose with decisive grace. “Trust those you employ; don’t use those you doubt. If there are no other objections, have Liu Zhang appointed to the vice minister post at the Ministry of War. As for Zhang Kui and Wang Lin, I have other, more fitting positions in mind for them.”
“And what positions would those be?” Lan Xun asked.