Chapter Text
霸業成時為帝王，
Success in conquering would have placed him on the throne,
不成且作富家郎。
Failure should have given him an easy life of wealth.
誰知天意無私曲，
Who could have guessed that the Heavens ordained such an austere path?
郿塢方成已滅亡。
His palace was newly finished, but his future lay wrecked.
《赐董卓》 宋朝: 罗本
"For Dong Zhuo," by Luo Ben (Song Dynasty)
When Tong Lei was born, his father, a common beta man, had been three houses away, ears ringing constantly with frustrated shouts and rattling dice while the collar of his shirt splashed with cheap wine from the bottle held in his gnarled hands. When Tong Lei’s mother, a common beta woman, had him on her breast and was feeding him his first meal, his father had stumbled in, smelling of drink and clutching a rock that he had been convinced looked exactly like an ingot of pure silver.
This child is a good luck charm, the once-again father had shouted, and then tried to write down the child’s new name. In the morning, when the haze of drink had finally faded, his wife passed him the piece of paper – the certificate proving the boy’s existence – to him:
Instead of a single rock, he had written three of them. Instead of naming his son Tong Shi, like he and his wife had agreed because rocks were strong and sturdy and those were good qualities for a son, he had named him Tong Lei.
He hadn’t even realised that Lei was a word, much less what it meant!
His wife had smacked him hard on the head, threw the rock he had brought back into a bowl of water, and given it to him as ‘soup’ for breakfast.
When Tong Lei was five, he was told this story with his little brother, the properly-named Tong Shi, in his lap. He had looked at his mother, her knuckles rubbed raw with lye from her life as a washerwoman, and at his father, who carried bruises on his shoulders from his life as a dealer wo was beaten whenever a customer’s luck turned, and thought:
I will be your good luck charm.
At ten years old, he walked up to one of the black-clad officers of the Investigative Bureau and volunteered his services. They took him by hand and brought them to see their Chairman, who smiled and greeted him by name.
And his family never saw him again.
(He saw them just fine: from the rooftop of their new house, from the corner of the pillar of the schools his younger siblings were now enrolled in, and from the side of the street of the shops that hired his older brothers.
They lived well, and there was even a little wooden plank with his name set in the corner of the garden at the back of the house that his parents regularly cleaned and placed offerings, and Tong Lei was content.)
The hoofbeats of His Highness the Eldest Prince’s horse had barely faded from the capital when His Highness the Crown Prince had called His Highness the Imperial Princess to his Palace.
(You must refer to them by their full term of address and their titles all the time, the head eunuch of the Empress’s palace reminded all of them every single morning. Even when you are only thinking of them, you must use the entire term of address and their title.
Tong Lei knew better than to question such orders, especially out loud. And there was no need for him to anyway: the Empress was strict with propriety – how could she not, when she was Empress based on her blood ties to an imperial family that was already dead and replaced by the current Emperor? – and any slip of tongue would end up with a servant’s head rolling on the floor.
Or floating in the nearby river. Or their body dangling from the beams. It really depended, Tong Lei had learned, on which assassin had been sent. There were a few rumours of people in the palace dying from being shot through the eye with the arrowhead poking out from the backs of their skulls, which likely meant that one of the imperial family was rearing a high-level archer and letting them use the servants as target practice.
Anyway, regarding the titles: Tong Lei never spoke when in the presence of royalty, and so there really was no point in him continuously practicing in his head. He tended to simply choose either the title or the term of address instead of using both; it was faster this way.)
Her Majesty had decided, when the Crown Prince had turned ten, to give her son his own little building – the term she used was ‘cottage,’ the better description was ‘estate’ – within her own palace. At the ripe old age of eleven, Tong Lei was considered better suited for His Highness than Her Majesty, and thus was given over to “that little cottage that my darling son can practice his skills in management of a household, and, besides, he’s a little old to always be hanging around my skirts, isn’t he? Boys need space to grow and roam, after all.”
“Here,” one of the other servants said, passing the tray of sweets he had carried from the kitchens into Tong Lei’s hands. “Your turn, Wulang.”
“Thank you, Sanlang,” Tong Lei murmured, taking the tray from the boy judged by both the housekeeper of the ‘cottage’ and the Crown Prince himself to be too ugly to appear in front of the Princess or any other important guests. “You should take a break now.”
“As if,” Sanlang – a name given by His Highness because he was the third servant to appear in his sight, just like Tong Lei had been the fifth and was thus renamed Wulang – snorted. “I still have to go clean up the gardens. His Highness the Crown Prince had left quite a few things there after his drawing lessons this morning.”
“Avoid the shed,” Tong Lei advised, already turning his back. “Jiulang,” the ninth, “told me that he heard wailing coming from it that night.”
“Ugh,” Sanlang shuddered. “Is this place haunted already?”
“Her Majesty the Empress has always said the whole Imperial Palace is haunted,” Tong Lei said, putting on a pious tone. “The blood of the previous imperial family—”
“—has stained the walls and can never be erased, wooo,” Sanlang flapped his sleeves, grinning out of the corner of his mouth. “Get going already.”
“I’m giving His Highness the Crown Prince more time to talk to His Highness the Princess,” Tong Lei said, putting on a prim pretence. “But alright.” Before Sanlang could reply, Tong Lei had already started walking, and managed to duck his head down and walk perfectly with the silent, shuffling steps of all imperial servants when the housekeeper suddenly appeared out of the corner of his eyes.
“Good, you’re on time,” the man – the only adult servant belonging to the Crown Prince – said, crossing his arms. “Set the tray down and come right back out.”
“Alright,” Tong Lei nodded, and lowered his head even further and hunched his shoulders in when the housekeeper pushed open the doors to the front garden, where the Prince sat with his older brother the Princess under a pavilion.
“—had the kitchens make some of your favourite snacks, Er-jie,” the Crown Prince was saying, “but I guess they’re slow—”
“Oh, they’re here!” the Princess said, and there were flashes of brightly-coloured silk and bare feet when His Highness jumped from his seat and approached Tong Lei. “Oh, they look so pretty!”
“Ah, Er-jie,” the Crown Prince said, sounding a little flustered. “You don’t have to—”
“Set them down, set them down,” the Princess urged Tong Lei, his sleeve nearly smacking the servant in the face from his eagerness. “What are they? How did they make the chestnut shine like that? Ah, how did your servants even find chestnuts in this season, San-di?”
“I can’t answer any of your questions when you ask so many of them so quickly, Er-jie,” the Crown Prince said. The amusement in his tone was, Tong Lei guessed, supposed to sound indulgent of the Princess’s whims, but with the Crown Prince’s high, unbroken voice, he only sounded like he was whining.
“Oh well, you don’t need to answer them,” the Princess said. “I’m not really asking you anyway.”
As he set down the tray, Tong Lei shifted his head just in time to catch sight of the dark look crossing the Crown Prince’s face at his older brother’s words. A flick of his gaze down let him take in His Highness’s white-knuckled fist, and Tong Lei retreated, he watched carefully as the Crown Prince picked up the pastry made of chestnuts – and topped with a glazed one – and offered it to the Princess.
And the Princess turned his head away, picked up the one that was exactly identical, and ate that instead.
The Chairman was right, Tong Lei thought as he bowed to the two imperials who had already dismissed him from their sights. He had never once imagined the Chairman being wrong, of course, but there was always a sense of triumph when he realised, again, just how lucky he was to be chosen by someone like Chairman Chen to serve him.
“You really should,” the Crown Prince was saying, “eat more of them, Er-jie.”
“What about you, San-di?” the Princess asked, already putting one of the lychee-topped pastries to his mouth. “Aren’t you going to eat any?”
“I don’t like sweet things, Er-jie,” the Crown Prince said. He was blatantly lying: the fifteen-year-old pastry chefs in the kitchens had been trained specifically to serve His Highness’s sweet tooth. “So, they’re all—”
“Don’t be stupid,” the Princess huffed. “Of course you like sweets, San-di: you’re a kid.”
“But I’m not,” the Crown Prince protested. “Look at this place, Er-jie – I don’t live with Mother anymore, see?”
“You still live in the Empress’s Palace,” the Princess pointed out. “Just because you have a house to the side of her grounds doesn’t mean you don’t live with her anymore.”
“But—”
“If you really want to be a grown up,” the Princess steamrolled over the Crown Prince easily, “you have to move out and live in— in the city, like a proper Prince!”
“You mean like Da Ge,” the Crown Prince muttered.
“Exactly!” the Princess jabbed his finger at him. “Like Da Ge!”
A motion out of his eye. Tong Lei bowed once again to the two people who definitely no longer saw him, and walked backwards until he crossed the doors and closed them behind him. Then he braced himself—
Just in time to not sprawl all the way to the ground when the housekeeper’s palm smacked hard against the back of his head. “I told you to come back immediately!” the man hissed under his breath. “What were you doing, staying there? Are you trying to eavesdrop on their conversation?”
Yes, Tong Lei said. “No,” he said. “Sorry sir, I won’t dare to do it again, sir!”
“Go to the garden!” the man snapped. “Stay out of His Highness the Crown Prince’s sight for the rest of the day!”
Exactly as his duties required of him. Tong Lei bowed – deeply enough that his head nearly smacked against his knees – before he scurried away to the garden. A scan of the place with his eyes showed him that Sanlang was hiding and sleeping up one of the trees all the way to the other side of the garden from the shed, and Tong Lei bit back a smile before he headed straight for the shed.
The lock placed on the door was one that Zhu Ge the First Division Head had personally gifted him: it looked like a completely normal lock, complete with a keyhole, but actually could only be open if certain tiny panels in it were pressed in a precise order. His Excellency had shown him another version, one with numbers written on the body, and told him that this one now keeping the shed door shut was far, far more special.
Tong Lei knew that words like that were meant to make him more loyal, more willing to throw his life away to serve the Bureau. And he knew, too, that if he had nine lives, he would pledge each and every one of them to the Bureau.
Pocketing the lock, Tong Lei carefully eased the door open, slipped inside, and closed it again. Then, looking straight forward at the figure barely-lit by the light streaming in from the one window high above, he cracked his neck to the left, and then to the right.
“Sorry, Jiulang,” he told the slightly-older servant boy whom he had pounced upon, tied up, and shoved into this place. “I really didn’t want to do this.”
Jiulang stared at him, the white of his wide eyes almost the same shade as the cloth Tong Lei had shoved in between his teeth. He had somehow fallen to his side when Tong Lei had kindly placed him in a sitting position leaning against the wall.
“You know it’s just bad luck,” he continued. “You didn’t want to be the one that the Crown Prince chose, did you?” When Jiulang’s eyes went even wider and he made some incoherent muffled noises from behind his gag, Tong Lei waved a hand. “No one could hear me here, so don’t worry: I’m not going to be punished for being rude.”
A heavy thump rang out as Jiulang flipped himself over, legs kicking out against the wall as he tried to struggle out of the ropes. Convenient, really: Tong Lei strode over and shoved his hand into the other boy’s shove, digging until—
There it was: the little ceramic bottle, sealed with wax and topped with a tiny piece of red cloth, that he had seen the Crown Prince pass to Jiulang, and had overheard him saying that Jiulang should sprinkle into the pastries to be served to the Princess.
Tong Lei tossed it from one hand to the other, resisting with all of his might the urge to pop the bottle open to check because there really would be no point: he was of the First Division, not the Third – he had no skill whatsoever when it came to identifying poisons, much less using them.
Jiulang was making noises again. Tong Lei looked at him for a long moment before he sighed. Tucking the ceramic bottle inside his clothes – right beside his precious little lock – he reached down and undid the gag.
“When they told me,” Jiulang said, voice very hoarse, “that the Investigative Bureau has people everywhere and of every age, I didn’t believe them. I didn’t want to believe them.”
“You really should have,” Tong Lei said. “I’m sorry, Jiulang-ge.” He paused, and then said, very tentatively, “Would you mind giving me your real name?”
“Why?” the older boy snapped out.
“Because,” Tong Lei started, “your family…”
“Are you going to kill them as well?”
“No!” Tong Lei held up both hands. “Of course not. You’ve actually done nothing wrong here, Jiulang-ge—”
“—but I’m going to die—”
“—except having the bad luck of the Crown Prince choosing you to be the one to poison his brother’s food, and I had to stop you, and so now you know what I am and no one here should know what I am.” Tong Lei gulped down a breath, deeply regretting his decision to remove Jiulang’s gag. “If you know I’m from the Bureau, then you know why I’m doing this.”
“I’m a servant, and a son of peasants,” Jiulang said, tone bitter and eyes fixed on the wall behind Tong Lei’s head. “What do I know about the good of the country?”
Tong Lei let out a giggle he couldn’t quite muffle behind his hands. “I’m not doing it for the country,” he told Jiulang. “I’m doing this because the Chairman asked, and the first time we met, the Chairman greeted me by my name even before I gave it, and he always greets me by my name.” He reached and patted Jiulang on the shoulder. “And he agreed when I said I wanted to stage a bad cart accident that ended up with me ‘dead’ and my parents compensated for their loss of me, and now my entire family is well taken care of while I work for him.”
Jiulang opened his mouth. Closed it.
“So,” Tong Lei said. “I want to know your name so I can give it to him.”
“Zhang Jing,” Jiulang blurted out. “Zhang like in the common name, Jing like the character for well. My family lives in the Forty-Third North-Eastern District, my older brother operates the cart-stall selling jiajiangmian with his wife, and I have five younger siblings. My house is on the fifth street if you count from the north, and inside the house is a—”
“—well?” Tong Lei finished for him.
“Yes,” Jiulang bobbed his head.
Tong Lei looked at him for another moment before he reached out a hand and placed it over Zhang Jing’s eyes. “Zhang Jing,” he repeated. “Second son out of seven children of the Zhang family of the Forty-Third North-Eastern District of the capital of Qing. Named for the well that is in his house situated in the fifth street counted from the north.” He slipped his blade from beneath his boot. “His one older brother had married, and sells jiajiangmian with his sister-in-law… near the house?”
“Down the street and turn the corner,” Zhang Jing said.
“Sells jiajiangmian with his sister-in-law,” Tong Lei picked up the thread again, “from a cart-stall down the street and around the corner,” and slid the blade smoothly across that exposed throat, “from his family home.”
When he lifted his hand from Zhang Jing’s eyes, they were closed, and he looked peaceful. Tong Lei looked at him for another few seconds before he withdrew a small handkerchief from his pocket. He dropped it into the pool of blood gathering beneath Zhang Jing’s gaping-open throat, and, when the cloth was soaked, he wrapped it around the ceramic jar of the Crown Prince’s poison.
“Zhang Jing of the Forty-Third North-Eastern District,” he muttered under his breath as he pocketed the entire thing and started to head back out of the shed. “Second son out of seven….”
“It’s not a heat-inducing drug,” Fei Jie – Master Fei, Tong Lei corrected himself – declared, lifting his head from where he had been sniffing into the bottle. “What it is exactly, I’m not sure, because everything smells of blood.”
Tong Lei shrugged. “Zhang Jing of the Forty-Third North-Eastern District,” he repeated for the third time.
“Should I be thankful you didn’t decide to fill the damned bottle with Zhang Jing of the Forty-Third North-Eastern District?” Master Fei barked, raising an eyebrow. “There’s doing the right thing, kid, and there’s doing it the right way.”
“I don’t think Tong Lei here has done quite that badly,” the Chairman’s mild voice said from behind Master Fei. “Zhu Ge, has—”
“The body has been removed and will be returned to the family,” His Excellency the Head of the First Division, Zhu Ge, said, lifting his arms to salute the Chairman as he spoke. “They will be told that he did well serving His Highness the Crown Prince, and had died honourably in the line of duty.” He paused. “They will be compensated as well.”
“How,” Master Fei said, head tilted up as if speaking to the ceiling, “can a slit throat be explained by ‘died in the line of duty’?”
“Well,” His Excellency Zhu Ge said, “he tripped and fell.”
“On a knife?” Master Fei asked, sounding incredulous.
“Stranger things have happened,” His Excellency Zhu Ge said, sounding eminently reasonable.
“How,” Master Fei questioned the ceiling again, “is tripping and falling dying in the line of duty?”
“He might be trying to catch the Prince?” Tong Lei suggested.
“So,” Master Fei said, “he tripped and fell on a knife, and it just so happened the Prince fell on top of him, and that’s how he died in the line of duty?”
“Entirely plausible,” His Excellency Zhu Ge said, spreading out his hands.
“I,” Master Fei said, “want to punch you in the jaw.” A muscle was actually twitching in his brow. Tong Lei was in awe: he had heard of this happening, but had never witnessed it until now.
“A reasonable explanation,” the Chairman said, clearly trying to not laugh and failing, “will be given to the family, Fei Jie, so you really don’t have to worry.”
“Oh, I’m not worried about Zhang Jie of the Forty-Third North-Eastern District or his family,” Master Fei said, dragging a hand through his messy, scraggly hair that looked like someone had dyed a mop black and dropped it on top of his head. “I’m more concerned that Our Royal Highness the Crown Prince, the current heir to the thrice-damned Imperial Throne, is trying to poison his brother.”
“With pastries,” Tong Lei added helpfully.
“Why is that an issue?” Master Fei narrowed his eyes at him.
“It’s very simplistic,” Tong Lei shrugged. “Simple to do, simple to stop.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m only eleven, Master Fei, Your Excellency Zhu, Chairman.”
“He means to say,” the Chairman folded his hands on top of his lap and leaned back against his wheelchair, “that the Crown Prince did not only try to poison his brother, but did it in a very stupid manner.”
“The boy is only ten,” His Excellency Zhu Ge pointed out carefully.
“So, are you going to teach him to poison his brother better?” Master Fei asked, sounding even more disbelieving. “Or do you think he’s going to improve on his technique by himself?”
“One might hope,” the Chairman said.
“What?” Master Fei asked. Tong Lei concurred, blinking rapidly.
Sighing, the Chairman settled further back into his chair. “The death of Zhang Jing of the Forty-Third North-Eastern District is a tragedy,” he murmured, “and it was a wrongful death. But it is not one that will be avenged.” One side of his mouth curved up into a mirthless smile. “Because he was killed to continue the life and safety of the Princess, and he was killed because he was involved in the Crown Prince’s clumsy plot.”
“As you have always said, Chairman,” His Excellency Zhu Ge picked up the thread, “those with such privilege are judged according to higher expectations.”
“How else can they be justified to be higher than those who are common, after all?” the Chairman asked. When Master Fei opened his mouth, clearly to protest, the Chairman silenced the Alpha with one shake of the head.
“Yes, Fei Jie, I do hope the Crown Prince will improve,” he said. “Because it means he has some merits.” Then, before anyone else could say a word, his gaze flicked towards Tong Lei. “This will be difficult on you.”
Tong Lei ducked his head down into a deep bow immediately. “Not at all, Chairman,” he said. “If the Crown Prince improves, then I will improve with him.”
“And if the Crown Prince does not?” the Chairman asked.
“Then I still will improve,” Tong Lei said, “so that I will not have to bring back another bottle of poison so dirtied with blood that Master Fei could not identify it by scent.”
“A worthy cause,” Master Fei drawled, “but you might be forgetting something, Zhu Ge.”
“Oh?” His Excellency arched a brow.
“Who,” Master Fei said, “gave the Crown Prince something like this?” He shook the bottle in his hand.
“Isn’t that obvious?” the Chairman answered, leaning forward. “His mother, of course. Who else?”
Master Fei heaved a long, heavy sigh. “I hate,” he said, “imperial affairs.”
“Would you like a break from the capital, then?” the Chairman asked. With his hand still resting on one of the arms of his chair, he flicked his fingers in Tong Lei’s direction.
Lifting his hands, Tong Lei made a clumsy salute and turned his back. He had almost reached the door when the Chairman said, voice loud and resonant in the room:
“Well done, Tong Lei. I look forward to seeing you again for your next report.”
Without lifting his head, Tong Lei turned back around and went on his knees. He touched his forehead to the ground just once – without being so crass as to make any sound – before he stood again and continued his way out of the Investigative Bureau.