Cold Moon, Bright Star
By bloodredrosez
September 23, 2018
Author's Note: Thank you to anyone who is here and still reading this, despite the long time between updates. I try my best to write more quickly but real life responsibilities have a way of taking up too much time. Thank you so much for your patience and support.
"The North Wind Blows Colder" corresponds with uncut episodes 53-54, but I am making some major changes to the storyline and reordered/rewrote some scenes from the drama, as you might expect. In my version, Chu Qiao doesn't make the choice to stay with Yan Xun out of some hope that she can "wake" him up from his dark plans; aka she doesn't choose Yuwen Yue only at the last resort! (Can you tell I'm still really mad about that?) Unfortunately some of it is still a rehash of what happened, but whenever that happens, I do my best to at least show it from a different perspective than what was done in the show and to give more depth to it. Please bear with me while I set everything up for Part 2.
"For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others." - Nelson Mandela
The North Wind Blows Colder
Yuwen Yue struggled to piece together a whole picture from the fragments of information that his spies brought him. It was never an easy task to begin with even when he had all the archives of the Eyes of God at his disposal, but now it was almost impossible. He had eyes and ears everywhere, but individually, the spies were as useless as pawns on the chessboard. It was up to him to make sense of it all, to see the strategies that were slowly unfolding before him and come up with strategies of his own to counter them.
At least he had foiled Cheng Yuan's attempt to assassinate Yuan Song. After finding out about how the Yanbei general had betrayed Chu Qiao and nearly caused her death, Yuwen Yue had jumped at the chance to eliminate him for once and for all. Cheng Yuan had been lucky to get away with only a few arrows in his thigh. The damned man seemed to have as many lives as a cat—or perhaps it was less about luck and more about a well-honed sense of cowardice built on saving his own skin.
The candlelight flickered as Yuwen Yue rubbed his hand across tired eyes. He hadn't slept well ever since he had saved Xing'er from Chun'er and had seen her carried off by Yan Xun. Though to be honest, he hadn't slept well before that either. The stress and exhaustion would catch up with him one day, but until then, a war was already being fought: a war between hidden players, a war of minds. Every bit of information had to be assessed for accuracy and relevancy. Some of the news that reached him could be discarded as rumors, some of it arrived to him much too late, and some seemed insignificant but had been reported anyway for fear that something would be missed.
It was a very delicate balance he was trying to find: he was sabotaging his own side while simultaneously trying to cripple the Yanbei forces. He had sent Yue Jiu and Meng Feng to secretly poison the leading Wei general, who had made a hasty retreat back to Chang'an due to his "incurable" illness. Meanwhile, he also rebuilt the fortifications to the Meilin border. Both of these moves would buy them some time on the Wei side, but he had less control over what was unfolding in Hong Chuan with Yan Xun.
"Young Master, some new reports have come in," Yue Qi announced, entering the tent and making his way over with his customary alacrity before giving a short bow. "Someone wealthy and powerful has entered Hong Chuan, bringing with him an entire shipload of food supplies."
"So Yan Xun's army stock will be replenished." Yuwen Yue could feel the beginnings of another headache. "What else do we know about this man?"
Yue Qi shook his head in discouragement. "Not much. Only that according to the servants, he comes from Da Liang. One servant thinks he overheard that the man is a cripple, but I couldn't get confirmation on it. No one was even able to get a name. He asked to meet with Yan Xun, but Yan Xun is in Lan City. He may have met with Cheng Yuan instead."
"A noble from Da Liang," Yuwen Yue mused. "Of course. They benefit the most from fanning the flames of war. They buy slaves from Wei and sell supplies to Yan, happily playing both sides while they get ever richer."
"What do you want to do?"
"I will have Meng Feng infiltrate the city in order to destroy their food supplies. That should set them back for a little while. All we can do right now is delay the fighting. Yue Qi, call everyone together right now. We must act fast."
* O * O * O *
Chu Qiao stared at the little unrolled scrap before her, a message that had been cleverly and quickly passed from hand to hand, from spy to the next, at least until she had intercepted it. Five people were locked up now as she debated what to do with the message that had clearly been on its way back to Yuwen Yue.
In some ways, Chu Qiao couldn't help but admire what he was trying to do. Destroying their provisions would tie the Yanbei troops to Hong Chuan, in effect freezing the war, and all without shedding any blood on either side. It was a good plan—no, it was a great plan.
She had thought of it as well.
But Chu Qiao now understood the Yanbei generals better than Yuwen Yue. She had also seen the poor and hungry in Hong Chuan. The generals had been willing to sacrifice the entire city simply as a distraction to the Wei army; their ambition couldn't be reined in so easily. A shortage of rations wouldn't stop Cheng Yuan and the others from sending the soldiers back out to fight their way to Chang'an.
The truth was, whatever the army lacked would just be taken from the people of the city, and they already had lost too much. They had already been starving from the siege. If Yuwen Yue succeeded, many of the ordinary citizens would die, and no doubt Cheng Yuan would call them patriots and say that they were necessary losses for the defense of their homeland. He would claim that they were more victims of the Wei, even as he took their food to feed the soldiers.
After what she had seen, Chu Qiao couldn't be sure that Yan Xun wouldn't just go along with that course of action. She had lost too much power in the army to have any influence. What reputation she had built for herself by staying to defend the city had vanished when the returning soldiers found out that she was the reason why Yan Xun had turned them back at the gates of Chang'an. Yan Xun himself didn't listen to her any more, and she still didn't know how she could even face him after everything that had happened.
She was on dangerous ground as it was. She couldn't let Yuwen Yue's spies destroy the supplies, but neither did she want them killed.
As she looked down at the characters on the message before her, an idea began to form.
Carefully, ever so carefully, she copied out a new message, one that would lure Yuwen Yue's saboteurs to an ambush that she would arrange herself, with the only soldiers she still trusted—the Xiuli troops.
Her heart squeezed uncomfortably as she watched the black ink dry. If there was one thing she could always rely on, it was Yuwen Yue's intelligence and attention to detail. She knew the way he thought and she knew the moves he would make because he had taught her everything.
Yuwen Yue had even taught her how to write.
It was as if she could feel his hand right now, his warm fingers gently correcting the way she gripped the brush, showing her just how far the tip should be dipped into the ink. It had once been her beautiful calligraphy that had won her a place in his bedchamber and her silver bells. Gifted with a nearly perfect memory, she had learned quickly by watching others, and most of all him.
She used to write this character carelessly, waiting for him to reprove her. But he never did, and she didn't know why. All she knew was that it wasn't because it had slipped his notice. He observed her too carefully for that. It was as if he didn't want to correct her, and that was a strange kind of disappointment for her too, as if he didn't care enough.
How fitting that this little thing, this intimate detail, would serve such a great purpose now.
She was betraying Yan Xun with every stroke of her brush. She should be ruthlessly eliminating every last one of Yuwen Yue's spies, not sparing them. But she thought of Yue Qi, and of all his loyal Yue guards, and she couldn't bear to think of them dying for this.
Her eyes glittered as she handed over the finished message to be delivered back to Yuwen Yue. Would he think he had caught her careless mistake? Or would he recognize her fake message for exactly what it was meant to be? Either way, it didn't matter, because it would achieve what she wanted. Whether or not he understood her intentions behind it, he would recognize that she, not his spy, had written the message. It was proof that something had gone wrong, so he would surely pull his people out before they got killed.
Of course, the spies they had already caught and were now holding in the jail would be dead by morning if Cheng Yuan had his way. He would be furious that she had earned credit for foiling Yuwen Yue's plans. Even if the ambush failed—and she had made sure that it would—she had still protected their supplies. Who could argue with that success?
Chu Qiao swallowed hard. She had already gone this far to subvert Yan Xun's cause. Part of her was appalled at what she had done, yet the other part held onto the slim hope that her actions would somehow lead to a better path for them all. But if she got caught setting Yuwen Yue's spies free, there were no excuses she could make. It was treason.
She could almost hear Cheng Yuan telling Yan Xun that she was weak, that she would be Yanbei's downfall. In his eyes and in the eyes of many of Yan Xun's soldiers, she was a mere woman and therefore had no stomach for war.
A part of her feared that it was true. She was tired of bloodshed. Chu Qiao had once wholeheartedly believed that violence was a necessary part of change, that war was simply the price for reform and peace.
Her greatest regret was not realizing until too late that Yan Xun had and would continue to choose bloody revenge over the welfare of his people. His idea of leadership was based all on his right to rule, rather than his responsibility to rule. It took far too long for her to realize that Yan Xun didn't care about what he could do for the people of Yanbei, only what the people of Yanbei could do for him—namely, to use them for his ambitions of deposing the Emperor of Wei and taking that seat of power for himself.
The trust between them was too broken to be repaired. Once, a lifetime ago, she had cried because she had thought Yuwen Yue had been playing her all along. But the trust that she had thought had broken back then had been solely due to secrets and misunderstandings. With Yan Xun it was the exact opposite: her trust in him had broken because she finally understood.
Resolve crystalized in her heart. Before the night was done, she knew that she would find a way to spare five more lives.
* O * O * O *
"Chu Qiao. So I finally meet the missing daughter of Luo He," Wu Daoya said to her in lieu of an actual greeting. He looked serene but a little remote and it was hard to decipher his expression. Zhong Yu had made good on her promise and arranged a private meeting between them, though Chu Qiao had almost forsaken it altogether after her last stressful encounter with Yan Xun—when he had sworn that he would believe anything she said and she had told him she had nothing to do with the spies that had escaped.
"I only recently found out who I am," Chu Qiao said after a moment. Mr. Wu waited patiently for her to take the lead, but she had so many questions and hardly knew where to begin. From their high vantage point on a cliff, she could see the vast wilderness of the Yanbei steppes in the distance. It was beautiful and yet lonely.
He finally broke the silence with a shockingly straightforward question. "Are you thinking of revenge now that you know about your mother's death?"
"No," Chu Qiao answered, startled. But then as feelings of guilt flooded her over her instinctive reply, she hesitated. "Well, I don't…I don't remember all of it. I know we were betrayed and she sent me into hiding with the Jing family. She left me a message telling me to go to Yanbei to find you."
"I heard about you from Zhong Yu during the years that she spent with you and Yan Xun under house arrest in the Oriole Courtyard, but I didn't think you were the same girl I had searched for all those years ago. That was my oversight. But seeing you in person, the resemblance is unmistakable, even without all the other signs." Mr. Wu sighed, turning to look away from her. "I know you have amnesia, so it's easier if you tell me what you remember first, before I explain everything to you."
She didn't have that much to tell him, but Chu Qiao began slowly, still trying to process the feelings that her memories evoked in her. There was already so much fear, love, and loss. Part of her was afraid to find out the rest and another part of her still insisted that it was better to let the past remain the past. The memories she was beginning to recover were painful ones and she already had more than she could handle.
When she finished, Mr. Wu shook his head in something like incredulity or sorrow. "The gods surely have shaped your fate in ways that only they understand. For the daughter of Luo He to end up as a slave in the Yuwen household, personally serving the scion of the Yuwen family himself—for Yuwen Yue to have been the one to teach you how to fight and to turn you into a spy—what a sad joke this all is. Perhaps this is a kind of revenge from our descendants for the wrongs you've inherited from past generations. Yuwen Yue's actions, both those you know of and those you don't, certainly speak of his devotion to you."
Intensely uncomfortable, Chu Qiao spoke rather sharply. "I did not meet with you to discuss Yuwen Yue. I—"
"It is all related," Wu Daoya interrupted. "You know that I was the first advisor to the Duke of Yanbei, Yan Shicheng. It was in that role that I knew your mother. Luo He was a powerful woman, the holder of the Wind and Cloud Decree and the leader of the jianghu spies. She believed that she had the responsibility to use that power and influence to abolish slavery, even though it was an endemic system that involved all three kingdoms: Yan, Liang, and Wei."
"How was Yanbei involved? Yan Xun told me that this land has been free for a long time. There are no slaves here."
Wu Daoya gave her a stern look and Chu Qiao gave a quick apologetic nod to show that she would stop interrupting. "Yes, Yanbei was the land of the free. That was why Luo He established her power here, though this brought her into conflict with the Duke. Yan Shicheng was a bosom friend of Yuan Zhengde, then just the Crown Prince of Wei. They grew up together, they fought many battles together, and when Yuan Zhengde became Emperor of Wei, Yan Shicheng swore his undying loyalty to Wei, even thought some of his own tribes wanted him to rebel and crown himself an independent king of Yanbei."
Seeing the question in Chu Qiao's eyes, Wu Daoya answered it before she could speak up. "Yanbei didn't support slavery. But Yan Shicheng, because of his loyalty to Yuan Zhengde, did nothing to stop it, either. Slavery is a cornerstone of both the western Wei and southern Liang's economies: the Wei supplied most of the slaves from their own citizens, while Da Liang exchanged important resources for those slaves to use as human labor in all their farms and fields. There was a mutual dependency but the slave trade grew so important that it upset the balance between the three states.
"Simply put, the Wei were running out of slaves to keep up with the demand from Southern Liang. The leaders of Southern Liang realized that if they could break the alliance between Yan and Wei, if they could provoke a war so Wei would overpower Yanbei, they could potentially have a huge new source of slaves—especially if in the resulting chaos, Southern Liang came out on top of both Wei and Yan. So that was the situation that started it all."
"I remember now that my mother raised me for this purpose," Chu Qiao murmured. "But even before I remembered, I'd resolved to fight against slavery in any way that I could. I killed three generations of the Yuwen family because of my vengeance, not hers. I am not my mother and I did not inherit her ambition; I developed my own when I became a slave and saw how slaves suffered. How human life could be thrown away like nothing more than some spoiled vegetables."
Wu Daoya was silent for a moment. "Your mother gave her life for that cause. Whether it was the right thing to do, I cannot say. But she believed in her principles and stood by them all the way to the end."
"How exactly did she die? Before I fell into the river and lost my memories, I tried to go rescue her. But the woman in the prison wasn't her, and then when I was trapped, another woman pretended to be me and fought with all the guards."
"Yes, that woman was Xia Chong, an assassin from the Afterlife Camp."
"The Afterlife Camp!" Chu Qiao exclaimed before she could stop herself. The same group of spies that Yuwen Yue had infiltrated and taken over in order to cure her of the poison? Of course, they would have owed their loyalty to Luo He back then, rather than being assassins for hire.
"Da Liang sent several assassins after you and your mother, but none succeeded," Mr. Wu explained. "It was someone by her side, someone she trusted, who betrayed her and killed her. They used both Yuwen Hao from the Wei state's Eyes of God and Yinxin from the Secret Repository of the Da Liang state in order to kill her. When I found out, I tried my best to help. It was not enough."
He told her about how he had sent the Viper and the Trailokya, two of the most feared jianghu heavyweights, to rescue Luo He. By the time they tracked her down, she was dead—but they found her daughter still alive. Chu Qiao could feel the bits of memory jarring loose as she listened to Mr. Wu's almost hypnotically smooth voice. Though the names were unfamiliar to her, she remembered the men and women involved, even the burst of power she had unleased in order to kill Yuwen Hao just before she fell into the Yellow River and lost her memories.
"So who was it?" Fill with too much agitated energy and feeling like she was unable to match Mr. Wu's calm demeanor, Chu Qiao paced in front of him. "Who was the man who betrayed my mother and sent her to her death?"
Wu Daoya looked at her somberly. "That is where the past and the present intersect, Miss Chu. I received word yesterday that Zuo Baochang is dead."
"Master Zuo?" She had barely thought of the old shopkeeper from so long ago, but he had been the first to recognize her and had tried to help her unlock her memories. Her encounter with him was the reason she had found the hidden message her mother had left for her in the wooden bead on her bracelet. But before this, his greatest help to her was providing her the flying device she used to escape Qing Shan Yuan. How had he been mixed up in all of this?
"Yes. The poor old fool was a Yanbei spy and he had been protecting you in whatever way he could. Someone finally got to him. They didn't know that he'd helped a poor street urchin who had seen the whole thing though, and from that boy's description, I suspect I know who the traitor is: Dong Fang Ji."
The name meant nothing at all to Chu Qiao and she struggled to accept that for a moment. Mr. Wu seemed to have been waiting for her reaction, but she had none to give. "I only remember one thing about the man in black who tried to kill me after luring me to the prison to rescue my mother. He was wearing a thick jade ring."
At that, Wu Daoya let out a soft curse that had her hairs standing on end. The composed man stared intently at her. "Your mother may be resting in her grave, but her enemies are still involved in this even now. Dong Fang Ji was Yan Shicheng's military strategist but also a spy from the Han Shan alliance. Your mother trusted him deeply because…well, that is a story for another time. What you need to know is that Dong Fang Ji must currently be working with Zhan Ziyu, the top advisor in Da Liang. He has always been very ambitious. It appears that Yan Xun has been skillfully used by them."
Chu Qiao broke out in a cold sweat. "What do you mean? How can that be true?"
"Four years ago, a series of messages were intercepted by spies from the Eyes of God. They contained proof that the Duke of Yanbei was planning to take up arms and rise up in rebellion against the Wei Emperor. This provoked the Emperor into ordering the execution of the entire family and lead directly to the events of that terrible day at the Jiuyou Tai. I suspect that Dong Fang Ji had secretly sold out Yanbei by passing along information to Zhan Ziyu from Da Liang."
Her head spun with all the new information that Wu Daoya was giving her. Chu Qiao swallowed hard, feeling her stomach lurch sickeningly. Her mind latched on to one phrase: the events of Jiuyou Tai. The very day that Yan Xun's mother had committed suicide in front of him after being forced to identify the heads of her husband, sons, and daughters. Luo He's death years ago was somehow connected to the events that had broken Yan Xun and sent him spiraling down his dark path of despair and revenge? She was afraid to ask but needed to anyway. "Are you…are you saying that Yan Xun's father truly was going to rebel?"
That would…that would change everything, and nothing. What if everything she and Yan Xun had believed in were a lie?
"I won't lie to you, Miss Chu. After Luo He's death, I distanced myself from Yan Shicheng and all the politics between Yan, Wei, and Liang. I retreated from the jianghu as much as I could." Wu Daoya gazed out at the distant steppes rather than look at her, but his voice was burdened by regret. "You accused me earlier of not being present when the Duke was killed, of being nowhere to be found when Yan Xun escaped from Chang'an and came back to claim Yanbei. You are right; I wasn't there. It wasn't until Yan Xun was locked up in the Oriole Courtyard that I met Zhong Yu and helped devise a plan for him to escape. I couldn't leave the son of my old friend like that, whether or not his father was guilty of treason as claimed."
"But all that we suffered…" Chu Qiao felt like she would cry from shock and disbelief. She remembered those endless nights in prison she had tended to Yan Xun, screaming at him to not give up, telling him to live so he could take his revenge on those who had did this to him. She remembered his finger being sliced off as "payment" when he had defended her. She remembered those first few months in the Oriole Courtyard, constantly alert for assassins, so starved that they were tempted even by food they knew was poisoned, surviving only by sheer strength of will and stubbornness.
Had Yan Xun's father actually brought all this on his family and on his own son? Yan Xun had been certain that his father was wrongfully accused. Afterall, Yan Shicheng's loyalty in the past had been proven over and over again. But Yan Xun had been the crown prince of his royal family, a prince that had been held hostage in Chang'an since he was but ten years old. How much could have changed in the years that had passed? Could Yan Shicheng have fallen prey to Da Liang's ambitions and persuasions? Look at how even Crown Prince Xiao Ce had had to disguise himself, simply to survive in his own court of snakes…
"Chu Qiao, we may never know the truth of Yan Shicheng's loyalty," Wu Daoya pointed out. "Only Dong Fang Ji has that information. He has been working with Zhan Ziyu to manipulate us all. Zhong Yu and I found out recently that Zhan Ziyu, the advisor from Da Liang, is the supplier for all the Black Eagle army provisions. It is to the Liang state's benefit if Wei and Yan are occupied by fighting each other to a stalemate."
"I don't know what to do," Chu Qiao whispered. It was too much to take in on top of her already bitter disillusionment with Yan Xun. "Why are you telling me all of this now? Yan Xun no longer trusts me. He's turned away from Zhong Yu as well. He listens to Cheng Yuan's poison instead."
Yan Xun had been nothing more than an unwitting pawn. What did that make her?
"I am telling you because you are the daughter of Luo He," Wu Daoya reminded her. "You have the right to what your mother achieved. You may not have unlocked your powers yet, but you carry the Wind and Cloud Decree within you. You are the true leader of the Underworld spies. It is not a power or a responsibility that can be set aside or given away."
Chu Qiao stared at him as if he had turned into a stranger. "Don't you understand? None of that matters! Mr. Wu, I can't stop the war. I can't stop him."
The man stopped her before she could say more. "This isn't all about Yan Xun. It's about more than that. This is about you. Chu Qiao, I know your relationship with Yan Xun and Yuwen Yue is complicated. There is more to each of you than the roles you've inherited. I've told you all this so that when you make your choices, you won't do so out of ignorance."
"Help me, then," she begged. "I know that above all, you seek to protect the people of Yanbei. Now that you are a part of this again, help me save Yanbei from Yan Xun. You more than anyone else should see why it isn't his fault—"
"Isn't it? Chu Qiao, no one can deny that Yan Xun was a victim. But he has made his choices, too." There was little sympathy in Wu Daoya's black eyes. He pierced her with an assessing look from head to toe, though what he thought of her was kept hidden. "Your mother was a woman of principle and I have heard that you are one as well. As long as you keep the welfare of the people in your heart, you won't lose your path. I believe that one day you can finish what she started."
With such meager comfort, Mr. Wu left her. The foundations of all that she'd fought for in the last four years of her life were crumbling away.
Chu Qiao shivered violently as she realized the temperature had plummeted while they had their lengthy conversation. She hadn't noticed, but the air had a touch of frost, as if the torrential rains might soon turn to snow. Her mind compared it to the warm, balmy breezes of Qing Shan Yuan. She had been a slave in Wei, and yet her heart had oddly been free to pursue whatever and whomever it liked. Here, in Yanbei, she was a free woman and a general, and yet her heart felt enslaved.
It was true, she reflected, that the north wind blows colder.
* O * O * O *
A/N: Please review and let me know your thoughts. Thank you all so much for sticking with me and my little story. I promise I will not leave you hanging like the show did – my disappointment and anger over that is literally the reason why I even started writing fanfiction for Princess Agents, so I will never do that to you guys! My updates might be very slow in coming, but you can be assured at least that I'm always still working on it.
The next part will have all the XingYue moments. I hope you're looking forward to them!