"All Ye's are descended from Zhao Li Ling." Yuze explained when it was clear Chenzhou couldn't. "After her apparently not first marriage to Ye Tang Su, she beca the First Lady Ye Ling. They had three children, and when Tang Su died three years later, she married his younger brother, Tang Pei."
"Maybe that one was for love," Finn put in, desperate.
"They had no children, and he died four years later. After which, she married the youngest Ye brother, Tang Zang. They had five children, and Tang Zang died after being married for six years."
"I don't like where this is going," Eirian muttered.
"Since none of Lady Ye's children were old enough to inherit, Tang Su's cousin, Ye Gong Su, beca Lord Ye, and three guesses who he married."
"Seriously?" Eirian gaped.
"Maybe she loved them all!" Finn cried, but he looked on the verge of tears, so it wasn't very convincing.
"How did she survive having so many children so quickly?" Eirian grimaced. She didn't particularly like children and had never felt the urge to have her own. Having eight seed like a nightmare.
Yuze gave her a flat look. "I have no idea how the female body works and no interest in finding out."
"That's okay, I was mostly being sarcastic." Eirian shrugged.
"Please get back on track," Chenzhou begged. "I'd like to hear the rest of how horrible my family was before I pass out."
Concerned, Eirian and Yuze reached for him, but Chenzhou waved them off. "I'm just tired. Please go on."
"Fine." Yuze didn't look completely convinced, but he went back to the stacks of papers on his desk. "I can't find any direct surviving recordings of any of Lady Ye's marriages. I have Fox and Snake looking through the personal archives of so of the families that are gone now, but we'll probably have to ask the Zhaos, the Yangs, the Yings, and a few others at so point."
"Last resort," Chenzhou decided. He didn't need to give them more ammunition against him.
"They probably have similar stories in their own histories," Eirian tried to offer so comfort, but reminding them all that there were more terrible people in the world didn't really help.
"The marriage between Ye Gon Su and Lady Ye lasted for twenty years and despite the suspicious deaths of two of her children, it was eventually one of her children with Tang Zang who beca the next Lord Ye."
Chenzhou ducked his head, focused on breathing in the incense. He knew what was coming next and didn't particularly want to hear it again.
"The day after her son inherited, Lady Ye threw herself from the Eastern Bridge. There's an eyewitness account that said Ye Gong Su tearfully begged her to co down for an hour before she finally jumped. By all accounts, he was devastated by her death."
"That doesn't an she loved him. Or that it was a loving marriage." Eirian said.
"Over the course of the following year, the second Lord Ye carried out a…well, the nicest way to say it is a cleansing."
"A cleansing?" Finn asked as Eirian closed her eyes and massaged her temples.
"According to the record, he had every mber of his father and uncle's generations executed for various cris. He even had his grandparents hung from the Western gate. The only Ye's who survived were his siblings, and all the Ye's since are descended from Li Ling's children."
"By the gods," Marian murmured, hand to her chest like that would help the rapid beating of her heart.
"Why would he do that?" Finn was pale, the hand holding the quill shaking.
"Getting justice for his mother, most likely." Eirian assud. "Where is Bennoit Arnheim in all of this?"
"Serving as the senior advisor to the Second Lord Ye."
Chenzhou's head snapped up. "What?"
"Sowhere between Li Ling's marriage to Tang Pei and Gong Su, he starts showing up as a senior commander, then a mber of the court, and then finally as a direct advisor to Lord Ye."
"He was trying to stay by Li Ling. That's romantic!" Finn smiled.
"Just because Tang Su took her from Arnheim doesn't an the marriage to Arnheim was good," Eirian warned. "It could have been just as bad as the rest."
"That poor woman was hated by the gods," Marian said, face deep with sorrow. "If that's the case and he was still following her, she must have been terrified."
"But then how did Arnheim end up so close to her son?" Finn asked.
"The lesser of two evils," Eirian suggested. "Or maybe they did love one another. We just don't know."
"It certainly sounds bad based on what we do know," Chenzhou hissed.
"I've still got people looking for more records." Yuze cautioned. "We could find out they were madly in love, and Arnheim eventually got revenge. Even Gong Su was executed in the cleansing."
Without realizing it, Eirian reached out and rubbed Chenzhou's slumped shoulder in comfort. He'd only gotten paler as the conversation continued, and it was obvious he was upset with what his ancestor had done.
It also, she realized, ran a bit close to what Chenzhou himself had done. Though his intentions had clearly been more noble and his treatnt of her far better.
"Arnheim fell out of favor a few years after Li Ling's death. I can't tell if there's any truth to it yet, but it looks like there was an accusation of treason from one of Second Lord Ye's sisters, Gau Pei. She was the Calia's first female Eye, and I found a series of secret communications between her and her brother in our archive, discussing the betrayal of a high-ranked mber of the Calia's court. A week after the last letter I could find, Arnheim was no longer listed as an advisor. He disappears completely from any records after that."
"Not even a death date?" Eirian asked.
Yuze shook his head. "I can't find a single ntion of him in anything I've looked at so far. Under either na."
"It's possible he returned to Antiquity." Chenzhou suggested. "If he did commit treason he would have had to have fled to survive. The Calia has always had zero tolerance for betrayal."
"Wait," Eirian waved aside Chenzhou's question. "What makes you think he was responsible for the miasma?"
~ tbc
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