Jealousy (2)
After catching a proper earful from Han Yeong, Ma Chao had ridden home alone, and without even changing her clothes she flopped faceup across her bed.
Had anyone been watching, they might have pointed it out as a graceless way for a young woman to behave — but there was no one beside her now to see it.
"Stupid... Why'd I have to go and get jealous?"
She muttered at herself, half in mockery — barging in on Han Yeong's work for nothing, earning his resentment for her trouble — and a sulky heaviness settled over her.
Han Yeong, her childhood friend and the only friend she had in the world, had never once gotten angry at her before. Today was the first.
She truly believed she had done something worthy of that much anger, and the guilt gnawed at her.
Cowed and deflated, Ma Chao closed her eyes and let the past wash back over her.
Back then, they had lived in a poor commoner's house, shabby down to the last beam — a place that could not have compared to the home they kept now that her father had risen to Administrator of Wuwei. It was no house at all for a family that claimed descent from Ma Yuan, the founding general who had helped Emperor Guangwu establish the Later Han.
The line had withered and its fortune long since run dry; life meant earning their bread with an axe.
And yet Ma Chao had felt a deep, abiding pride in having been born a descendant of Ma Yuan. She wanted to follow the example of that great and revered ancestor who had given his whole body to the country, and to practice justice as he had.
Her justice was a simple thing: to name the bandits swarming the realm as evil, to punish them, and to stand loyal to the state.
But the age of chaos that a rotting court had ushered in would not grant her the room to see that conviction through.
However fine her martial arts, she had no money to put forward for an official post, and keeping herself fed meant the woodcutter's life. Even when she beat bandits into the dirt, without a title or a coin to her name she was simply ignored.
Whenever the neighborhood children her age taunted her for being poor beside the famed and wealthy clans, Ma Chao answered them with her fists. A few boys, taken with her face, tried playing the strongman to win her attention — right up until they saw what she could do, at which point they went very quiet.
The upshot was that the children feared her, and by the age of ten she had not made a single friend her own age.
Growing up with no one beside her to steady her path, Ma Chao had begun to wonder. With eunuchs rotting the state and fierce bandits boiling up across the realm, who had the luxury of thinking about justice? Everyone was a villain anyway. Had justice, in truth, never mattered all that much?
The yearning for justice she had clung to was worn away bit by bit, and in its place only a single duty remained to fill her heart: make her name ring out, and restore her fallen house.
She hated even to imagine her young brothers ground down by poverty, so she threw herself single-mindedly into forging the martial arts that would lift her up in the world. But reviving the family would take money and fame alike, and she was still racking her brains over whether she would have to join the volunteer armies mustering in the Central Plains, or perhaps the rebel bands running wild west of the passes — when her father, long absent, came home, his face one great bloom of smiles.
"Haha!! Ma Chao! My little girl!!"
Stone drunk, Ma Teng scooped his daughter up in the middle of her practice.
"Father? Have you been drinking?"
"We can make our name at last!! The lean years are over, I'm telling you!!"
He laughed for joy and wept until his eyes rimmed red, as if at last spitting out the old bitterness of a man born of Han and Qiang blood, scorned all his life along the boundary between the two peoples.
"What? Why?"
"Han Sui — the warlord of Liangzhou... no, Wenyue! He asked me to become sworn brothers with him and pool our strength!! Heard the tales of me thrashing bandits and came looking for me himself!!"
"Lord Han Sui, you say?"
The name Han Sui was famous enough in Xiliang that even young Ma Chao had heard it more than once: the master of a Xiliang where the court's reach had thinned to nothing — a warlord of the great houses, seated in prosperous Jincheng Commandery.
That her father called the man by his courtesy name without a moment's hesitation said the two of them had drunk together long and deep enough to forge a real bond.
"We may have caught bandits, Father, but we're so poor we couldn't scrape together a rat's dropping of property. How could we possibly become sworn brothers with one of Liangzhou's warlords?"
Not yet ten, and still Ma Chao understood how the world turned. The realm was in an uproar and bandits swarmed the land; a world where those without office were disregarded, where blood and rank were weighed carefully. And yet here was a man who, far from taking penniless folk like them in as retainers, proposed to join forces as equals — of course she was suspicious.
"Wenyue means to submit to the Han court, and are we not the descendants of Han's great general Ma Yuan? That's why he wants to join hands with us."
A famed general's fallen line, and a magnate whose name and power towered over all of Liangzhou. What pairing could be less fitting than that?
"And what if he's only planning to use us?"
Ma Chao suspected the warlord had beguiled her guileless father with a crafty tongue — perhaps to spend the two of them as arrow-fodder in his fights.
"Nothing of the sort. They say that in Jincheng, where Wenyue sits, they've stopped squeezing the people and keep the peace well — all in preparation to submit to the court."
"He... cares for the people?"
The great majority of warlords could not have cared less what became of the common folk. With Qiang raiders sweeping down year after year, the frontier's prejudice ran so deep that the strong trampling the weak was taken for the natural order of things.
That Han Sui — counted among the foremost warlords of Liangzhou — actually looked after his people was more than she could bring herself to believe.
"He couldn't praise Wenyue's son enough — says the boy is remarkably brilliant. And he's your age, Ma Chao."
"Lord Han Sui has a son?"
That much she was hearing for the first time.
"He lost his wife in the rebellion years back, and after that he treasured the child so dearly he hated to let him out of his sight. But word's been spreading lately that the boy is sharp enough to have a hand in governing the city."
Ma Teng sang the praises of Han Sui's son — a boy entrusted with ruling a city at an age when others were still playing in the dirt — and looked pointedly at his daughter.
"Good character, too, they say. Who knows? He might just become our Ma Chao's first friend."
Crunch.
The remark, slyly prodding her rawest nerve, made Ma Chao bristle — and she stomped down squarely on her father's foot.
"AAAGH!!"
"...Whether he becomes my friend or not is for me to decide."
With that flat retort to her father, still clutching his foot and groaning, Ma Chao turned on her heel and marched back inside.
But in her heart of hearts, she was curious. A boy who governed a city and looked after its people at so young an age — he had well and truly caught her interest.
If his character turns out to be decent... he wouldn't make a bad first friend.
Truthfully, she wanted a friend — wanted it badly. But she buried that wish and told herself she merely wanted to meet the retainer who would one day serve at her side, once she had made something of herself.
And so, on the day her father and Lord Han Sui formally swore themselves brothers, the two of them met.
His name was Han Yeong — courtesy name Bailian.
Unlike her, who had scraped by in poverty all her life, he had lived as the heir of a great house, and it showed: fine clothes draped over him, brown hair gleaming as though luster had been poured over it.
Unlike the callow children their age, he had the schooling of a good family behind him, and it lent him a composure that held steady from morning to night.
He was the son who had Han Sui's love all to himself, and anyone could see at a glance that he had been raised gently — perhaps a touch too gently.
...How on earth do I approach him?
She was glad to have found him alone — but having never once made a friend in her life, she hadn't the faintest idea how to close the distance.
And then, unbidden, one of her father's rare lessons surfaced in her mind.
"Men, you see — when the words won't come, they sound out each other's hearts by sparring, body against body. Which is to say, when you can't find the opening for conversation, a duel is exactly the thing."
That's it.
Ma Chao had honed herself since childhood and had full confidence in her martial arts. Show him what she could do, she reasoned, and they would be fast friends in no time.
Besides, this was the son of a Liangzhou warlord. Unlike the ordinary village children, there was no chance in the world he would be weak.
Gathering every ounce of courage she had for the sake of her first-ever friend, Ma Chao picked up a wooden spear and walked slowly toward him — arranging her face into the kindest smile she could manage, closing in as sweetly as she knew how.
Han Yeong, seemingly unaware of her presence, was admiring the garden beneath the pale, sinking moonlight.
"Hey!!"
Han Yeong, strolling through the garden, turned his head at her voice.
...She really is pretty, no denying it.
A neat, clean-cut face — a far sight better than the slovenly, rough-tempered children their age, the ones who trailed snot or sprayed spittle with every word.
Han Yeong, too, found the sight of her unexpectedly striking, and a faint warmth rose to his face.
With skin as fair as her father Ma Teng's and hair of the same gold, he knew in an instant that this had to be Ma Chao.
Seeing his reaction, Ma Chao concluded that her first impression had landed well. Privately, she had always been confident in her looks.
Blooming into a bright, radiant smile, Ma Chao held out her hand.
"You're Lord Han Sui's son?"
"That's right — I'm Han Yeong. And who are you?"
"I'm Ma Chao."
No sooner had the words left her than she thrust her free right hand out toward him, palm open.
"I hear you're my age, too. So — what do you say? Wanna be friends?"
"Sure."
Han Yeong accepted her offer on the spot, and Ma Chao was determined not to let this chance to deepen the bond slip through her fingers.
"Then will you spar with me?"
At the challenge, Han Yeong's color drained a little — but after a brief moment searching her eyes, he gave his consent.
"...All right. But go easy on me, please."
Han Yeong took the wooden spear she handed him and settled into his stance.
He's just being modest, isn't he?
A warlord's son could not be weak — and watching Han Yeong square up, Ma Chao judged that he had been trained after all.
She loosed a probing strike with the shaft toward his chin.
But though her martial arts outshone those of anyone her age, she was still a child, and her eye for measuring another's skill had yet to catch up. Accustomed to sparring with children her own size, she misjudged her strength.
It was the kind of strike any reasonably trained warrior could have parried with ease — but for a boy not yet ten, it came far too fast.
WHAM—!!
With a dull, heavy thud of impact, Han Yeong went sailing off into the distance.
Huh...?
Ma Chao froze for a heartbeat. The moment she saw him trembling where he'd landed, unable to steady his own body after the blow, she knew instinctively that she had caused a disaster.
Her face drained an ashen blue, she hoisted Han Yeong onto her back and bolted for a physician.
Before long Yan Xing came sprinting after them, the banquet was brought to an abrupt end, and Ma Chao was hauled home by the hand of a livid Ma Teng.