The Offer (2)
Jia Xu, courtesy name Wenhe.
Unlike Lu Bu or Meng Da, who cycled through lord after lord within the Three Kingdoms yet met miserable ends as traitors, she was a strategist who preserved her own neck through sheer brilliance at the art of survival and lived out her full natural span—something almost unheard of in that age.
The number of lords she served alone came to five, from Dong Zhuo all the way to Cao Cao.
Judging by that record alone, one could call her a matchless traitor of the ages. But in an era of chaos where keeping one's own skin intact was hard enough, her adaptability and foresight were more than equal to the task of protecting herself.
Her stratagems were every bit as formidable. Puppeteering Li Jue and Guo Si from behind the scenes, she routed the army of Lu Bu—the very man who had killed Dong Zhuo—and delivered the court into the hands of Dong Zhuo's henchmen.
Later, while serving under Zhang Xiu, she left a record that spoke for itself: she killed Dian Wei, the peerless berserker who stood shoulder to shoulder with Xu Chu in the army of Cao Cao—then swelling its power with the Son of Heaven held firmly in its grip—and drove Cao Cao's host headlong before her, slaying his son Cao Ang and his nephew Cao Anmin in the rout.
And later still, she sowed discord between Ma Chao and Han Sui—two warlords far too fierce to face head-on—split the coalition armies of Guanzhong in two, and crushed the Xiliang rebellion. A strategist of the ages, no less.
Part of it was simply that she was a Liangzhou native, easy to find and close at hand. But it was no accident that Han Yeong had ranked the recruitment of Jia Xu above even that of Pang De.
Han Yeong took a long, careful look at the face of the woman smiling before him.
Hair white as fresh snow, and eyes of gleaming gold—a golden-eyed beauty. She looked for all the world like a gumiho, the nine-tailed fox of legend, stepping out of a story and into a woman's skin. And unlike the petite Fa Zheng, her figure curved as generously as Ma Chao's or Pang De's, alluring in every line.
The smile hovering at her lips had a sly, scheming cast to it, yet on a face like that, it only deepened the fascination.
'A gumiho bewitches people with a lovely face and eats their livers while they're still smiling... honestly, that might suit Jia Xu's image to a tee?'
It was the white hair that jogged his memory—the female officer of Dong Zhuo's whom Song Jian's men claimed had visited them as an envoy.
'So that envoy was Jia Xu?'
Going by her appearance, it certainly seemed to be. But that left the real question...
Why would the Jia Xu be here, of all places, peddling information?
"...Is there something on my face?"
"Ah—no, forgive me. You're so beautiful I lost myself staring."
He had no idea why a woman who ought to be serving in Dong Zhuo's army had come looking for him, but for now he paid her looks a compliment to soften Jia Xu's guard. As the old saying goes, praise can make even a whale dance—few people alive truly dislike being complimented.
"Hohoho, thank you."
Fortunately, Jia Xu appeared to have no aversion to flattery; she accepted it with easy grace and was visibly pleased.
On the other hand, the moment the compliment left his mouth, he felt a distinctly chilly draft of displeasure from behind him, as though someone were glaring daggers. He decided, for the moment, not to notice.
"By the by—how is it that you know of me well enough to seek me out, Lady Jia?"
Born into this world as Han Sui's son, he had gone looking for Jia Xu again and again to recruit her, almost from the moment he was old enough to know his own mind. But tracking her had proven impossible; she was a woman who had lived an eventful life even in the histories, and her path in this one proved no less winding. And when word reached him that she had entered someone's military service, his gut had whispered whose. He had let go of the regret at failing to recruit her—he had at least secured Fa Zheng, after all—and yet now here she was, come to find him of her own accord. The irony was almost too neat.
"You may simply call me Jia Xu. I have since left office; I am nothing more now than an idle drifter with nowhere left to return."
'Left office?'
At this point in the timeline she wouldn't be held in any special favor, so no flashy exploits were expected of her—but she should still be serving under Dong Zhuo, shouldn't she?
"...Were you not in Dong Zhuo's service until recently, Lady Jia?"
He asked, probing her with artful nonchalance. If she denied it and asked whatever could he mean, he need only point out that they were fellow Liangzhou natives—and that Song Jian's men had already confessed everything.
"Oh my? So you know about me, do you?"
But Jia Xu did not trouble herself with a lie. She owned to it readily, raising a hand to veil her lips as if in feigned bashfulness.
"What?! A woman serving under Dong Zhuo?!"
Ma Chao—who up to then had only been quietly sulking at the news that Jia Xu had once served Dong Zhuo—jolted and cried out, while Pang De and Yan Xing stared, eyes gone wide.
"I have since resigned my post, so there is no need to guard against me so."
"And how are we supposed to believe that?!"
They were on the verge of a battle with Dong Zhuo's army, and out of nowhere appeared a former strategist of that very army, offering to sell them her wiles. It was only right that Ma Chao and the other officers be suspicious. What if this was a trap, laid to snare them? Their vigilance sharpened to a razor's edge.
The hulking man at Jia Xu's side felt the killing pressure rolling off the officers behind Han Yeong and set a hand on the enormous blade slung across his back.
"Enough."
Han Yeong lifted a hand, reining in the officers behind him before they could loose their killing intent.
"Why? She could be a spy trying to slip us false intel, you know."
"We'll hear her story first."
"You believe her?"
"Judging her before she's said a word would be hasty."
It was true that Jia Xu had changed lords as freely as any opportunist. But unlike Lu Bu, who betrayed for private gain, the cause was usually that her counsel went unheeded. Take Zhang Xiu: a fellow son of her home region, yes, but one whose strength was laughably outmatched by Cao Cao's and whose talents were middling at best. Even so, she never abandoned him—she stayed with him to the bitter end, and even went out of her way to counsel him, when the moment came, to surrender to Cao Cao.
Zhang Xiu did take that advice, of course—and was later disgraced and destroyed by the psychopath Wei would go on to produce...
Dong Zhuo had kept both Jia Xu and Li Ru about him, but while it was Li Ru's stratagems that gleamed in the pages of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Jia Xu had never once been properly employed under Dong Zhuo. It was Li Jue and Guo Si, ironically, who made use of her—and it was from her time serving them that Jia Xu first announced herself, smashing Lu Bu's army to pieces. If she had walked out because Dong Zhuo refused to hear her counsel, then her words were well worth hearing.
"A wise decision."
Bathed in the murderous aura of officers strong enough to snap a man's neck barehanded before her very eyes, Jia Xu merely smiled, soft as ever.
"Before we begin, I would like one person from my side to sit in on this as well. Would that be acceptable?"
"Of course."
Trusting her outright, though, would be naive. As the proverb says: you may fathom ten fathoms of water, but never one fathom of the human heart.
"I have returned, my lord."
"Welcome back. Allow me to make the introductions—this is the one who handles military strategy on our side."
The keenest mind in the army—a strategist with an almost uncanny gift for seeing through the hearts of men—opened the door to the guest chamber and stepped inside. She had been buried in war plans before coming here, and he felt guilty for pulling her away, but with intuition as sharp as hers, he had asked her beforehand to sit in on this meeting.
"I am called Fa Zheng. A pleasure to make your acquaintance."
"I hadn't realized your army kept a strategist at all—and the daughter of Master Fa Yan, whose name commanded such respect at court, no less. To bear the strategist's burden at so young an age. Truly impressive."
Jia Xu lavished praise on Fa Zheng, who more than pulled her weight as a war-strategist despite having yet to see twenty summers. It was the sort of honeyed patter that made Jia Xu's very name a byword for political survival—but Fa Zheng, blunt by nature and a stranger to any courtier's polish, seemed to let the compliments run in one ear and out the other.
Even the sweetest praise left her expression untouched. She simply smiled, gently, because courtesy demanded it.
"Your praise is appreciated. Now then—what is this stratagem you wish to sell us?"
To Jia Xu's flattery, Fa Zheng made her position plain: none of the dressing was necessary, get straight to the point. She reserved her gentleness and her manners for Han Yeong alone. In truth, Fa Zheng's temperament was exactly as history recorded it—famously thin on virtue, and famous above all for its roughness.
Only recently, word had come back that a handful of Imperial Academy men—green with envy that Fa Zheng had parachuted into the strategist's seat of their army, and tiresomely catty about it behind her back—had been handed a rather memorable beating on their way home.
"Very well. To business, then."
Jia Xu took no offense whatsoever at what could easily be called rudeness.
"Are you aware that Dong Zhuo, once dismissed from office, bribed his way back into it?"
"Yes. We are aware."
Having fumbled the Yellow Turban Rebellion on a grand scale, Dong Zhuo had chalked up no noteworthy merit, and so he had purchased his return to office from the Ten Attendants, who sold ranks and posts like market wares.
"To pay that bribe and raise a fresh army, he has been stripping the wealth of Liangzhou—commoners and gentry alike—rather mercilessly."
"There must be a great deal of resentment."
"There is—immense resentment. They simply do not raise their voices for fear of Dong Zhuo's army. If you turn that to account, it will prove a great advantage to you, Lord Han Yeong."
"And the reason you would share such intelligence with us?"
Whether she had half-guessed where Jia Xu was headed with this, Fa Zheng asked after her intent.
"If you break the momentum of Dong Zhuo's army and win your coming battle, I will persuade the magnates to come over to you."
"The magnates, how—"
"Among the gentry of Liangzhou, my name carries considerable weight as a woman of letters. Persuading them will be no great task."
At such effortless confidence, Han Yeong could only stare at her, dumbstruck.
...Win over the magnates?
Within the Three Kingdoms saga, aside from Wu—a coalition of great clans in all but name—and the storied individuals of gentry birth, the magnates themselves never loomed large in the tale. And yet to any provincial governor or warlord, their support was nothing short of indispensable. Liu Biao had ruled Jingzhou securely only because the gentry stood behind him, and Gongsun Zan, after murdering Liu Yu, found the gentry yanking their backing away—mid-way through his see-saw war with Yuan Shao, he was driven back in the blink of an eye and met his ruin at Yijing Tower.
'If they would only come over, the lands Dong Zhuo rules would pass into our hands—and the road to Sili Province would lie open...'
He asked Jia Xu her price for the stratagem.
"And what would you have from us in return?"
Even if the price smarted a little, this was a scheme he had to lock down at any cost.
"It's simple."
"If you succeed in taking Dong Zhuo captive—will you employ me as your strategist?"
"...Huh?"
That's the condition? If anything, I'm the one who was about to beg her for exactly that.
The terms were so painless—so suspiciously effortless, without a single downside—that it was he who half-suspected a trap.