Homecoming (1)

In accordance with the message Cao Cao had sent through Xiahou Dun, our army — encamped until now in the vicinity of Hongnong Commandery — pushed north as one, pausing at Anyi County, the seat of Hedong Commandery.

It was there that I came face to face with someone I had never imagined meeting.

Inwardly I was more flustered than I cared to admit, but with the person standing before me, discourtesy was unthinkable. So I buried my thoughts, feigned perfect composure, and offered my greeting with every courtesy.

"I am honored to behold the noble countenance of Her Highness the Prince of Chenliu."

At my words, the maid standing at her side gently corrected me.

"She is no longer the Prince of Chenliu, General. This is Her Highness the Prince of Fufeng."

…Prince of Fufeng?

The girl — invested not as the Prince of Chenliu but as the vassal king of Fufeng — flinched and shrank back beneath my puzzled gaze.

Had history flowed as it was originally meant to, this was the one who would have ascended the throne after Dong Zhuo deposed Emperor Shao, Liu Bian — the last emperor of the Eastern Han. Liu Xie, courtesy name Bohe. In both the official histories and the Romance she is the Son of Heaven, sovereign of all the Han, and yet a figure of tragic fate who never once got to play the part, wracked by every hardship conceivable. Swapped onto the throne by Dong Zhuo's hand, she was later treated so shabbily that Li Jue and Guo Si ordered her to eat rotten food; and once Cao Cao carried out her stratagem of holding the Son of Heaven hostage, she could not escape her lot as a scarecrow — a font of manufactured legitimacy, forever trapped in his grasp.

With Ding Yuan seizing the reins of government at Luoyang in Dong Zhuo's stead, I had naturally assumed nothing could stop the changing of emperors… and yet, here she was.

"N-now, then. I am… in your hands, General Who Pacifies the West."

Liu Xie, a small girl, answered in a voice that faded and died, as though strangled by nerves.

Perhaps because she was such a pivotal figure in the Three Kingdoms, she, like the others, had been born a woman.

Unlike Liu Bian — born the same year as Ma Chao and Fa Zheng, and now standing at the very threshold of manhood — Liu Xie was still a girl who had not yet undergone her coming-of-age rites.

Her appearance befitted the blood of emperors: hair of orange, radiant as the noonday sun, and golden eyes that gleamed like precious metal.

At her right stood a woman warrior, evidently dispatched by Wang Yun, guarding Liu Xie as tight as a fortress; at her left stood a beauty in a maid's dress, so luminous that the word fairy would ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠have been no flattery at all — a single blossom of a woman.

'Was this, too, something the alteration of history had set in motion?'

Now that I found myself standing against Ding Yuan, the man who had stepped into Dong Zhuo's role, Wang Yun and Cao Cao — both of whom remained in Luoyang — must have moved in concert, investing Liu Xie as the Prince of Fufeng and dispatching her to her fief.

'…I see. Enthrone a prince-royal and send her off to govern her own fief, and the emperor on the throne can no longer be deposed.'

In an instant, I grasped Cao Cao's purpose in sending her here.

To replace an emperor, one needed imperial blood — and the late Emperor had left precisely two children: Liu Bian and Liu Xie.

Without Liu Xie, propping up some other branch of the imperial clan as a rival claimant was simply impossible.

'But why Fufeng, of all places? She was the Prince of Chenliu by rights — wouldn't Yan Province have made more sense?'

If they had to brave danger to slip past the eyes of Ding Yuan's army — the very host now fighting its way out of Hongnong Commandery — by routing her through Hedong, I thought it would have made far more sense to send her to Yan Province: the opposite direction entirely, and the heart of the Central Plains.

The officers escorting Liu Xie told me the whole affair had been Cao Cao's doing, but having heard nothing of it from her directly, I couldn't begin to fathom what was in her mind.

That said, I could make a fair guess as to why she had called Liu Xie a gift.

The girl's usefulness would be all but limitless.

She could serve as the emblem around which a coalition against the tyrant Ding Yuan might gather — or, with a prince-royal of the imperial blood to honor, as a banner beneath which talent left buried in the wilderness might be drawn into the light.

Of all those advantages, the one that would matter most to our army was simple: the way the world saw us.

If those who thought of me as the bloodline of a traitor, or sneered at me as a man of the uncouth frontier, watched me faithfully attend upon the blood of the late Emperor, I would win an immense reservoir of goodwill among the scholar-officials and celebrated gentlemen of the Central Plains — the very people whose loyalty belonged to the court.

The reverse, of course, held equally true: the ambitious would come crawling out with every pretext under heaven, seeking to enthrone her as a rival emperor and pluck power for themselves.

'But why, though?'

A connection had been forged, yes — but Cao Cao and I had met mere days ago, and the sheer scale of the favor she was extending to me sat uneasily on my mind.

"The Intendant of Henan asks that the General Who Pacifies the West shield Her Highness from the clutches of the treacherous Ding Yuan, and attend upon her so that she may want for nothing."

The woman warrior Shi A, who had come along to guard the Prince of Fufeng, delivered Wang Yun's message.

She and Wang Yue — Wang Yun's bodyguard — had once contended for the title of First Sword of the Capital; rivals on paper, yet the two were thick as thieves, dearest of friends, and it was said she had spent long years at Liu Xie's side as her sworn shield. When Liu Xie departed for Fufeng, she had followed without a moment's hesitation.

'There's real iron in that one, I'll give her that. In the original history she'd have been a man — and she'd never have had anything to do with Liu Xie at all.'

Shi A had barely rated a mention before — a single line in passing, back when Xun Yu went to comfort Cao Pi.

Perhaps because she had been hand-picked as Liu Xie's guardian, her bearing was blade-sharp, her eyes keener than a razor's edge.

But the one who truly held my attention stood elsewhere.

A woman with pink hair, no older than I, stepped forward — lovely and graceful as a single peony in bloom.

There was no mistaking it: the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on.

Which was, perhaps, exactly why I found myself all the more wary of her — all the more unable to look away.

"I am Diaochan, daughter of Wang Yun, Intendant of Henan. Though unworthy of the charge, I have been appointed to attend upon Her Highness the Prince of Fufeng. My father asked that I deliver this to you, General."

Diaochan held out a sealed letter, its binding knotted tight. Taking it in hand, I confirmed that her identity was precisely what I had suspected.

'…Diaochan. Of course it is.'

Her calling Wang Yun father — and that fairy-like beauty — settled it beyond all doubt.

Of course, Wang Yun had left a sour enough taste in my mouth back in Luoyang, so even as I kept a faint guard up against this professional sower of discord, I broke the seal and unfolded the letter.

Wang Yun apologized for the wrong he had done me, and with that apology entrusted me with the protection of Liu Xie, now the Prince of Fufeng.

The sheer gall of it — asking me to set aside my grudge for the sake of the Han. For a moment it was almost laughable. I had no particular loyalty to any state, after all.

'Well. Pitiable she may be…'

The life of Liu Xie — Emperor Xian, last emperor of the Eastern Han — had been unhappy and ill-starred from the cradle.

Born with imperial blood more exalted than any soul under heaven, she was watched from birth with jealous suspicion by the He clan of Nanyang, who hungered for the Son of Heaven's seat; through their treachery her own mother was poisoned, and she was raised in the hands of her grandmother, Empress Dowager Dong. But even that grandmother was, in the Romance, confined and murdered at Empress Dowager He's order. She seemed, if anything, close to her half-brother Emperor Shao, Liu Bian, who shared her blood — but he too was deposed and killed by Dong Zhuo not long after. From then on, even into her adulthood, hers was a life of being passed around as a political plaything in the hands of one powerful minister after another.

At twenty, Liu Xie could endure it no longer and moved to assassinate Cao Cao, the great power of the age — and by wretched luck the plot failed, costing her her wife and every last one of the loyal retainers who stood by her. And in the end, in the crowning humiliation, she met the most tragic of endings: forced to abdicate her throne to the psychopath Wei had bred.

It was simply that the eyes of most everyone who read the Three Kingdoms were fixed, fascinated, upon the great three-way rivalry of Liu Bei, Cao Cao, and Sun Quan — but no emperor of the Eastern Han ever lived a life so wretched as Liu Xie's.

When the Partisan Prohibitions handed the eunuchs their ascendancy and gnawed away the throne's authority, she was — in name and in truth — the one who paid the highest price.

Born with the noblest blood in all the world, the second-longest-lived of all the Eastern Han emperors — and yet never once did she taste a happy or peaceful day, spending her entire life watching every face around her, walking on eggshells until the end.

'Meanwhile the bastard who leaned on his family's four generations of Excellencies, usurped the imperial title, and strutted about got to live out his natural span in perfect freedom… well, until his own karma caught up with him and he died a miserable death.'

The surviving records say that even after abdicating the throne to Cao Pi, she dispensed benevolent rule. In a calmer age, might she not have become the very emperor to set the Eastern Han back on its feet?

That she should be pitied — born, through no fault of her own, into the wrong era — went without saying.

With pity settling in my chest, I called out to her.

"Your Highness."

"W-what is it?"

Though she outranked me by half the heavens — a prince-royal, no less — Liu Xie shrank back almost reflexively, her spirit wilting as she searched my face.

She was not so very much older than I, and I had not even passed my rites of majority — yet watching her break off mid-word and tremble from fingertip to toe was more than a little painful to behold.

In the Romance, Dong Zhuo raised Liu Xie to the throne on the reasoning that she was the cleverer child: where Liu Bian had stood paralyzed with terror, she had stared him down and demanded he observe proper courtesy.

But the Liu Xie before me looked like nothing so much as a girl soaked through with fear.

For Dong Zhuo — who needed a puppet through which to move the state — hadn't that "cleverness" simply been a convenient pretext, the justification he required to depose Liu Bian?

Unable to watch any longer, I knelt upon the ground and bowed my head in deep courtesy, paying the respects a subject of Han owed his sovereign.

It was to show her, plainly, that I was not Ding Yuan — not another beast drunk on tyranny and violence.

"I am only a subject of the realm, Your Highness. You have nothing to fear from me."

…

Liu Xie could only stare, eyes gone wide, at the sight of me kneeling before her, speaking in a tone so gentle and so formal.

Shi A and Diaochan at her side likewise widened their eyes a fraction at my display — but I simply carried on, calm and unhurried, exactly as I was.

"Save for His Majesty the Emperor upon his throne of ten thousand chariots, no soul under heaven holds the right to do Your Highness harm. You are the true and rightful line — heir to the late Emperor's blood. Stand, I beg you, with your head held high."

With those words I bent low at the waist, bowing until my brow all but touched the earth.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"Should any man ever dare to threaten Your Highness or raise a hand against you, I will be the first to step forward, brand him an enemy of the realm, and strike him down. So fear me not, I pray you — treat me with ease, as your subject."

The long speech ended, and a hush settled over us. When no answer came, I grew flustered beneath my bowed head.

'…What? Was I laying it on too thick?'

Wang Yun had called her frail of heart, so I had spoken with a gravity far from my usual manner, hoping to plant some confidence in her — perhaps it truly hadn't suited me.

Head lowered as I was, I could not see her expression.

I simply waited, composed, for some reply — and then Liu Xie opened her mouth, and the silence broke.

"…General Who Pacifies the West. You may raise your head."

"It is my honor, Your Highness."

When I lifted my head, her eyes were brimming with unshed tears, and her voice, when it came, trembled on the edge of weeping.

"Since my earliest days I have been hounded by assassins sent at me by Her Ladyship the Empress Dowager and the Grand General. Were it not for Shi A beside me, it would have been no wonder had I died any number of times over."

'…He Jin?'

Faced with an affair I had never once heard of in all my readings of the Three Kingdoms, I thought to myself.

'Well — if you mean to set your own nephew on the throne, the surest way is to cut down anyone who might stand in his way.'

In historical dramas, siblings hurling themselves at each other's throats for a crown is an old and familiar sight.

And in a Han whose royal authority had already scraped bedrock, it would have been stranger for a string of such affairs not to occur.

'Anyway, that bastard was about the least useful man who ever lived.'

Liu Xie pressed on in a trembling voice.

"…Until now, apart from my elder brother, no one has ever stood on my side… Even that Ding Yuan, the Colonel of Martial Ferocity, did nothing but glare at me as though to devour me, and bellow at the ministers, cowing and threatening them by turns."

Recalling Ding Yuan's savage outrages, Liu Xie clutched at the hem of her robe, sorrow written across her face.

"And yet… are you truly on my side? You are not — like Ding Yuan — simply another who would hold terror over me?"

She asked it in a shaking voice, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that voice was brimming over with yearning and grief.

To the Ten Attendants she had been nothing more than an instrument in their struggle for power; to the He clan, an obstacle marked for removal. She belonged to no one's side at all — a poor, forlorn creature.

And then there was Ding Yuan — frontier-born like me, whatever the distance between our homelands — and he had made atrocity his habit. Small wonder she feared me.

Her small lips, fragile as porcelain, quivered.

It was a question that needed no deliberation at all.

The surest way to end this cursed age of chaos was to stop the age of the Three Kingdoms from ever dawning — and to rebuild the Han in its place.

And to do that, standing with Liu Xie, blood of the imperial house, was simply obvious.

"…If Your Highness will but give the command, I will carry it out faithfully, with every fiber of my strength."

"I can do nothing for you. And even so — you say you would fight for me?"

"Yes."

I answered without a moment's hesitation.

"Your Highness need only stand tall and secure. That alone will be a great strength to me."

…

"So if ever something weighs upon you, tell me. Please."

At my answer — a vow of loyalty — the pallor of Liu Xie's face slowly brightened, as though at last she had found someone of her own, and could finally breathe easy.

"…Thank you. Truly. General Who Pacifies the West. No…"

"Han Yeong."

Liu Xie, who had been fighting back her tears, seemed — mercifully — to take heart from the sincerity of my manner, and smiled a quiet, gentle smile.