I Am the Daughter of Zhang Yide
It was a day like any other, training finished. I dragged my weary body into the tent I shared with Zhang Fei, and he—already inside ahead of me—called me over.
When I sat down facing him, he asked,
"So. How is the training these days?"
"It's good. I've grown friendly with the soldiers, too."
"Hm. Getting along with the men is well enough, but keep to the line."
"I'll remember."
That line owed something to his contempt for petty men, but more of its weight rested on the simple fact that I was a girl. It was the same reason I shared his tent. He had said there would be no special treatment, and yet his daughter still caught in his eye; in this, at least, he had drawn a hard boundary.
"And tomorrow, come out with me."
"Will you be watching me yourself, Father?"
Hope lifted my voice a little. He had said he would oversee me in person, but Zhang Fei was hardly a man with leisure enough to watch only me. The three powers were still locked in their struggle over Jing Province, and he was busy enough that two bodies would not have sufficed.
Because of that, the days he had personally taught me martial arts had ended after the first few. When we talked after the day's work he still explained the theory, but theory and actually moving the body were as far apart as heaven and earth.
My hopes, though, met a firm shake of his head.
"Then..."
"Eldest Brother says he wishes to see you."
"Eldest Brother—you mean..."
Liu Bei! And Guan Yu!
To see the three sworn brothers in one place—the leads of the histories, the heroes of the Romance. I was a history nerd who had fallen harder for Western history than for the Three Kingdoms, and even so, how could my heart not pound?
"Haha. So eager to see your two uncles? Why do your eyes shine brighter now than when you asked whether this father would teach you?"
"I-I'm just nervous."
"Good. You ought to be."
And what was that drop? All at once Zhang Fei lowered his voice.
"I may have acknowledged you, but if Eldest Brother refuses, I have no choice but to follow his will. This is not merely a matter of the army. You are bound to Adou, Eldest Brother's own son, by a betrothal sworn before either of you was born. This meeting will serve that purpose as well."
If I failed to show any promise, forget the army gate. Was I headed straight for the ending already written—Empress Jing'ai of the Zhang clan?
Wasn't that too cruel for a nine-year-old? I was still too young even to have received a courtesy name.
"I'll keep it in mind."
"Don't worry overmuch. Your father will help you. And my brothers will make allowance for the fact that you are still a child."
"Yes, Father."
At his word that I should sleep, I lay down on the cot and turned over everything I knew of Liu Bei and Guan Yu.
By the judgment of later ages, Liu Bei had two faces. He was called a benevolent lord who understood righteousness, generous and merciful—and, in the same breath, a hypocrite who hid his true heart behind a glittering pretext. Both verdicts lived in him at once.
Guan Yu's reputation ran the other way: it was consistent. Great ability had swollen his pride into arrogance, and yet toward the weak—soldiers and common people alike—he knew how to be magnanimous. A temperament the very opposite of Zhang Fei's, who cherished men of virtue and despised petty ones.
One fact, however, held for them both. They had loved their brothers to a terrible degree.
When Guan Yu and Zhang Fei died, Liu Bei flung aside everything he had built and went to war. Guan Yu, for all his arrogance, set Zhang Fei on the same tier as himself, and at times even praised him as the better man.
I closed my eyes still holding the wish that a brotherhood like theirs might reach, as well, to those brothers' children.
When I opened my eyes the next morning, the waking was unusually clear, and I started the day with a pleasant stretch. In my previous life I had only dabbled—glancing at videos of stretching, exercise, and yoga—and done a little of it in brief snatches while learning the longsword. Since becoming Zhang Lan, I made time for it whenever I could.
This was no stiff body. It was a young one, supple and full of give, opening and lengthening exactly as I willed, and stretching had never been so much fun.
"Up and ready early, I see."
Zhang Fei, risen a little after me, ruffled my hair as if I were a credit to him. I hadn't even tidied it after sleep, so it hardly mattered—and yet it left me feeling, uncomfortably, like an actual child.
At any rate, unlike other mornings I ate with him, then followed him toward the main camp.
With every step I could feel my heart hammering.
There, not far ahead, Liu Bei and Guan Yu were waiting for me. The protagonists of an epic that had run on for thousands of years. Heroes who had written their names in great strokes across history. Waiting for me.
Was this what a fan felt in the moment before meeting an idol? I did my best to settle a chest fluttering with nerves, anticipation, and excitement, and trailed after Zhang Fei until we stood before the great tent at the center.
Liu Bei and Guan Yu were in there. Zhuge Liang might be, too. Or—could Zhao Yun be inside as well?
I was not this excited merely because they were great men who had carved their names into history. The three kingdoms of the tale—Wei, Shu, and Wu—had split their admirers three ways, and I belonged to those who loved Shu. A Shu diehard.
They say you mod a thing and mod it until you end up back at stock. I read the Romance and became a Shu partisan, got drunk on Cao Cao and crossed over to Wei, even flirted with the Wu camp for a while, and then came home to Shu.
Of course, that was a middle- and high-school story, from the years I was buried in Three Kingdoms games and novels. Once I was older, I took the Westernizers' road and chose Western history instead.
"Hooo..."
"Nervous?"
"Yes."
"Don't worry. In the family, they are your uncles and you their niece, are they not? Even if my two brothers do not welcome you, this father will stand on your side."
Oh... to see Zhang Fei in so new a light. He had always shown a remarkable respect to those he acknowledged. It seemed I fell within that circle.
I'd been grumbling to myself that he wouldn't teach me properly. From here on, I'll trust you and follow, Father.
"Let's go."
"Yes!"
With a sharp sweep of his hand, Zhang Fei threw the tent flap wide. Every eye already gathered inside turned at once upon the two of us, father and daughter.
I followed him in and swiftly took the measure of their faces.
The man in the seat of honor at the center was Liu Bei. He did look kindly. Large ears, and long arms besides. Not tall, and yet not so short that one thought him small—a middling height.
The men flanking him were each a head taller, giants both, but where the one in armor was big and solid, the man in the white crane-plumed robe looked rather slender. Guan Yu overflowed with a presence even more imposing than I had imagined, and Zhuge Liang was so handsome that I wondered whether he could truly belong to this age.
Those three were everyone in the tent. I saw neither veteran commanders such as Zhao Yun and Chen Dao, nor Jian Yong, Sun Qian, and Mi Zhu. This was probably no grand council to set the faction's course, but a small discussion for lighter business.
Summoning every senior officer in the middle of a war merely to settle the treatment of one girl would have been absurd. Had it not been a matter of his niece, Guan Yu himself might not have come.
"You've come."
At the deep, quiet sound of Liu Bei's voice, Zhang Fei and I offered our greetings. He received them lightly, then turned his gaze on me.
It was less the look of a man taking someone's measure than of an uncle regarding his niece with genuine affection.
"It has been a long time. I saw you when you were very small. I wonder if you remember."
Was that line issued in every country, in every age?
"Yes. Faintly, I do. Have you and Second Uncle been well since then?"
"The realm is still in turmoil, so mind and body are both weary. Yet to see you grown so lovely is a comfort, in its way. Yide praised your hair so highly that I find myself a little disappointed."
"Eldest Brother!"
Was there anyone but Liu Bei who could tease Zhang Fei like that? Guan Yu did not seem the sort to use so sly and familiar a tone. It would be Liu Bei alone.
Liu Bei smiled faintly at Zhang Fei's discomfiture, then spoke to me again.
"But I hear you wish to enter the army."
At last, the point.
"Yes. I do."
"Will you tell me the reason?"
Without hesitation I was about to say that I wanted to lend a hand to the restoration of the Han imperial house—and the words caught hard in my throat.
If I said that, would they truly accept me?
Honestly, I had no resolve to follow the cause Liu Bei proclaimed. I liked Shu-Han, and as Zhang Fei's daughter I naturally thought I ought to distinguish myself there. Talk of restoring the Han, of rooting out the traitor Cao clan—none of it reached me.
Would Liu Bei fail to see that?
Could I even hope to deceive the eye of the man said to surpass Zhuge Liang himself in reading people—the foremost judge of character under heaven?
I bit down on my lip. Steady. What I had to say was no glittering, empty shell of a cause. I would meet sincerity with sincerity.
From the small split in my lip, the metallic taste of blood and a thin sting of pain cleared my head, and slowly I opened my mouth.
"Oh?"
It lasted only an instant, but I clearly saw Liu Bei's brow twitch. I felt the gazes around us change.
Guan Yu, who until then had been looking at me the way one looks at a cute niece—just as he had when I first went to Zhang Fei—now seemed ready to listen in earnest. Even Zhuge Liang stopped the crane-feather fan he had been idly waving.
This was the moment to speak.
"My father will surely leave his name in the histories as a hero of the age. Not my father alone. You, Eldest Uncle, and you, Second Uncle, as my father's elder brothers, will win a renown still higher. But I am different."
"Different?"
"Yes. I, too, will be recorded in the histories. They will write that Zhang Yide had two daughters. The eldest married the son of Liu of Yuzhou. Should the Han house be restored in days to come, and should Liu of Yuzhou ascend to a higher seat, the title of Lady Zhang will be added as well. But that would be a sorrow—for me, and for my father."
"And why is that?"
"It is said that a child is one who carries on a father's work. Just as you, my lord of Yuzhou, took an adopted son before you had Adou, every father wishes to leave his life's labor to his child. My father is a general. Guo Jia, who followed Cao Cao, called Second Uncle and my father each a match for ten thousand, and Zhou Yu, who followed Sun Quan, likewise marveled at the fierce majesty of you both. Second Uncle has Elder Brother Ping to inherit his work as a commander. My two elder brothers cannot inherit a commander's work. How, then, could it not be a pity if the martial art of Zhang Yide, a match for ten thousand, were cut off? I wish to be remembered not as Lady Zhang, but under the name Zhang Lan. Not as someone's wife, but as one who wins a warrior's fame worthy of being Zhang Yide's daughter."
In short: Guan Yu had Guan Ping for an heir, and Zhang Fei did not, so let them back me. I wanted to make a warrior's name of my own. I wanted a line in the histories declaring that Zhang Fei was a general like a tiger, and that even his daughter was a tigress worthy of him.
No grand cause of restoring the Han. No benevolence that would end a chaotic age. Only one person's hunger for fame, and a child's filial wish to follow her father.
And yet this, too, was a kind of righteousness.
Loyalty and filial piety. Of the two supreme values running through an age governed by Confucian teaching, this age set filial piety highest.
Xu Shu was not condemned for surrendering to Wei for his mother's sake. Jiang Wei, who did the opposite and placed loyalty above filial piety, was criticized for it.
So my claim—that though I had a woman's body, I would willingly take up spear and sword and go to war in order to carry on my father's martial fame—had a principle of its own.
"How admirable."
Liu Bei smiled kindly and stroked my hair. Zhang Fei did the same. Why did everyone pet my head? Was my hair really as fine as Zhang Fei claimed?
The relief of having said my piece, and the warmth of Liu Bei's response, loosened me enough for idle thoughts. His next words yanked the string taut again.
"Your heart for the youngest is laudable, but a battlefield is not a place where heart alone wins merit and spreads a name. So I will test you—whether, in a woman's body, you are truly fit to stand upon a field of war. If you are not, then with an uncle's feeling, one that cherishes his niece as deeply as your filial heart, I will send you back."
I had expected as much. However deeply words might strike the heart, war was heavier still.
"I will obey."
"Good spirit. Then, Yunchang."
"Yes, Elder Brother. It is prepared."
So the stage had already been set. Even so, if I had failed to answer properly, I would never have reached this step. I would have been refused on the spot and packed straight off home.
We followed Guan Yu out, and a man was already waiting there to take the measure of my skill. Watching him confirm who we were and offer Liu Bei a formal bow, I murmured under my breath.
"Of course..."
A face from Zhang Lan's memories. His name was Guan Ping.