Back to Chengdu
"So you really did come over?"
"I did."
"And Her Ladyship and our lord both accepted it?"
"Why else would I be riding here beside you?"
Yu Eun and Zhang Yi traded the words as they rode along with me. They had discovered they were the same age, and on the strength of that alone they had dropped the formalities and grown easy with each other at once.
"You're hardly any different yourself."
"I was a military man to begin with."
"And I've decided to be one from now on."
"I'm not slighting you, but will you manage? It's grueling work."
"Grueling, my foot. I won merit in the field and rose to Attendant Officer of Yi Province on the strength of it. Bandits, I'll grant you, but I've been in a real fight. And I hear the other campaign major under the general is from Ba Commandery too, isn't he? We treat the mountains like the yard out front. A march is nothing to us."
"Dexin is from Baxi Commandery, mind you."
"Ba or Baxi—aren't they both of the Three Ba?"
Zhang Yi had been reappointed a colonel, the same rank as Yu Eun. Victory in the Battle of Dangqu had swelled my command a little, and we had been in need of one more colonel just then; it had fallen out neatly. In the history I remembered, he had served as a gate captain under Ma Zhong. This time the two of them were colleagues.
From where Zhang Yi stood, leaving his post as Attendant Officer of Yi Province to become an army colonel was a demotion. He had known that, and still answered that he would follow me.
Whether he judged that the long road would favor him more at my side, or whether he was simply sick of shuffling documents and wanted a military post, I could not tell.
I'll set you in a higher seat before long.
It was a vow he would never hear.
"General, that looks like the village up ahead. We must be nearly there."
Yu Eun pointed toward a hamlet just beginning to show pale in the distance.
The destination of this outing, and the man Du Zheng had recommended: the place where Wang Si lived. Zizhong County, in Jianwei Commandery.
"Elder, might I ask you the way?"
I stopped a village elder walking the road.
"Do you know a man called Wang Si?"
"Wang Si... ah, that young fellow. Of course I know him. But what business..."
The further he went, the more wariness crept into his voice, until the words trailed off.
"This person is a Guangwei General of the third rank. Wang Si was recommended to us as a man of talent, and we have come to see him. Set your mind at ease, and tell us where he is."
Zhang Yi had caught the unease in the old man's tone and stepped in. Only then did the elder's face break into a broad smile.
"Aigoo, so that was it. This ignorant old villager, failing to know noble guests when he saw them..."
"It's quite all right. Would you guide us?"
"Of course. Follow me."
We went after the elderly man, and before long a youth working a field came into view. They said Zhuge Liang, too, had farmed to pass the time. My hopes rose.
"Is that man Wang Si?"
"Aye, that's him. Ho there, Shengzhong! Your guests have come calling!"
"Guests for me?"
The youth wiped his sweat, got to his feet, and looked our way.
A handsome face, and a build that spoke of farm work—solid enough. He might fall short of a proper man-at-arms, but a physique like that was nowhere near the measure of an ordinary soldier.
"Noble guests, come to a place as shabby as this."
He brushed the dirt from his clothes with a light hand. Three uninvited callers, and an awkward company of two men and one woman at that—yet he was perfectly at ease.
"You've come a long way. Don't stand about out here; come to my house. It's nothing much, but won't you let me offer you something?"
"Not turning uninvited guests away is kindness enough."
I, a woman, had spoken for the party, and he showed no particular surprise. He had already guessed who I was.
Wang Si's house was ordinary. Set beside the mansions of Chengdu's rich it was humble, yet it was not so cramped as to be called wretched. It was simply the home of a middling household that ate and lived in reasonable comfort.
"I've been sweating in the fields until just now. May I change my clothes?"
"If it weighs on you, sir, then please do. It doesn't weigh on me."
"In that case, let us speak as we are. The breeze is cool—shall we sit over there?"
He indicated the wooden platform in the yard.
"That suits me."
It put me a little in mind of idling in a friend's rooftop room in my past life, sitting out in the wind and tipping back a can of beer. Up until then, I had lived with fair diligence.
Was that friend getting on all right? A faintly bitter old memory rose as I took a seat facing Wang Si. Cover the past over with new memories, and turn yesterday's failures into tomorrow's success.
Steadying myself, I spoke to the two who were still on their feet.
"You two, sit as well. If the guests remain standing, the host will only be more uncomfortable. Isn't that so?"
"Haha, of course. Please, sit at your ease."
With a good-natured laugh, Wang Si himself led Zhang Yi and Yu Eun over. Yu Eun first unslung the long saber that had been getting in his way, leaned it against the platform, and sat; Zhang Yi followed him down.
"Allow me to introduce myself properly. I am Zhang Lan. My courtesy name is Mingjing."
"Yu Eun. Courtesy name Xiuyan."
"Zhang Yi. I go by the courtesy name Baiqi."
Each time we offered our names in turn, Wang Si returned the courtesy with a formal clasp of the hands and introduced himself as well. After bidding us speak freely, he was the first to put a question.
"Lady Zhang Lan, what brought you seeking this humble man?"
"When one comes looking for talent, what other reason is there?"
I deliberately did not say that Du Zheng had recommended him. Du Zheng had asked me not to, and I wanted to see Wang Si as he was and judge for myself.
For his part, Wang Si showed no inclination to pry into how I had come to know of him.
"I fear I may only disturb Your Ladyship's peace of mind."
"Modesty has its place, but just now I want to hear you speak plainly. If you'd rather not answer, you needn't."
Gaining a man of talent was something to welcome with both hands raised, but I had no thought of dragging along anyone who did not wish to come. Talent in the service of Wei or Wu would be another matter.
"If we are to accomplish the great enterprise, what do you take to be the first necessity?"
Contrary to the reluctance he had just shown, Wang Si answered as if he had been waiting for the question.
"The peoples beyond our own. Befriend the Di in the west and steady the frontier. Work with the Nanman, and make our produce abundant. In the east, hold Jing Province together with the Man of Wuling. And in the north, ally with the Qiang, the Xianbei, and the Xiongnu, and face Wei as one. Do that, and the great enterprise becomes something we may attempt."
What Wang Si described was the very course Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang had actually pursued—the opposite of Wei and Wu, who had sought only to crush the foreign tribes and bind them. Of course, that course had not been pure intention so much as the consequence of insufficient strength.
Even here, Zhuge Liang would try to hold to that line until Wei was brought down. He was a man who labored for the greatest possible effect. He would never cast aside the shortest path to overcoming a want of people.
Zhang Yi asked next.
"How would you make them our own?"
"Hmm... must we settle, in so many words, exactly how we mean to treat them?"
What followed would have made a learned man of this age gasp.
"Accept them as they are. They and we are different; it is not that one of us is wrong. Must we remake them to fit ourselves? Why? In what way are we so very superior?"
"But they are foreign tribes, are they not?"
Yu Eun spoke with a trace of discomfort, and Wang Si met his eyes and answered him in kind.
"The Qiang ride better than we do. As for crossing mountains, no one matches the people of Ba. And the Di? Where insects and beasts are concerned, they are likely the most learned under heaven."
"Those are nothing but miscellaneous studies. How could they compare with the Hundred Schools?"
"They are people as well. They love their families, and they revere Heaven. They simply never set those things down in writing, or as scholarship. They already know. Those who do not are not the tribes. It is we Han."
Having gone past a mere policy of conciliation to preach mutual respect itself, Wang Si drew a breath and tied the thought off.
"Do not seek to teach—seek to learn. Do not seek to take—seek to give. Not with pretense, but with sincerity; not as servants, but as friends. Treat them so, and who would refuse to stand with you?"
Zhang Yi, who had been listening quietly and turning the words over, answered in a calm voice.
"Every word you speak is right, Master Wang."
But he added what came after.
"And yet your words are far too ideal. If others respected us as we respected them, no one would pine for the age of Yao and Shun. People come in two kinds. One receives goodwill with gratitude and tries to repay it. The other takes it as his due and demands still more. Against the latter, approach them in earnest—but keep, always, the power to control them."
"That is no different from honey in the mouth and a sword in the belly. It cannot be called sincerity."
Having heard them that far, I stepped between the two.
"Both of you, leave it there. Try to settle this with words, and there will be no end to it. As I see it, each of you is making a case that holds."
Even after I had spoken, neither looked quite ready to let it go.
"Then allow me to offer a solution of my own."
"You have a view, General?"
"If a man has a will, ought he not put it into action?"
Knowledge and deed as one. Learning that remains only in the head is as good as dead, and action without intent is merely meaningless. Words have force, but they have their limits, and a claim without grounds is empty.
So there is no better way to prove oneself right than to carry the thing into practice.
"Stay with me, and you will have no choice but to deal with the foreign peoples. Depending on the case, you may even be given a shepherd's work—the office of a grand administrator, or a county magistrate. I'll give the two of you a chance. A chance, out in the real world, to prove whose way was right."
Not only to test whether one's learning held, but to gather experience and be remade as a still finer talent. What a pleasant opportunity that was.
"Of course, the age being what it is, military duty will make up the greater part of it. But we do not quarrel with the tribes so very often. Unless they invade first, we ourselves seldom send an expedition."
And Wang Si, as the talents of later years so often were, had the makings of a military officer as well as a civil one. To my eye—an eye that had now reached something like a true realm of martial skill—his potential showed plain.
A scholar-commander in the mold of Ma Zhong. I could hardly look for a vanguard of Yu Eun's kind, nor for the commander of an army entire, such as Wang Ping or Ju Fu. Even so, posted to a military office, Wang Si looked as though he would more than earn his keep.
And once the northern campaigns were underway, the tribes would have to be dealt with whether we wished it or not. He would be exactly the man for that hour.
So this is what they call an eye for talent.
Keeping company with none but outstanding people may simply have cultivated it in me. Later histories had left no record of Wang Si in my memory, and yet I knew it by instinct. I merely did not know the record. Somewhere, Wang Si must already have left his name. That was why the offer I made him was sincere.
"When I asked how we should accomplish the great enterprise, you answered at once. You had this path in mind as well. What do you say? Come with me, and put that noble intent of yours to work."
Treat a man with sincerity, not pretense, and who would refuse to stand with you?
Just as he himself had said, Wang Si accepted my sincerity.
He set his posture straight, gathered his hands, and bowed.
"Wang Si of Zizhong County presumes to seek his coming-forth into the world beneath the general's renown. Will you receive me?"
To come forth into the world.
A man who had lived in hiding had chosen to step out into the age, and I would honor the duty of drawing him into its dust and wind.
"Of course."