The Negotiation

Soldiers closed in along both our flanks, and before Cao Cao the generals poured out a crushing pressure in unbroken streams. The civil officials stared with a keenness that seemed intent on taking us apart where we stood. Every one of them was an enemy. We stood in the very heart of the enemy's camp.

Guan Yu walked on anyway, in long, unhurried strides, as if none of them amounted to anything at all. Even under the glares of Wei's famed ministers and commanders, his bearing never faltered. If anything, the weight of him as he looked the room over in his turn seemed to press that whole multitude down until they were the ones who flinched.

Having taken the assembly in his grasp, he looked Cao Cao straight in the eye and spoke.

"For an escort, there seem to be a great many soldiers."

"Against a man worth ten thousand, they feel rather few."

There was a curious force in Cao Cao's voice. It was not that he spoke loudly, nor that his tone was strange. Even so, the voice was somehow different.

Guan Yu, it seemed, felt that difference in his own way.

"Your Lordship has aged a great deal."

"Have I? And yet the years have left you remarkably hale."

"I have grown old as well. In my youth I would not have come to negotiate. I would have been looking for the counterstroke."

At those plain words, which nonetheless had a spine in them, Cao Cao laughed aloud and met him in kind.

Their talk and their manner were nothing like men met to bargain a truce. They seemed far more like old friends, long parted, trading jests with an edge.

"To see even Lord Guan grow old — time is a fearful thing. Nearly twenty years since you returned to Xuande. A great deal of time has passed."

"And a great deal has changed."

"Even now I regret it, from time to time. I should never have taken Xuande in, back then."

Then, all at once, Cao Cao's gaze turned to me.

"Had I not, that child would not have remained Xuande's niece."

It was unexpected. To Cao Cao I ought to have been a mortal enemy — I had killed Cao Hong, the younger brother he cherished, and Zhang He, a famed general of Wei — and yet he spoke of me with an easy familiarity.

The moment his interest settled on me, Guan Yu's blade-sharp brows twitched. Cao Cao paid that displeasure no mind at all and addressed me.

"I heard it from Ying. That it was you who returned Miaocai's body."

I had spared Xiahou Ying, Xiahou Yuan's fifth son and a cousin of my mother's, and entrusted him with the coffin.

I gave a silent nod, and from the ministers around Cao Cao came coughs and low sounds thick with discontent.

Guan Yu's eyes blazed as he glared them down. But they were steadfast men in their own right, the very talents who stood for Wei.

As the contest of presence between our embassy, Guan Yu at its head, and the officials of Wei grew sharper, Cao Cao raised a hand.

Silence came all at once.

However old and weary he had grown, perhaps a dragon remains a dragon to the last. His hold on the room had not faded.

The officials of Wei drew back in obedience to his will, and we folded our own displeasure away.

In the quiet that had settled low, only Cao Cao's voice rang through the hall.

"The same blood as yours runs in this body."

He laid his right hand over the heart in his chest and spoke with a raw ache.

"Miaocai cherished your mother, and loved her, more than his own children. There was a time of famine when fathers ate their sons, and even the great clans turned bandit merely to survive. To keep Hui'a alive, Miaocai gave up his own young son."

I had already known that Xiahou Yuan held my mother dearer than his own flesh and blood. On the day I meant to enter the army, she had grieved for the fight between Xiahou Yuan and me that was bound to come.

And I, remembering the love he had borne her, had spared Xiahou Ying in a shabby act of atonement and returned Xiahou Yuan's body into his hands.

"After the defeat at Hanzhong, I looked into you. I faced the past I had tried to turn from. I was told, as well, that Hui'a grieved on the day Miaocai died. And so… I will forgive you."

To the man who spoke of forgiveness, I drew out the fact he had left unnamed.

"I killed Cao Hong as well."

"Yes. You did. You killed Zilian and Junyi both. Every one of them was a pillar of this Wei — men who were as my own hands and feet."

Cao Cao's eyes flushed red. For a moment I thought he might weep, but it was not sorrow alone. Anger was in it too.

"The fault is mine. It was my complacency that killed them. And so I will forgive you. I forgave even Zhang Xiu and Jia Xu, who killed my Ang. How much more, then, you, who are of my own blood?"

It was true that he had forgiven and taken in Zhang Xiu and Jia Xu, the men who killed his eldest son, Cao Ang, and Dian Wei, the warrior he prized. But what had Zhang Xiu's last years been? Under Cao Cao's indifference and Cao Pi's petty torments, he had chosen suicide in the end.

Only a man on the order of Jia Xu — whose gift for survival would rank among the greatest not merely in the tales of the Three Kingdoms, but in all of history — truly received that forgiveness and lived out his allotted years.

Of course, as Cao Cao said, I was Xiahou Yuan's sister's grandchild and thus of their blood, unlike Zhang Xiu. Even so, it was difficult to believe those words entire. And so I did not waver at the offer that followed.

"Come to me. Do that, and I shall set you in the same rank as my own princesses, enfeoff you as a marquis, and make you a senior general of the realm."

It was an extraordinary offer. Cao Cao had long made use of the granting of surnames, and he favored those he brought into the clan, raising them alongside his own children — yet he never truly placed them in the same file as his own flesh and blood. To me, he had just said he would give precisely the treatment he gave his own children.

However much stronger Liu Bei's restored Han had grown than in the history I remembered, the strongest of the three states was still Wei. In an age when population was national strength, the power of Wei, holding the Central Plains, was immense enough to make an offer like that.

The instant I parted my lips to answer, Guan Yu stepped out beside me and set himself between Cao Cao and me.

"My lord. This child is Yide's daughter."

"She is Miaocai's grandniece as well."

"She is a child upon whom the King of Hanzhong has set his eye."

"Is she? Word of a betrothal is the first I have heard of it."

"I ask that you allow me to go on revering you as my lord, to the very last."

The true meaning beneath Guan Yu's words was a threat: take one step further, and he would respect Cao Cao no longer.

Even Cao Cao seemed to find that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠difficult to answer head-on, and he yielded a pace. The trouble was that the direction of that retreat was toward me.

"Surely what matters most is not the two of us arguing back and forth, but the wish of the person concerned."

At that, Guan Yu too was at a loss for a reply, and his silence was a tacit assent.

Only then could I let out the words that had climbed to the tip of my tongue.

"I decline."

"…So it is, after all."

"Hm."

The contrast between the two of them was nothing short of theatrical. Unlike Cao Cao, adept at schooling his face, Guan Yu did not hide his satisfaction in the slightest. He was a man whose outside and inside matched completely.

"A pity. Still — surely I might at least see your face? That brat Yellow-Beard, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠how he does go on. Will you not show yourself to this uncle of your clan?"

Yellow-Beard was the nickname of Cao Zhang, Cao Cao's second son. Having seen my face, he had later rendered the brief verdict that I was the finest under heaven, and the remark had spread so fast it became my new epithet.

I had never been especially fond of the man called Cao Cao, but I did hold a certain respect for a giant of his age.

I took off the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠mask and showed my bare face. At once another murmur rose from the same assembly that had coughed at my discourtesy. This time it was not displeasure or rebuke, but a sigh drawn up from wonder.

"Yellow-Beard was not wrong."

Cao Cao, who carried in one person a hegemon's majesty and an artist's temperament, reacted on a different grain from the rest. He showed the face of a man of the arts and regarded me with the seriousness of a critic studying a work.

Seeing that this might go on without end, Guan Yu cut the talk off at a suitable point.

"Let us speak of the negotiation now."

"Quite so. For a moment I forgot that this seat was prepared for negotiation. They say that when Wang Zhaojun set her fingers to the strings, the wild geese fell — and so she was called Falling Geese. Take off your mask, and even the moon would hide its face for shame. Moon-Concealing suits you."

Sinking Fish, Falling Geese. Moon-Concealing, Flower-Shaming.

They were the phrases that named the Four Great Beauties. Sinking Fish belonged to Xi Shi, Falling Geese to Wang Zhaojun, Moon-Concealing to Diaochan, and Flower-Shaming to Yang Guifei. Unlike the others, Diaochan, who bore the name Moon-Concealing, was a figure invented by Luo Guanzhong. Whether this history would prove any different, I could not say.

Having shown, for a moment, one face of a man of letters, Cao Cao returned — as swiftly as a change of masks — to the face of a sovereign. He turned his gaze to Guan Yu and spoke in a tone sunk calm and low.

"You will send back the generals — Cao Ren, Man Chong, Yu Jin, and the rest — and the soldiers of the seven armies you hold prisoner."

"And the price?"

"Your safety."

Bluster.

Guan Yu knew of the rebellion that had broken out in Ye. Weighing advantage against disadvantage, and seeing clearly that Cao Cao was the one at a loss, he cut the matter off short.

"Then we fight. That is all."

In a negotiation it was ordinary to name a price far above what one hoped to gain, but this raised the bid past all reason. That Guan Yu's manner of address, which had honored Cao Cao, had dropped from the deepest reverence to a cooler courtesy was proof — together with his displeasure — that he truly meant to go on with the war.

Yet Cao Cao carried himself as if his words were simple fact.

"I still have a great host of more than a hundred thousand. Cao Ren and Man Chong may be shut inside Fan Castle, and Yu Jin may have been taken, but I still have Zhang Liao, and Xu Huang, and Zang Ba. Nor is that all. There are counselors as well — Jia Xu, Chen Qun, Zhong Yao, Sima Yi. How, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠then, is this not we who are showing mercy?"

For the briefest moment, Guan Yu's eyes wavered.

I realized I had been mistaken. A gap of knowledge lay between Guan Yu and me, because I had never fully shared with him what I knew of the future. However exceptional a man he might be, he could not know what he did not know.

He did not know how much effort Sun Quan had spent on the attack against Jingzhou, nor how effective the preparations we had made to stop it would prove. Above all, he did not know that little of Cao Cao's life remained.

And so, from where Guan Yu stood, the thought would run like this.

However much a rebellion had risen in Ye and Cao Cao's grip was shaking, if he left the Jingzhou front to the generals under him and returned to Ye himself, he could recover his footing whenever he pleased.

Cao Cao's naming of those generals rather than himself was meant, without quite saying so, to lead Guan Yu into exactly that thought. We held the advantage for now, but it was not strange that Guan Yu should judge that if the war dragged on, advantage and disadvantage would reverse once more.

Cao Cao was certainly no easy man. Beyond the words themselves, he controlled to perfection everything around them — tone, pace, and stress, and the expression, the gesture, the light of the eyes. Even in a situation this favorable to us, he made it feel as though it were truly they who were dispensing mercy.

Before Guan Yu could waver, I had to step in. I passed beside him, came forward, and recited a verse I carried in memory.