Cao Cao's Condolences, and Cao Pi
It did not take long, nor any great preparation, to leave Chengdu on the condolence mission.
What was needed had already been sent ahead with Han Yeom. All I had to carry was Liu Bei's edict naming me chief envoy of the delegation.
Of course, once that title was mine the mission swelled, and a little more preparation did become necessary — not of goods for the mourning, but of men to guard me. And while I was away, Nanling Commandery would need someone to govern in my place.
Zhang Yi, Ma Dai, and Fu Qian won't be enough on their own.
Even that, though, was not a matter of ability. It was rank and standing. Install someone of sufficiently high station as my deputy, and the thing was done.
"We are to ride together again."
"So we are."
The man I welcomed with a wide smile was Zhao Yun. When I had gone into Hanzhong to bring Ma Chao's family out, Liu Bei, anxious for my safety, had attached Zhao Yun to me. He was sending him with me again. And not only him.
"I am told General Pang will join us at Nanzheng."
Pang De as well.
"It puts me in mind of Hanzhong."
Chen Dao and Wei Yan were not with us, but three out of five was a majority. Chen Dao administered the household troops of Liu Bei himself, and Wei Yan, his latest merit recognized, now commanded southern Jing Province. Neither of them could easily come along.
Before we set out in earnest I reviewed the men and the stores. From Chengdu all the way to Ye — a road of months, however short one made it — grain and daily necessities had to be watched with care. Along the way I fell into idle talk with Zhao Yun and hinted that he might set ceremony aside with me. Zhao Yun was immovable.
"We may be close in private, but Your Lordship the Rear General stands above me in rank. You are, moreover, chief envoy of this mission. How could I improperly lower my speech?"
True to the Zhao Yun of whom no one could find a fault — magnanimous, fair, and scrupulously just — the warmth he felt for me never once opened a gap in the order of rank.
When every preparation was finished, the journey proper began, toward Nanzheng, where we were to join Han Yeom, who had gone on ahead. We had turned our backs on Chengdu and were just about to leave Shu Commandery when Zhao Yun spoke.
"You look uncommonly pleased. Has something good happened?"
"Ah. It showed?"
I smiled, a little abashed, and touched the corner of my mouth. I hadn't noticed, but the edge of my lip had lifted, just slightly, under my fingers.
Something good — yes, there had been. It had happened as I was stepping out of the house to leave on the mission. To make the hour of assembly I had meant to go at first light, and someone was waiting for me. My mother stood before the gate.
"Mother..."
"You meant to go without a word?"
I stood frozen, still as stone. She came to me in long strides and drew my collar closed.
"The weather hasn't fully broken. Dress warm."
"...Yes."
She smoothed my clothes, and even then she held the collar a moment longer before she slowly let it go, looked up into my face, and spoke.
"Did you think I would hate you?"
"No. I didn't think that. I just..."
I was the one who could not stand before her cleanly. I had not had the courage to look at her. I tried to say so, and the words would not come. My lips and tongue moved, but the speech lingered in my throat and showed no intention of coming out.
She put her arms around me and drew me in tight.
"Where is the parent who hates her own child? Always, always, I have worried for you. How could I resent you?"
"Even though I knew of my uncle's death and looked away all the same?"
"Even so. I would rather be a failure of a mother than have a failure of a daughter."
I felt myself grow small. How selfish I had been. How cowardly. I had said I would face her, and then I had turned my eyes from the one person I must never turn from, and I hated that shabby shape of myself. I had been drunk on merit. That was all.
Word by word, the mother's love steeped into them melted something in me.
"You have lived only in the south, so you wouldn't know, but Hebei is a cold country. It will be summer by the time you reach Ye, and still it will not be a summer like this one. I have packed clothes. Take these as well."
"Yes... Mother."
I answered with my tears held hard in my throat, and she patted my shoulder and said,
"Square your shoulders. Wherever you go, you are my daughter, and the blood of the Xiahou runs in you. Remember that. You are to stand tall before anyone. Keep it in mind when you reach Ye."
"I will. I won't forget."
"Good. Then that is enough."
She took her hands from my shoulders, drew something from her bosom, and pressed it firmly into my palm. It was not heavy; not coin, then, and not gold. I looked from the silk pouch in my hand to her, asking with my eyes what it was.
"I packed a little something sweet, so you won't be bored on the way. Eat it as you go."
From the day she heard I was to go with the condolence mission, she must have spent days thinking what I would need, and preparing it. I had understood her affection with my head and never accepted it with my heart. Only now did I see it. I held her close and left her the best words I could manage in that moment.
"I'll go, and I'll come back."
And then, returned to the present, I let the reins rest a moment and took out the silk pouch I had kept carefully in my robes. When I loosened the cord, a faint smell rose from inside — nutty, and sweet.
"General Zhao."
"Yes?"
He turned his head at my call, and I drew what was in the pouch and held it toward his lips.
"Would you like a piece of taffy?"
Perhaps it was because we had set out on the back of something glad. The days were clear and bright, and the wind was cool. Passing mountains and fields thick with the scent of spring, I set my foot on the soil of Wei.
Until then my heart had been a sightseer's. From there on I looked about like an inspector sent on a circuit — careful, intent, laying everything into memory. I could not go drawing maps in the open, but what I carved into my mind, how were they ever to know?
Beyond the Qinling Mountains, Chang'an was vast enough to startle. It had a grandeur worthy of its fame as one of the greatest cities of the age. Luoyang, by contrast, glittered. Until Cao Cao moved the capital it had served as the capital of the Later Han, and the fact that an emperor had lived there struck me all at once.
Chengdu, Nanzheng, Chang'an, Luoyang, and on to Ye. A long road over mountains and across rivers, and it went on while the season turned. The mission that left in the late spring of the third month drew near the city of Ye just as summer was truly beginning. Even so — whether because this was the north, or because the climate of the age ran cooler than the twenty-first century's — it was bearable enough.
"I think we're nearly there."
The guide assigned to us had said that as far as the approaches of Ye we would travel by water, so if that held, Zhao Yun had the right of it. The Zhang River runs through Ye, and one could perfectly well arrive by boat. But that would offend propriety, and so the party was to land along the way and pass the gates of Ye by road. Empty ceremony, I thought — and then I remembered that we had come in by making use of that very empty ceremony, and it was not so hard to accept.
When the walls of Ye began to show, I felt the long journey coming to its end. In the same moment I saw a company coming this way from the city gate, and tilted my head.
"They look as if they're coming to us."
"Mm. A party sent to receive the envoys, I should think."
As Pang De said, we thought little of it and went to meet them, but the closer we drew, the deeper we sank into confusion. Carriages so lavish they edged into extravagance, and the dress of the attendants. An escort far too heavy to be called a mere reception for a mission. All of it pointed to a single man.
Cao Pi, King of Wei.
Would that Cao Pi truly come out in person merely to greet a condolence party? And yet the manner and the scale of the company approaching us were a king's, however one looked at them. While we floundered in the dissonance, at a loss for what we ought to do, they closed the distance with perfect steadiness and at last came to a stop before us.
"Are you the condolence mission from Shu?"
At the question from the commander who rode at their head, Zhao Yun answered for our side.
"We are!"
"Then dismount, all of you, and pay the proper respect! You stand before His Highness the King of Wei!"
Hell. So it really was him.
Everyone still in the saddle turned to look at me at once. They were asking what they should do. Had this been a battlefield, perhaps it would have been different. As it was, we were guests who had come to them. So long as they did not cross the line first, observing the rites was our duty as well. I nodded, dismounted ahead of the others, and stepped forward.
"I am Zhang Lan, charged as chief envoy of the condolence mission in the stead of His Highness the King of Hanzhong."
"You are..."
The Wei officer who had been staring at me cleared his throat — ahem — and moved his horse aside. At that the guards parted as one, and a path opened all the way to the carriage.
"Go on. His Highness the King of Wei is waiting for you."
I walked between the ranks of Wei and did not bow my head. Remembering what my mother had said, I held my chin high until I stood before the carriage, and there, seated in the shade of a parasol as enormous as it was beautiful, a man came clear into view. A man of about thirty, in robes crowded with splendid ornament. He was not wearing a king's true formal dress, the dragon robe and the beaded crown, but there was no mistaking him.
Cao Pi. His eyes met mine.
"Hoh... indeed. No wonder that Ziwen carried on as he did."
His gaze was exactly a snake's. As if a small snake had slid across the skin — a clinging, intense look passed over my face as though it were licking it. His appraisal apparently finished, such as it was, Cao Pi nodded and spoke to me.
"Come up. I grant you the honor of riding in the carriage with me."
And to that offer from Cao Pi—
"I decline."
I answered at once.