Are You Zhang Lan?
The year 209 closed with the marriage of Liu Bei and Lady Sun.
It was a joining of the houses of Liu and Sun, and the proof of their alliance. After the wedding, Jingzhou slipped free of a war that had dragged on far too long and settled into a peace held together by three powers keeping one another in check.
To make the four southern commanderies of Jingzhou he had just gained—and the portion of Nanjun that Zhou Yu had carved off for him—unmistakably his own, Liu Bei set his administrative seat at Gong'an and bent himself to internal affairs. Liu Qi had died of illness at the end of the previous year, and Liu Bei had formally risen to Inspector of Jingzhou; the province melted quickly into his influence.
Cao Ren, who had cut his way out through the desperate fight of the fierce general Li Tong, barely clung to his life. They said even Guan Yu had been struck with admiration at the valor that punched through his encirclement to drag Cao Ren clear—which rather said it all.
Guan Yu himself, having held that encirclement splendidly against so many of Cao Cao's famed generals and completed his withdrawal without mishap, was named Administrator of Xiangyang and General Who Subdues Bandits, and took up his post north of the river.
My father, Zhang Fei, was enfeoffed as Marquis of Xinting and given the office of Administrator of Nanjun. At first he oversaw only the southern stretch of Nanjun that Zhou Yu had previously ceded; later, won over by Lu Su, Sun Quan lent him the remainder of Nanjun that had lain within Sun's own sphere, and Zhang Fei became administrator of Nanjun in full.
That news meant, as well, that Zhou Yu was dead.
Word that he had died while preparing to march on Xichuan—Yizhou—spread swiftly, and not only to me. It ran the length of the Central Plains.
With the victory at Nanjun that followed Red Cliffs, Zhou Yu had won a name known throughout the realm, and his death carried a tremendous shock.
I had wondered whether my meddling might turn the course of things, but events ran on exactly as that foreseen future had written them. Fretting over it was absurd, if I was honest.
The wound Zhou Yu had taken at Nanjun had never been a light one. Even Cao Ren, a man seasoned to the bone by war, had judged him already dead.
Far from convalescing, he had been hounded by official business and, on top of that, had prepared a campaign. There was no world in which his body could have held. His death was inevitable. Even if I had glued myself to his side and managed him with all my will, I could not have guaranteed he would live.
My head understood that. My mouth still tasted bitter. I had thought I had shaken off the lingering affection from my previous life, yet it had remained all the same, like a softness I could not quite train away.
I pushed the tea leaves he had once given me into a place where no one would see them. Thoughts of Zhou Yu I laid away with the tea, stored in some corner of my mind.
Such was the shape of things beyond our walls. Sun Quan was busy with Zhou Yu's funeral and with filling the seat he had left empty; Cao Cao was catching his breath after the successive defeats at Red Cliffs and Nanjun.
Liu Bei, as I have said, was occupied with governance and showed no particular military movement. The fifteenth year of Jian'an was, in every sense, a year of peace.
Through those peaceful days I remained in Nanjun with Zhang Fei.
In the fighting for Nanjun I had looked hard at my own immaturity. However fine one's qualities and talent, potential left uncultivated is nothing but a handsome shell.
I left the camp. I had not left the army for good. I had been an ordinary foot soldier; there was nothing to resign from, and nothing to bar me from walking back in.
What welcomed me home was not Zhang Fei, but my mother, Xiahou Hui, and my younger sister, Zhang Yan.
"Sister!"
I turned ten that year, and my sister, four years younger, came pattering over and threw herself into my arms. The warmth of that embrace; the aching love in my mother's voice as tears welled at the scars left on my body—
"I told you to take care of yourself..."
—and my father's fervor, swearing he would pass on every art he knew so that I would never be hurt again:
"From today, I will teach you in earnest."
All of it reminded me that I was their family.
And so I melted into them as one of their own. Zhang Lan's memories and feelings had been mine from the start; one might as well say I had simply passed through an early adolescence.
In any case, the days left me no room to breathe. I learned the martial arts from Father, let Mother half drag me off to be dressed and looked after, and doted on the little sister who trailed after me wherever I went.
When winter ended and spring began, I had grown nearly half a handspan taller than I had been on the day I first awakened to my previous life. I had been training, yes, but to shoot up like this—so this was a growth spurt.
As my body filled out, real strength came with it, and the intensity of training rose by the day. Each day better than the last. Having already walked the line between life and death in actual combat, I was growing steadily beneath a master named Zhang Fei.
I was not shut in the house doing nothing but train. I kept up a certain amount of company as well.
I met Zhou Yu on my own a few times before he died—he was in Nanjun then, very near—and once Guan Ping came looking for me.
Today was a special day. Once a week I kept a promise: only the basic training, and the rest of the time with my sister.
Zhang Fei happened to be away on official business, and I had decided that today I would heal myself by squishing Yeoni's cheeks, soft as glutinous rice cakes.
"Sis? You gonna keep squishing till tomorrow?"
"Mm~ I want to squish them my whole life."
"But—but then? Um, if you do that, I can't eat my rice..."
I went right on kneading, and Yeoni poured out the adorable worry that she would not be able to eat. Little sister, you still don't know that answers like that only spur me on.
Seeing her fidget with her fingers where she sat on my knee, I let go of her cheeks.
"Shall we play cat's cradle?"
"Yeah!"
She hopped down off my knee and ran off somewhere, short legs working hard. The patter of her feet echoed through the house.
Children in this world truly had nothing much to amuse them. Not knowing what to do with Yeoni, I had taught her cat's cradle, and now, whenever we were together, she pestered me to play it.
I never thought I'd be doing something I only did in elementary school again.
In the childhood of my previous life, boys usually played with boys and girls with girls, but I had gone back and forth between them well enough, and I had been decent at the games girls played. Ddakji and gonggi especially—the folded-paper tiles and the little stones you tossed and caught—I had ruled the whole school at those.
I was turning that useless memory over when Yeoni came back with the string. Not so much carrying it as already looped about both hands, ready to play. How eager could one child be?
"Sister's turn!"
Cat's cradle is quietly difficult, yet Yeoni picked up the string neatly even with her chubby fingers. Our parents' blood really was something. I myself had already finished the Thousand Character Classic and was reading the classics at nine.
"Ah... it fell."
Yeoni was still small, her fingers short, and mistakes like that happened.
"It's all right. You've gotten so much better, our Yeoni."
"Yeah! I copied the one-person one you showed me last time!"
Cat's cradle by herself? I was certain I had shown her only once—and she had remembered? Those bloodlines were anything but ordinary.
"Wanna see? Just wait~"
Before I could answer, her fingers were already moving. The sight of those small hands working the string this way and that was so cute that my hand went, of its own accord, to the crown of her head. Ah. So this was why adults had always gone for the top of my head. I might not have had the manners, but the looks, at least, I could claim in fair measure.
Time with Yeoni taught me Mother's heart without my trying. Four years lay between us, but with a previous life's memories she felt less like a little sister than a niece.
If Yeoni ever said she meant to enter the army and take the field, even I would have stopped her. Thinking of it that way, how much must Mother's heart have ached on the day she saw me come home wounded?
I knew the Mountain Spirit had arranged things. Our parents did not even know that much. Father's attainment was high enough that he had grasped my potential and permitted it, but Mother, Xiahou blood or no, would have had her limits.
"Ta-da! All done!"
Mm. Thinking it over again—potential or not, I could not send her.
"Wow~ our Yeoni is really something."
"Hehe, right?"
How was I ever supposed to let this little one go?
Having shown off a full round of cat's cradle, my sister declared, proud as if it were only fair that I now show her what she wanted in return:
"Sister, show me that."
"That?"
"You know. The thing where you go like this and like that with a sword. Yeah?"
Yeoni explained with a tongue that was still short, swinging her arms wildly through the air.
In training I used both sword and spear. When Zhang Fei was there I mostly took the spear; alone, I used the sword more.
And that sword work was almost entirely Liechtenauer's longsword. A longsword certainly gave you something worth watching. Unless an art had been made outright for self-cultivation or display rather than real fighting, there was little to match it.
"Then shall I put a little strength into it?"
"Waaaaah!"
Leaving my sister clapping like a delighted seal, I took up the sword. I was tall for my age, but still small, and in my hands an ordinary Han sword was as good as a longsword.
"Hoo."
I settled my breath and brought the blade to the middle guard. Pflug—the plow.
Then the forms began. Like flowing water, like a wind that does not stop, I changed posture without cease, cut following thrust in an unbroken chain.
Someone watching might have called it a sword dance. Compared with last year the linking was smoother, and at the same time sharper. Speed gathered. Even the sound of the blade parting the air faded from my ears.
In the instant I brought down the Zornhau—the wrath hew, the diagonal cut—running from Ochs into Wechsel.
"Ah—ah, wait, you can't just—"
A commotion rose by the manor gate.
"S-sister?"
At the servant's voice, thick with bewilderment where he kept the door, Yeoni looked at me with a frightened face.
"It's all right. Big Sis will handle it."
That word had stuck to my tongue by now. I heard it from Yeoni so often that using it of myself no longer felt strange.
Setting trifles aside, I was about to see what was happening when a servant came running, caught sight of me, and spilled his words in a rush.
"Y-young miss! R-right now, that is—"
"Old Guo. Don't panic. Speak slowly. There—take one good deep breath."
The servant, old enough that people also called him Elder, steadied his breathing at my word.
"There. You can speak now, can't you? What's happened?"
"A guest has come, only the thing is..."
"Only?"
Even uninvited, people with business for Zhang Fei sometimes knocked at our gate. Whenever neither Father nor Mother could be reached, the servants came to me and asked what ought to be done. Before I could let it show that I wondered why this time should be any different, Elder Guo cried out.
"She says she is Lady Sun!"
With his urgent shout, the main gate flew wide with a crash, as if it had been smashed apart.
They had not received so much as the master's leave, yet a party crossed the threshold without a trace of shame. Their footsteps came straight into the courtyard and scraped unpleasantly at the ear.
At last the Chuihua Gate opened—the hanging-flower gate that divided the front court from the inner quarters.
None were meant to pass it without the master's permission, yet the uninvited guests set their feet through it as boldly as if they were coming and going in their own house.
I stood at the center of the inner court with the sword in my hand and faced them.
The woman at their head wore brilliant dress. Her eyes swept sharp and upward, and the air about her was as fierce as a wild beast's.
The trained body her clothes could not entirely hide was taut and springy, and the sword at her hip was too worn by use to be a mere ornament. She called to mind nothing so much as a black panther.
There was no mistake.
She was Lady Sun—Sun Quan's younger sister, and Liu Bei's wife.