The Imperial Envoy (4)
"Ah, so you're finally done."
I had just finished my audience with the Empress and stepped outside when Sima Yi came scurrying up to me.
"Did it go well?"
"It did."
Sima Yi craned her neck toward me, eyes bright with expectation.
"……"
"……"
I held her gaze for a long moment before finally blurting it out.
"Thank you."
"Oh, it was nothing, really."
At my thanks, Sima Yi instantly glowed with triumph. For all that no one could call her a little girl anymore, she loved being praised to an almost childish degree. Not that I minded — I found it endearing....
While I was still turning that thought over, Sima Yi spoke up.
"I can help you again whenever you like, so just say the word."
"Hmm...."
Would that be all right, though? I let out a thoughtful hum. As long as it excluded memorials submitted to Her Majesty, surely it would be fine — official documents only, no private correspondence. After a brief silence, I gave a slow nod.
"All right. I'll be counting on you."
"...That was a rather noncommittal answer, you know."
My moment of hesitation must have bothered her, for Sima Yi narrowed her eyes shrewdly.
"Be honest with me. What happened in there?"
"……"
I'm not sure I should tell her this. Seeing me waver at her question, Sima Yi said flatly:
"You're always going on about how amazing I am, this and that, and then...."
Maybe it was just my imagination, but a faint gloom seemed to lurk beneath that curt tone. When she pulls that, there's nothing for it but to talk.
"Fine. I'll tell you."
"...You mean it?"
The moment I opened my mouth with an awkward grimace, Sima Yi snapped right back to her usual self.
"Then hurry up and tell me. What happened in there?"
She fussed at me as though she couldn't bear to wait even a second longer.
"Well, what happened in there was...."
In a calm, level voice, I walked her through everything that had just taken place. That I would no longer need to remove my shoes, nor approach at a quick trot, when granted an audience with the Empress. And that when I, flustered, had begged Her Majesty to reconsider, she had gone so far as to raise the matter of bearing a sword, silencing me on the spot.
No sooner had those two items left my mouth than a look of utter bewilderment crossed Sima Yi's face.
"No more ceremonial quick-step.... no removing your shoes.... and even leave to bear a sword...?"
"Not the sword."
"Even so, this is.... hmm...."
Despite my correction, the shock showed no sign of fading from her face. Then, in a faintly trembling voice, she asked:
"You... you didn't persecute Her Majesty the Empress, did you...?"
"Don't say things that could get us all killed."
I struck the question down at once. I swore it by the heavens above: if anything, I had honored the authority of the imperial house, and never once had I moved to oppress the throne or strip away its power.
"If anything, it's Her Majesty trying to press power into my hands. That's what worries me."
"……"
At my unblushing answer, Sima Yi brooded over something for a while. Wondering what she was chewing over, I gave her a moment, and at last she spoke, slowly.
"Could it be that you want an office higher than General-in-Chief?"
"No."
The answer came without a beat of hesitation.
"This seat already attracts every aggravation known to man. Why would I climb any higher from here?"
I'd said it before, but the higher one's office, the more it demanded of a man. Every deed had to be weighed for how others might read its intent, and every gesture conducted with care. For all that I carried myself boldly, I could hardly ignore the eyes around me altogether.
"I have absolutely no desire to go up."
"How very resolute."
So Sima Yi pronounced upon hearing me out, then added in her usual tone:
"In that case, you had best watch yourself. One wrong step, and you may find yourself climbing higher still."
Her warning drew a puzzled look from me. An office above the General-in-Chief's seat I now occupied.... The Three Excellencies, commonly called the highest posts of the Late Han, varied with the era, but they were generally treated as roughly on par with the General-in-Chief. Which meant only one office could be called, without argument, higher than mine.
"You mean the Chancellor?"
"Yes."
Sima Yi nodded.
The Chancellor. Yes — the very office Cao Cao and Zhuge Liang had held in the original history. Where the General-in-Chief held supreme command of the military, the Chancellor oversaw that and the entire machinery of civil administration besides — an office of staggering breadth.
But there was a reason her remark struck me as odd.
"The chancellorship was abolished ages ago, you know."
For all that it was an office so overwhelming it had no rival beneath the Emperor himself, the chancellorship had been abolished at the end of the Western Han and replaced by the Three Excellencies — in practice, a post that no longer existed. The simplest way to put it: the Chancellor's power had been carved up and dealt out to form the three offices.
Even the Emperor had come to recognize that the chancellorship concentrated far too much authority in one man's hands. So they hadn't merely split the Chancellor in two — they'd split him three ways. The Minister over the Masses took civil affairs and education, the Minister of Works handled irrigation and public construction, and the Minister of War managed military administration.
At a glance, the Minister of War's duties might seem to overlap with the General-in-Chief's, but unlike the General-in-Chief, the Minister of War held no authority to actually command troops in the field.
"I have no intention of reviving the chancellorship."
The post, abolished at the close of the Western Han. In the original history, Cao Cao had revived it from the General-in-Chief's seat — but in this world I was already sitting there, so that history would never repeat itself. What would I even use a revived chancellorship for?
With the Han still shaking, resurrecting the office would be the surest way to invite suspicion from every soul under heaven. The man sworn to shield the imperial house has gathered too much power, has he? General-in-Chief wasn't enough — he had to bring back the chancellorship too? Doesn't something about that smell rotten? The whispers would never stop.
Some might credit the Empress's favor for my rise, but in an age when the throne's authority trembled, few would think so generously. Her Majesty surely understood that as well as anyone — which was exactly why she would never be seen seating me in the Chancellor's chair.
"And if the realm were made stable?"
"Hm?"
"What if hardly any power remained to oppose us, and unification stood right before our eyes?"
I fell silent at her question. That, admittedly, would be dangerous.
Reading my face, Sima Yi went on slowly.
"Besides, even a Chancellor was never shown courtesies like exemption from the quick-step, let alone leave to bear a sword."
"Was that so?"
"Yes."
She stated it as plain fact. I strained to dredge up the memory. I had a nagging sense of having once read a line in the Records of the Three Kingdoms — something about a man who "no longer needed to observe the forms of ritual before the Emperor".... While I was still groaning over the effort, Sima Yi continued.
"Being excused from performing the rites before the Emperor is a special honor reserved for the most exalted minister in the realm."
That was it.
At her explanation I nodded along, the memory finally stirring. If my recollection served, I had indeed read such a line — about no longer needing to observe ritual before the Emperor. It had been precisely the case when Dong Zhuo, having coerced the Emperor, forced his own elevation to Chancellor of State.
"And when that day comes, you'll have the great merit of having steadied a chaotic realm — you could well be made Chancellor of State."
"……"
Chancellor of State. I had just been singing the Chancellor's praises, but the supreme office to which a subject could rise was the Chancellor of State. Its prestige ran so high that after Xiao He and Cao Can — the founding ministers of the Han — the seat had stood empty more often than not.
If the Chancellor was the second man of the state, the Chancellor of State was so towering in authority that he might as well have been a second Emperor.
I tried picturing myself in the role. The Empress, grown into her years, smiling as she conferred the office upon me, while every civil and military official about the court sang its praises....
...Something about that image looked terribly wrong.
The chancellorship already didn't suit me — and Chancellor of State, of all things? I shook my head inwardly.
"If that day ever truly comes, there's only one thing for me to do."
"...And what would that be?"
Sima Yi asked with a puzzled look.
"Resign."
The word for walking away from office altogether. Once peace arrived, I meant to dust off my hands without a shred of regret and idle away the rest of my life.
I would put in the occasional appearance, loose a grand ahem of a cough, and indulge in a little back-in-my-day grumbling. After everything I'd accomplished, who was going to object if I played until the day I died? A truly flawless plan.
"You really believe that would be possible?"
"……"
Sima Yi fired the question at me point-blank.
— He petitioned to resign his office; leave was not granted. —
Why, of all lines, did that one choose this moment to surface? A nameless foreboding crept over me, and I held my tongue.
"Absolutely not."
Then Sima Yi flashed me a smile that crawled right up my spine.
"The moment you try to run, I'll drag myself after you and hold on to you if I have to."
Her tone carried the iron will of someone who refused to be left to die alone. ...Perhaps I ought to add a midnight escape to the plan as well.
After our long detour into the subject of ranks, Sima Yi circled back to the matter at hand.
"So? What was it, in the end, that gave you pause about my offer?"
"Ah. That."
How on earth was I supposed to explain this one? If I came out with it plainly, something quite enormous seemed bound to happen. I combed through my thoughts again and again, searching for the phrasing that would keep the aftershocks to a minimum.