Jing Province, Nanyang Commandery (8)
We had driven Yuan Shu from his stronghold in Nanyang Commandery of Jing Province, and to Liu Biao, who had seized the remaining lands of the region, we sent an offer of surrender by way of an imperial envoy. All that remained now was to wait for his answer, so I resolved to devote myself to domestic affairs in the meantime.
Wan and the districts surrounding Nanyang Commandery still bore the vivid scars of Yuan Shu's tyranny. Liu Biao, whatever else could be said of him, had at least never amassed a private fortune—but that scoundrel Yuan Shu, greedy beyond all reason, had crow-like heaped his residence high with every glittering thing he could lay hands on. Great wealth was a fine thing in itself, yet the moment I considered where it had all come from, only a sigh would come out.
Raising something up had always taken far more strength than tearing it down. Restoring Nanyang Commandery would swallow more money on top of the money, and bleed more time on top of the time.
Having sketched out the road ahead, I put an end to my worrying there and set my plan in motion.
"Your Majesty."
"Ah, yes. What brings you today?"
The Emperor, having cleared away everyone around her, welcomed me in the familiar manner. The little Emperor had grown with the passing years, her frame noticeably larger than when we had first met—our Liu Bian, who had been barely more than a schoolchild back then, was thriving. Where Liu Bei had fully matured into an adult woman, Her Majesty could now, without any stretch, be called a teenager. Prince of Chenliu Liu Xie, on the other hand, remained a tiny thing. Which was only natural, given her age—she was still in her early teens.
I presented my proposal to the Emperor.
"Would it be permissible to invite the prominent gentry families of the provinces to settle near Chang'an?"
"Hmm?"
At my suggestion, the Emperor asked with a puzzled note in her voice.
"You mean entire families, not merely individuals?"
"That is correct."
I answered with due courtesy. Considering how close the Emperor and I were, one might ask whether a report was even necessary—but this was the sort of undertaking that could breed ugly gossip if mishandled, so I raised it through proper channels. If I stumbled into trouble without knowing, so be it; but wherever possible, it was better not to manufacture grounds for blame.
Chaotic as the times were, the supreme power ruling the Han was still the Emperor. Anyone who served the throne was obliged to submit a memorial for every conspicuous undertaking—a formal written account of one's intentions, laid before the sovereign. Controlling the Son of Heaven came with plenty of benefits, but this one part was a genuine chore.
In the original history, even Cao Cao, once he held the Son of Heaven, would submit a memorial and obtain the Emperor's approval before moving so much as a single army. ...Not that "approval" was quite the word—it was, in effect, a one-way notification. Be that as it may, this was precisely why acting on my own authority without a word of consultation could be construed as trampling on the dignity of the imperial house.
To put it less politely: certain unsavory types nursing their grudges might mutter behind my back—there he goes again, another would-be rebel in the making. Of course, insult me to my face and something of theirs might get summarily lopped off, so they would presumably gather in some deep corner beyond all eyes and grumble there instead.
The Emperor murmured in a quiet voice.
"So you would grant lands near Chang'an to the provincial gentry..."
Ever since Dong Zhuo had put Chang'an to the torch and laid the area waste, a staggering amount of land nearby had been left without a master. Part of that ownerless ground had since been reclaimed by the state and was being managed directly.
"By lands near Chang'an, you mean the Sanfu, I take it?"
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"I see."
Having heard me out, the Emperor nodded thoughtfully. The word referred to the region around Chang'an, which had served as the capital in the Former Han era: Zuo Fengyi, Jingzhaoyin, and You Fufeng. These three territories together were known as the Sanfu. Indeed, Sima Fang—Sima Yi's father—had once held the office of Jingzhaoyin. The title differed, but in practice he might as well have been the governor who ruled the place.
In the original history, it was Li Jue and Guo Si—the pair who had driven out Lü Bu after Dong Zhuo's death—who wrecked the Sanfu region beyond recognition, in the chaos known as the Sanfu Rebellion. Those three commanderies, having endured it, were devastated just as thoroughly as the Luoyang that Dong Zhuo himself had burned. With the Qiang and Xianbei tribes pouring across the borders without cease, the lands once called the Sanfu recovered their old prestige only after dynasty upon dynasty had risen and collapsed.
In this world, things were somewhat better... they were not. One could fairly say Li Jue and Guo Si were simply Dong Zhuo in an earlier stage of evolution—and did anyone truly believe an arsonist like Dong Zhuo would have left the Sanfu untouched? He plundered, he burned, he put innocent commoners to the sword; every crime imaginable, he committed them all. This was part of why Chang'an's restoration lagged so badly: it was not enough to revive the city itself. The entire region around it had to be raised from the dead along with it.
After nodding along for a moment, the Emperor spoke.
"Now that I think of it, the offices that govern the Sanfu are sitting empty, aren't they."
"Yes, Your Majesty. During the recovery of the Chang'an region, with everything thrown into confusion, certain officials seized the moment to commit graft."
I remembered them vividly, having dragged them down from office with my own hands. It had been, if I recalled rightly, hardly any time at all after the Peach Sisters entered my bugok.
"Something about this feels off?"
"Hm? Off how?"
"The numbers don't add up, that's how."
It was Sima Yi. Back then, the man holding the post of Zuo Fengyi—whether out of sheer gall or sheer stupidity, who could say—had been siphoning off state funds with his entire clan roped in, and she had caught him red-handed. Sima Yi had been helping me sort through the paperwork; she ran the figures in her head, then grabbed some spare bamboo slips and a brush lying nearby and laid the whole thing out in terms even I could follow.
"See? Something's wrong with it, isn't there?"
"...You're right."
I conceded her point with perfect calm. The girl calculated so absurdly fast I half suspected she was a pocket calculator.
"Going strictly by the ledger, the tax revenue ought to have come out considerably higher. The remaining twenty percent has simply vanished somewhere."
With that, Sima Yi lifted her eyes from the bamboo slips and looked at me.
"Do you suppose the tax money grew legs and ran off on its own?"
"I don't think that's what happened."
If it had, that would have been terrifying before it was funny. Sima Yi grinned like a little imp.
"Then who would the culprit be?"
......
I led the bugok straight into the raid.
"Please, I beg of you—forgive me just this once!"
"Drag him out."
"General-in-Chief! General-in-Chieeeeef───!"
Every man who resisted was flattened by the Peach Sisters, and the one the soldiers seized kept howling like that the whole way as they hauled him off.
That man was none other than the one who had once held the post of Zuo Fengyi. And since—as I said just now—he had dragged his entire clan into his corruption, I had uprooted the whole gentry house that dominated the district, not merely the man himself. Gentry houses tend to be tangled together by marriage and shared interest, so every family that had joined hands with his was implicated in turn, one long chain of them. As a result, the lands around Chang'an currently belonged to the crown with no officials worth the name to govern them. For the time being, makeshift appointees were administering Zuo Fengyi, but sooner or later fresh talent would have to be found to take the region properly in hand. The Emperor had most likely already divined why I was proposing all this.
The Emperor asked.
"Have you some talent you have been keeping an eye on?"
"I do, Your Majesty."
Offering the provincial gentry families a place near Chang'an was, in substance, my way of declaring that I would recommend their people for office—nominating those fit for a post and seating them in it. However well the regional clans were doing for themselves, would any of them really spurn the chance to come to Chang'an? To Chang'an, with the Han capital of Luoyang sitting practically next door? From a provincial family's standpoint, it was a lottery ticket—a fully legal path up to the capital province of Sili. Save for a handful of odd ducks, every scholar of the age dreamed of rising in the world, so they would back me enthusiastically in gratitude for such a favor.
At first it would be nothing more than a change of residence, but I planned to see them raised into official posts before long. Wasn't that a parachute appointment? Guilty as charged. But then, the standard method of recruiting talent in this era was, for the most part, a parachute appointment wearing the mask of "recommendation" to begin with—or else outright hereditary succession, where the children of a flourishing house simply inherited the office. The house of Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu, famed as the Four Generations of Three Excellencies, was exactly that case. The civil service examination system—testing your way into office, as in any period drama—would not be instituted until the founding of the Sui dynasty. And the Sui was a state that rose only after the Three Kingdoms had passed, after the Sixteen Kingdoms of the Five Barbarians, after the age of the Northern and Southern Dynasties. The examination system still had a very long wait ahead of it. ...Though it might not be a bad idea to simply build it now, come to think of it.
While I was sunk in that idle thought, the Emperor, for reasons I couldn't fathom, appeared to be wrestling with something. Then whatever she had been mulling over burst out of her all at once.
"These talents you have in mind... they aren't women, by any chance?"
"...Your Majesty?"
The bewilderment escaped me before I could stop it. That was one question I had never seen coming.
"Answer."
I stole a careful read of the Emperor's face as she pressed me.
"That is... I could not say myself."
"Hmm..."
Hearing my answer, the Emperor fixed me with a narrow, suspicious stare. What was I supposed to do? I genuinely didn't know. And so a brief stretch of time that felt ready to squeeze the air from the room crawled by.
"It does not appear to be a lie." At last the Emperor withdrew that unreadable gaze. "Do as you please."
"Thank you, Your Majesty."
I bowed, feeling a faint chill of sweat break out.
"General-in-Chief."
Then the Emperor called to me once more. When I answered and inclined my body toward her, she spoke in a low, even voice.
"I know full well that you are beloved by others."
...
"And I am endeavoring to understand that about you."
With that, she rose from the throne and crossed the distance between us with slow, deliberate steps. Grown as she was compared to the old days, her frame was still small beside mine, and she could only tilt her head up to meet my eyes.
"General-in-Chief. You shall not grow lax toward Us while your eyes wander to other women."
"Your Majesty?"
"This is an imperial command."
The finality of it brooked no rebuttal, so I answered with proper deference.
"...I understand."
It was a genuine blessing that not a soul was anywhere nearby at moments like this. In any case, with everything settled so smoothly, exactly one task remained to me: time to send letters around to every renowned gentry family in the land.