Crouching Dragon (2)
Yangdu County, Langya State, Xu Province.
The noble family residing there had been in quite an uproar of late.
A white-haired woman hurried along, calling out someone's name.
"L-Liang! Liang—!"
"...Sister?"
At the sound of her name, a girl paused her reading and lifted her head.
"Did you hear the news—... oof!"
"......"
The white-haired woman, who had been rushing headlong while calling someone's name, toppled flat onto the floor.
The small girl let out a sigh at the sight of such clumsiness. Her white hair, falling all the way to her shoulder blades, was tied back with a cord at the nape of her neck. The girl, whose eyes were as white as her hair, spoke.
"Sister Jin, what could possibly be so urgent?"
At the girl's question, the woman called Jin opened her mouth.
"You haven't heard the news?!"
"What news?"
Still young in years, the girl was quietly devoting herself to her studies at home. Zhuge Jin glanced at the books and bamboo slips piled around her and said,
"A letter came from Luoyang!"
"......?"
The girl—Zhuge Liang—showed a puzzled look.
"Then it must be from one of your old acquaintances. What did it say that startled you so?"
"It's not from someone I know!"
When Zhuge Jin denied it, Zhuge Liang tilted her head.
Zhuge Jin had once studied at the Imperial Academy in Luoyang. Aside from the acquaintances her sister had made there, no one in Luoyang had any reason to send her a letter. Truthfully, the very sight of her sister this rattled was strange in itself.
Zhuge Jin had been hailed as a prodigy even at that academy. Her sister—gentle, warm, and forever logical—had never once, in Zhuge Liang's memory, been so flustered as to trip over her own two feet.
Met by her sister's curious gaze, which seemed to demand she get on with it, Zhuge Jin spoke.
"The General-in-Chief!"
"...?"
"The General-in-Chief sent a letter himself!"
"......??"
The brilliant mind that posterity would one day call the Crouching Dragon helped the still-eleven-year-old Zhuge Liang keep her composure.
"Sister."
"...What is it?"
Zhuge Jin answered the calm voice calling her.
Zhuge Liang said,
"What manner of trouble did you cause in Luoyang, that the General-in-Chief himself would send a letter..."
"I didn't do anything!"
"Might it not be wise to beg forgiveness now, while there is still time? Then perhaps only the party concerned would be punished, and it would end there..."
"I told you, I didn't!"
Zhuge Jin protested with an aggrieved expression.
"I can't see any other motive for the General-in-Chief to act that way."
Zhuge Liang went on in a tone that said she simply couldn't understand.
"It is not as if he would be seeking to recruit our family..."
"That's exactly right."
"...I beg your pardon?"
To her sister, who asked back with eyes gone round, Zhuge Jin nodded haltingly.
Zhuge Liang asked,
"Why?"
"...I don't know that either."
Zhuge Jin said that the letter from the General-in-Chief had contained nothing more than an invitation for the Zhuge family to come to the Sanfu region.
"Hmm..."
Setting down the book she had been reading, Zhuge Liang sank into thought.
Chang'an, left nothing but ruins by the fires of the traitor Dong Zhuo. She had heard that the Sanfu region surrounding it had suffered Dong Zhuo's relentless plundering as well, until countless people could no longer afford to stay. The wanderers who had fled Sili Province in those days had scattered to every corner of the realm—some could be found even here in Xu Province.
'...Now that I think of it, I did hear that a whole crowd of gentry around Chang'an was recently thrown into prison together for corruption.'
It seemed the General-in-Chief was seizing this opportunity to invite the regional magnates who had shown themselves cooperative toward him. Having gone this far, he presumably intended to gather men of high renown and outstanding ability under his wing. Would any magnate in his right mind refuse such an offer from the General-in-Chief?
'Almost certainly not.'
The city had been razed once already, its officials dismissed wholesale, even the gentry there swept away in the tide. Chang'an was now being filled anew, step by careful step, slowly reclaiming something of its former prosperity.
And yet why, out of all the countless magnates, had the letter come to them? It felt a little awkward to admit, but the Zhuge family was merely one of Xu Province's ordinary gentry clans—neither especially wealthy nor especially famous. Zhuge Liang pondered long and hard, and in the end found no answer. For all her genius, there was no way she could have known that the General-in-Chief had sent that letter with her—a girl still young—in mind.
"How are the others reacting?"
"'Who in their right mind would pass up a chance to enter the central court?'... that's what they're saying."
"Ah..."
It was the obvious choice. To rise through the central court and exalt the name of oneself and one's family—for the scholars of this age, it was the ideal every last one of them dreamed of.
"If there is one thing that worries me, it is what manner of man the General-in-Chief really is..."
"......"
"He isn't exactly known only for pleasant rumors these days, is he?"
Zhuge Jin asked,
"What do you think, our Liang?"
"...You already know the answer. Why ask?"
"Oh, come now. Would I ever do such a thing?"
She said it, all the while beaming from ear to ear.
Zhuge Liang let out a small, short sigh and spoke.
"Even the dullest head would have caught on by now that all of it is baseless rumor."
"How so?"
"Because if the rumors were true, his domain would have been in an uproar long ago."
Yet not once since the General-in-Chief had taken that land had she heard a single word of rebellion. There had supposedly been some commotion in Xiliang shortly after Dong Zhuo's execution, but she'd heard that, too, was put down in short order.
Zhuge Jin said in an even voice,
"There is such a thing as crushing dissent by force."
"While also holding down the countless foreign tribes spread across Bing Province, Sili Province, and Xiliang? He would crack down on his own people by force on top of that?"
The Xianbei, the Xiongnu, the Qiang, the Di, the Wuhuan... Some called them barbarians and scorned them, but in Zhuge Liang's eyes they were one element that could never be taken lightly. Tribes who differed only in their language and their customs. It was sheer good fortune that they quarreled among themselves as much as they did. Should a figure ever arise who could bind them into one, a calamity beyond measure would fall upon the realm.
"You know how the Hegemon-King of Chu came to ruin, don't you?"
Even the Hegemon-King, victorious in every battle he ever commanded and holding all the world in awe, had crumbled in the end, assailed without pause from within and without.
"Assassination attempts, uprisings—for things to be normal, his domain should have wobbled at least once. That not so much as a whisper of such stirrings shows is what's strange."
"......"
"Do those high and mighty ministers look like men who would bend the knee to rule by terror?"
They were like great bamboo: they would sooner snap than bow. Their stubborn streak could be tiresome at times, but for that very reason it was no exaggeration to call them the last bulwark guarding the Han imperial house.
"Do you know who spread those rumors in the first place?"
"...No idea."
Zhuge Jin shook her head. Street gossip—so-and-so did this, such-and-such did that—was easy enough to pick up wandering the markets, but tracing a rumor to its source across so vast a realm was another matter entirely.
Hearing her sister's answer, Zhuge Liang flashed a grin.
"Well, I know."
"......"
That smiling face was so insufferably smug that Zhuge Jin very nearly rapped her sister's skull before she knew what she was doing. Perhaps all heaven-sent talents were like this—her little sister delighted in that maddening way of speaking that revealed everything and nothing at once. And yet she never quite crossed the line, so there was never any proper grounds to scold her.
Zhuge Jin briefly recalled the sorts of people who had misjudged their place and been dealt with by their lords—but knowing what manner of talent her sister possessed, she let the worry go. She'd manage. With that brilliant mind of hers, surely she could mind her own footing. In truth, Zhuge Liang had never once quarreled seriously with anyone. At worst, she had reduced the children of other gentry families to tears a few times with nothing but words...
'...She'll be fine, won't she?'
Zhuge Jin forcibly shook off the dark thought that had sprung up unbidden. Whether she sensed it or not, Zhuge Liang carried on.
"The rumors began spreading about two years ago, didn't they? And mostly around the Central Plains."
That much matched her own memory: the gossip had started circulating not long after the current Emperor took the throne.
Zhuge Liang continued.
"Rumors travel fast by nature, I will grant—but judging by the speed at which that one spread, someone was clearly fanning it along on purpose."
"......"
"Back then, who could have spread such scandal without a care for the General-in-Chief, the man who held the real power?"
Exactly. The General-in-Chief had only just driven out Dong Zhuo and taken the reins of power. To anyone who didn't know his temperament, opening one's mouth carelessly was unthinkable. If he proved to be cut from the same cloth as Dong Zhuo, heads would roll—who in their right mind would step forward rashly? Very few men at that time wielded enough influence to disregard the General-in-Chief's mood entirely.
"And which warlord most loudly made his presence known on the back of those rumors?"
"...Yuan Shu, I'd say."
"Precisely."
Yuan Shu had built his power in Nanyang Commandery, putting the Central Plains well within his grasp. And above all, hadn't he sent proclamations across the realm and raised a coalition that drew in countless lords? His star had since dimmed, but when the coalition first rose, Yuan Shu's renown was such that no one could afford to dismiss him.
The very point she herself had failed to catch, Zhuge Liang had unraveled as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Zhuge Liang said, her voice thick with disgust.
"The moment Yuan Shu crossed my mind, I dismissed him outright. Why on earth would I waste a single thought on the likes of him?"
"Then what about the General-in-Chief?"
"The General-in-Chief?"
At Zhuge Jin's question, Zhuge Liang let a smile curl at the corner of her mouth and answered with maddening composure.
"Well, the fact that I am sitting here so quietly should tell you everything, shouldn't it?"
"......"
Zhuge Jin gave Zhuge Liang's head the very lightest of knuckle raps.
"Ow!"