The Banquet (4)
The banquet did not end in a single day. In truth, a gathering of this scale was the first since I had entered Luoyang. I had flung invitations to the four winds, but those whose posts lay far from the capital—the distant stations to which they had been appointed—politely declined.
Foremost among them was Han Sui, serving in Wuwei, that city tucked away at the very tail end of Xiliang. The Wuwei region under his charge was so obscenely far from here that I could understand the refusal perfectly.
The distance came to a staggering three thousand li—some 1,200 kilometers. Three thousand li. Gangdong, which already felt hopelessly remote from Luoyang, was a mere two thousand away, and that far-flung corner of Xiliang was three thousand.
Needless to say, it was not a trip one could make lightly just to enjoy a single feast. If it were Red Hare, the fabled steed said to cover a thousand li by day and another eight hundred by night, the journey would take two days—but that would be the horse being a freak of nature. An ordinary mount, even ridden half to death, would need a good week or more.
I knew this all too well, having once made the trip to Xiliang in person under the pretext of an inspection tour. I was a Bingzhou native and fancied myself a passable rider, and even for me the road had dragged on forever. Ma Teng, who had come all that way from Xiliang regardless, was the exception. The man's loyalty weighed a ton.
Truthfully, part of the reason the banquet had been stretched this long was that the person I was most anxious about still had not shown. Where in the world was she, and what was she doing, after promising to come? Ma Teng's journey had taken no less time, so it would not have been strange for her to arrive ages ago—and yet the one person occupying my mind failed to appear right up until the day the banquet itself began.
Just as I was starting to wonder whether some calamity had befallen her en route, she strode into the banquet hall, hale and roaring with vigor enough to make my worrying look downright silly. And who, you ask, was this person I had been fretting over?
"Son! Mommy's here!!"
My own dear mother—the woman who had given birth to me in this world.
Ding Yuan, courtesy name Jianyang. Romance of the Three Kingdoms records him as Inspector of Jing Province, but that was a slip of the pen on the author Luo Guanzhong's part; in the official histories, the man served as Inspector of Bingzhou. He came from a humble household and was coarse in his bearing, yet valorous and celebrated for his horsemanship and archery—and it was this very man who first recognized the talents of Lü Bu and Zhang Liao and recommended them to the court.
Beyond that, there is precious little worth telling about him. At most, the story of his riding about Bingzhou hunting down horse bandits—thieves who prowled the roads in mounted packs—including a crowd of them who had dressed themselves up as the Black Mountain bandits to plunder ordinary homes? In the end, he perished at Lü Bu's blade after she was won over by Dong Zhuo—one of the countless minor figures who flickered briefly across the Three Kingdoms era and vanished just as quickly.
And I had been born as that figure's child.
No sooner had my grey-haired mother entered the banquet hall than she made a beeline for me and swept me into her arms.
"It's been far too long! My precious son—you're not hurt anywhere, are you?"
"Mother, look how many people are here. Could you at least keep up appearances for a little—"
"What does it matter if a mother wants to show her child some affection? Anyone with a complaint can come out and say it to my face!"
Had our reunions grown so rare since I settled in Luoyang? My mother had become even more brazen than in the old days.
I put a question to her.
"You're later than I expected. Did something happen?"
"Oh! It was nothing. I just took care of a few bandits on the way here!"
A good twenty years my senior yet still boasting a young woman's face, my mother answered with perfect aplomb. In the world I had originally come from, she would have been hailed as a miracle of agelessness and paraded across daytime television—but in this world such things were hardly rare, and not a single soul so much as blinked at the sight of her.
Hearing her out, I pulled a face that said this was giving me a headache.
"...Mother."
"Mm?"
"It's time you settled down in Luoyang. For good."
Brave and skilled in the martial arts she may have been, but the passage of the years spares no one. The battlefield is a place where even the young can die in the space of a single careless breath—what hope would someone her age stand? As her child, I could not help but worry.
Just as her expression turned strange at my proposal, I pressed on.
"I know the reason you've stayed in Bingzhou all this time."
"......"
No woman could conceive a child entirely alone, which meant that I, too, had had a father. The problem was that he had fallen in battle in Bingzhou, holding the line against foreign tribes and bandit raids. It had happened not long after Mother had conceived me, and there was nothing I could do to change it.
They say a child in the womb is shaped by its mother's every emotion. For someone like me, whose memories even of those earliest years remained perfectly vivid, it had been a truly painful time.
"I will send people of my own to tend Father's grave. So please, humor your son's stubbornness just this once."
"All right, all right! I heard you, so stop right there!"
When I said this and made to sink to my knees, my mother hurriedly caught me and hauled me back up.
"Whew. My son's one flaw is that he's far too grown-up for his own good."
My mother heaved a sigh.
"Do you have any idea how flustered I was back when you were little and losing your baby teeth?"
"......"
Was she talking about when my milk teeth fell out? Fair enough—any ordinary child would have wailed and kicked up a storm over it, but whenever a tooth felt even slightly loose, I simply pulled it out myself, calm as could be. My mother, who had been braced for me to bawl my eyes out in terror, very nearly froze solid on the spot.
"I had a feeling it would come to this someday."
With that, my mother flashed me a bright grin.
"So I just don't go home even after the banquet ends, then?"
"Exactly. If you wish, I'll have everything brought here—I won't leave so much as a single pillar behind."
"Oh... er... there's really no need to go that far?"
My mother looked utterly taken aback.
"......"
Glancing around, I discovered that every last person inside the banquet hall was now staring at us. ...Well, my mother had been making quite the spectacle of herself.
Having wrecked the banquet's atmosphere twice over, I said, sheepish:
"Er... what are you all looking at? Get back to enjoying yourselves."
"...Hahahaha! What joyous news this is! What are you idlers gawking at? Drink up, everyone!"
Hearing me, Ma Teng threw his whole heart into lifting the mood back up. My thanks, Ma Teng.
Having more or less smoothed over the commotion, I slipped out of the banquet hall for a brief breather. By now the festivities had ripened enough that my absence from my seat would pass without a ripple, so I left without any real concern.
I plopped myself down in a convenient spot and gazed out over the courtyard, and Seo Yeo, who had been guarding me all evening, knelt quietly at my side. At some point the Chu Heaven Sword—the colossal blade she always carried strapped across her back—had been laid out neatly on the ground beside her.
I thought it every time I laid eyes on the thing, but it truly looked inconvenient. The sword was so enormous that even the simple act of sitting wherever she pleased was beyond her. Then again, for Seo Yeo—who whirled that massive blade around like a pair of chopsticks—perhaps it was no more than a slightly cumbersome trinket. Though if we were ranking cumbersome weapons, Zhang Fei's Serpent Spear would surely take the prize.
As ever, Seo Yeo lingered close, keeping watch over me. I was idly zoning out, thinking nothing at all as the night breeze washed over me, when she spoke.
"My lord."
"Hm?"
"Someone approaches."
Now? Puzzled, I turned my gaze in the direction Seo Yeo was facing.
Barely a heartbeat after I looked toward the main gate, just as she had said, a figure appeared at the head of the street with attendants in tow.
"......?"
One look at her, and I could not hide my bewilderment. What was this? Her retinue was strangely, absurdly large. For anyone to drag that many people about, she would have to be the Emperor herself—
...The Emperor?
The instant the thought landed, I shot up from my seat, startled out of my wits. I hurried my steps, and Seo Yeo, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, fell in right behind me. The sun had already set and the night lay dark, but the Empress's robes stood out vividly even from a distance.
Once I had closed a good part of the distance, I flung myself into a deep bow to receive her.
"The General-in-Chief greets Her Imperial Majesty the Empress!"
"You'll ruin your clothes. Up you get, now."
The Empress reached out at once and raised me to my feet, then met my eyes with that jet-black gaze.
"How many times must We tell you there is no need for such ceremony with Us?"
"Even so, Your Majesty, how could I ever dare—"
"I must say, I don't care for this stuffy, sealed-up manner of yours."
Having delivered her single reprimand, the Empress went on.
"I was merely passing nearby when word of your banquet came to mind, and so I stopped for but a moment. Do not take it so heavily."
"As you say, Your Majesty."
Having paid my respects, I spoke with care.
"Then allow me to escort you to the hall—"
"No need."
The Empress continued, her expression placid.
"Were We to barge in, it would only make the whole atmosphere awkward, would it not?"
"......"
"I meant only to watch from afar a little while, and then be on my way... Ah, yes."
Just then the Empress turned to look at me, and the faintest smile touched her lips.
"Come to think of it, I hear your mother has only just entered Luoyang."
"...Your Majesty?"
"Is there any gift, perhaps, that she is particularly fond of?"
Why on earth would she want to know that? Surely it wasn't what I suspected.
I looked up at her with a flicker of unease, but the Empress simply went on smiling, calm and utterly unreadable.