The Emperor (3)
Thinking we had said all there was to say on serious matters, I turned to the Emperor and spoke again.
"Your Majesty. Now, if you would accept the Seal—"
"Ah. We had quite forgotten."
The Emperor cocked her head slightly. Somehow the Seal had been getting treated like something dredged out of a gutter for a while now. It was as if the Heirloom Seal of the Realm, sitting there beside me, were quietly weeping.
Wasn't this supposed to be an object of supreme importance to the Emperor? I distinctly remembered the imperial household keeping an official whose sole duty was the care of that one seal...
Picking the Seal up once more, I extended my arms toward her, and the Emperor, standing directly before me, accepted it with perfect calm. The Seal, as if determined to overturn first impressions, flaunted its full, dignified bearing once again.
The Emperor studied it for a long moment before blurting out, "...It's heavy."
"Well, it is rather large..."
Her first remark about the Imperial Seal, and that's what she goes with. Heavy it certainly was. When people picture a seal, even the largest rarely runs bigger than a palm — but the Imperial Seal left that measure far behind. It was larger than a grown man's hand outright, and while I could have lifted it one-handed, cradling it in both arms was far more comfortable.
Turning the Seal this way and that, the Emperor spoke at last. "It doesn't look all that special, really."
"You think not?"
I let my surprise show plainly. The exquisitely carved surface, the brilliant radiance it cast — none of it seemed to register with her at all. Even I, hardly a man consumed by material greed, hadn't managed to hide my awe the first time I beheld it, yet the Emperor looked utterly indifferent.
"Hmm..."
Then she turned to me. "And what say you?"
"...?"
"Does this thing truly look so remarkable to you?"
I answered honestly. "Yes, Your Majesty. Crafting it must surely have taken tremendous effort."
"Is that so..." The Emperor tilted her head slightly at my reply. "Then remarkable it must be."
...
It felt as though she was only calling it remarkable because I had. Like someone unconditionally deferring to the opinion of the person they love.
"We shall entrust this to an official later..." The Seal must have been getting in her way, for the Emperor set it down without the slightest ceremony.
Hold on — didn't you just say it was remarkable?
It was a world apart from a certain someone who, even while fleeing his pursuers for a solid week, had carried the Seal tenderly against his chest.
Having deposited the Seal, the Emperor asked, "Is there more you would report?"
"There is, Your Majesty. It concerns, if I may be so bold, the traitor who dared usurp the imperial title — I have come to seek your wise judgment on how he is to be dealt with."
For starters, Yuan Shu's death was a settled matter. I could no doubt beg Her Majesty to spare him if I truly wished — but why would I? I couldn't begin to guess what good keeping this man alive would do. Spare him, and he would only crow that he had at last recognized who the true Emperor was and carry on with his tyranny all the same.
"You mean the wretch who styled himself Dangtugo — 'the high one on the road'?"
The Emperor continued in an even voice. "We saw him at the Imperial Palace when We were still young... Never did We imagine it would come to this."
It went without saying. What subject in his right mind would dare spirit away the Imperial Seal and usurp the Emperor's title? However much he wished to exalt his own authority, there were things a man did and things he did not. Devoured by his hunger for power, Yuan Shu had never once weighed his own station — he had simply gone and set the catastrophe in motion.
"In fact, let Us put the question to you instead. General-in-Chief — how do you think We ought to deal with that traitor?"
...
I pictured Yuan Shu as he must be even now, shut away in his solitary cell, howling — as if screaming were the only thing holding him together. I had no idea what manner of upbringing could warp a man into that. But greedy men, in the end, tended to meet much the same fate. With an expression of perfect composure, I offered my counsel.
"I humbly submit that it would be fitting to impose Execution by Boiling, or else being torn apart by the chariots — as before."
I really had changed a great deal. To think I could now propose boiling a man alive or tearing him limb from limb without so much as a blink.
Hearing me out, the Emperor favored me with a serene smile. "Then it shall be as you wish."
"I am grateful, Your Majesty."
It wouldn't be long now before I laid eyes on that insufferable bastard again.
Just as the thought crossed my mind, the Emperor addressed me. "General-in-Chief."
"...What is it?"
Her smile unchanged, she continued. "Pondering it just now — is this Yuan Shu not the very man who has tormented you, General-in-Chief, since days long past?"
"He is."
I answered without a heartbeat of hesitation. It was Yuan Shu who forged the call to arms, assembled a coalition, and forced staggering losses upon me; Yuan Shu, too, who sent me Dilu — the steed infamous as a bringer of death — in a naked provocation. Beyond that, every chance he got, he dispatched spies and spread baseless rumors, confining himself strictly to the most underhanded of conduct. How was I meant to feel warmly about that? He had presumably intended it all as a check on my influence, but if raking at my nerves counted as containment, then he had been resoundingly successful.
"How dreadful... What an insolent wretch."
The Emperor was unmistakably smiling, yet I could tell it was no smile born of good cheer.
"We trust the choice of his punishment may be left to Our own discretion?"
"Do you even need to ask, Your Majesty?"
A nameless unease crept over me, and I answered from where I knelt on one knee.
Then the Emperor said, "Do not worry. At the very least, he will not be sent off gently."
...
That only made me worry more. I could only dread what horrific punishment the Emperor had in store.
Yuan Shu's execution followed soon after. A man whose self-regard alone was colossally inflated might suddenly despair of life and drop dead on his own, after all. In the original history, he had hacked up blood and died for want of a single cup of honey water — so it was hardly impossible.
I nodded as I regarded the enormous cauldron standing in the execution ground. So Her Majesty had evidently settled on Execution by Boiling.
The officials who had gathered at the execution ground at word that a great traitor was to be punished turned a sickly, mottled green the moment they laid eyes on it. Not even a year had passed since the magnates of Jing Province were put to death; that sight had to be burned vividly into their memories still.
As for me... I was devoting my entire being to looking elsewhere, straining with everything I had not to let my gaze land on the corpse that had been boiled down into human stew. Having rolled across my share of battlefields where severed limbs took wing, I could just about stomach a body torn apart by chariots. But Execution by Boiling was, I had to admit, rather a lot.
Punishments this hideous were not ordinarily meted out lightly — but Yuan Shu was a traitor beyond all whitewashing, and not a soul would dare submit a memorial in protest.
"What, we're boiling someone again?" Lü Bu, drifting over to my side, muttered in her usual tone.
"Because the people who suffered unjustly at Yuan Shu's hands alone number in the hundreds of thousands."
Yuan Shu was the man who squeezed the land dry to fund his own luxuries and starved multitudes to death. In other words, his ledger of villainy rivaled Dong Zhuo's outright — only the manner of harm differed.
China's scale truly was enormous. One fool at the top so much as hiccupped, and the damage began in the hundreds of thousands — and if someone like Liu Hong, seated on the throne itself, went and overturned the realm, the toll ran into the millions...
"Hmph." Apparently even Lü Bu couldn't call that wrong, for she raised no argument.
Once everyone had assembled, the Emperor spoke in an even voice. "Bring forth the criminal."
"As You command!" The general supervising the prisoner thundered his reply, and a short while later the condemned man made his appearance.
"Wh-where are you dragging me?! Answer me this instant!"
Yuan Shu, courtesy name Gonglu, appeared trussed head to toe in rope, shouting with a restless, uneasy edge — as though he had already divined his fate. If anything gave me pause, it was that the rope in the soldiers' hands was rather long, and that they stood a good deal higher up than I had expected.
"Gah—!"
Yuan Shu swallowed hard at the sight of the enormous cauldron sitting beneath the planks. He seemed, at last, to have worked out why he had been dragged here.
"I—I have committed a grievous wrong! I beg of you, spare only my life—!"
Perhaps he had finally grasped that clinging to his pride any longer would truly cost him. Yuan Shu flung himself flat upon the ground and groveled for the Emperor's mercy. A shabby sight, for a man who had once usurped the imperial title — but I understood it.
The Emperor, however, gave her order without a ripple. "Carry out the sentence as decreed."
"At once!" At the officer's signal, the soldiers restraining Yuan Shu let fly a kick, and with a wretched shriek the man — boot squarely delivered to his backside — went tumbling into the cauldron with a mighty splash.
"There is something We have long wondered."
"...?"
The Emperor murmured to herself, in a small voice meant for my ears alone. "Namely — if a man were dipped into boiling water and drawn back out, just how much longer might he endure?"
...
"And does there not happen to stand, right over there, a man none could reproach Us for punishing so?"
In other words, she meant to scald a human being over and over, to see how much he could take. It was a remark startling enough that even Lü Bu beside us widened her eyes a fraction. ...Seo Yeo, for her part, remained as expressionless as ever.
Watching the soldiers take hold of the long rope tethered to Yuan Shu, I found myself thinking: He really is going to die in agony.