Commotion (1)
Even after I had taken Diaochan into my arms, my daily routine carried on much as before.
The weather saw to that—winds that bit to the bone the moment they stirred, and a goddamned snow that came dumping out of the sky without warning. Soldiers grinding away at their drills under their commander's eye; soldiers staring off at the distant mountains with the glazed, rotten eyes of a frozen pollock as they saw to the snow clearance. And then there were the moments that, personally, left quite an impression on me—when the children, shrieking with laughter as they pelted one another with snowballs, ended up mingled with the soldiers shoveling out the drifts. Had I only been able to preserve the scene in a photograph, it might even have been worth a Pulitzer Prize.
"My lord."
…?
I was staring out the window, mind drifting nowhere in particular, when Diaochan appeared. I flicked a glance her way and spoke in an even voice.
"What is it?"
"Several of the servants of our household have caused trouble."
"Trouble?"
A puzzled look settled on my face. Most of the servants in my house had been raised and trained from childhood; they were hardly the sort to step out of line. Had they been swept up, through sheer misfortune, in some other family's affair?
Reading the question on my face, Diaochan delivered her report in that lovely voice of hers, as pleasing to the ear as ever.
"Most of the ringleaders are sons of named families."
"Ah... so it was that kind of trouble."
I nodded. The servants of my house generally fell into two groups: children who had lost their parents early in this age of chaos and been left wandering the streets, whom I had taken in. And then there were the others—children I had shielded when the adults of a condemned family went to the block one after another, on the grounds that the children bore no guilt of their own. The servants causing trouble now, Diaochan told me, were the latter.
By the time I had heard that much, I had a fair idea of what these fools had been up to. If Diaochan—who had overseen every great and small matter of the household since long ago—judged it worth reporting to me directly, then it was a grave affair. Most likely they had been watching for a chance to do harm to me, the sworn enemy of their houses. Or perhaps they had sold information from within to some hostile faction.
"They were on their way to your chamber with blades concealed on them, in the dead of night."
…….
As I listened to the rest of her explanation, I confirmed that my guess had not been far wrong. Diaochan asked me:
"What would you have me do with them?"
"...Handle it as you see fit."
With a bitter taste settling on my tongue, I handed the authority over to her.
"Understood. Then I shall deal with the matter within my own purview."
Mandate received, Diaochan bowed with a bearing that did not waver by so much as a hair's breadth. Truly reassuring, that woman. So this was what it felt like to have an all-purpose maid, was it?
"...Whew."
I watched her withdraw, then let out a long breath. It was not that I couldn't understand why they had turned against me. Elbows bend inward; blood runs thicker than water. However many of the children I had spared, from where they stood I was no different from the mortal enemy who had slaughtered their family's elders to the last. And to slaughter a family's elders meant, plainly enough, that those children's own mothers and fathers had been among them.
I knew that as well as anyone, which was why I had tried not to spill more blood than I had to. But in the end, the situations that left no other choice kept finding their way to me.
The Great Fire of Chang'an. A grand atrocity in which hundreds of thousands of people died in the span of a single night. The sight of the city—everything burned, nothing left but ash—had forced even my eyes shut for a moment. Even now I can summon it, vivid and unbidden: the human-shaped things that had met my gaze no matter which way I turned my head.
Dong Zhuo. He had spilled the blood of far too many who bore no guilt, and heaped up far too much karma for any one life to repay. It is a common thing, a man who is a devil to all the world showing a tenderness to his own family that he shows to no one else—and Dong Zhuo was exactly that case. He flung wealth at his kinsmen without rhyme or reason, and wielded his power with such impunity that he seated a child who knew nothing of the world yet into high office. Evil deeds past all reckoning. He had built a situation that his single life could never atone for, and so every soul who had so much as tasted the crumbs of his favor found their necks forfeit.
Even the children had survived only because I was willing to shoulder the political cost of sparing them. Had Her Majesty the Emperor, who backs me without reservation, not arranged matters on my behalf, a few of those bastards would still be clinging to me like leeches to this very day. As for exactly how Her Majesty arranged them—well, I'll spare the details. The ones who had sneered openly to my face that I had abetted a house of traitors, vanishing one by one with every passing day... I still haven't gotten used to that. So this was that "reign of terror" thing, was it?
Her Majesty, who had faced the Ten Attendants' intrigues and Dong Zhuo's depredations at close quarters since childhood, had come somewhat... crooked, somewhere along the way. I killed the parents with my own hands, and with these same hands took in the children their deaths had orphaned. Some might criticize me for leaving future trouble behind out of cheap sympathy. But what can I say? Just as every person has a line they will not yield to anyone, I had been this sort of man from the very beginning.
The Luoyang underground prison, where the condemned were locked away. A place where the ventilation barely functioned and cleanliness was maintained at the barest minimum imaginable; the meals that came out of it, naturally, were filthily, insultingly bad. The administration had more than enough competence to improve the prison had it the will, and the reason this state was maintained was simple: proper treatment was considered wasted on criminals. Most of the soldiers who served in such places carried a malice toward criminals packed tight within them, each for reasons of their own. A place built on grinding its prisoners down—you ought to be grateful just to be spared; how dare you expect treatment above your station. The one mercy was that the soldiers did not defy their orders.
Be that as it may, in a place no human being could live in for long, a group of them lay collapsed and unconscious.
Zhang Fei, who had come to have a look at the new prisoners the moment word reached her, spoke up.
"So these bastards are the ones, huh?"
"Indeed. Until a decision is reached, they are to be confined here for the time being—or so I am told."
Having heard Guan Yu's explanation, Zhang Fei clicked her tongue.
"You could've taken their heads on the spot and nobody would've said a word. Honestly, this is way too soft."
"Yide. That is unseemly."
"Ah—fine, fine! I won't say it again, so quit raising that fist."
When Zhang Fei grumbled—once—that Guan Yu had gotten far too strict since that night, a knuckle-chop came down on her head like a shaft of light.
"Eek!"
…….
Liu Bei was just beginning to smile wryly at the sight of her when one of the figures lying unconscious stirred and opened his eyes.
"...Hrk—!"
Perhaps the chatter of the three sworn sisters around him had simply been too loud. The man sat up heaving breath, as though waking from a nightmare, and muttered:
"Wh-where... is this...?"
"Huh? He's up?"
At Zhang Fei's offhand remark, the man blinked rapidly—then shouted in a rush.
"Where is this place! What in the world is—!"
"Still can't read your situation?"
Zhang Fei rapped the bars with the handle of that long Serpent Spear of hers.
"You're in a cell. Right now."
"Th-that's..."
As the man muttered in a daze, a scene rose up in his mind.
'Are you truly set on going through with this?'
'I am.'
The man who had summoned his comrades in secret in the dead of night went on, a blade tucked away inside his breast.
'If not now, we can never avenge our families. You all know that as well as I do.'
'That's...'
'When I close my eyes, I still see my mother and father's faces. Are you telling me you do not?'
At the growl of the eldest among them, the men gathered at his side answered at once.
'N-no, it isn't that! I only wondered whether plotting this now was the right thing to do...'
'Right now, we are the only ones awake.'
Using the seniority they had built up among the servants, they had juggled the duty rosters with care, so that only their own would be awake tonight. And the guard who never left the General-in-Chief's side was, for whatever reason, standing frozen at the door.
'That fierce-looking guard of his is posted right at the door, so all we need do is talk our way past the woman.'
'…….'
'Rush him all at once, and the General-in-Chief will not manage much of a fight.'
'...And then we die too?'
At his comrade's question, the man gave a thin smile.
'If a handful of slaves can buy the General-in-Chief's life, is that not cheap enough a price?'
'Well... aye, I suppose it is.'
The comrade nodded, and before long the band, their preparations complete, set their steps toward the General-in-Chief's chamber.
'…….'
Before the door stood the guard who watched over the General-in-Chief day and night. The man approached her and spoke in a voice kept carefully ordinary.
'General. Hard at it again today, I see.'
'…….'
She said nothing—but the man knew that this guard never opened her mouth for anyone but the General-in-Chief.
'The fact is, the General-in-Chief has an errand for us—'
'What errand?'
'...Pardon?'
For the first time, the guard had spoken to another soul. She asked once more, in a voice stripped of all feeling.
'What errand?'
'That is...'
Before he could answer, the guard let her gaze drop—just slightly—to his chest.
'…….'
She had seen through the weapon hidden beneath his clothes at a single glance, and the man felt the warmth drain out of his entire body. And in the instant those emotionless eyes fixed themselves squarely upon him, a shrill voice came from behind.
'...Enough. I've heard quite enough of this.'
'What?'
'Stupid. Genuinely stupid. Do you not understand that fools like you get people who have nothing to do with any of this hurt as well?'
The man opened his mouth to the white-haired girl who appeared, dragging something along behind her.
'You're—!'
'Be quiet. I'm in a foul mood.'
With that, the girl swung whatever she held without a shred of warning—and there the man's memory ended.
Zhang Fei said, sounding thoroughly entertained.
"So I hear you lot fought it out among yourselves—all proud sons of the Dong clan, no less?"
…….
"Fighting your own kin now. You really are something, you know that?"
The mockery in her words was unmistakable, and the man could not manage a single word of answer.