The Wedding (4)
Time flows at the same pace for everyone, without exception.
With barely any time left before my wedding—what people like to call the grave of a man's life—I was, surprisingly enough, feeling rather at ease. The reason was simple: the two duties that had kept me busiest during my stay in Luoyang had both evaporated into thin air.
For days now, not a single summons had come down from the imperial palace, and the stack of documents that made its way to my desk had shrunk to a fraction of what it once was. No need to wonder why—the palace was surely run off its feet preparing for the wedding ceremony. They could barely keep up with their own work as it was; where on earth would they find a spare moment to call for me? In the first place, I couldn't imagine anyone so tactless as to summon a husband before his bride had even finished her fresh bridal makeover. And if such a fool really did exist, Her Majesty would never have let it slide.
As for why the documents had dwindled, the answer was just as simple: the exceptional talents under my command had thrown themselves into the work in earnest.
Think about it. In the original history, did Liu Shan—the emperor who handed full authority over to Zhuge Liang—actually accomplish much of anything? As if. At best, he was probably off entertaining himself somewhere in the palace with the eunuch Huang Hao. Which taught me one lesson: when your subordinates are remarkably capable, the person at the top enjoys peace of mind and body alike. The Zhuge Liang of the original history did ultimately work himself to death at his desk, but here and now, there were plenty of talents around to shoulder one another's burdens.
"No—I'm telling you, handle affairs that way and someone will slip through the cracks like a loach!"
"Y-yes? You... think so...?"
Sima Yi was wholly absorbed in tutoring Pang Tong, a girl her own age, at her side.
"Ugh, for example, let's say..."
Sima Yi heaved a long sigh and launched into an explanation so tangled that even I couldn't follow it.
So how, exactly, does one slip away like a loach?
"Aaargh..."
Pang Tong, whose talents had yet to fully bloom, seemed to share my sentiments exactly.
After holding forth for a while, Sima Yi caught sight of Pang Tong sitting rigid as a board and tilted her head in confusion.
"...Are you even listening to me?"
"I-I-I'm listening!"
"..."
The sight of the young phoenix quivering before a great tiger was honestly rather entertaining.
Watching that spectacle, Zhuge Liang smiled faintly and spoke up.
"It seems the tiger means to devour an innocent little bird."
"...I beg your pardon?"
Ah.
The moment I saw sparks kindle in Sima Yi's eyes, I had a fair idea of what would come next.
"Taking another person's goodwill and twisting it like that—there's a limit to how warped you can be."
"If the one receiving it feels burdened, then it was never goodwill to begin with."
"Well then, I doubt anyone will ever trouble themselves to show you any."
At the blade-edged voices they aimed at each other, I buried my face in my hands. So this was why things had been quiet lately—another storm had simply been brewing.
Pang Tong, for her part, had already crouched down in an inconspicuous corner, holding her breath. When she committed to it, her presence faded away almost entirely. So that's how herbivores survive among predators, huh? These verbal brawls always began with one or the other picking a fight—Sima Yi one day, Zhuge Liang the next—and they carried an air that made it difficult for bystanders to intervene, so her response was a wise one in its own way.
"How many times do I have to tell you two—stop fighting?"
"Ugh..."
"..."
The words were barely out of my mouth before both of them clamped their lips shut. Sometimes it honestly looked like they quarreled on purpose just to catch my attention. Of course, that was pure wishful thinking on my part. They growled at each other far too sincerely for it to be an act staged for my benefit.
"Oh, that reminds me—I never gave you this."
"...What is it?"
I held out an item to Sima Yi, who still looked a little sullen.
"A gift."
"..."
"I did say I'd get you one ages ago, remember?"
Back when Zhuge Liang had first joined us, Sima Yi would scowl a little each time she laid eyes on the fan Zhuge Liang carried everywhere. The reason was simple. Having encountered countless adaptations of the Three Kingdoms across every medium imaginable, I had commissioned a craftsman to make Zhuge Liang a fan the moment I met her. Her fan—the White Feather Fan—was my gift to her. The thing, woven of pure white feathers, was beautiful enough that even I could appreciate it. The price was a touch steep to settle on the spot, granted, but I was the sort who kept his purse comfortably full at all times, so I had more than enough to pay without batting an eye.
The craftsmen of Romance of the Three Kingdoms were, frankly, suspiciously skilled. Hadn't the Peach Garden Trio gotten extraordinary weapons forged at an ordinary village smithy near Zhuo Commandery? The Twin Swords of Male and Female, the Green Dragon Crescent Blade, the Serpent Spear—in game terms, that was a country blacksmith knocking out legendary-tier gear like it was nothing. Lü Bu's Sky Piercer Halberd came together just as fast the moment I tossed her a bit of inspiration. The workmanship was so uncanny it might as well have been sorcery, and I hadn't been able to hide my astonishment. By the smith's own account it was the masterpiece of a lifetime, one he claimed he could never replicate—but who was going to believe that? I'd heard the world was full of prodigies, but this world took the saying a step further.
"Your lips pout every single time you look at that fan. How was I supposed to not notice?"
"...For someone who noticed all that, you certainly took your time giving me one."
The item I handed over was a feather fan shaped much like the White Feather Fan. The one decisive difference? Its feathers were a deep violet.
"The material being what it was, there was nothing I could do."
"And what material would that be?"
I flashed her a grin.
"That part's a secret."
"...No, hold on. Excuse me?"
Hiding the single most important detail earned me a look of utter incredulity from Sima Yi. Watching her face, I spoke in a voice of obvious satisfaction.
"It's a joke, obviously. It's from a zhen bird. A zhen bird."
"...I'm sorry, what?"
Sima Yi's eyes went wide with alarm.
"Th-the creature said to dwell south of the Yangtze?"
"The very one."
The zhen bird. A creature of legend said to carry a venom potent enough to kill a person in the blink of an eye. Wherever the zhen bird so much as perched, supposedly, no plant could grow. And most astonishing of all, the poison drawn from its body had no color and no smell whatsoever—truly colorless and scentless. It was the very poison I'd once nearly been done in with, back when a magnate of Jing Province had tried to have me killed.
Hearing my answer, Sima Yi mulled something over for a moment before opening her mouth again.
"Don't tell me the reason it took so long was..."
"That's right. Extracting the poison safely took quite a while."
Do you know what Empress Gao of Han—Lü Zhi, wife of Emperor Gaozu and infamous as one of China's great villainesses—most favored for assassinating her political rivals? Zhen wine. Wine steeped in the zhen bird's venom. The recipe couldn't have been simpler: just drop one of the bird's feathers into the cup—plunk—and one unfortunate soul goes straight to the grave, or so the stories went. It wasn't even a matter of brewing liquor with a whole snake the way some people do. Simply astonishing.
"...You really did remove it properly, didn't you?"
"I did. The Divine Physician handled it personally, so you can rest easy."
Hua Tuo had taken the venom extracted from the zhen bird as her fee for the job. What was it she'd said again? Something about how even poison, used well, could become medicine. Frankly, I had no idea how a toxin that lethal could ever be put to use as medicine, but she surely had a plan. Or perhaps she'd simply taken it for research purposes. The zhen bird itself was an exceedingly rare creature, so either was entirely possible.
"A hunter working out of Gangdong got lucky and bagged one that had been prowling around near a village, and sent it up as tribute."
"..."
"Though I still can't decide whether the point was for me to use this to kill off anyone who gets on my nerves."
I added that last part with a jesting tone. In any case, we'd wined and dined that hunter generously for several days and paid out a handsome reward on top. Preventing an accident before a single innocent life was lost deserved the highest praise.
"Besides, once I examined the carcass, the color of its feathers struck me as a perfect match for you."
The zhen bird's plumage was black overall, but violet feathers grew in across its chest and a few other patches. Black feathers you could pluck from any of the crows that littered a battlefield, but violet ones? One glance was enough to tell they were fantastically rare.
"So that's why I commissioned it. It was meant to be your gift."
"...Is that so."
Sima Yi stroked the fan with uncharacteristic gentleness.
"...Um. About that."
"Hm?"
When I responded to her call, Sima Yi bowed her head deep and mumbled in a tiny voice.
"...ank you."
"What was that?"
"Thank yo—"
BANG! CLATTER!
"General-in-Chief! Urgent report!"
Before Sima Yi could so much as finish her sentence, a soldier came tumbling through the door in a frantic rush. What impeccable timing.
"..."
I gave the head of Sima Yi—who had begun to radiate an indescribable aura—a single consoling pat, then spoke.
"What is it?"
"H-Her Majesty has decided upon the date of the wedding ceremony!"
"Hmm?"
That alone was hardly reason enough for him to be this worked up.
"And that date would be?"
"Well, you see..."
The soldier hesitated for a heartbeat, then blurted it out.
"It's today!"
"...What?"
At those words, I shot up from my seat. It was still only the tail end of December! Don't tell me the whole business about holding the wedding next spring had been a lie from the start?
"..."
She truly doesn't waste a moment, does she. At the very least, the people I'd sent invitations to had arrived well in advance—thank goodness for small mercies.