The Wedding (5)
The Emperor had suddenly settled on a date for the wedding. Worse still, that date was today. Blindsided by a development no one could have seen coming, my mind kicked into high gear.
I was at the Grand General's office as usual, and judging by how far the shadows had slanted and how high the sun sat, it wasn't quite midday yet.
"Did Her Majesty leave any word for me?" I asked the soldier hastily, the moment he finished his report.
"The wedding ceremony is to commence shortly," the soldier replied. "By order, the Grand General is to halt all affairs at once and return to his residence!"
That gave me pause. Not rush straight to the imperial palace—but go home? ...Just what was she planning to do?
Orders were orders, though, so I gave a curt nod. "Understood. I'll return to my residence directly."
"Yes, my lord!" The soldier bowed once, then swiftly withdrew from my presence.
Watching him go, I turned to the pint-sized strategists nearby. "You should head home for today as well."
"And what exactly are we supposed to do once we get there?"
"Hard to say." I shrugged at Sima Yi's question. "Her Majesty said she'd handle all the preparations herself, so I'm honestly in the dark."
"..." At my answer, Sima Yi fixed me with a look usually reserved for hopeless lost causes.
That stings a little, you know.
I brushed it off and pressed on. "The proper banquet doesn't begin until tomorrow, so just take today easy."
"...And how exactly would you know that?"
"A man has his ways." Specifically, Diaochan's help.
'The full-scale banquet will most likely begin after the first day,' Diaochan had told me.
'Then what happens on the first day?'
At my question, she'd asked right back with a perfectly serene expression: 'Do you truly wish to know?'
'...No, never mind.'
The way her eyes had dimmed ever so slightly at that moment... um... let's just say it was frightening. This remains a secret I can never confide to a living soul.
I gathered my meager belongings and hurried on my way. "I'm heading out! You all hurry home too!"
"...Haah." Sima Yi let out a long, deep sigh as she watched me go.
"...Honestly, the sheer nerve of that man." The words left Sima Yi the instant Jeong Reung vanished from sight.
Zhuge Liang, evidently taking this for yet another slight against the Grand General, needled her back in a placid voice. "You accept a precious gift from our lord, and still you grumble so. What could possibly displease you?"
"...That wasn't about the Grand General, so kindly keep quiet."
"If you say so."
With Sima Yi slamming the door on any room for dispute, Zhuge Liang withdrew without protest. Sima Yi knew all too well that a war of words with that insufferable little prodigy only exhausted the one waging it. The way the girl cited obscure classical anecdotes as though she'd memorized entire libraries, nitpicking every last trivial thing to death, was enough to turn anyone's stomach. And her eloquence flowed like a clear, unbroken stream—so relentless that even Sima Yi, who rarely lost an argument, could only shake her head.
'...Flinging herself about on nothing but the strength of her station.' Sima Yi thought, still gazing in the direction the Grand General had gone. To see the Emperor—the one person alive who ought to plan more meticulously and act more carefully than anyone—behave so lightly did not sit well with her at all. Hadn't this impulsive decision of hers already thrown the administration into disarray? Sima Yi looked at the heap of bamboo scrolls piled on the table and sighed.
'Still, at least she hasn't given it no thought whatsoever. Thank goodness for that.' At the very least, the Emperor wasn't rampaging about trying to make the Grand General hers and hers alone.
This faction was a strange beast: talents who could never otherwise mix, fused into a single heterogeneous mass by their fixation on one person. The Peerless Under Heaven, who heeded no voice but the Grand General's—only one man in the world could keep that beast of a woman leashed. And the guard commander who attended him at his side was worse still; she would not so much as open her mouth for anyone else, so what more needed saying? There was the woman who went about forever smiling, her thoughts unreadable, and the Match-for-Ten-Thousand generals who trailed after that woman like shadows.
If someone ordered people like these—bound solely around the Grand General—to never lay eyes on him again, how would they behave? As if there were any question. The more headstrong among them would inevitably defy the order and rise up on the spot. Those with a modicum of sense would hunt for any crack, any loophole to slip through. One would be treated to the spectacle of this colossal faction splitting clean in two.
To Sima Yi, things unfolding that way wouldn't have been entirely unwelcome... but 'now is not the time.'
The Emperor was turning a blind eye to the various women nursing feelings for the Grand General and circling him. In precisely the same way, the women at the Grand General's side pretended not to see the Emperor shamelessly throwing herself at him. The day this delicate equilibrium collapsed would be the very day the Han collapsed.
'And if the Han falls... I can well imagine who would take the next throne.' Of course, this was strictly a worst-case projection. If the Grand General simply held his lovers close and made them obey his every whim, they'd probably do nothing but trade idle chatter about who lasted how long through the night.
The two who guarded the Grand General's side already seemed to have become exactly that. Seo Yeo and Lü Bu. That anyone could reduce those two women—formidable at a single glance—into such creatures was nothing short of astonishing.
'C-could that rumor actually be true...?' The rumor that the Grand General, whatever his other talents, outshone every man alive in the bedchamber. She was old enough to know everything worth knowing, so Sima Yi understood precisely what it implied.
When Sima Yi flushed scarlet over her indecorous imaginings, Pang Tong cocked her head. "Um... d-do you suppose she's unwell somewhere?" she asked Zhuge Liang beside her.
"There is no need for concern whatsoever," Zhuge Liang replied airily. "One glance is enough to tell she's off having strange imaginings again."
Sima Yi flinched inwardly but let nothing show. She raised the violet fan—a gift from the Grand General—to hide her mouth. Yes. Exactly as Zhuge Liang so often did.
"...Hmph." With a single derisive snort, Sima Yi put on her smuggest voice. "Could it be that you're jealous I received a precious gift?"
"..."
"How unbecoming of you. The Grand General truly ought to have witnessed you in that state."
Zhuge Liang narrowed her eyes—go on then, try me—while Sima Yi sneered back without a care in the world.
"Uuaaah..." Poor Pang Tong, caught innocently in the crossfire, was having the worst time of it.
Report received, I covered ground faster than I ever had in my life. Not sprinting through the Grand General's offices, mind you—merely walking at a very brisk pace. Nodding past the soldiers who saluted me each time they saw me, I swung up into the saddle and took the reins in a firm grip.
Guiding the horse with practiced ease, I let my thoughts run. '...She wouldn't already be waiting in front of my house, would she?' The ceremony was supposedly about to begin, but knowing Her Majesty's bulldozer temperament, it wouldn't be the least bit strange for her to already be camped at my gate. This was a woman who had yanked a wedding planned for next spring up to today on a whim—what was a little waiting to her?
Still, keeping the Emperor waiting too long would look exceedingly bad.
"A palanquin that looked insanely expensive just went by a moment ago..."
"What on earth is all this about..."
Catching scraps of the citizens' chatter on the street, I realized my uneasy hunch had struck true. Whatever could be so urgent, Her Majesty had apparently already set out for my residence.
How much time passed like that? "...Master." Seo Yeo spoke up the moment she laid eyes on something in front of the house, and—
"Hmph. I see you were worried your turn might get pushed even further back, were you?" Lü Bu, riding Red Hare, muttered in a voice thick with displeasure.
"..." Arriving home, I could do nothing but fall silent. A palanquin that radiated staggering luxury at a single glance. Mountains of gold and silver treasure heaped before my gate. "...? ...??" And even my mother, question marks practically floating above her head, still utterly unable to make sense of it all.
"Ah, there you are at last." As I stood frozen for a moment, a familiar voice drifted over from nearby. Knowing full well who owned that voice, I dismounted in a flash and called out, "I greet Her Imperial Majesty the Emp—!"
"Tut-tut." Before I could finish, the Emperor cut me off with a deliberately stern face. "Do you think We made this journey in person merely to witness such a display?"
"That's..." I couldn't get an answer out and hesitated.
Then the Emperor said, "Now—take my hand." "...Your Majesty?" She extended her hand to me as I knelt on one knee, and smiled. "I have come to fetch you myself."
"..." Come to think of it, wasn't one of the Chinese wedding traditions to seat the bride in a palanquin and carry her off to the groom's house? The Emperor, seizing the hand I'd extended in a daze, turned her head and said, "Do with those betrothal gifts as you please." "...Huh? Ah—understood..." my mother answered, her voice still nowhere near grasping the situation.
...If this felt suspiciously like being sold off, surely I was imagining it. With my hand captured in the Emperor's delicate one, I climbed up into the palanquin.