The Wedding Rites (7)
What image comes to mind when people picture a wedding palanquin procession?
For most, it would be musicians off to the side playing lively tunes, and a crowd of onlookers trailing behind the procession, chattering away in high spirits.
But the Empress's procession today was nothing of the sort.
"……."
The civil and military officials of the imperial court followed the palanquin in solemn silence. The Imperial Guards marched in ranks aligned to perfection, every footfall measured and precise. One glance was enough to see how far this scene stood from any sort of festivity, and I found myself feeling a little dazed by it.
"You look quite flustered."
Her Majesty, who had been boring holes into me from the seat across, remarked.
"We understand it all too well."
"……."
"This is meant to be a joyous occasion, yet is it not far too silent?"
The Empress grumbled in a dissatisfied voice.
"Honestly, those people have no sense of occasion whatsoever."
When I failed to find anything to say and held my silence, she kept going.
"I did consider including musicians in the procession... but as things stand, it would only make the whole spectacle look strange."
"You're right, Your Majesty."
I nodded. Playing music in an atmosphere like this would do nothing but conjure an even stranger mood.
It would be like—what was it—that one scene from a historical drama once famous for the line "Let the music blare!" Music rung out by sheer force, nothing more.
The civil and military officials surely all had their reasons for cultivating this kind of atmosphere, though...
"That said..."
The moment I tried to fathom the officials' intentions, the Empress murmured so and turned her gaze out the window.
"Someone out there appears to be in a rather foul mood."
"……."
Catching on to whom she meant, I turned my head toward the window just as she had. Seo Yeo and Lü Bu. Mounted on their horses and guarding the palanquin at close quarters, the two of them looked as though a million-strong army could come charging in that very instant and still fail to break through.
If there was just one problem...
"……."
"Hmph."
...it would be their absolutely atrocious moods.
The pair were radiating such an overwhelming aura that even their own allies were unconsciously giving them a wide berth. Lü Bu was scowling outright, her displeasure on full display, while the perpetually expressionless Seo Yeo had, in her stead, Ochyma pulling the face of a street thug.
That horse really was something else, every time I laid eyes on it. It had been the same the day we first met—how could any horse have such a rich range of expressions?
Oh, and for the record, Red Hare looked perfectly serene, entirely out of step with the mood around it. Had it grown calm in compensation for its hot-tempered master? Come to think of it, the reason Ochyma had oddly developed such varied expressions might well be the influence of Seo Yeo, who wore nothing but a blank mask from dawn to dusk.
The natural world truly is profound.
In any case, I must have been wearing an expression of worry that the two of them might kick off some incident or other.
"Hwahyeon."
"You called?"
At the Empress calling my courtesy name, I calmly offered my respects. There were only the two of us inside this palanquin, after all—presumably her way of saying there was no need to mind anyone else's eyes.
...The way Seo Yeo's and Lü Bu's bodies visibly tensed up every time Her Majesty called my courtesy name was surely just my imagination.
I saw none of what Liu Bei had once done to Dilu—clamping the horse's flanks between her thighs hard enough to crush them, or seizing the reins in a white-knuckled death grip.
——Neigh?!
Seriously.
While I was busy averting my eyes from reality, Her Majesty spoke up.
"There is something I would ask of you."
"And what might that be?"
"The other women. Did you get them with child?"
At that staggering question, my thoughts stopped dead for an instant. Like a buffering video frozen mid-download, I stood stock-still, then desperately set my brain grinding.
"So you did."
"……."
But all that effort came to nothing; the Empress swept her gaze around once and delivered her verdict in a heartbeat.
"There are truths one can know without needing to hear them spoken."
Legs elegantly crossed, the Empress tapped a finger against her knee as she spoke.
"The very moment We posed that question, you and a number of the other generals swallowed hard."
"...Your Majesty."
"What use is a secret kept by a man so easy to read?"
The Empress was still smiling at me. Her voice was far, far too calm for a woman who had just realized her husband had a child growing in another woman's belly.
"And what do you plan to do about the child's surname?"
"...They will take their mothers' surnames."
"Hmm?"
Playing coy before an Empress who had already seen through everything would have been laughable, so I answered obediently.
"You will not attach the surname Jeong to the children?"
"No."
My reason for the decision was nothing special. There were simply far too many names that would turn strange the moment the surname Jeong was attached to them.
Take, for instance, the surname Lü, famous through Lü Bu's daughter. What would happen if I swapped out the surname of the figure known by the fictional name Lü Lingqi for my own? She would instantly become Jeong Lingqi—less a girl's name than a spirit-powered mecha straight out of some fantasy robot-battle series.
And what of Cao Ang, Cao Cao's eldest? If this child took my surname, the name would become Jeong Ang—and that, too, felt distinctly off.
In this ancient China, where men and women stood on equal social footing, children felt no particular shame in carrying their mother's surname. Households with two or more children often had one child bearing the father's surname and another bearing the mother's.
"Hmm... I see."
It being that kind of world, the Empress simply murmured in a tone tinged with disappointment.
"What a shame. I had half wondered whether, a few centuries from now, the whole realm might be blanketed in your surname."
"...Surely even for you, that would be a stretch."
Even Prince Jing of Zhongshan, said to have fathered more than a hundred and twenty children, had failed to blanket the realm with the surname Liu. All he managed was to make Liu—the mark of the imperial bloodline—a little more common. Which, admittedly, was quite a feat in its own right.
Perhaps the Empress had only been joking, for she flashed me a wry smile.
"Well, at the very least, I shall know at a glance who the mother is, the first time I set eyes on any child of yours."
"……."
"Just do not make too many of them all at once."
The Empress said in a level tone.
"Preparing for the future is all well and good, but someone may well bide for the moment your strength wanes and invade."
"...Yes."
It was a fair point, and I conceded as much. Seo Yeo and Lü Bu were already in a state where they could no longer take the front lines. It hardly showed yet, but as time went on, even running would surely become a struggle for them, let alone fighting.
Even today, they had only tagged along after throwing a fit when I suggested it was about time they started looking after their bodies. Blocking their path with attendants would have been pointless—they would simply send the attendants flying and keep coming anyway. Their bodies had grown a touch sluggish, but their skill and raw strength remained as fearsome as ever.
Still, I really ought to start thinking about contraception, with the future in mind. Wouldn't the Divine Physician know of some method?
And the moment my thoughts traveled that far, the Peach Sisters—with whom I had once spent a night entangled—began to weigh on my mind as well. I did lose a bit of my reason that night, but I trust everything turned out fine. ...Probably.
Perhaps the quiet still displeased Her Majesty, for she kept striking up conversation with me even after that—truly trivial topics, like what the weather had been of late. The exchange mostly took the form of her speaking and me receiving her words, but even that alone was enough to spread a beaming smile across the Empress's face.
The commoners who caught sight of the massive procession all came flooding into the streets to gawk at it.
"I've never in my life seen a palanquin that enormous. What in the world is going on?"
"Aigoo, and how is it you have no eye for these things at all..."
A merchant opened his mouth to the man standing beside him.
"Look at the colors, the patterns—that is a wedding palanquin. And in this day and age, who else could lead a procession of that scale?"
"Well, that's..."
"Have you not heard the news that the General-in-Chief has been chosen as Her Majesty's consort?"
"Ah, right!"
The man nodded along at the merchant's words.
"Then what are we doing, hmm? On such an auspicious day, and all we do is stand around buzzing like fools!"
"Hm? What are you suddenly on about..."
"Seems to me the oblivious one here is you, not me!"
Before the merchant could even finish speaking, the man shouted at the top of his lungs.
"Long live Her Majesty the Empress!"
"Wh-what?"
The merchant pulled a dim-witted face at the sudden outburst.
"Her Majesty? You mean the Empress?"
"Good heavens! Is she not a sage ruler who looks after ignorant worms like us?"
"Did she not open the imperial treasury to restore Chang'an?"
The bystanders who had watched the man's antics murmured among themselves for a moment—then threw both arms high into the air.
"Long live Her Majesty the Empress! Long live! Long, long live!"
As the triple cheer rippled outward in an instant, a few of the civil officials gave small nods.
Everything appears to be proceeding according to plan.
The petite woman with light brown hair wore a satisfied expression.
Ordinarily, whenever a procession containing the Empress went on the move, the Imperial Guards would step forward in advance and issue the people a warning. A bloodcurdling one, at that: anyone who so much as displayed suspicious behavior would have his head taken on the spot, and his entire clan—every last relation—put to the sword.
The sight of commoners cowering and shrinking away at such a warning was not what she wanted.
The woman, who had risen to a high post on the strength of her exceptional ability, had pressed her opinion upon the court, and the great lords and high officials had agreed with her. The result was this.
Watching the people raise their cheers as one, the woman thought:
The wedding ceremony itself is to be concluded as swiftly as possible, so I leave everything that follows in your hands.
The brown-haired woman—Xun Yu—fixed her brilliant, perceptive eyes on a single point.