Changes (1)
"Whew…."
Her seat at the banquet had been chosen to catch the eye — but only just so. In it sat a figure whose blue-silver hair gleamed like polished diamond, and from her lips escaped a long sigh.
A man who had been watching her threw his head back and laughed. "Haha! You seem to have quite a lot on your mind for such a fine day!"
"…A fine day, you say?"
"……Ulp."
The man — blessed with the very same blue-silver hair — read the shift in the air and hastily sealed his lips. Come to think of it, his daughter, the very apple of his eye, was hopelessly in love with the General-in-Chief. For him to blurt out such a thing, oblivious, at a banquet celebrating the General-in-Chief's union with another… an icy reception was only natural.
"W-well, that is… Ahem."
Glared at like that, with a look that was his wife's in every detail, a man could hardly help but lose a little steam. The post of father, it seemed, was one no number of years would ever accustom him to.
"……"
The young woman, watching her father carefully gauge her mood, heaved out a deep sigh. Right. What fault had the man before her committed, after all? Her father had only spoken up to lift his child's spirits.
Turning from him — his face flushed deep with drink — she let her gaze settle on a single point across the hall. Black hair, black eyes: the mark of the most exalted bloodline under heaven. That appearance, the surest proof imaginable that the imperial line ran unbroken, was a small marvel every time she beheld it. Among commoners and nobles alike, black hair was exceedingly rare, and a pairing of black hair with black eyes, outside the imperial family, simply did not occur. Thanks to so foolproof a means of telling them apart, proving one's imperial blood had never been much of a trial.
It saw frequent use, too, whenever one of the Emperor's women bore a child — a ready way of determining whether she had taken a lover on the side. The moment an infant arrived with neither the hair nor the eyes, the palace would be thrown into uproar. With a female Emperor, of course, there was hardly any trouble to speak of. The one bearing the child was the Emperor herself — where, exactly, was the scandal? There had even been the occasional blockhead who, desperate to pass himself off as imperial blood, attempted some absurd remedy and blinded a perfectly good pair of eyes in the process, but that was no concern of hers.
And what, she wondered, did those who could sit closest to the heavens — even among the noblest bloodlines under heaven — find to talk about?
"What say you? So gentle, so good with people — does it not favor a certain someone?"
"Yes! Even those mild, doleful eyes seem alike!"
"As I thought — you see it too."
She was holding forth on the animal cradled in her arms, comparing it against another person entirely.
"…Do you perhaps mean him?"
"Ah — you noticed."
At that, the man beside her pulled a bemused expression. It certainly did seem to resemble him…?
From any other mouth, it was a claim he would have denied with a shake of the head — but to women blinded by love, it passed for perfectly sound reasoning.
"Still, what am I to do…."
The young woman, eyes fixed on the Emperor and the General-in-Chief, muttered under her breath. At this rate, the banquet would end and she would walk away empty-handed, exactly as she had last time — the whole evening spent hovering after her father, half-afraid his drunkenness might breed some fresh absurdity, until the night called it quits.
"Wahaha! Fear nothing! Your father here never put a foot wrong, even drinking alone with the General-in-Chief!"
Anyone with eyes could see it was a lie. If her father's boast held any truth, why did the gaze of the general who ever stood guard at the General-in-Chief's side change, ever so slightly, each time she drew near? It was a difference far too subtle for an ordinary person to catch — but she caught it. She had no idea what he had said, but her father had without doubt opened his mouth about something strange in front of the General-in-Chief.
"……"
Her mind drifted back for a moment — to the days when her heart was not yet ready and she gave herself over wholly to training. Before she had first journeyed up to Luoyang and begun receiving instruction of every kind from the General-in-Chief, she had realized that no one in Xiliang could stand against her, and the knowledge had made her rather swaggering.
"All right, hold on! That one landed! I lost, so quit hitting me!"
"Don't feel like it."
"Why you rotten—! GWAAAH!"
She had thrashed the old man who, under the banner of martial instruction, had wailed on her since she was a child —
"I yield! I yield, so stop!"
"Sis, are you even human? Where do you get this strength?"
— and felled, all in the same breath, the three younger sisters whom the grown-ups praised as marvels of talent.
"Sis, be honest with me. You're really some beast that learned to walk on two legs, aren't you?"
One of the sisters she'd sparred with had come out with that particular gem.
"…So you really do want to die today."
"KYAAA! Mom! Dad! Save me!"
And every time she raised a hand to give her a thrashing for it, the little wretch would dart off shrieking for their parents — a sight that never once failed to gall her.
Being on the receiving end of such treatment back home had taught the young woman, quite naturally, that her martial arts stood apart. Her beauty was such that the word "Splendid" had been stitched into her very epithet, and her skill at arms was every bit its match. Had that life gone on, she might well have slid from confident into utterly drunk on herself — into the groundless arrogance that nothing in this world lay beyond her.
Bearing that faintly dangerous self-assurance, and believing every preparation complete, she had gone up to the capital.
…That confidence had not survived a handful of days.
"There. Finished."
The one who had brought a spear's point to rest against her throat, calling an end to the bout. A woman who bore black hair despite no drop of imperial blood, her crimson eyes gleaming like fresh-spilled red, had said:
"Your skills are good. It's experience you lack."
Zhang Fei Yide — that had been the name, if memory served. One of the generals who had held back the Peerless Under Heaven itself at the Battle of Hulao Pass. She still remembered how her father, on hearing that news, had paced and stamped in alarm, all but dispatching a relief force ten times too large — and how, with Xiliang's own defenses to consider, he had compromised and sent only what they could spare.
Zhang Fei, who had long since left her own beloved troops in the General-in-Chief's keeping, merely shrugged. "Eh, that's a problem time will solve. No matter."
"……"
"Get just a little stronger, though, and you might even manage to cross spears with me from sunup to sundown."
At those words, the young woman narrowed her eyes ever so slightly. "On horseback, the outcome would have been different."
"Hah? PWAHAHAHA!"
Practice spear — frayed half to splinters — slung across her shoulder, Zhang Fei laughed until she rocked. "Wake up and smell the hay. I'll grant that you Xiliang folk are born in the saddle, but I ride plenty well myself."
"Hmph. Then come at me mounted and see for yourself."
"Pass. I've a prior engagement, you see."
And with that, Zhang Fei darted off toward the General-in-Chief, plainly hunting for someone new to spar.
"……"
By the time her thoughts reached that point, the competitive fire had come roaring up inside her all over again. True, the duels that followed had taught her that above every sky there is yet another sky — but that was beside the point. Now was the hour to challenge once more the one who had barred her path.
…And, while she was at it, to carve a strong impression into the General-in-Chief's memory.
For some reason the latter felt distinctly the more important of the two, but she did her best to shake the thought loose.
"My darling daughter — do you know what your problem is?"
"…?"
"The moment you stand before the one you like, you turn timid for no reason at all. That's your problem."
Timid for no reason. Honestly.
Her mother — whose coarse tongue left no room for doubt that she was a daughter of the Qiang — had declared: "If you're my girl, you march right up and make yourself known, same as I did! Stand there hemming and hawing and watching for your moment, and what ought to be done never gets done!"
"Hmm? And what, precisely, is that meant to mean?"
Her father, chancing to be within earshot, had spoken up, suspicion thick in his voice.
"My dear, if I recall, there was a time when you, too, would freeze like a boulder the moment you stood before—"
"What on earth are you saying all of a sudden!"
"OOF! Enough! Enough, I said!"
The sight of her mother, face blazing scarlet, bringing her palm down across her father's back as if to flay the hide from it — that, too, remained vivid in memory.
…So Mother had been exactly like her.
Having glimpsed her parents' green, awkward years entirely by accident, the young woman could think nothing else. Her mother's paper-thin bravado was one thing — but there was not a single flaw in the argument itself. Did they not say that treasure belongs to the bold? Content yourself with gazing from the sidelines, and you may well spend your whole life doing nothing but gazing.
And the young woman, naturally, was not the sort to be content with that.
"…All right."
Her rival's fire stoked and a way to announce herself to the General-in-Chief now in hand, she set her face with resolve. Word had it that the general who had bested her was hailed as a Match for Ten Thousand — and an opponent of that caliber was more than worthy of carrying her name to new heights. This time, come what may, she would have the mounted duel she had been denied before.
And so the woman they called the Splendid Ma Chao of Xiliang waited for the banquet to run its course, searching for her opening to speak with the General-in-Chief.
"……"
"…That is — look, I was wrong, so stop glaring at me already… my dear."
The poor patriarch who, as the price of that one slip of the tongue, promptly found himself on the receiving end of his actual wife's glare — well, that was merely a bonus.
A father, it seemed, was a truly pitiable creature.