The Inspector of Youzhou (5)
Ever since Liu Bei had arrived in Ji, Gongsun Zan had come to see her every other day, without fail. If he had a reason, he came to call; if he had none, he invented one and came anyway.
"Xuande, little sister! Just thought I'd look in and see if anything was troubling you!"
And there it was. Just like now.
Liu Bei flung the door open and, faced with Gongsun Zan's booming laughter, managed a reluctant smile of her own. She was well practiced at concealing what lay beneath, and so Gongsun Zan never once noticed how carefully she kept him at arm's length.
Zhang Fei, forced to watch this little play day after day, felt her patience wear thinner with every visit. For days now she had been chewing down her fury, fiddling endlessly with her beloved spear.
"How long are we supposed to keep this up?"
Unable to bear it any longer, Zhang Fei was the first to break.
Liu Bei answered her with a wry smile.
"The time simply isn't right yet."
"The time isn't right? What's that supposed to mean?"
They had already scouted every corner of the city and put an escape plan together — what more was there to wait for?
Reading the look on Zhang Fei's face, Liu Bei went on.
"That's all we've managed, isn't it?"
They had no idea how the prison was laid out, and above all, no way of knowing where inside it Liu Yu was being held. With no intelligence to go on, how could they possibly move? To make matters worse, the guard force around the prison was dauntingly heavy, and Liu Bei had no choice but to stay her hand.
Of course, Zhang Fei knew all of this too. And that was precisely why Liu Bei's call to wait felt stranger the longer she turned it over.
"Anything beyond that lies outside our reach."
Liu Bei and her companions were here, first and last, under the status of guests. Wandering the city was one thing; restricted areas like the prison were quite another. They could have gathered intelligence if they put their minds to it, but the very act would inevitably catch Gongsun Zan's eye.
"And word's already starting to spread that Gongsun Zan means to kill the Inspector of Youzhou."
The window for saving Liu Yu was closing fast — and Big Sister surely knew it as well as she did.
"Don't worry."
"...Haah. Fine."
Zhang Fei heaved a sigh at Liu Bei's maddening composure. If she couldn't trust Big Sister, who could she trust? Liu Bei was not one to act without a plan, so there had to be a countermeasure somewhere — or so Zhang Fei chose to believe.
"Lady Xuande."
Just then the door opened, and Guan Yu, who had been standing watch outside, stepped into view.
At the sight of her — looking for all the world as though someone had come calling — Liu Bei smiled serenely. Her guess was not wrong.
"A gentleman has arrived asking for a private meeting with you, my lady."
"Show him in."
Liu Yu, courtesy name Bo'an — the paragon of benevolence and righteousness whose name was on every tongue in the realm. If he was truly the virtuous lord the rumors made him out to be, she reasoned, then surely someone was already moving to rescue him.
"It is an honor to meet in person the lady whose benevolent virtue has been the talk of the realm of late."
A man in official robes entered the room and bowed with deep courtesy.
"I am called Sun Jin."
The man raised his head and met Liu Bei's gaze squarely.
"Forgive my presumption, but might we exchange words of importance to us both?"
In his eyes, as he spoke, burned the steady resolve of a man who had already steeled himself for what was to come.
Liu Bei nodded, her smile bright and unhesitating.
"Xuande, little sister. There's a strange rumor going around about you lately."
"A rumor, you say?"
Gongsun Zan, who had dropped by for their usual chat, spoke as though the thought had only just occurred to him.
"What was it again... something about you keeping close company with people you really ought not to..."
"..."
"It isn't true, is it?"
Having raised the delicate subject, Gongsun Zan flashed a grin that said he already knew everything.
"I only say this because I care about you."
It was a warning, plain and simple — a warning to have no further dealings with those people.
"What becomes of a man who keeps gripping a rope he knows is about to snap?"
Gongsun Zan patted Liu Bei on the shoulder.
"Nothing, save that he falls and dies. Is there?"
A faint killing intent seeped from him as he spoke. Any ordinary soul would have been forgiven for going weak at the knees.
Yet even staring down Gongsun Zan's threat, Liu Bei did not lose her smile.
"I shall engrave those words deeply upon my heart."
"Hm... Yes."
Gongsun Zan's expression stiffened ever so slightly at her reply. In his experience, people who answered like that fell into one of two camps: either they truly had nothing to be pinned for, or their minds were already made up.
"..."
It seemed he would have to put more eyes on Liu Bei. From the moment he had walked in until this very second, her lips had never once stopped smiling — and to Gongsun Zan, that unbroken smile felt like a distance she was deliberately keeping from him.
Time slipped by. The moon rose, and the sky sank into full darkness.
Little time remained before the operation was set in motion.
"Lady Xuande. The watch on us has grown."
Guan Yu, who had caught the stir of soldiers moving nearby, spoke in a hushed voice.
"Could they have caught wind of something...? Hmm..."
At the news, Liu Bei looked faintly troubled — and at the sight, Zhang Fei snorted.
"What's a handful of goons? I've got a fair idea where they're posted. I'll just go put the whole lot of them face-down in the dirt."
Guan Yu breathed a small sigh as she regarded her.
"Yide. However swiftly we move, we cannot silence every last one of them."
"...We really can't?"
"If you are so eager to cross blades with every soldier in this city, I shall not stand in your way."
At Guan Yu's level reply, Zhang Fei pulled a face like she'd bitten into something sour.
"Then what are we supposed to do?"
Liu Bei, who had sunk into brief thought, opened her mouth.
"...It's all right. Someone else is making the first move."
All she had promised was to answer when Liu Yu's faction acted. The trouble was, she still had no inkling what that action would be. They had said they would weigh every possibility and choose whichever offered the best odds of success, and yet—
—!!
——!!
Then, far in the distance, black smoke began to climb into the sky, and the streets around them erupted into an uproar.
"Ah..."
A crimson haze blazed bright against the black night sky. A towering inferno had swallowed the army's grain depot, which stood a good distance from the prison.
So that was it.
"...Lady Xuande."
Guan Yu murmured, barely above a breath.
Liu Bei caught her own lips parting without her leave and pressed them firmly shut.
So they truly did mean to set a fire.
"Now that's what I call going out with a bang."
Gazing at the grain depot roaring up in flames, Zhang Fei let out a whistle of admiration, then turned her head toward Liu Bei.
"Every soldier tailing us is streaming off toward the fire. What do we do?"
"...We move."
Without a moment's hesitation, Liu Bei set off — her destination, the prison where Liu Yu was held.
Deep in the dead of night, with the entire fortress asleep, a massive fire had broken out within the walls.
The news that the grain depot was burning jolted Gongsun Zan bolt upright from his seat, and he rushed his soldiers out to fight the flames. Did he have any idea how precious every last sack of that stockpile was?!
As he hurried the firefight along, Gongsun Zan seized a soldier standing guard and demanded to know how such a thing could have happened.
"How in blazes did this fire start?!"
"Th-that is, I... I don't rightly know, sir...!"
When the guard just kept freezing up, Gongsun Zan's face mottled red.
"Answer me properly if you want to keep your life—!"
"Gah!"
Seized by the collar, the guard broke out in a cold sweat and blurted out his answer.
"Z-Zhang Chan! General Zhang Chan said something seemed wrong with the grain stores, and the fire broke out after he went inside!"
"Zhang Chan? Did you say Zhang Chan?!"
"Yes, sir!"
Zhang Chan. One of the most prominent of Liu Yu's loyalists, alongside Zhang Yi and Sun Jin.
"So those bastards have finally crawled out and made their move—!"
He should never have left them breathing!
Instead of dithering and hunting for a pretext to be rid of them, he should have cut them down long ago!
Feeling his fury surge to the very crown of his head, Gongsun Zan forced his mind to race.
"...Hoo. Calm yourself. Calm."
Think it through. Slowly.
What exactly were Liu Yu's men hoping to gain by pulling a stunt like this?
Gongsun Zan took a deep breath, muttering under his breath, and wrestled his rage back down. His deliberation did not take long.
His head snapped up, and he roared.
"The prison! It's the prison!"
He barked his orders at the officers around him.
"They mean to break Liu Yu out of his cell! Take troops and get there at once — stop them!"
"At once!"
His officer swiftly gathered a contingent of cavalry and vanished into the night.
"How dare they pull this bullshit stunt on me?"
They will pay most dearly for crossing me.
Bloodshot eyes glaring at the flames, Gongsun Zan seethed.
And yet, for all the speed of his response, the deed was done. Scarcely had the fire broken out inside the walls when — as though they had been waiting for precisely that moment — word arrived that Liu Yu had escaped his cell.
And as if that were not enough, the report came with a final sting: the ones who had freed Liu Yu were none other than Liu Bei and her companions.
The news was so staggering that Gongsun Zan very nearly collapsed where he stood.