Hidden Tiger (1)
Rising from her seat, Cao Cao made her way back to her chamber and carefully drew out the letter she had kept tucked away inside her breast.
"…Hmm."
What in the world could he have written? She had never once seen the man put brush to paper, but by all the intelligence she had gathered on him, he was not one to compose at length. Whenever a personal letter was called for, he apparently skipped every flourish of fine language and set down only the business at hand.
There was, for instance, the letter he had sent when that fool who spent his days craving nothing but honeyed water provoked the Grand General. It was said to contain a single line, and a single line only—a jeer at the fool himself. The man had tried to smother the affair in silence, but the story had already spread far and wide; in all of Yanzhou and Ye Province there was not a soul who had not heard it.
"And what will he write to me, I wonder."
She did think his bluntness had a charm of its own, but— Swallowing the rest of the thought, Cao Cao unfolded the letter, aware of her heart beating just a little faster.
— Mengde.
Her Majesty the Emperor has praised your merit in bringing stability to the lands of Yanzhou, and has said that the offices of General Who Pacifies the East and Provincial Governor of Yanzhou are to be conferred upon you.
My hand lacks skill with the brush, so I cannot write at length—but I congratulate you in all sincerity.
Just as it was in Luoyang once before, I believe that you and I walk the same road, and that we will remain together to the very end.
"…Pfft."
Reading slowly through the letter Jeong Reung had sent, Cao Cao let a laugh slip out of her all at once.
"His writing really is clumsy."
The contents were scant, the sentences stiff and formal on the page. And yet it was precisely that unpolished quality through which sincerity made itself felt. In every line she could glimpse the traces of a man who had agonized at length over how to set down each character, one by one. It was like coming face to face with a bashful, green young man.
"Truly amusing, as ever."
Had she ever paid this much mind to another person before? Not the calculating appetite for acquiring a brilliant talent, but a feeling laced with something warmer. If the man ever learned of it, he would shudder and put his distance between them, no doubt of it. She understood he was shy—but push people away too hard, and they simply stop coming.
It didn't matter. Take it slowly, one step at a time, and the day would surely come when the two of them faced each other in earnest.
—I believe we will remain together to the end.
Tracing that sentence with a fingertip, Cao Cao smiled. And just how they would come to be together—that much, she could decide for herself, couldn't she?
The age of the Three Kingdoms—when Liu Bei, Cao Cao, and Sun Quan each raised their own powers and fought it out for supremacy. In that era, a leader's faction and the great clans—the powerful landed families who dominated the countryside—were bound together in a relationship neither side could sever, however much they might have wanted to. After all, most of the famed generals and strategists of the age hailed from those very clans.
Xun Yu—Wenruo—the Talent to Assist Kings, who had propped up Cao Cao from the earliest days? A daughter of the great Xun clan of Yingchuan Commandery in Ye Province.
Lu Xun—Boyan—who spent a very hot night with Liu Bei's army at Yiling? A daughter of the great Lu clan of Wu Commandery in Jiangdong.
Zhuge Liang—Kongming—Chancellor of Shu Han, whose ability every last person acknowledged with a nod? A daughter of the great Zhuge clan of Langya in Xuzhou.
So with the capable overwhelmingly drawn from clan stock, what would happen if word spread that a leader was persecuting the great clans?
What would happen, indeed. The backing of those magnates, who lorded their strength over the provinces, would be cut off at a stroke—and talented men of clan birth would naturally turn on their heels. Nor would the clans stop there: the instant a leader showed an opening, they would go so far as open revolt.
The textbook case: while the filial daughter Cao Cao was off wielding the great butcher's blade across Xuzhou, Chen Gong roped in Lü Bu, Zhang Miao, and the great clans of Yanzhou and stabbed her squarely in the back—nearly crushing her faction to the point of collapse.
And so leaders split down two roads. Either they worked this scheme and that to keep the clans' power firmly reined in, or they struck a dramatic compromise and learned to live with them on good terms. Cao Cao, who after that backstab in Yanzhou ran a government built around her own kin, took the former road; Sun Quan, who somehow patched things up with the Jiangdong clans her elder brother Sun Ce had smashed to splinters, took the latter.
Thus every leader had to decide how to get along with the great clans of their lands—and on that score, our faction was remarkably free of the headache. Small wonder, really: ours had the Emperor, reigning over the capital of Luoyang.
No matter how stiffly a clan might carry its head out in the provinces, defying the Emperor was outright lunacy. When Her Majesty the Emperor said jump, you asked how high—where did some provincial clan get off, and daring what? Fancy a taste of what happens to traitors? With the righteous cause on this side, unless a man was some strange creature who actually wanted three generations of his house exterminated, the clans had no choice but to bow and scrape of their own accord.
To be sure, in an age of chaos the Emperor's authority had faded somewhat—but there was a world of difference between having an Emperor and not.
That was why, unlike Cao Cao, I never took a hard line with the clans; my policy was conciliation—cooperate in good faith, and your rights would be respected. The trouble with powerful clans is that they grow swaggering, tune out their leader, and act only in their own interest, but with the Emperor looming over them they kept themselves deferential of their own accord, and so I never felt any need to clamp down hard on discipline.
Sili, being the region where the Emperor's influence reached most directly, had hardly a flaw worth picking at. Bing Province? Its clans had emigrated long ago and settled in other lands. If anything still gave me pause, it was Xiliang—but Han Sui and Ma Teng mediated there capably, so it would keep.
It goes without saying that anyone who committed a crime answered for it, clan or no. Live a little more honestly. And those who proved beyond redemption to the very end were sent off on a long journey to distant parts—purely in the spirit of encouraging them to turn over a new leaf.
Today, escort in tow, I had made my way to one of the counties under Sili's jurisdiction.
"You have come."
"…"
He had evidently anticipated my visit, for the moment I set foot in the county seat, a middle-aged man of stern countenance bowed with punctilious courtesy. I returned it with an even expression.
"It has been quite a while. Have you been well?"
"Yes, General. Thanks entirely to the Grand General's gracious virtue."
Every time we meet, it's the same speech from this man. He was no automaton keyed to respond to certain phrases, yet his every gesture was stiff as a board. Even now, holding his gesture of respect, he hadn't stirred so much as a hair, preserving his formal posture to perfection. Watching him was enough to make me uncomfortable on his behalf.
"Then let us be off."
He gave every sign of not budging an inch from his spot until I spoke first, so I hurried my steps.
"You haven't gone and stirred up any trouble, I trust?"
"No, General. I impress strict vigilance upon my household at all times, so you need have no concern."
This man at my side was precisely the sort to grind everyone beneath him into exhaustion. To live one's whole life under the instruction of a man so utterly inflexible—I honestly believed that if it were me, I couldn't have endured it; I'd have bolted somewhere around the middle.
"I will know once I have seen for myself."
With that, I moved briskly, following the man's lead. Honestly, though—much as I said such things, I could not bring myself to believe that a man so strict even with his own conduct had caused any trouble. I already had people scattered about gathering information; if something were amiss, it would have found its way to my ears by now.
"You do come here rather often, don't you? Is there some reason?"
It was Lü Bu who spoke then—she had been standing guard behind me alongside Seo Yeo. These days, with plenty of generals beneath her to deploy in her stead, Lü Bu had gained a fair share of leisure, and every time it appeared she volunteered herself for my escort, until by now she had all but appointed herself my second bodyguard. Seo Yeo had changed from the old days as well; unless someone tried to pry her away from me, she paid not the slightest mind to whoever else stood guard at my side.
I answered Lü Bu's question briefly. Truth be told, calling it an inspection was nothing but a pretext—the real reason for my visit lay elsewhere entirely.
"There are talents here worth a close look."
"…Talents?"
"That's right."
When I gave a nod, Lü Bu looked at the middle-aged man guiding me from the front and asked.
"Him?"
"There are more."
"There's more?"
Lü Bu's eyes went round. Blood-red eyes opened into perfect circles—she looked for all the world like a startled rabbit.
"You'll see soon enough," I said with a faint smile.
"Hmmmm…"
Since this was her first time following me here, Lü Bu clearly hadn't the faintest idea what I meant.
Wen County, Henei Commandery, Sili—that was where I had come today. A family whose name, spoken within Sili, won a nod from one and all: a house of true renown. The Sima clan.
Need I even say it? The man guiding me before my eyes was Sima Fang, celebrated at court for his unbending integrity—and the father of Sima Yi.
The Eight Da of Sima. The name for Sima Fang's eight children: every one of the eight was exceptionally gifted, and every one bore in his courtesy name the character da—the da of "one who has mastered"—and so they were called the Eight Da of Sima. That all eight in fact went on to hold high office at some point shows the talent was no idle boast. …Though with Sima Yi so toweringly famous among them, the rest do rather fade by comparison. A similar case would be Zhuge Jin and Zhuge Jun, who count Zhuge Liang as family.
In the history I knew, the Sima family would have fled the plundering of the anti-Dong Zhuo coalition as it thrust to Luoyang's very doorstep, escaping deeper into the Central Plains—but since I had driven that coalition out of Hulao Pass, in this world they had stayed quietly in Henei.
Outstanding talent, sitting right there within reach—how was anyone supposed to look the other way? My position being what it is, I had become a most precious personage indeed, but if it served to recruit talent, I stood ready to carve up my schedule and go anywhere.
Someone out there in the world might well take me to task for conduct like this—a Grand General without a shred of majesty, a frivolous fellow flitting from place to place. They do say that once you reach my rank, every gesture and every step is weighed for political intent. What an insufferable bother, the whole of it.
…But seriously—how on earth am I supposed to recruit Zhuge Liang?