The Eastern Depot, the Brocade Guard
Stripped of all will to fight, Huang Yan found himself ringed in by Zheng He and eight Hall-Accompanying Eunuchs.
Flee, resist, throw whatever tantrum he pleased — they would run him down and put him on his face. He was on the road to the grave without even time to scream.
A short while later, the blast that had torn through Yinghua Hall lit the imperial palace as bright as noon.
Stamp! Stamp-stamp!
Sa Hapji and the Brocade Guards, startled out of their posts, came pouring toward Yinghua Hall.
"Hail, Commander!"
Gongsun Dajing recognized Sa Hapji at once and snapped out a military salute.
"What happened here?"
Sa Hapji's gaze, as he asked, was already locked on Zheng He, the eunuchs, and Huang Yan. He had not spent a lifetime in office for nothing; one look was enough to take the measure of it. Huang Yan's face — the face of a man whose entire universe had come down around his ears — told the story by itself.
It was over. All of it.
Sure enough, Gongsun Dajing raised a hand and pointed at Huang Yan.
"This was Brush-Holding Grand Eunuch Huang Yan's doing. Huang Yan met Supervisor Jang here in Yinghua Hall. In the conversation that followed, it came out that he had threatened Gu Ryun and Gong Jun and bribed the interrogator."
"Supervisor Jang met with Huang Yan?"
The result was clear enough. What Sa Hapji wanted was the path that had led there. His face tightened with genuine puzzlement.
What in heaven's name did Jang Jinmyeong do?
Zheng He and his eunuchs would not have fallen on Huang Yan without some kind of trail to follow.
"That is correct. The commotion started when Huang Yan tried to kill Supervisor Jang."
"You've arrived, Your Excellency."
Zheng He stepped forward after Gongsun Dajing's report, ease written across every line of his face. The worry had gone out of him. Having just taken the Brocade Guard down a peg — an opportunity he had been waiting for — he even looked as if the skin of his face had drawn a shade tighter.
"...Grand Director."
Sa Hapji, by contrast, could only look sour. He kept it off his face, but inwardly he must have sighed ten times over.
"As you've heard, Huang Yan has committed a vile act. As the head of our kind, I find it nothing short of mortifying. Kindly have the criminal conveyed to the prison."
"Ahem. Very well. But where is Supervisor Jang? I should like a rather more detailed account."
"You haven't seen him? Your paths must have crossed. Supervisor Jang went to the prison to present himself to Your Excellency."
The words struck Sa Hapji like a blow. In that instant he recalled a fleeting image from before he had even arrived — a silhouette glimpsed in the heartbeat after the explosion, as he poured every ounce of his movement art into the sprint. Leaping the halls beyond Xi'an Gate, he had caught the figures of two eunuchs slipping out through the gate itself.
It can't be... the one who was beside him then?
The thought detonated in his skull like a thunderclap. For a moment it felt as if a bull's horn had driven into the back of his head.
Sa Hapji turned on Gongsun Dajing, his face flushed dark.
"Gongsun Dajing! When you arrived, were Supervisor Jang and Huang Yan the only two people in Yinghua Hall?"
Of course they weren't. Huang Yan was no drooling idiot. To think a veteran eunuch who had climbed to third in the Directorate of Ceremonial would simply walk into Jin Myeong's leading questions? You could insult the man, but there were limits — the claim wouldn't have bought a grain of rice.
There was, however, one assumption under which it all made sense. Why had he not thought of it sooner?
His own men did not know Gu Ryun's face.
"Only the two of them, sir. Huang Yan is babbling that Supervisor Jang and Gu Ryun conspired to pin the crime on him, but we'll need a proper investigation to sort out the particulars."
When Jin Myeong and Huang Yan had clashed, Gu Ryun had already withdrawn behind Yinghua Hall, exactly as Jin Myeong had arranged beforehand. Gu Ryun, Zheng He, and Gongsun Dajing — those three were never supposed to come face to face. It would have put Gongsun Dajing, who had already risked enough, in an impossible position.
The moment the eunuchs had Huang Yan subdued, Jin Myeong had announced he would go report to Sa Hapji, then slipped out of Yinghua Hall with the concealed Gu Ryun at his side.
"Supervisor Jang and Gu Ryun conspired..."
From that single sentence, Sa Hapji knew the assumption that had just flashed through his mind was the truth. Jin Myeong had smuggled Gu Ryun out. There was no other explanation.
Crafty little monster... He stationed those eunuchs from the start with this in mind, didn't he? The boy is a fiend.
He had used the interrogator as a pretext to send the Brocade Guards packing, then planted eunuchs in their place — a dozen of them, no less. Thinking back, those eunuchs had all been built much like Gu Ryun.
"Heh..."
In a single breath the strength went out of him, and a hollow laugh escaped his lips. Even if he went to the prison now, Gu Ryun would be sitting in his cell as if he had never left it. It was already too late. He had no choice but to admit it: the Brocade Guard had taken a clean hit from a eunuch who hadn't even come of age.
"Commander...?"
Gongsun Dajing was still watching him with a puzzled frown, that hollow laugh hanging in the air, when—
"Hahahaha!"
Without warning, Sa Hapji threw back his head and roared with laughter, a sound so vast it seemed ready to shake the pillars of heaven. The laugh, thick with inner force, rolled through every corner of the imperial palace.
Eunuchs and guards alike spun around in shock. This was the imperial palace — the Emperor and the Crown Prince were here.
Then it stopped.
The hearty laugh that had been rolling on was severed in an instant, as if a blade had sheared it clean through.
"Grand Director."
A contradictory smile sat on Sa Hapji's face — hollow and thoroughly delighted all at once — as he turned to Zheng He.
"Speak, then."
In that instant everyone understood: the blade was Jin Myeong, and the golden saber was the Brocade Guard itself. One man had defeated twenty thousand.
"The fingernails of us lowly eunuchs have always been rather sharp."
"A divine blade! A divine blade! Hahahaha!"
Sa Hapji shook his head as a man does when he has lost, and turned on his heel.
Three days later, Huang Yan and the interrogator were beheaded and departed this world. Gu Ryun and Gong Jun, their actions judged to have been taken under threat and coercion, escaped with ten strokes of the heavy rod.
To say they "escaped with" ten strokes was generous. Ten strokes of the heavy rod meant a month flat on one's back.
Four days after that, at the Directorate of Ceremonial.
The Directorate's senior leadership had gathered as one — from Zheng He at the head of them down to Jin Myeong, who had only just put on a Supervisor's cap. Chief Hall-Accompanying Eunuch Hai Shou, who attended the Yongle Emperor in person, and Chief Brush-Holding Grand Eunuch Wang Guitong, who attended Zhu Gaochi, were both present.
The reason the Directorate's inner circle had assembled was this: the Dongjishichang. In other words, they had come to discuss the founding of the Eastern Depot.
"Supervisor Jang did fine work the other day. Thanks to you, our kind kept its face. Hong-hong!"
Zheng He opened with praise before the real discussion began. It was said that when parents gathered they talked of nothing but their children, and eunuchs were not so different. For a eunuch, a "child" was the castrated boy who had come up under him, and whenever the Grand Eunuchs of the Directorate got together the talk ran mostly to the little eunuchs in their charge. From there it slid, as it always did, into opium, gambling, wagers, the dogs and cats and birds they kept, and whichever palace maids happened to be particularly fine-featured that season.
"Not at all. It was only possible because the Grand Director and the other Grand Eunuchs lent their aid."
"Hol-hol-hol! Supervisor Jang, a eunuch who hasn't even hit his fifties, already putting on humility?"
Wang Guitong, seated close to Zheng He, put in a word, looking thoroughly pleased with him. The point was that a man who practiced the Sunflower Manual — and so might drop dead at any hour — could afford to wait until his fifties before he started being modest. It was a jab at how often eunuchs who cultivated that art died before sixty.
"Supervisor Jang, this old public servant had never heard of a eunuch with nerve that terrifying. What were you going to do if the Grand Eunuchs had been late? You nearly had to bury your jar that night. Hol-hol!"
Hai Shou, the Hall-Accompanying Eunuch, added his own cut. A native of Joseon and personal attendant to the Yongle Emperor, Hai Shou had only ever heard stories of Jin Myeong; this was the first time they had spoken face to face.
"This humble servant trusted you would arrive in time. If not... well. Sadly, this humble servant and this humble servant's treasures would have gone into the ground together."
"That's exactly my point. Don't we eunuchs live by the creed of going thick and living long? Don't tell me you..."
"Pardon?"
"Still have everything... intact?"
Hai Shou nodded as if he had put his finger on the heart of the matter, and flicked his eyes toward Jin Myeong's waist.
"He's got you there, Hai Shou. You and I packed our nerve away in those little jars with the rest of us, didn't we? Hol-hol-hol!"
"He's right, sirs. Shouldn't we give Supervisor Jang a proper inspection? Who even recruited him? Doesn't seem like he's one of our castrated brethren at all! Hong-hong-hong!"
Hai Shou and Wang Guitong, delighted to be among the Grand Eunuchs again after so long, were emptying a cellar's worth of stored-up filth and having the time of their lives. Eunuchs and palace maids had always been the twin peaks of palace gossip. If the martial world had Shaolin revered in the north and Wudang honored in the south, the palace art of verbal warfare belonged to castrated eunuchs and born palace maids — those who'd lost it versus those who'd never had it.
...These damned eunuchs. There are jokes, and then there are jokes.
Wang Guitong and Hai Shou were joking, and enjoying themselves. Jin Myeong, on the receiving end, went cold to the bone. It was as if a dagger had flown straight into his chest.
He did not, however, worry. The Huanxu was more perfect than any pair of eyes.
A pity for them. This public servant has the Illusion Transforming Secret.
Once upon entering the palace, and three more times on the climb to Supervisor — four inspections, all passed without a flicker of suspicion.
"...This humble servant is a proud member of the eunuch clan, sirs."
"Of course you are. And who was it that recruited you, hm? Gentlemen, you must not forget this humble servant's contribution. It was none other than Vice Director Yun Bong who brought the greatest inner-court talent under heaven into the Directorate of Ceremonial!"
Warmed to the occasion, the Grand Eunuchs tossed jokes back and forth and cackled until the hall rang with it — oh-hong-hong-hong! — without the faintest idea that a moment ago they had struck the bullseye without even aiming.
A short while later, Zheng He and the eunuchs got down to the real business.
"Let us begin. First: His Majesty has commanded that, on the surface, we stand as equals with the Brocade Guard."
The Grand Eunuchs hummed and nodded.
The Eastern Depot had not, from its first day, openly ruled the Brocade Guard. That outcome was all but guaranteed — the Emperor's most trusted eunuchs would form its leadership — but folding the Brocade Guard into the Eastern Depot as a subordinate office on the formal table of organization carried a political cost. The Brocade Guard already sat above the Three Judicial Offices, the highest legal institutions in the realm, and wielded enormous power through surveillance, investigation, arrest, interrogation, and punishment.
The Brocade Guard alone was already too much. To create, at this moment, another office with the same functions and still greater authority was absurd on its face, and there was no political pretext for it. And so, at its founding, the Eastern Depot would take as its stated purpose a check upon the Brocade Guard.
"The Depot has lived in His Majesty's heart for a long time already. It is only a matter of time before our kind has the Brocade Guard under our heel."
Hai Shou, who stood closer to the Yongle Emperor than anyone, took up Zheng He's thread. The Brocade Guard was an organization the Emperor's own father had built. From the beginning, the Yongle Emperor had felt the need to bring the swollen Guard to heel — and he needed an instrument he could trust more completely, one he could drive as hard as he liked without glancing over his shoulder. How else was a man to stop a usurper like himself? If that mighty Guard ever changed its heart and threw in with a traitor, it would be the end of everything.
"Hai Shou is right. It is not a problem worth losing sleep over. Our kind attends the throne at arm's length. Who would dare reach for the eunuch clan?"
Wang Guitong added his voice.
There was only one group the Yongle Emperor could trust more than the Brocade Guard: the men who, when he tore the throne from his nephew, had fed him intelligence on the political weather and the disposition of armies, and had spared no effort in his cause. The eunuchs, whose faces he saw for all twelve watches of the day. The founding of the Eastern Depot was, in that sense, both inevitable and a hinge of history.
"Yun Bong."
"Yes, sir!"
Zheng He, having taken Hai Shou and Wang Guitong's points, turned to Yun Bong.
"How far has the table of organization come?"
"I am still drafting the skeleton of the central command, sir. I beg pardon for the delay!"
"No matter. You have enough on your plate. Explain it."
Yun Bong ducked his head, and Zheng He waved the apology aside. Grand Eunuchs who had already peaked in rank were not about to rot their brains on actual paperwork. Which meant the Left and Right Vice Directors and the Left and Right Supervisors were, in practice, the Directorate's menials. Or its slaves, depending on the day. That was why the flesh beneath Yun Bong's eyes was always dark.
Just kill me already... kill me... They said we'd discuss this today with no bottom and no end, so I pulled another all-nighter...
Yun Bong let out a sigh no one was meant to hear, unrolled a sheet of hanging paper with the organizational chart drawn on it, and hooked it over a wooden frame. Jin Myeong stepped in to help. Then Yun Bong drew out the black bamboo switch with which, not so long ago, he had beaten the calves of Wang Zhen's little trio, and began.
"The head of the Depot will be the Chief Brush-Holding Grand Eunuch, or, depending on circumstances, the Deputy. For the opening, we propose that the Grand Director himself take the seat."
The foundations had to be laid, and no one yet knew how the organization would actually run; Zheng He holding it was only proper. The Eastern Depot and its first chief were also matters of the keenest interest to the Yongle Emperor, which meant the post had to go to the eunuch he trusted most. Putting anyone else forward was unthinkable.
The Grand Eunuchs nodded their agreement, one after another.
"Good. We'll decide these one at a time, here and now. What is the chief's official title to be?"
Zheng He asked.
"...Undecided, sir. I wished to hear the considered views of the Grand Eunuchs."
At the word undecided, the Grand Eunuchs sank at once into thought.
Presently—
"What about Eastern Depot Grand Eunuch?"
Hai Shou spoke first. Zheng He and the others turned toward him — and their faces fell almost immediately.
"Hai Shou, that's far too obvious. Hmm... from the sense of 'master of the Depot' — Depot Lord Grand Eunuch?"
As Wang Guitong himself had just said of Hai Shou's suggestion, it was crude as a brick.
"...Sirs, that does not seem to me so very different from this humble servant's own suggestion..."
"Isn't it...? Tch. We need something so fearsome it fogs the mind the instant you hear it. Has no one got a decent idea?"
Wang Guitong looked around the Grand Eunuchs, but they only hemmed and hawed and chewed on the problem. No one seemed ready to step forward. What could they do? They wanted a fine name; their schooling had simply been too short. There was no shortage of Grand Eunuchs who knew no characters beyond the Thousand Character Classic.
Zheng He, for his part, had gone quiet with thought.
Dongjishichang... the Eastern Depot...
This was the title of the man who would head an organization meant to guarantee a hundred-year — no, a thousand-year — grand design for the eunuch clan. It could not be thrown together.
Grand Eunuch... something with that in it, I think...
He was turning a handful of words this way and that, trying to fit them together, when Jin Myeong spoke up.
"Might this humble servant offer a suggestion?"
"Myeong? You?"
Zheng He's question and the snap of every Grand Eunuch's head came at the same instant. A eunuch still black-haired and young had stepped forward, and their hearing pricked up of its own accord.
Then, into the silence:
The full and official title
And in abbreviated form
Dozens of eyes flew wide. Through that forest of staring gazes, Jin Myeong's voice carried, calm and even.
"What would you say to making it Superintendent of the Eastern Depot?"