The Eighteenth Year of Yongle (2)
They had stepped forward out of loyalty to their superiors.
The attendants of a First-Rank Left Commander-in-Chief of the Central Military Commission and a Second-Rank Minister of War were seized in a single exchange.
Shang Yu, Junior Fifth-Rank Aide, and Jiao Shouheng, Senior Fifth-Rank Bureau Director.
The hands and blades, in other words, of Left Commander-in-Chief Zhang Fu and Minister of War Jin Heup. Knives they were accustomed to using this way — retainers who handled the tedious work in their masters' stead and who, when the need arose, spilled blood in their place. Clever subordinates who knew how to read their lords' hearts without being told.
The display just now had been, in no small part, an exercise of force that leaned on their masters' prestige and tacit permission.
But the supreme commander of the Great Ming's ten thousand eunuchs had a blade of his own.
The man granted the title of Imperial Inner Attendant, and an imperial sword besides.
Senior Fifth-Rank Supervisor Jang Jinmyeong.
A sharp metallic ring split the chamber.
Two sword-bodies, their paths cut off by Cheonyang Biyeon and Jeongeumshin, trembled violently. Their owners — Junior Fifth-Rank Aide Shang Yu and Senior Fifth-Rank Bureau Director Jiao Shouheng — froze where they stood.
A choked rasp.
Shang Yu had surrendered his throat to Cheonyang Biyeon. Jiao Shouheng had surrendered his manhood to Jeongeumshin. Both men swallowed dry.
Standing between them, Shang Yu on his left and Jiao Shouheng on his right, Jinmyeong spoke again.
"Honored sirs. Grand Director Zheng is not the Grand Director of some other bureau. He is the Grand Director of the Directorate of Ceremonial. He is the man who opens the palace morning and closes its night."
Zhang Fu and Jin Heup did not answer.
The young eunuch is a rare master. Has some back-room castrato gotten his hands on a sharpened blade?
Of the two, Zhang Fu was a veteran who had rolled through battlefields, a master of the Peak Realm - Late Stage. That a eunuch who looked barely twenty had subdued Shang Yu surprised him only slightly. He recovered his composure at once.
Jin Heup, a civil official by origin, had not refused to answer. He had been unable to.
Even Aide Shang taken with him. Is that bastard's martial learning truly at this level?
He had never imagined that Jiao Shouheng — whose martial skill was not so far beneath his own — would be pinned without so much as a squeak. And Shang Yu had gone down with him. To a eunuch years their junior, no less.
In matters of administration Jin Heup would yield to no one. Martial learning was another question entirely. He was rattled.
"Rank aside, what this humble servant means is that we lowly eunuchs have a great deal of work beyond this discussion."
"So this official and the Minister of War are idlers, is that it?"
Zhang Fu, composure restored, had taken his seat again. The question carried a thread of anger he made no particular effort to hide.
"Who in all the Great Ming would be mad enough to call a First-Rank official and a Second-Rank official idlers? This humble servant is not mad."
"And yet?"
"When men so burdened with affairs of state have gathered, and the Grand Director steps forward to mediate so the discussion might proceed swiftly — and you slight him and put him to shame — what would you have us do? We must withdraw."
"This official has slighted no one."
"Your permission, my lord, is not the issue."
"What did you say?"
Zhang Fu's frost-white brows twitched. He was no ordinary First-Rank official. He was a meritorious noble who had inherited a ducal title. Jinmyeong's refusal to yield so much as a single word left him incredulous.
"The slight and the humiliation are the issue. The Grand Director has stood at His Majesty's side since the days of the Yan Princely Household. In both northern campaigns, my lord, the Grand Director was there as well — not only you."
"And what is that supposed to mean?"
"It means that though we lowly eunuchs have no manhood, we do have eyes and ears. It means the Grand Director saw the war and lived the war through those eyes and ears. And if you meant to summon him only to seal his mouth, why summon him at all?"
Having drawn his blade, Jinmyeong had no intention of withdrawing gracefully. He had not planned this from the start — but the moment Zheng He felt the insult and stormed from his seat, the matter had exploded.
You don't get to call a man ignorant and put him down in front of everyone.
By ordinary standards, Zheng He's conduct had overstepped the rites and protocols of officialdom. But that was the view of ordinary people. If a eunuch said he was angry, he was angry. If he said he had been humiliated, he had been humiliated. And if his guts twisted and he charged in headlong, no one found it strange.
That was simply what eunuchs were. Creatures who flew into a rage over nothing and remained serenely detached from genuine catastrophe. Unpredictable things.
The one thing the Grand Director hates most in this world is being dismissed as ignorant, you idiots.
Most ordinary people, when a eunuch lost his temper, either blinked in bewilderment — what's he angry about? — or recoiled in disgust — what is it this time? What's it about now? Those were the two usual camps.
Scenes like this were hardly rare in official circles. Especially when martial-trained officials gathered, as they had today, this sort of disaster had a way of breaking out. The imperial palace was, after all, a jianghu in its own right, where the logic of force still applied. There was a reason people spoke of the Official Path's martial world.
The Official Path. The Orthodox Path. The Unorthodox Path. The Demonic Path.
The Official Path's martial world simply had a finer mesh of rites and protocols that had to be threaded whenever the law of the jungle came into play. Most such incidents ended as mere shows of force. Bloodshed was exceedingly rare. An official, regardless of rank, could be executed only by verdict of the Brocade Guards or the Three Judicial Offices, or by order of a personage of princely rank or higher.
"Studying the art of war, drilling it, mastering it — and simply watching and listening — these are the same? Are you borrowing the Grand Director's prestige to insult this official?!"
"Then by all means discipline this humble servant. However! For the same reason, this humble servant will take the heads of Shang Yu and Jiao Shouheng, who dared draw steel on a superior."
"You bastard!"
A hiss of tightening steel.
Zhang Fu's eyes flashed as he hurled killing intent across the room — and Cheonyang Biyeon cinched tighter around Shang Yu's throat.
"Kh—! M-my lord—"
Shang Yu's tongue trembled with the terror of death. The soft blade wrapped around his neck was astonishing enough. Its owner was a madman.
No.
This one… is properly insane.
A mad eunuch. He stood there speaking with perfect composure while a blade-belt nearly eight chi long coiled around another man's throat. Which meant this young castrato's command of true qi was at least one move above Shang Yu's own — no, two.
Shang Yu himself stood at the Initial Peak Realm. Then what in heaven's name was this young eunuch's realm…?
He wouldn't actually kill me… would he? The manhood too?
The gravest problem was that they had fallen into the hands of a eunuch, a creature whose temperament was notoriously grotesque. Watching this young castrato speak and move, Shang Yu was increasingly certain he was dealing with no ordinary lunatic. If things went wrong, the man might genuinely kill them.
A chill crawled over him. Goosebumps rose on Shang Yu's skin as the fear of death became real.
"This humble servant's courage is small. If you startle me, I may make a mistake."
"So you truly wish to die today. Your head will come off before that happens."
Zhang Fu's voice was ice. He picked up the brush from the table, and the light in his eyes deepened — meaning he had drawn up his true qi, ready to strike at any instant. To a sword master of the Peak Realm - Late Stage, anything that came to hand was a sword. Sharpness and dullness were beneath concern.
Jinmyeong did not so much as twitch an eyebrow.
"I think not. Do you know the last of the four principles a Great Ming eunuch must uphold?"
Jinmyeong asked it with a laugh so soft it was barely there.
"Principles?"
Zhang Fu had no reason to know. He echoed the word, puzzled — and the answer came from Zheng He. The voice was utterly still.
Zheng He, who had been standing behind Jinmyeong, swept a glance over Shang Yu with his throat in a noose, then walked forward.
"Supervisor Jang Jinmyeong and this humble servant are one body. If we are one body, should we not live together and die together, my lord?"
Zheng He and Zhang Fu faced each other squarely. The words never left Zheng He's mouth, but his bearing made the meaning unmistakable.
You will not walk away from this either.
A situation, quite literally, on a hair-trigger.
That was when Sa Hapji stepped between the two men.
"My lord. Grand Director. Rather than this, let us resolve the matter amicably. One can argue that neither side has violated rite or protocol."
Sa Hapji clasped his fists toward Zhang Fu and Zheng He in turn, attempting to mediate. One was a comrade-in-arms and a superior from the battlefield. The other was about to become the founding head of the Eastern Depot.
An awkward position.
The bond of brothers-in-arms was said at times to run thicker than blood — but even if Zhang Fu was the foremost of the powerful ministers, he was an outer official who lived far from the palace. Zheng He was close. An inner official who resided within the imperial precincts all twelve watches of the day. And he was about to take the Eastern Depot in his grip. Weighing which of the two held the greater power was no simple thing.
So Sa Hapji chose neutrality and mediation, and favored neither side.
"Supervisor Jang. Aide Shang. Bureau Director Jiao. That is enough."
To bleed the tension from the room, the first necessity was that Jinmyeong withdraw Cheonyang Biyeon and Jeongeumshin. Jinmyeong did not so much as shift his weight.
"Lord Sa. All we lowly eunuchs possess is the dignity of our clan. The head of that clan has been slighted as an ignoramus. Worse — his inferiors have even received a sword-strike. If we bow our heads here, the dignity of the eunuch clan will collapse. The Grand Director and this humble servant stand in the place of ten thousand of our kind. We will die before we step back."
He was simply, oppressively, resolute.
At this rate someone may well leave here dead today. Supervisor Jang is young, but that temperament of his is no ordinary thing.
Beside Sa Hapji, Gongsun Dajing — who had been watching the affair unfold — shook his head. Sa Hapji felt the same. Fanatics who hid a savage venom behind mild speech and mild gestures. Every time one tasted a eunuch's poison, the teeth ached.
Ordinarily men took each other's measure and in the end compromised and drew apart. But if the party in question was a eunuch? Never. Not a chance. Eunuchs were vicious, and vicious again. They never surrendered. They never yielded. The wise course was never to touch that nerve in the first place.
Jin Heup might be forgiven. Zhang Fu, who had lived far from the palace, had been far too careless — and Sa Hapji felt that fact in his bones. The combative, blunt temperament peculiar to military men hardened by long campaigns had met the corkscrew temperament of the eunuchs, and the result was this wreck.
Even if they somehow got through today, today's affair would become the grievance of ten thousand eunuchs. From this day forward the Ministry of War and the Central Military Commission would stand as eternal enemies of the eunuch clan. That much was certain.
"Hah…! Then what would you have us do?"
"The two honored sirs slighted the Grand Director first. We will have an apology for it."
"An apology? You want this old soldier to apologize?"
Zhang Fu had drawn up his fighting intent, but his tone remained relatively even.
"Unless you've gone mad!"
Jin Heup nearly leapt out of his seat.
"Neither of you honored sirs is of the Son of Heaven's blood. What reason is there that you cannot apologize?"
"Well then. It cannot be helped."
Behind Jinmyeong's needling voice, Zheng He stepped forward.
The peculiar flavor of those words — it cannot be helped — washed every face in the room with bewilderment.
I hereby command Supervisor Jang Jinmyeong of the Directorate of Ceremonial!
GRANTED.
Leave the Ministry of War by this road. This Grand Director will answer for what follows in your wake!
Zheng He delivered the roar without taking his eyes off Zhang Fu and Jin Heup. The shout rolled through every hall of the Ministry of War, and dust shook loose from the rafters.
"Half a ke! Grant this humble servant half a ke, and I will summon Chief Scribe Eunuch Wang Guitong and a thousand martial eunuchs beneath him!"
At that, Zhang Fu and Jin Heup — and Sa Hapji and Gongsun Dajing with them — went white with shock.
They did not need to hear the rest.
"I will seal heaven and earth, front and rear, left and right, so that not even an ant may enter or leave this Ministry."
A drumbeat of catastrophe. The announcement of ruin.
Whatever other arts one might debate, in the art of movement the Sunflower Manual stood supreme. No one present, by any means they possessed, could outrun a Peak Realm eunuch. If even a fraction of those thousand martial eunuchs arrived first, Zhang Fu and Jin Heup were already dead men. Eunuchs were madmen. They would come charging in ready to kill the enemies who had insulted their clan's dignity, and to die doing it.
"Good."
Zheng He glanced back and gave a slight nod.
Shang Yu's and Jiao Shouheng's heads were about to fall. The chamber was about to tip into wreckage.
"I did mention — when eunuchs stick a man, they carve out the manhood first. The neck comes later."
Jinmyeong began his final warning before he cut the two throats and left the Ministry. He named no one, but the gaze that moved between Zhang Fu and Jin Heup did the naming for him.
"So you two are quite finished taking concubines! Quite finished stroking a woman's skin! The rest of your lives you'll spend fishing lakes and rivers, and that will be—"
Jinmyeong was in the middle of pouring out a threat truly terrifying for any man to hear, when—
"Khahahaha!"
Without warning, Zhang Fu exploded into a laugh that seemed ready to shake the Ministry of War off its foundations. It sounded, of all things, thoroughly delighted.
The men in the room stared, baffled. His chest ought to have been packed with fury. A sudden, hearty laugh? It made no sense. It felt like a riddle.
Zhang Fu's voice rolled on.
"To think a man's life-thread would swing over a thing like this. This killing aura is sharp as a battlefield. It is a battlefield! Eh? Khahahaha!"
He met the eyes of every man present, one by one, and laughed again, louder. Among them, fellow military men Sa Hapji and Gongsun Dajing managed awkward smiles.
Having completed his circuit, Zhang Fu's gaze found Zheng He once more.
"Grand Director. This official has lost. This old soldier summoned people and misspoke. But the Grand Director has misunderstood this old soldier's meaning. I was speaking of the division of official business. Is that not why offices and bureaus were separated in the first place?"
In the end, Zhang Fu chose concession and compromise. They had come at him ready to die together. They had said this matter was worth staking their lives on. The side that was not prepared to do the same had no choice but to yield.
It had been a long time since he had felt the extraordinary temperament of eunuchs this keenly. It felt rather like facing the disciples of the Diancang Sect's main mountain — men who treated sword and honor as they treated their own lives. These eunuchs had charged in staking their lives on the dignity of their clan. The resemblance was close enough.
Zheng He changed his bearing at once.
"This humble servant also begs pardon. Eunuchs are, by nature, a contrary breed. I ask that you be generous in your understanding."
Hearing Zheng He's reply, Zhang Fu turned to Jinmyeong.
"Supervisor, was it? I have taken a good look at that vicious temperament of yours, and at your martial skill. One of these days you should exchange a few moves with the officers under this old soldier. Well then. This official has apologized. Are we finished? Let them go."
"Yes, my lord! How could there be any objection?"
A soft uncoiling.
As if the frost had never been there at all, a warm breeze entered Zhang Fu's voice — and Cheonyang Biyeon, which had been wound tight around Shang Yu's throat, slipped free.
"Hah! A warm wind already? This old soldier forgot the temperament of the inner officials while he was away from the palace. Well then, Grand Director. There is no problem now between the Central Commission and the Twenty-Four Directorates, I take it?"
"A problem? Did something happen?"
"Khahah! That's right, that's right. Nothing happened at all! Khahahaha! And the Minister of War? Does the Ministry of War not intend to apologize?"
"…"
Jin Heup, who had never imagined Zhang Fu would actually apologize, shook his head with the face of a man chewing dung. Eunuchs were the sort who kept score of who apologized first in a situation like this. Zhang Fu had stolen the march on him.
Four days later. The first day of the first month, the eighteenth year of Yongle.
New Year's morning, on the official road that led to Mount Baohua.
The Zhu household and the great and lesser ministers, having completed the ancestral rites, had left the imperial palace and were moving under the escort of a thousand Brocade Guard warriors. Among them were women of the Inner Court as well — the Empress, principal consort of the Yongle Emperor, and the Crown Princess, principal consort of Zhu Gaochi.
"Your Majesty. The day is warm and fine."
Noble Consort Wang, formally invested as Empress for the New Year, kept pace with the Yongle Emperor as she spoke. The Empress rode well. Zhu Di had long made a practice of teaching his favored consorts to ride. Worthy Consort Kwon, a favorite who had died some ten years past, had even been taken as far as the battlefields of the northern campaigns.
"So it is. The day is warm and fine."
On a mild day, even the beasts left their dens to fill hungry bellies. The Yongle Emperor was well pleased with weather that had been bitter for three days and then suddenly broken.
"This is precisely the day for a hunt, Empress."
At the same hour, on Tangshan, near Yingtianfu.
Gong Jeong-mun, Central Army Commander-in-Chief of Suchengye and former master of the Blood Death Archery Corps, was conducting a final inspection of his men's readiness before they marched. Mount Baohua was visible at a distance of twenty li — some five miles.
The archers assembled before Gong Jeong-mun numbered a full thousand. Like Gong Jeong-mun himself they were dressed as scholars, and every last one of them was a Peak Realm master capable of loading true qi into a shaft and loosing it.
Among the martial artists of the Central Plains' jianghu, masters who could send an arrow — that object otherwise beneath a warrior's notice — nearly a hundred zhang, some three hundred paces, with true qi riding the shaft, were rare enough that it was no exaggeration to say more than half of them stood here. Peak Realm archery itself was scarce in the Central Plains. The greater part of such bow-arts belonged to Joseon and the Jurchen.
Waiting for the inspection of his men to finish, Gong Jeong-mun looked toward Mount Baohua and opened his mouth.
He pictured that dazzling, hard-blue sky dyed the color of blood.
He intended to make it so, and soon.