Zhao Yun
No sooner had Jia Cong departed than the sky over Ye was swallowed whole by Father's vast ambition.
Retainers who followed him with fierce devotion already stood ranked at his side, and with them a powerful army; in the course he drove to force a new order of power into place, there was not the slightest hesitation. The old officials of Jizhou felt that overwhelming shift of strength upon their very skin, and, unable to defy his will, they bent and accepted it.
At last came the day the grand reorganization of the Inspectorate of Jizhou was proclaimed. Still too young to set foot in the administrative hall—Father's seat of government—I remained outside, though my brothers all attended. Waiting in my room for news, I was not particularly on edge. A firm calculation was already in place: the people I had carefully positioned in advance, those I thought of as mine—narrowly, Wen Chong and Ren Jun; more broadly, Zhang Liao, Wu Yi, and Wu Ban as well—would not be slighted.
Within the hall, beneath the oppressive weight peculiar to Father's gaze, a heavy silence broke, and only Feng Ji's smooth voice went on echoing. It was the moment a vast organizational chart took its finished shape—swollen past any comparison with the days of Jia Cong, and honed to a military edge.
The apex of the civil administration was filled, without remainder, by Father's closest retainers. The Biejia Zongshi, second-in-command, went to Feng Ji himself, who delivered the proclamation; the Chizhong Zongshi, charged with overseeing administration, to Xu You; and the Registrar, who would handle core secrets and documents, to Xin Ping.
Beneath them, the working skeleton of the administration was arranged with exquisite care, blending household retainers and the existing officials of Jizhou. Xin Pi was seated in the Merit Bureau, which held the power of personnel; Liu Zihui in the Household Bureau, which managed registers and land; Li Li in the Bureau of Accounts, which gripped the purse strings; and Shen Pei was settled upon for the Granary Bureau, to answer for army grain and materiel.
The Commandery Attendant, vested with a keen and cutting power of inspection, went to Guo Tu, and the Literary Attendants, charged with encouraging learning, to the upright Min Chun and Geng Wu. Chen Lin was posted as Magistrate of Ye County. A county magistrate, yes—but Ye was the heart of the Inspectorate, and the post carried a power scarcely inferior to a grand administrator's.
Yet even when the principal civil appointments had all been read out, the names of Tian Feng and Ju Shou—called the finest minds in Jizhou—were never spoken. Ju Shou, who always kept his inner thoughts concealed, showed no change of expression. Tian Feng, whose temper burned like fire, went cold in the face, as if he might chew a bamboo slip to splinters and swallow it on the spot.
Then followed the military appointments. The Jianjun, Chief Military Supervisor—first man of the military office, holding at once command of the troops and the power of inspection—was, against every expectation, named as Ju Shou. Father had calculated with thorough care: a nature as mild and loyal as Ju Shou's could be given mighty military authority and still kept well beneath his own control. It was proof, at the same time, that among his retainers there was no one cold enough in judgment to coordinate the entire armed strength of the Inspectorate.
Beneath him, Chunyu Qiong entered the Military Bureau to handle military administration, and Qian Zhao and Wu Yi took their places with dignity as Sima, the staff adjutants. Chunyu Qiong was a man of distinguished lineage who had served as Right Colonel among the Western Garden Eight Colonels.
The fierce generals who would actually lead the troops found their places as well. Yan Liang stood foremost as General of the Gentlemen of the Household, highest among the commanders, and behind him, as Colonels, came Zheng Huan, Zhao Fu, Zhang He, Wu Ban, Wen Chong, Qu Yi, Gao Lan, and Zhang Liao in a file.
Last of all, an Office of the Colonel of Agriculture was newly established to encourage agricultural colonies and farming. Xun Chen was named Colonel of Agriculture, and Ren Jun and Dong Zhao were chosen as the Sima who would oversee its practical administration.
And then those whose names were never called. Tian Feng and Zhao Yun, whom the former Inspector Jia Cong had valued so highly, were left dangling, awaiting a posting. The two had one thing clearly in common. Their talent flashed keen enough to cleave the realm—yet their temperaments were judged too fierce, too ignorant of compromise, too ready to cross those above them.
The moment the proclamation ended and the crowd in the hall began to scatter, Ren Jun crossed my threshold with urgent steps. Ordinarily a grave man, he was a little flushed with excitement. Small wonder. From a mere officer of practical affairs at the Wushajin ferry, he had been named to a post that would oversee, in practice, the agricultural administration of all Jizhou. His heart would be pounding.
"Young master! A bitter wind just tore through the administrative hall."
I tilted my teacup at my ease, and a smile touched the corner of my mouth.
"From the look on your face, you've risen to Sima. And here I was, worrying your head had gone flying. So—His Lordship didn't treat our people poorly, did he?"
"My head's still on my shoulders, isn't it? They've dropped the post of Sima in the Office of the Colonel of Agriculture square in my lap—the sort of place where a man eats dust and works himself to the bone. Wu Yi took a Sima's seat, and Wu Ban, Wen Chong, and Zhang Liao each secured a Colonelcy, solid as you please."
Ren Jun tossed off the boast lightly, eyes bright. There had been reward in looking after my people strictly according to their ability. A Sima was hardly going to eat dust at his work, but I had ordered him to look after the men beneath him with care, and so he had put it that way.
"His Lordship's eye for capable men of affairs is exact. The result was only natural. Even so, there will be those who are discontented with it, I imagine."
I set the cup down with an audible click as I asked, and Ren Jun, quick to take a hint, went on at once.
"Yes. Young master, you are positively uncanny. Tian Feng left the hall with a face gone the color of earth, and that young commander Zhao Yun—fierce as a wild beast—withdrew with a blank, hollow look, without so much as a decent post to his name. Their tempers are so much like drawn blades that His Lordship must have found them too burdensome to take in at once. Even I, with men like that..."
At his report, a hot elation rose quietly to a boil in the deep of my chest. Talents that could turn the fate of the realm had been cast aside for no better reason than that they were inconvenient to handle. It was like Father, I thought. It was also proof of how many men of talent stood around him.
If it is a keen and famous blade that others found too troublesome to grip, and so left abandoned by the roadside, then even if it cuts my palm a little, I ought to take it up gladly and set it in a splendid scabbard.
I rose from my seat in one motion, without hesitation. Piercing through my usual cold reason, a hot possessiveness toward my own people flashed up. I expressed my thanks to Ren Jun and sent him on his way.
Afterward I wrote letters, formal and courteous, and sent them to Tian Feng and Zhao Yun. I wanted to meet them, but I did not command them to come to me. What mattered was getting my sincerity across. If need be, I was prepared to go find them myself.
"Must you..."
Informed of what I meant to do, Father showed only a lukewarm reaction.
"Men with horns on their backsides, and you mean to go meet them? What are you trying to do? A child, after all."
Yuan Tan, for his part, laughed in scorn. In his eyes, a talent who defied his superiors was no talent worth having.
The first to answer the approach I had made was none other than Zhao Yun.
He had suffered the humiliation of being left awaiting a posting, and yet he came to my quarters himself, his stride upright, unbent by so much as a hair. Pressed-shut lips and fierce, glaring eyes held a stubbornness that knew no compromise, gathered there like needles of frost. He was precisely the sort Father would detest: an inflexible, stiff-backed tiger, devoid of tact.
"You are welcome."
I rose at once and received him with due courtesy. I offered him a seat, and poured with my own hands tea just drawn, its fragrance thick. It was generous treatment for a boy of eleven—yet Zhao Yun, cup in hand, face set hard, opened his mouth.
"Why have you sent for me?"
"Because I wanted to meet you."
"I am a man without a post, soon to be turned out of Ye and sent home to the country. My tie to the house of Yuan is already severed."
"Instead of going home, would you remain here in Ye, and stay at my side?"
At so plain an offer, Zhao Yun's thick brows twitched as if displeased.
"A bodyguard? No."
He cut the proposal down in a single stroke. He had once been a commander who led troops in proper dignity; to sink to a bodyguard running a child's small errands would have cut deep into his pride. I savored a mouthful of tea and smiled, unhurried.
"Then—do you mean to go to Beiping?"
In that instant the color of Zhao Yun's face, as he toyed with his cup, turned sharply. Beiping. That was where the fierce general Gongsun Zan kept his seat.
"What startles you so? His Lordship has, in the end, chosen not to employ a general this fine. A man such as you is hardly going to rot his whole life away without a post. If that is so, then the Xianglu Colonel, whose power rivals the Inspectorate of Jizhou, seems to me the likely alternative. Am I wrong?"
The Xianglu Colonelcy was the office Gongsun Zan held. Zhao Yun gave a start and straightened where he sat. The air of inward contempt—he had crossed the threshold dismissing me, after all, as a boy of eleven—thinned away in a breath. It was proof that he had at last begun to see me as an equal party to the conversation. His gaze glinted sharp, and he cast out a bait, sidelong.
"Might one not go, instead, to the provincial government of the virtuous Governor of Youzhou?"
Liu Yu, Governor of Youzhou. His fame for excellent character resounded through the realm, and he governed the whole of Youzhou. Gongsun Zan, too, lay in principle beneath his control. Zhao Yun's thin design to test me showed through, transparent as a pebble in clear water.
"The Governor of Youzhou is too soft a man to make his way through this rough age of chaos. Even now he flounders, unable to keep a proper grip on a single subordinate of his—the Xianglu Colonel. A tiger like you, Lord Zhao, would go to the Governor's government only to be jostled this way and that, just as here in the Inspectorate, and never receive your due. That much is plain. And so I guessed you would seek out the Xianglu Colonel, a man whose nature as a general runs thick with the chase of blood."
Zhao Yun's eyes wavered, visibly. It was the instant in which the look that had thought, a child's paltry bit of wisdom, no doubt, shattered to pieces.
"Young master... on what grounds do you declare the present an age of chaos?"
"They say the former Inspector, Lord Jia, governed Jizhou admirably—but look at the state of neighboring Yanzhou, and Qingzhou, and Youzhou. Bandits seethe on every side, and corrupt grand administrators and county magistrates, wringing the very blood and marrow from the people, swarm without number. There are commanderies and counties in plenty where even an imperial command no longer truly holds. Call this the threshold of an age of chaos, and the name is not too much."
"Rot further from here, and it becomes a hell in which no one can see an inch ahead. If someone draws the sword and sets things properly to rights, the great peace of old may yet be recovered."
"Then which way do you see the realm flowing, young master?"
"The former, of course. Dong Zhuo, out of Liangzhou, has already committed the outrage of deposing the Son of Heaven at his pleasure and raising the Prince of Chenliu as emperor in his place. The root of the imperial capital—which ought to be the model for all under heaven—has been torn out. How could one hope the realm will settle easily? That is wanting too much. Chaos can no longer be avoided."
Zhao Yun's pupils shook violently. He had remained in the Inspectorate of Jizhou and encountered no few civil officials who fancied themselves brilliant, but not one of them had pierced the realm with a coldness and a keenness to match the small child before his eyes. And that manner of speaking, so full of conviction it did not waver by a hair. No—even had they thought as much, they would never have said it to Zhao Yun. It was far too perilous a matter to speak of carelessly.
A man to whom one would devote a life, and serve as lord, ought by rights to possess a vision this vast. But the one before him was, of all souls, an eleven-year-old on whom the down had not yet faded. Zhao Yun gave a faint tremor, from the ache of it.
"Does my age... weigh on you?"
"If I speak honestly... it does."
"But don't you think the talent I possess will handily surpass a trifle like age? If it were merely the literary gift of making poems and discoursing on texts, men better than I would be beyond counting. But an eye that sees clean through this madly spinning, chaotic world, and cuts the sharpest way out of it—that much, I can swear, I hold ahead of any man."
"That is why I dare call it a talent beyond age. Take my hand. Your starting line may fall a little behind the other generals, but I will make certain that in days to come you overtake them. I am confident of it."
I set the cup down and quietly held out my hand. I longed, urgently, for him to clasp it, but the pride of an upright commander still held him hesitating. I rose from my seat, willing. With light steps I came to Zhao Yun's side and closed both hands in a firm grasp around his—large, and rough.
His hands, frozen stiff with surprise, were very warm. Like the warmth I give to my own.
"Help me. I ask it of you in earnest."
"To endure as a mere bodyguard, and stand at your back... the career I have built until now would be too precious to waste."
"One could think so. General Zhao, in your homeland you organized and led a company of righteous volunteers with your own hands, to protect the people. It will have been a noble recourse—to keep your own safe from savage bandits, the Heishan Bandits among them."
Zhao Yun's shoulder flinched. I gripped his hands still tighter, and went on, quiet and resolute.
"Raise a cavalry for me. I will furnish you with ample funds. When I was staying in Luoyang some time ago, Father personally pledged to finance the work I undertook. Only—until that strength is grown, I would have you hide its claws from the world outside."
Zhao Yun held his breath and stared into my eyes for a long while, as if to bore through them. Under a burning gaze, the way a beast stares down its prey, my eyes stung—but not once did I look aside. I met him straight on. I had wanted him by thorough calculation. But the urgency held in the two hands now clasped was raw sincerity, nothing feigned.
At last the lips Zhao Yun had kept pressed shut came open.
"Thank you! I have gained Zhao Zilong of Changshan—and the sureness in me feels as if I had gained the whole world!"
Still clasping his rough hands tight, I broke into a bright, clear laugh. In the countless memories of my former life, he was a peerless general who would one day enjoy enormous fame—so much so that men said one uses Zhao Zilong of Changshan the way one uses a worn-out sword. Honestly, until I met him myself, that vast reputation had never quite come home to me. But now that I held so upright and fierce a commander in my keeping, the memories of that past life were at last turning into perfect certainty.