Tian Feng
When I asked how I might draw Tian Feng into my own camp, a deep caution passed for a moment over the handsome face of Zhao Yun, seated before me with his back straight.
He turned the warmth of his teacup between his hands and spoke with care.
"Young Master, Master Tian's circumstances are nothing like mine. Unless there is some sure cause to set his heart boiling, some motive that truly moves him, he will pack his bags without a backward glance and go down to his home village. This latest round of our lord's appointments has disappointed him to the bone. I doubt he wishes to remain in Ye even a single day more."
"I think not, Zilong."
I set my cup down and cut him off, firm and yet gentle.
A small question flickered through Zhao Yun's clear eyes.
"What do you mean?"
"That Master Tian is disappointed is plain enough. But deep within him a fierce reluctance is still alive and breathing. The proof is simple. He has not gone home. He remains in Ye even now. Think on it. To tell a man born with the talent to turn the realm in his palm that he must go to the countryside and teach runny-nosed children, waiting without end until someone deigns to call for him... would that not be a punishment too cruel to bear?"
At that cold, precise insight, Zhao Yun barely kept himself from slapping his knee.
He had been so fixed on Tian Feng's famously unbending, stubborn nature that he had briefly overlooked the instinct for power carved into the marrow of such a man. Turn it over, and Zhao Yun himself was no different. A quiet life in retirement could never slake the heat of his ambition and his thirst — which was why he had come looking for me, and why he sat across from me now.
Zhao Yun's gaze deepened.
"Your discernment astonishes me, Young Master. My own thinking was shallow. Rather than have you step forward too soon, let me go to him first and sound out that upright mind of his."
"Thank you, Zilong."
I offered him my thanks with genuine courtesy.
I had no real tie to Tian Feng yet. Far better that Zhao Yun — plain-spoken, and thick with good faith — serve as the bridge, than that I blunder in myself and put the man on his guard.
The longer I spoke with him, the more one certainty settled in my mind. This man was no one to take lightly.
In the memory of my past life, Zhao Yun had been the upright commander who, when Yuan Shao deceived Han Fu and seized Jizhou by intrigue, turned his back on Ye without a glance and went to Gongsun Zan. Later, even while he followed Gongsun Zan, once Liu Bei recognized him and laid a heavy kindness upon him, he abandoned Gongsun Zan and followed Liu Bei instead. If the lord he served strayed from the right path, or proved too small a vessel to hold him, he possessed a cold reason that could turn away at any moment, without regret.
Zhao Yun's loyalty was not blind. It was a noble thing, weighed out again and again against whether his master was worthy of it.
I looked at the breadth of his shoulders and made a vow, quiet and fierce. Not for a single moment would I neglect this man, or give him cause for disappointment. I would give him more — far more than the kindness Liu Bei had shown him in that other life — until his loyalty turned wholly toward me.
With Zhang Liao, Wen Chong, and Zhao Yun as my trio, I could stand against anyone. And I swore that I would take Zhang He as well, though he was my father's man.
Darkness and silence lay heavy over the streets of Ye as Zhao Yun crossed them at an unhurried pace and stepped into Tian Feng's lodging.
In one corner of the room a half-tied bundle of belongings sat abandoned, and across the floor bamboo slips lay scattered, left mid-reading. It was a scene that betrayed, whole and unsoftened, the bitter disquiet of a man of rare talent who had once held the realm in his breast.
Zhao Yun bowed deeply, his posture straight and courteous, toward Tian Feng, who was washing his face with rough, dry hands, sunk in worry.
"Ah, Zilong. Come in."
Caught off guard by the visitor, Tian Feng rose at once to receive him.
A warm cup was set down in the chill room, and between the two men there passed a strange current of shared misfortune. When Yuan Shao entered Ye and made his first round of appointments, both of them had been thoroughly passed over and left waiting for a posting, like men slighted.
After a few words of greeting, Zhao Yun set down his cup and came straight to the point.
"I have just come from seeing the Third Young Master."
Tian Feng had stepped down from his post as Biejia Zongshi, second man of the Jizhou Inspectorate, but Zhao Yun still addressed him with full respect, for he honored the man. Tian Feng was in his forties as well, more than ten years Zhao Yun's senior.
At those weighty words, the corner of Tian Feng's eye trembled.
The Third Young Master. Yuan Shang. Only a few days past, had he himself not received a letter from that young lord? Unable to read the boy's intent, he had put off his reply — and now he found it inwardly startling, and strangely enviable, that Zhao Yun, famed for his rectitude, had moved faster than he had.
Tian Feng had been packing on the strength of nothing but an unbending pride, telling himself he would sooner break than bend in some shabby compromise.
"The Young Master... what did he say?"
"He is, truly..."
In a low, steady voice, Zhao Yun began to recount the conversation he had shared with Yuan Shang. He stripped away private feeling and exaggeration alike, and delivered Yuan Shang's cold, marrow-deep insights exactly as they had been spoken. Only then could Tian Feng, strategist of the realm, see the Third Young Master's true face without misjudgment.
"Hah..."
When the tale was done, a heavy sigh escaped Tian Feng.
Watching the man's eyes waver, greatly stirred, Zhao Yun smiled faintly to himself. It was the very image of himself a little while before, every hair on his body standing on end before that deep and cutting sight.
"Master Tian, do not lean on a broken pride and go home in loneliness. Stay beside the Third Young Master for a time. Serve as his tutor, and bide the years as they pass. Teach him, endure only a few years, and wait for the hour — and he will surely recommend you to an office where your ability can be spread across the realm. I will wager that the waiting will not be dull."
Tian Feng did not answer at once. He only turned the cooling cup in his fingers.
Astonishment at the young lord's extraordinary capacity had torn through his thoughts, and at the same time a deep unease pressed heavy on one side of his chest.
"As you know, Zilong, I am a man who does not hesitate to speak plainly, and time and again I strike the reverse scale of those above me. For now the Third Young Master is a child, so he may at least pretend to heed my bitter words. But what of the day he comes of age and climbs to high office? Where is the guarantee that the humiliation I have suffered at our lord's hands will not simply repeat itself? Unless he is a man like the late Master Jia..."
Tian Feng let the words trail off, bitter, remembering Jia Cong, the former Inspector of Jizhou — the only man who had truly known him. Broad as the sea and kind, Jia Cong had taken even Tian Feng's thorned remonstrances into his generosity, and let that talent bloom in full. He had been a benefactor.
"You fear the Third Young Master may one day grow as capricious and arrogant as our lord?"
"That, and more. If in a few years our lord is promoted and transferred out of Jizhou, will all my labor as the Third Young Master's tutor not come to nothing?"
Zhao Yun shook his head, resolute.
"Even if it comes to that, the time you spend here in Ye, binding yourself closely to the core officials of the Inspectorate, will not be wasted. Above all, the Young Master hungers for your teaching. As Master Jia once did, he is a man who will swallow even your sharpest remonstrance as if it were sweet, and trust you to the end. Should he leave Ye when he comes of age, he has the ability to wear our lord down with persuasion and see you recommended to a vital post. If you do not mean to rot away your whole life in retirement, teaching children, then setting one foot quietly upon the power of the Yuan clan would be no small profit, would it?"
At that pointed persuasion, Tian Feng let out a hollow laugh, as if he could scarcely believe his ears.
"Ha. That stiff-tongued Zilong has grown a rather sharp way with words."
"Deep talk with the Third Young Master woke even this dull head of mine, and put a strange stubbornness in me besides. A young lord who has not even held his capping ceremony reads the board of the realm with eyes that cold — and I, who have known nothing but the swing of spear and blade, had to ask myself what I have been doing all this time. In truth, on the way here, I wracked my head over how I was ever to bend your stubbornness, exacting as you are."
Tian Feng's throat moved as he swallowed.
The Third Young Master, whom he had taken for nothing more than a bright child, now felt like a vast abyss whose bottom he could not see. To shake the soul of Zhao Yun — that uncompromising, prideful man who knew no bargain — and set him moving of his own will... this was no shallow trick of a clever tongue.
"Well? Will you meet the Third Young Master yourself?"
Under Zhao Yun's quiet pressure, Tian Feng's firmly closed lips at last stirred.
"...Tell him to come here."
"I will."
"But will that clever, arrogant young lord of a great house actually deign to come to a shabby place like this?"
Zhao Yun rose, smiling with certainty.
"I expect he will come running, and gladly. This is only my own instinct, but the Third Young Master may have inherited our lord's blood, yet in character — and in the art of holding men and using them — he is cut from entirely different cloth. Wait only until the warmth leaves this room."
When Zhao Yun left like a wind, Tian Feng let out the heavy sigh he had been holding.
Whether his choice was the right one, whether it was worth the bending of a pride that had always stood straight, he could not yet measure. Never in his life had he stepped onto a board without perfect calculation and perfect certainty. This time he felt none of that certainty, as if he had set one foot into a thick fog. Only a strange anticipation quietly warmed one cold corner of his heart.
The moment Zhao Yun's message arrived, I hurried straight to Tian Feng's temporary lodging.
I had no power to restore him in splendor to a vital post in the Jizhou Inspectorate. What I could do was receive him with the full courtesy due a teacher. In the brief ten days I had studied under Jia Cong after he left Ye, I had understood a great deal and grown by a full step. How much more, then, would Tian Feng — a man of rare talent acknowledged by all the realm — raise me into a deeper, harder tree?
"I am honored to meet you, Master Tian."
I bent lower than I had when I first faced Zhao Yun, and used the highest form of address.
It was not because I judged Tian Feng a more precious talent than Zhao Yun. Until a few days ago he had been second man of the Jizhou Inspectorate, a man who commanded Jizhou, and overnight his wings had been broken. I meant to soothe that wounded pride, and to show him the greatest courtesy within my power.
"......Indeed. Sit, Young Master."
Tian Feng stared at me as if he would see through me.
In that brief instant, what had he found?
The muscles of his face, set hard as stone, eased by a fraction, and the sharply lifted corners of his eyes softened. In silence he brewed warm tea, pushed a cup toward me, and offered another to Zhao Yun, who stood quietly at my side.
"A little while ago I heard of the Third Young Master's uncommon eye from Zilong here, and I was privately doubtful. Meeting you in person, I understand at once. It is rare, but I see a talent thick enough to step lightly over the years."
An eye as keen as one would expect of Tian Feng.
"In particular, the passage in which you defined this age as a blood-soaked time of chaos left a deep impression. I agree entirely with the Third Young Master's cold view. Had the Grand Commandant not deposed the Son of Heaven on a whim, and had our lord seized the power of Luoyang whole, the realm would have found its stability by degrees. But peace is now a dream too far to reach. Sooner or later our lord and the Grand Commandant must collide, and violently. When that day comes, the realm will be sucked into a whirl of chaos no one can hold."
Startled, I tightened my grip on the cup.
I had not known he read the great current of the age with such chilling accuracy.
Perhaps Master Tian is the true genius this age has produced.
A mind extraordinary from birth. A career begun in the Grand Commandant's office at Luoyang, and a rise to second place in the Jizhou Inspectorate. Much anguish along that road, and a wide store of practical experience, must have forged a sense this formidable.
Tian Feng leaned forward and brought his face close to mine.
I tried to hold a calm, rational expression, but I could not hide the pounding of my heart. A fierce hunger rose in me. By any means, this man had to be mine. If the attempt failed, I would at least keep the thread of the bond from breaking.
"Was it because you foresaw this blood-reeking age of chaos that you secretly ordered Zilong to gather the scattered volunteer retainers?"
"It was. Master Tian, our lord desires the stability of the realm, but he is not a man who will sit still before injustice. And the Grand Commandant is a man of savage nature who has seized a power greater than his vessel can hold. He will inevitably try to tear into my father first — the rival who stands in his way. So I take this terrible war for a fate that cannot be avoided."
When I answered without the slightest waver, a faint smile, slow and satisfied, at last spread at the corner of Tian Feng's mouth.
"Then... how shall we set the relation between the two of us, going forward?"
He was half won. No — he was nearly mine.
A thrill of triumph shot through me, and I spoke with care.
"If my heart had its way, I would recommend you to a vital post this very day, but the wall of reality stands high. So, through that bleak stretch of time, I wish to bind a bond of master and disciple with you, Master Tian, and ask for your teaching."
"A bond of master and disciple... That is too heavy a burden."
His flat refusal puzzled me for a moment, but I soon read the tangle of his thoughts. My father might already have someone else in mind as my official teacher. Tian Feng's relations with him were already soured over the matter of appointments. He would not want to seize the place of my tutor as well, and prod that sensitive temper a second time. In any case, he too had to breathe beneath the shadow of Jizhou — beneath the vast shadow of my father.
"It would be better not to form an official tie that draws outside eyes. However... what if, for about ten days each month, we shared a modest cup of tea and discussed the state of affairs?"
"Those are truly generous words. I am deeply grateful, Master Tian."
I rose, brought my hands together in courtesy, and bowed deeply once more.
It was a calculated act of a cool head, and yet within it there was a sincere warmth, meant for a man I intended to make my own. And so a close bond with the great tree called Tian Feng began.
Tian Feng, a great magnate of Jizhou and a Confucian scholar of wide renown, was different from Zhao Yun in many ways. That much was certain. He did not declare himself my man. He only showed the intent to keep the tie, and to go on watching.
Had it been Yuan Tan, a sight like this would have sent him into a blaze of anger. I, on the contrary, was grateful. So long as the Yuan clan ruled Jizhou, I was certain that Tian Feng's only choice was me. And so, even watching him take my measure, I could be glad.
If Zhao Yun was a keen spear, Tian Feng was a flawless shield. For a first step toward my ambition, it was a harvest so perfect and so brilliant that my heart felt ready to burst.