The Bargain
As the march dragged on without beginning, a heavy stillness settled over Ye.
They had prepared for this hour with painstaking care, yet Gongsun Zan had thrown himself across their path, and the spirit went out of the city. He was a sworn enemy they would one day have to meet with steel, but to be seized by the scruff of the neck at the very moment they meant to punish Dong Zhuo was a bitter thing.
Yuan Shao crushed down the impatience boiling in him and let none of it show. With a calm face he directed the Inspectorate of Jizhou, and waited only for Gongsun Zan's envoy to arrive.
Cunning jackal. The barren north must be starving you of grain, and that is why you covet the tax rights of prosperous Bohai Commandery. You have no choice but to take my hand. I will swallow this humiliation for now, strike down the traitor Dong Zhuo, and steady the Han court. Then I will drive Luoyang's elite against you and cut off your breath first.
He hid his clenched fist in a splendid silk sleeve and swallowed the fury rising in his throat.
Before long the bitter cold of the second month was spent, and a mild spring wind began to move across the frozen earth. The inspectors and grand administrators of Guandong, flying the banners of the coalition, would be hurrying their armies into the field. Ye lay within a stone's throw of the imperial capital at Luoyang, so a departure a little later than the others would have done no harm. But Yuan Shao was the alliance lord who had raised the great enterprise. He could not put off the march forever, and the waiting burned him black inside.
A heavy quiet hung over the hall of government.
Biejia Zongshi Feng Ji approached with care and reported in a level voice.
"My lord. Gongsun Fan, younger cousin of the Dudu of Youbeiping and a colonel in his service, has just entered the city at the head of one thousand Youzhou cavalry."
"Have him brought in."
Yuan Shao gave the order without the slightest stir, his voice full of dignity. Feng Ji received it, turned, and withdrew, and only then did the rigid line of Yuan Shao's mouth curl in satisfaction.
A short while later a solidly built man in light armor strode briskly into the hall. It was Gongsun Fan. He offered Yuan Shao a crisp military salute, drew Gongsun Zan's personal letter from his breast, and presented it.
Yuan Shao unfolded the letter at his leisure and ran his eyes swiftly down the page. Almost at once his finely groomed brows twitched hard with displeasure.
"What is the meaning of this? He demands a hostage."
"This subordinate does not know why my lord takes it so. I and my thousand riders are a stout reinforcement for your great enterprise, and at the same time the hostage the Dudu of Youbeiping offers you. If the Inspector who leads the righteousness of the realm wishes both sides to rest easy, should he not pay a fair price in return?"
Before the great Yuan Shao of the realm, Gongsun Fan did not flinch by a hair. He answered squarely, with the same unbridled spirit as Gongsun Zan himself.
At the wretched demand that he offer his own blood as surety, the fingertips of Yuan Shao — a man who prized face above life — trembled faintly with shame. As the air in the hall turned cold, Feng Ji stepped quietly forward and offered counsel in a low voice.
"My lord... you must endure a moment's humiliation. When this campaign is over and we send Gongsun Fan back north, we need only bring the boy safely home then. Gongsun Fan is a younger cousin Gongsun Zan cherishes dearly, and a trusted man besides. That they should demand Young Master Yuan Mai, your own blood, as a hostage of equal weight is not so outrageous a condition as to break the talks."
Yuan Shao heard him out and let go a heavy sigh.
Had Gongsun Zan demanded his eldest, Yuan Tan, or his third son, Yuan Shang, he would never have agreed. But the one asked for was Yuan Mai. Yuan Shang, born of his principal wife, Lady Liu of imperial blood, or his eldest son Yuan Tan, could never be weighed the same as Yuan Mai, born of the concubine Lady Huang. Even so, the humiliation of handing a scion of the illustrious Yuan clan to Gongsun Zan as a hostage cut deep into his pride.
Still, to reach his goal, he set his teeth.
"......So be it."
"A splendid decision! Then hand over Young Master Yuan Mai at once. You have no more time to waste, do you, Inspector?"
Gongsun Fan pressed him roughly, as if the advantage were already his, and a cold anger kindled in Yuan Shao's eyes.
"Do not grow insolent. This is wholly a matter of the Yuan house. Test this official's patience no further with reckless words. I will see it done without delay. Do you understand me? Answer."
"I will wait."
Crushed beneath Yuan Shao's overwhelming presence, Gongsun Fan bowed his head for the moment, though a discontent he could not quite hide still clung to his face.
Yuan Shao ordered him to wait outside, then rose slowly and left the hall. With a grim expression he commanded that the whole family be gathered in one place. His face hardened further. Cold as he was, giving up a child was no easy thing.
Father looked slowly over Mother, his principal wife, the concubine Lady Huang, and his four sons, his gaze heavy and unsettled. He was the man who ruled Jizhou, but within the household he was a husband to women and a father to his own blood. The flicker in his eyes steadied as he recalled the great enterprise and his own dignity, and his expression set.
"Mai."
"Yes, Father..."
My younger brother Yuan Mai, the baby fat not yet gone from his cheeks, shrank under that frost-sharp look. I quietly took his small, frightened hand in a warm, light grip.
So in the end it is powerless Mai who is thrown out as the hostage.
I had already seen through the situation with perfect clarity. Gongsun Fan had arrived in Ye with a thousand Youzhou cavalry. For the bargain to hold, our side had to send blood of equal weight north. In the pitiless world of politics, where there was neither blood nor tears, it was only natural.
"Mai. Go north for a while, and take the cold wind."
"M-my lord...!"
At Father's announcement, my brother's birth mother, Lady Huang, opened her mouth in a trembling voice. Her heart-rending love was crushed at once by a sharp rebuke.
"Be silent! His Lordship has not finished speaking. How dare you step forward so presumptuously!"
Mother's eyes flashed as she scolded Lady Huang. In that instant the absolute order of the inner quarters was confirmed once more.
"There is no need to make this harder than it is. Not a hair on Mai's head will come to harm. I hold the leash of Gongsun Fan, the younger cousin the Dudu of Youbeiping treasures above all else. Would a mere frontier dudu dare harbor any other thought? Should he so much as scratch Mai's skin, I will march an army and repay him with tears of blood many times over."
"But my lord, how can you send so frail and young a child into that harsh north?"
"In the great sense, it is for the righteousness of the realm, to set the fallen Han court to rights. In the small sense, it cannot be avoided if our great Yuan house is to prosper! And have I not already given my firm guarantee of Mai's safety? How can your conduct be so light?"
At Lady Huang's whimpering, which crossed his dignity and his authority, Father cast aside the gentle mask of persuasion and roared. Lady Huang, whose heart was not hard enough for this, shed sorrowful tears in streams, yet under his pressure she could oppose him no longer and bowed her head.
"......I will obey Your Lordship's stern will. I only beg you to exert yourself, so that our Mai may come back alive and well."
"I give you my firm pledge. Would the Gongsun clan dare touch the blood of the Yuan and live to tell of it? Put these idle worries away."
I listened, and quietly studied the faces of my family. We were one household, sharing the same blood, and yet by the weight of power the place each of us stood, and the fate each of us had to bear, differed with such cruelty.
"Mai, it's all right. Dry your eyes. Why should a man be crying?"
I wrapped an arm kindly around my sniffling little brother's small shoulders and soothed him in a voice I made bright on purpose. Whatever anyone said, Yuan Mai was my dear little brother.
"Go see the north, come back healthy, and this brother will buy you all the most delicious sweets in the world. And so the road won't be lonely, I'll see you off properly, all the way outside Ye. All right?"
He was only a half-brother, born of a concubine, but to me he was endlessly precious blood. Cold reason nodded that it could not be helped for the sake of the great enterprise, and still a corner of my chest ached at the reality of driving a young brother toward what might be his death.
Father soothed the sobbing Lady Huang, then delivered a long oration on the justice of punishing Dong Zhuo and the grand cause of steadying the Han imperial house, and dismissed the gathering. Even the heartless act of sending his own young blood into danger he covered over with a perfect righteous cause. Truly, he was my father — the cold man who aimed at the realm.
A strange thought came to me then. Did Father truly think of my brother as a son? When it was only the two of us, he always called me my youngest. To my brother he said only Mai. I had been so absorbed in the memories of my past life, and in how to weather this age of chaos, that I had missed it. Only today did I see it clearly. Come to think of it, Father was cold indeed.
There must be some reason. Perhaps because my brother is only five, and not strong. Child mortality is terribly high, after all.
I tried to comfort myself. Honestly, I still did not understand.
Preparations to send young Yuan Mai into the cold north proceeded quickly. Lady Huang wept as she packed his bundle, and my brother, who understood none of it, simply caught his mother's grief until tears brimmed in his large round eyes. A corner of my chest stung. I went quietly over and held his small, soft hand tight.
That afternoon Father selected one hundred Jizhou cavalry and charged them with my brother's escort. They guarded him as they rode north, toward Gongsun Zan. Until the party, raising dust as it receded, vanished completely from sight, Father stood a long while beyond the walls and stared in silence. Then, returning to the cold, clear bearing of a man who bore the great enterprise, he turned his steps toward the seat of government.
"What a relief it is."
"Yes? What do you mean, Mother?"
At a voice low enough to reach only my ear, I turned quickly to look at her. To others, and to the concubines, she was endlessly exacting, but the eyes she turned on me were full of warm affection.
"That the hostage being dragged into that terrible place is not you."
"......Even so, sending my little brother off alone leaves my heart very heavy, and sad."
"I know your tender heart well. But what can be done? You and that child were born to different stations, and to different uses."
My shoulders flinched. In an age when the order of status stood more absolute than the principle of Heaven, it was only natural logic. If I startled, even for a moment, it was because of the memory of my past life.
"The wind is cold. Let us go inside."
"Please go in first, Mother. I'll watch the road my brother takes a little longer, and then come in."
"Very well. Do not be too late about it."
"Yes."
I bowed my head to Mother with proper courtesy, then turned my gaze again. At the end of the horizon only pale dust still shimmered. Even the small shadow of my brother's party had been wiped away without a trace.
"Hui."
"Yes, Young Master."
Li Hui, who had stood behind me as solid as a rock, answered short and loyal in a heavy voice.
"Sending my little brother away sits ill with me."
"He will surely return unharmed. Do not trouble yourself."
There was no thin excess in his comfort, and yet a strangely solid strength in it that set a man at ease.
"Yes. It must be so."
I nodded quietly, then stared north for a long while with a keen gaze.
"Did you look into what I ordered?"
"Yes. I searched thoroughly, but the three men the Young Master seeks were nowhere in the cavalry camp Gongsun Fan brought with him."
"Nowhere...?"
"Yes. I confirmed clearly that no such men are there."
I tilted my head in puzzlement. Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei were not there. Then where were they now?
"Even if they were not on the roster of this temporary reinforcement, might they not still be remaining in the rear, at the headquarters of the Dudu of Youbeiping?"
"This humble one considered that as well. I gave gifts to the cavalrymen who attended Gongsun Fan and asked them, but they say the three are not at the Dudu's headquarters either."
I nodded in satisfaction at Li Hui's wisdom, which had looked past a simple order to the variables I had not named.
"You moved with true cleverness. Well done."
Li Hui finished his loyal report, offered a military salute, then stepped two paces back without a sound and returned to the silent duty of a guard. But my mind was churning.
Liu Bei, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei. Those three are not even under Gongsun Zan? Then where in this vast realm are they crouched? And will they show themselves in the great campaign against Dong Zhuo that is about to begin?
They had not yet distinguished themselves, but Liu Bei — the man who would endure to the end by the force of his magnetism and his will to survive, and one day sit as emperor of Shu-Han — was a man to watch. I had meant to learn his face this time and seize a weakness. I would have to leave it for another day.
In the history of my past life he spent his first ten years and more endlessly pursued and fleeing, lodged himself with Cao Cao, and in the end suffered the humiliation of throwing himself on my father. So one day he would surely come within my reach. Whenever I next met him, I would have to break those wings so wretchedly that he could never rise again.
My eye was already drawing a blueprint of unification that reached far beyond Jizhou. To settle the age of chaos completely, Father would one day have to take fertile Yizhou whole. If the master of Yizhou then was not Liu Zhang but Liu Bei, conquest would pass into the realm of the impossible.
But would a true chance to cut off his breath ever come to me? From the moment I stepped into this age carrying the memories of a past life, the great current of history had already twisted badly. I stared at the end of the horizon and wished with all my heart.
Please. Let a perfect chance come to me to take their leashes in my hand.