An Awl in the Sack
The air in the room hung heavy as cotton soaked through with water. A hundred pairs of eyes were fixed on Yuan Shao where he sat in the place of honor, and the man who bore every one of those stares gave them nothing back. He only turned a teacup long gone cold between his fingers, his mouth shut tight.
"Middle Colonel! How long do you mean to sit there dumb as a mute with his mouth full of honey?"
Cao Cao, unable to endure the silence any longer, broke it.
"Do you mean to hand the realm over to those Ten Attendants eunuchs yet again?"
At the edged rebuke, the gazes around the room wavered. Not one of them wished to see the Ten Attendants prevail, yet none had the stomach to speak words that came so near to treason.
Only then did Yuan Shao slowly lift his head and look at Cao Cao.
"Forward Colonel."
"Speak."
"Surrender power to the eunuchs gnawing at the realm? Not before dirt is packed into my eyes."
His voice was low, yet solid enough to fill every corner of the room. He opened a drawer, drew out a blank sheet, and spread it across the desk. Without a moment's hesitation the brush moved, setting his own name down first, and then he laid it aside.
"If you share this resolve, sign. This joint memorial will be the thread our lives hang from, and the proof of loyalty we lay before the General-in-Chief."
The words had scarcely left him before Cao Cao snatched up the brush.
"I can hardly sit out a matter like this."
Cao Cao scrawled his name without pause, and Kuai Yue, Chen Lin, and the rest pressed forward in a rush to add their own. If the thing were discovered, the Ten Attendants would have them stripped of office or driven from Luoyang. At the worst, they might die. Even so, their eyes burned less with fear than with the hunger to steady a world gone mad.
"My thanks. Our will is gathered into one. The General-in-Chief will not be able to turn his face from it."
Grave as a man walking toward war, Yuan Shao clasped each comrade's hand in turn. They talked long and deep, and as the night wore on they departed one by one, until only Cao Cao remained.
"Only when His Highness the Crown Prince takes the throne, and the General-in-Chief seizes power, can we drive the Ten Attendants out."
Cao Cao was certain of it.
"Just so. However high they fly, however low they burrow, they cannot overcome a General-in-Chief who holds both the righteous cause and the army."
"Then taking the Ten Attendants' heads is only a matter of time. The Western Garden Eight Colonels? Hah. That Jian Shuo will be too busy saving his own neck."
Command of the troops in Luoyang was divided between the General-in-Chief's Manor and the Western Garden Eight Colonels, but the real strength lay overwhelmingly with the Manor. Jian Shuo, Supreme Colonel and head of the Eight Colonels, was himself one of the Ten Attendants, and the smile Cao Cao wore was open contempt.
After seeing him off, Yuan Shao stepped outside, looked up alone into the night, and let out a long breath. The great work had begun. There was no turning back.
A rustle.
It came then—a sound too alien to be wind, scraping at his ear. Yuan Shao's eyes changed in an instant, gone feral as a beast's.
"Who's there!"
At the thunder of the shout, the guards at his side drew their blades as one. His gaze went to the great old tree in the corner of the courtyard.
"Stop skulking like a rat and come out!"
"Father."
I edged out from behind the tree. The guards' killing looks softened the moment they saw who I was.
"Shang?"
Father's brow eased. He raised a hand and waved the guards back. A relief—he had the look of a man glad it was his son and not a spy. Even so, suspicion had taken hold of him.
"The dead of night, and you not asleep. What are you doing out here?"
"Forgive me. Sleep wouldn't come."
"Don't tell me you heard all of it."
"I did."
A lie would not pass. I bowed my head without resistance.
Silence held for a moment. Father stared through me, then broke into a short laugh.
"You rascal. Already taking an interest in grown men's affairs?"
"I am of the Yuan clan as well."
"Ha. Listen to the boy. Commendable—but it is not yet your time. Carry what you heard tonight to your grave. Do you understand?"
"I will take it to heart."
Reassured, Father stroked my head. He meant to write it off as a child's idle curiosity and let it pass. I used the slack in his guard and cast a heavy stone into the quiet.
"But, Father. They say even a rat, once cornered, will bite the cat."
Father, halfway out of his shoes and about to step inside, stopped dead. He turned slowly, and the smile had evaporated clean from his face. A chill brushed my spine, but I did not give ground. I met his eyes.
"What... do you mean by that?"
"The world chatters as if this were a contest between His Highness the Crown Prince and the Second Imperial Prince. In truth, isn't it a fight over who lives and who dies?"
"Go on."
"Jian Shuo, Supreme Colonel of the Western Garden Eight Colonels, is a eunuch with an army in his hand. The moment His Highness the Crown Prince ascends, the General-in-Chief takes power, and that man is as good as dead."
I set the cold arithmetic of a man in his forties into the voice of a boy of eleven.
"Will he sit and wait to die? If it were me... rather than die, I would take the General-in-Chief's head and seize the power for myself."
Father's pupils shook. He had been so fixed on the struggle of cause and faction that he had overlooked the enemy's instinct to survive—the Ten Attendants' will to live—and now he saw it. For a long while he could not find the next word. His lips only stirred, and then he asked:
"You are saying... the Supreme Colonel could raise a revolt?"
"There is nothing men like that will not do in order to live. You are thinking of victory, Father. They will stake their lives on survival."
Silence. Only the wind moving through the courtyard filled the space between them. Father looked down at me in a daze, then gripped my shoulder, his face grown complicated.
"How did you come to think of this?"
"It is only my shallow view. I was merely worried for you..."
"No. What you say... has reason in it. A dreadful amount of reason."
With a hand that trembled faintly, he stroked my head once more. The touch was not the fond one of a moment before. Its weight was different—a shiver in which pride, fear, and expectation were tangled together.
"It is late. Go in and sleep. I will carve what you said tonight deep into me."
"Rest well, Father."
I bowed with all propriety and withdrew. A faint smile caught at my mouth as I made for my room.
Now Father will move to take Jian Shuo's head. Had he never known, that would be one thing. But once he knows, he is not a man who can sit still.
The seed was sown.
"Haa..."
Yuan Shao let out a deep sigh and lifted his eyes to the night sky. A darkness in which even the stars were gone—much like the court as it stood, where a man could not see an inch ahead.
"Summon Xiansi."
Leaving the brief order behind, he went inside.
Yuan Tan hastily set his robes and cap to rights and made ready to go out. A summons in the deep of night ought to have drawn him tight, yet his face was full of curiosity.
"What did the youngest talk about with Father just now?"
"Forgive us. We were too far off to hear."
At the guard's answer, Yuan Tan gave a short laugh.
"What can one expect of an eleven-year-old? Whining, no doubt."
He strode on. Father seemed raw over the question of the imperial succession. At a time like this, I, the eldest, ought to show him a dependable face. Yuan Tan opened Yuan Shao's door in full confidence.
"You called, Father."
"You're here. Sit."
Yuan Shao's face was set hard. Yuan Tan swallowed his misgiving and took his seat.
"I'll ask you straight. How do you read the present situation?"
It was the question he had expected. Yuan Tan answered without hesitation.
"Is it not plain as day? His Highness the Crown Prince's ascent is a settled fact."
"And after that?"
"The General-in-Chief holds the army, so he will cut the Ten Attendants down in a single stroke. The realm will leave its turmoil behind and find its peace again."
Certainty filled his voice. It was the talk he had heard at the drinking parties of the Qingliu men until his ears grew callused from it—and the talk he himself had spouted there.
"How do you think Supreme Colonel Jian Shuo will act?"
"What can a scrap of a eunuch like that do?"
Yuan Tan snorted.
"When the tide turns, he'll flatten himself of his own accord. The Western Garden Eight Colonels will be disbanded before long. Father need only prepare to aid the General-in-Chief and win merit."
Well pleased with himself, he looked at his father. Is this not a perfect reading of the situation? But Yuan Shao's reaction was cold. Worse than cold—thick with frustration and contempt.
The same.
Yuan Shao swallowed dryly. The thoughts he himself had held until moments ago, and the words his eldest had just spoken—all of it a castle of sand, raised on the complacent premise that the other side would simply sit still.
If, as Shang says, Jian Shuo draws his blade first...
In his mind, General-in-Chief He Jin's head rolled across the floor. Next would be his own turn. And the head of this stupid, sunlit eldest son would fly with it. The Ten Attendants were men who, for the sake of power, would slaughter everyone in Luoyang and still have killing left in them. Cold sweat ran down his spine.
"What is it, Father? If I've said something wrong..."
"No."
Yuan Shao hid his trembling hand beneath the fold of his robe. The strapping eldest son before his eyes had suddenly begun to look stifling. The one who had warned him was his youngest, eight years old. The eldest, already past twenty, was complacent.
"Withdraw. My head aches."
"What? But I still have more to say..."
"Did I not tell you to get out!"
At the sudden roar Yuan Tan flinched and rose. Driven from the room, he pushed his lips out, utterly at a loss.
"Tch. A word of praise wouldn't have killed him. The situation's a tangle, so he takes it out on me."
Grumbling, he turned away.
"Bah. I'm too wound up for this. A cup of wine, then."
He vanished into the dark. Yuan Shao, watching that retreating back through a crack in the window, let out a long sigh.
"One of them is far too sharp, and the other far too simple. What am I to do with them?"
The next day.
Early in the morning, Yuan Shao rubbed his bloodshot eyes and knocked at the gate of the General-in-Chief's Manor. All through the night, his youngest son's warning had refused to leave his mind.
"The Middle Colonel? The sun has barely risen, let alone climbed to noon. What brings you?"
General-in-Chief He Jin appeared, stretching. Sleep still clung to him, but he could hardly turn the leading man of the Qingliu faction away at the door. They were a vital bloc in his support.
"Is His Majesty's illness unchanged?"
"Well, he hangs between today and tomorrow. A pity."
He Jin clicked his tongue, yet what showed on his face was less grief than unease. The death of an emperor meant a vacuum of power.
Yuan Shao drew from his breast a bundle wrapped in silk and spread it open upon the desk.
"What is this?"
"A joint memorial bearing the signatures of one hundred men of the Qingliu faction. We will support none but His Highness the Crown Prince and the General-in-Chief."
He Jin's eyes flew wide. Sleep seemed to flee him at a stroke. He unfolded the paper, and the corners of his mouth twitched.
"Oh! A hundred men! If the lot of you become my hands and feet, I needn't envy a mighty host!"
"General-in-Chief. There is, however, something you must keep in mind."
While He Jin was drunk on the pleasure of it, Yuan Shao drove in, cold and precise.
"If you mean to take a tiger, you pull its claws first. The instant His Highness the Crown Prince ascends, you must strike Supreme Colonel Jian Shuo."
"Jian Shuo?"
He Jin's hand paused. He stroked his beard and looked ill at ease.
"Stripping him of military power is one thing. Killing him is another... The Ten Attendants did have a hand in making my sister Empress Dowager, and I rose because of it. Spilling blood sits poorly with me. The world will call me a man who forgets a kindness."
"General-in-Chief!"
Yuan Shao's voice rose. He poured out, just as it was, the chilling comparison his youngest had made the night before.
"They say even a rat, once cornered, will bite the cat. If His Majesty should suddenly pass, and Jian Shuo uses that gap to draw his blade first, what will you do?"
"Ha. This fellow. Who would dare strike at me? Her Majesty the Empress Dowager stands at my back."
"Once your head has left your shoulders, Her Majesty will be of no use. Men who lunge in order to live see nothing in front of them."
At the cold warning, He Jin's face hardened. Even so, he forced a show of ease and waved a hand.
"Yes, yes, I understand. You worry far too much, Middle Colonel. I'll handle that matter myself, so go back and rest. Your eyes are red as a rabbit's."
It was a dismissal, plain as day. Yuan Shao bit his lip, but he knew that pressing the counsel further would only turn against him, and so he withdrew. Still, he had planted the seed.
Left alone, He Jin paced the room. Just as Yuan Shao had said, the unease would not leave him—the sense that he could not know what that gloomy eunuch Jian Shuo might be plotting.
This sits ill with me. Whom am I supposed to trust?
He Jin worried at a fingernail. Then a single name flashed through his mind.
Yes. Pan Yin. I still have that man.
Major Pan Yin was Jian Shuo's closest confidant. Yet he was a man He Jin himself had raised up long ago, and Jian Shuo, ignorant of that fact, had taken him for a trusted aide. He was a hidden tile He Jin had kept in hand, one Jian Shuo would not dream of.
"Is no one there!"
He Jin took up a brush at once and wrote a secret letter.
"Deliver this to Major Pan Yin of the Western Garden Eight Colonels. It must pass in utter secrecy, so that neither rat nor bird knows of it."
The guard acknowledged the order with loyalty and was gone. Only then did He Jin's heart seem to settle. He sank deep into his chair and muttered.
His eyes gleamed with a ruthless killing intent, the same cold light they had held in his butcher's days, when he used to whet a slaughter-knife.