From Now On, I'll See to It All
I finished putting things in order and came home to Xiapi.
First I made my report to Liu Bei. The funds I had taken from Mi Zhu I pocketed, cool as you please, as my own share, and then I paid the soldiers who had force-marched all that long road the double bounty I had promised them.
"It was a good journey. You've all had a hard time of it—buy your families a gift when you see them."
"Oh. There was a cut for us, too?"
"Hmph. All I did was ride the circuit."
I set gold aside for Zhang Fei and Zhang He as well and portioned it out, and there was a separate reward for Zhuge Liang.
"It was a truly meaningful journey. I should like to follow you again, without fail."
"Once you've found a proper teacher."
"Ah—my elder brother says the Governor of Xuzhou means to invite a great many scholars before long, in any case."
Of course he would.
The land was not scorched past saving. It could still be restored, a new Governor of Xuzhou had taken his seat, and learned elders were bound to gather, one by one. There would be fine scholars among them, and Zhuge Liang would rack up experience for certain.
"Hup—! Well then, shall I head home myself?"
I had done as much as needed doing. All that remained was to rest easy while I waited for Su Shuang.
When I came through the door, Lady Huan and Lady Zhuge welcomed me with a formal bow.
"We are relieved you returned safely."
"Did you buy a great many gifts?"
"More than we can hold."
I embraced each of them in turn, and once I lay down in the inner room they heated the bath and set about the cooking. Heaven itself had nothing on it. After so long a road, I made up for lost time so thoroughly that I would not be fit for the like of it again anytime soon.
We were living happily in that fashion when word came in the evening.
"Me, you say?"
"Yes, my lord. Colonel Zhao asks for you in person."
"Hm. True enough—we still have a great deal left unfinished."
Zhao Bao had summoned me after dark. Whatever his reason, he was still on uneasy terms with Liu Bei, could hardly be called friendly with me, and was in effect the only man left of a faction set against Liu Bei. The Danyang troops were as formidable as ever, the uncomfortable lodging together beneath the walls of Xiapi went on, and it was his side that had sought me out first.
"Fine. Let's settle it cleanly while we're at it."
"Oh my. You're going to Colonel Zhao's residence?"
Zhuge Xue, who had been paring fruit at my side, rose at once and opened the wardrobe. She laid out clothes for going out and neatened my topknot. She was a woman meticulous in every particular, from the first thing to the last. She held the mirror up, and the face she had groomed looked back at me.
"I'll be back."
"Yes, my lord."
When I opened the door, Ying was watching the two of us with a peculiar look in her eyes.
"I heard you're going to Colonel Zhao's at this hour."
"That's right. I'm leaving now."
"Hmm~ The talk from over there hasn't been good lately."
"What talk?"
"Colonel Zhao has no sons, only daughters, and every one of them is a beauty. The eldest especially—she tried to marry into Inspector Tao's house and couldn't, so now she's looking for another man."
"And what does that have to do with me…."
At that Huan Ying sidled over, buried herself against my chest, and whispered with a face full of mischief.
"It doesn't, does it?"
Heaven only knew what she was thinking.
At any rate, I let myself be shown in and went to Zhao Bao's house. I came to the main hall where he waited, opened the door, and stepped inside, and he came toward me in turn.
"It's been a while."
"Have you been well since we last met?"
"I'll have tea brought."
Zhao Bao bade me sit. A moment later the door opened, and a woman came in.
"Father, the tea."
"You came?"
"Ah… shall I call one of my sisters instead?"
"No need. Set it down and go."
Her height was ordinary. Her looks were not quite ordinary—a subtle face. Uneven, spiky hair; skin white as snow; a high, straight nose; brows that curled up at the tips; a black mole beneath the lip. But her eyes were long thin slits with no double fold, slanting upward. Perhaps because both Xue and Ying had such large eyes and such thick lashes, that fox-faced impression was pretty, in its way, and yet somehow off.
"She's a concubine's child."
"Ah. I see."
"Good. I'll speak without reserve. The truth is, I'm still on bad terms with the Governor of Xuzhou. Of course, the wish to defend Xuzhou is the same."
"A difference in temperament is no reason for us to spill each other's blood. Surely we are not about to cross spears inside Xuzhou itself?"
"That we absolutely will not!"
He still seemed to nurse the old regret, and the notion that real authority in Xuzhou ought to be his. Keep answering in that vein, and he and his Danyang troops would not last long beside Liu Bei. There was a limit to embracing everyone merely because one's strength was not yet enough.
"Then Colonel Zhao need only achieve merit as great as the Governor's."
"Do you mean that in earnest? Where, and against whom?"
So he wanted a fight. Then I would give him one. Win, and he was an ally who could walk with us. Otherwise, it ended here.
"Yanzhou, Shuchun, Yangzhou—every one of them will be whetting a blade aimed at Xuzhou. This time I negotiated with Mi Zhu, and the two of us have agreed to go into business together, so from now on you will receive wartime supplies in plenty, through me and through Mi Zhu."
"You'll stand behind me, so I'm to prove myself by fighting the men who threaten Xuzhou?"
"You can't?"
However much Zhao Bao might be harboring other thoughts, to join hands with an outside power now and start a brawl with Liu Bei would be to own a skull that turned more slowly than a Yellow Turban lackey's.
"Within this year or the next, someone will certainly come shoving his way into Xuzhou, backside first. If you want influence here, you have only to prove it. The support will be ample."
"Mmm. Very well. I'll think on it."
Then the door opened again, and this time a different woman came in bearing a wine table. Unlike the thin-eyed, fox-faced beauty of a moment before, this one wore a cold impression, her hair dressed in a severe straight line from the bangs to the sides, pride written all through her bearing.
"Father, I have brought the wine."
"Oh, good. Set it there."
She quietly set a wine table before each of us, bowed with perfect courtesy, and withdrew. Whatever else one might say of Zhao Bao, he had raised a handsome crop of children. Legitimate daughter and concubine's daughter alike were striking.
"Do you know the Governor of Xuzhou recommended me for the chancellorship of Xiapi, saying we ought to try to get along?"
"A matter worth congratulating."
"Good. Then let's talk over a cup."
I drank late into the night and came home at dawn.
And the moment I rose the next morning, I sank my hangover-soaked body into the bath.
"Ugh—"
"Is the water all right?"
"Perfect. Once I've washed off clean, I need to see the Governor of Xuzhou at once."
After Zhuge Xue had attended me at the bath, I came out, dressed in fresh clothes, and strode to the Governor's offices with my head high. Liu Bei received me—a man with no formal office—on terms essentially equal to a grand administrator, and over tea I came to the point.
"They call me a merchant who deals in profit, but it seems all I have traded in is talent."
"Ho. What are you saying? Are you preparing something even bigger?"
"Yes. The first proposal I mean to offer is that we build a large-scale military training ground in Langya, where Xuzhou was already scorched to nothing."
"Hmmm~"
"The houses there are all burned, and the corpses lie thick. Gather the refugees, build them homes, and tell them to live there again, and not a soul will go. Nor can we farm land that has been manured with the dead."
"So you mean to turn the whole of it into a camp for training soldiers?"
"On a scale that can forge an elite to match the Qingzhou troops Cao Cao boasts of so loudly, or the White Horse Volunteers of Youzhou. And we are not short of men who can command such a force, are we?"
"You've sent me a great many talents. What if we send your brother-in-law, Zhuge Jin, there, along with Xu Sheng and Zhang He?"
"The decision is the Governor's to make. Building the facility, I will do. I mean to start at about ten thousand majigi and grow it to three times that."
"Aiyo! Baijin, you really have made up your mind."
If the scale is hard to picture, then by the reckoning in my memory—converting majigi into pyeong—the Nonsan Army Training Center comes out around six or seven thousand majigi.
"A training ground that raises, inside Xuzhou, the elite who will defend Xuzhou. Yes—it ought to be at least that much!"
"What comes of it will be an elite more than double the Danyang troops, the strongest force in Xuzhou now, in both scale and experience."
Liu Bei went still.
The Danyang troops were a card, yes, but not one worth playing for long. From this moment I would raise, for Governor Liu Bei, an elite so far beyond them that the Danyang troops would be a mere trifle, and within the year I would build a great army under his direct command.
"In addition, the venture I agreed upon with Mi Zhu is the oil trade. On a large scale we will need waterwheels, fish to dress for pressing oil, and farmland for growing beans. Somewhere near Juxian, Mi Zhu's base, would be best."
"That, of course, must be done. It's your enterprise, Baijin."
The talents were gathered. What remained was to use them: founding and running the training ground that would raise an elite force.
"Also, to raise cavalry we need a great many horses. Just now Jizhou and Yanzhou are at war, and neither Yuzhou nor Yangzhou has a market where one can buy horses on that scale. So I mean to send men to Qingzhou to look into it. Are you on close terms with Tian Kai, Inspector of Qingzhou, and with Master Kong Rong, Chancellor of Beihai?"
"Of course. Wasn't it at your suggestion that I sent word to Jizhou, Qingzhou, Youzhou, Yuzhou, and the rest, regarding my wife's marriage and my succession as Governor of Xuzhou? What's more, when we first went to save Xuzhou, Master Kong helped us a great deal. I'll write a letter at once and send a man."
Liu Bei handled everything with brisk, open ease.
"Lord Xuande, time is short, and there is a great deal to do."
"Ho. You move as if something were chasing you. It's that, isn't it? You mean to steady Xuzhou and tend to matters beyond Xuzhou at the same time."
"That's right."
I had told only Lu Su, but little by little Liu Bei would have to know as well, and of course it would be work he agreed to and carried out.
Liu Bei drank his tea in silence and passed me a bamboo slip.
"These are the Confucian scholars I have invited this time."
I opened it, and the names were astonishing.
"Master Zheng Kangcheng, the great scholar who was a friend of Master Lu, my old teacher, has come here to us. Nor is that all. Many renowned Confucians have come from Yingchuan in Yuzhou as well. And Master Chen, a celebrated Pure Stream scholar of the Han, is coming to seek him out."
Chen Yuanfang of the Yingchuan Pure Stream faction. His name was Chen Ji: the man of that famous anecdote in which one could not tell the elder brother from the younger, hailed by later ages among the Three Lords of the Later Han, father of Chen Qun, who devised the Nine-Rank System for Appointing Officials, and the greatest elder among the scholars of Yingchuan now. The moment I saw that name, someone came to mind at once.
"Lord Xuande. May I make separate use of Master Chen?"
"Use him? Did you say you would use the great scholar of Yingchuan?"
"You know well that there is a tremendous talent under my roof."
"You mean Ziyou's younger brother?"
In the Zhuge family, my wife Zhuge Xue and Zhuge Liang lived in our house, while Zhuge Hua and Zhuge Jun lived in a separate house that Zhuge Jin had taken for them.
"As it happens, Ziyou asked Master Zheng of Qingzhou to instruct him and his younger brother, and I have already given my consent."
"I want to set Master Chen as Liang's teacher. He has come as an adviser to the Governor of Xuzhou, as is only right, but in private I would like him to see to the studies of one of my own household."
"Do so. Teaching a promising youth—what master would refuse?"
"Thank you for your leave."
"You've raised me an army, you've moved the supplies, you've set the people of Xuzhou on their feet again. I may run the thing, but it is you who has laid the whole board beneath me."
Liu Bei smiled, set down his teacup, and took my hand.
"Trust me, and you will succeed for the rest of your life."
I shared that good talk with Liu Bei and went home.
Laughter never ceased inside the house. When I came in and opened the door of the main room, the women were murmuring together.
"Oh my?"
"Ah, my lord. You've come?"
Zhuge Xue and Huan Ying rose in a flurry. And there was one more.
"Ah… good day to you?"
Those slit eyes opened just a little, and in the smiling gaze even the mole at the corner of her mouth seemed to twitch. It was the daughter of Zhao Bao I had met yesterday. She smiled with that fox-like face and greeted me.
"My lord, she says she is Colonel Zhao's daughter, and that she came hoping to do embroidery with us."
"I came because I wished for us to get along from now on. Forgive the intrusion."
"No, it's… nothing."
As my wives hurriedly led their guest off toward the rear garden, she looked at me, smiled with her eyes, and followed Zhuge Xue and Huan Ying at an unhurried pace.
"…Say. Where's Kongming?"
"He is at his studies in his room."
I took Xue at her word and opened the door to Zhuge Liang's room at once. The panel rattled aside.
"Brother-in-law?"
"Stacking bamboo slips and reading by yourself is all very well. Let's do something better."
"What… do you mean?"
Zhuge Liang, who had been reading the Spring and Autumn of Master Yan, the Records of the Grand Historian, the Lüshi Chunqiu—the Spring and Autumn Annals of Master Lü—and the rest I had brought back from Yecheng, asked with a bewildered face.
"I found you a teacher. Master Chen Yuanfang, the great scholar of Yingchuan, has come at the Governor of Xuzhou's invitation. Learn from him."
"Master Yuanfang!?"
"Yes. That Master Chen Yuanfang of the Yingchuan school."
"I am to enter Master Yuanfang's school?"
A scholar great enough that even the young Zhuge Liang knew of him, and the foremost elder of the Yingchuan school.
"No need to worry about tuition. Fine scholars stand in his following. He has even agreed to set aside time, invited into our own house, to teach you."
"It is truly an honor! Thank you, brother-in-law."
Zhuge Liang had met a new master. A Zhuge Liang taking in the learning of Yingchuan—what sort of hybrid that pairing would produce would show itself in the chemistry between teacher and disciple.