The Calculation to Make Liu Bei Imperial Uncle
I went from village to village along the Huai River, saw to the relief of the whole district, and only then turned back, thoroughly at my ease. Along the way Guan Yu had landed himself in no small number of awkward scrapes over a widow of the Du clan he had met in Xuyi County, but I let it pass—as a man, I understood well enough. The choice belonged to Guan Yunchang. If it came to something, I meant to stand behind him and send gifts in plenty.
And so we reached Xiapi. The soldiers who had labored so hard were given their rest, and as everyone else turned toward home I returned as well, to an easy welcome from my household. Once I had shaken off the weariness of the road, I handed out the gifts I had prepared.
"What is this? Some sticky grease?"
"Lye soap."
"Ah—the soap one uses for washing? But the fragrance is anything but ordinary."
Zhuge Xue, marveling, dipped a finger into the soap in its little gourd flask, rubbed it between her palms, and lifted them to her nose. I had taken the oil left over from frying food for the soldiers, let it cool, and strained it clean; then I mixed in lye filtered from the fragrant wood-ash we used for smoking, scented the whole with a blend of five-colored herbs, worked in mugwort powder, and set it into a deep green gel.
"I shall put it to good use."
"I made a tremendous amount, so I mean to send it around as gifts as well. Could you wrap them nicely?"
"Ah, leave that to me."
Zhao Mi turned the soaps over with keen interest, and Diaochan stepped forward to help. So I came home, and rested deep.
Later, summoned by Liu Bei, I packed a great quantity of the soap as a gift and made for the government office. He received it in his turn, and looked thoroughly pleased.
"Baijin—you mean you used up all the oil that was your trading capital, the whole of the Xuyi district?"
"We couldn't have sold it in Shuchun anyway. No. For years to come, our merchant house won't be able to set a foot in that region."
"Hahaha. So you spent it grandly, soothing the people there?"
"Governor Liu, I thought of it as an opportunity cost."
"Ha! Hahahaha!"
When Liu Bei laughed so heartily, Zhang Fei and Guan Yu beside him laughed as well and nodded.
"We've been given something fine. Ought to try it at once. Have them heat the bath. Let's wash."
Liu Bei took up the soap and gave the order with easy authority, and another sauna summit was convened.
Hot steam curled through the broad bathhouse as the three sworn brothers—Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei—and I lowered ourselves into the water.
"Phoo— hoo—"
A wet towel lay over Liu Bei's face as he took his full pleasure in the heated medicinal bath.
"Yunchang. Yide."
"Yes, elder brother."
"Baijin sitting in on a gathering like this—it's only natural by now, isn't it?"
He had lifted the towel just enough to bare his mouth. At those words Guan Yu was the first to smile, raising a hand.
"Baijin is a man our elder brother cannot do without. And I myself am very taken with this fellow's breadth of spirit and his mettle."
"Can't say I don't see it. That friend's handled every mess we were stuck in, neat as you please, hasn't he?"
Acknowledged so plainly by Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, I would not be hindered in my work from here on. Liu Bei still lay sunk deep, the towel over his face. They spoke of me a little longer, and then, all at once, he opened his mouth.
"Baijin."
"Yes, Governor Liu."
"Once the earthen forts along the Huai are raised, what ought we to do next?"
"I will follow whatever you think best, Governor Liu—you who are master of Xuzhou."
"There's nothing left but building up the territory. So speak the great design you've been turning over, and don't hold back."
Telling me to talk while he wouldn't even show his eyes—an awkward spot. His mouth was smiling, and what rose from the water before me was the hegemon of the Peach Garden, a muscular body laid bare and crowded all over with scars.
"Baijin, it's precisely because this is the sort of seat it is that you can speak without reserve. No ceremony. We're just bathing, and the words ought to come easy. That's what I mean."
"Hm?"
"What did you say?"
Guan Yu and Zhang Fei stared at me in shock. Only then did Liu Bei draw the towel from his face and look at me.
"Tell me in more detail."
"This is something I have been preparing for a long time. Once you hold Xuzhou securely and have raised a proper army, the next move is to rescue His Majesty, the Emperor of Han, held captive by traitors."
Guan Yu and Zhang Fei sat with their mouths hanging open, unable to get a word out. Liu Bei gestured for me to go on.
"Not long ago, when Cao Cao was putting down the rebellion that broke out in Yanzhou, we chose to support him through Yuan Shao, and the suppression succeeded, didn't it? At the time I said we would lay one great debt upon Cao Cao. I mean to spend that debt to save His Majesty."
"Hoh?"
"We'll have to petition Cao Cao, Governor of Yanzhou, and borrow the road through his lands to go into Guanzhong and bring His Majesty out."
"Will that... even be possible?"
"If it isn't, then you cannot save His Majesty?"
"Don't talk nonsense!"
Liu Bei came over with a grave look, sat beside me, and set a hand on my shoulder.
He spoke with absolute firmness, then asked me out of that same unyielding will.
"So if there is a way, tell me at once. If a way exists, however dangerous the thing, I'll go myself!"
I had only let a hint of it slip to Lu Su. But the time was coming around at last. If Liu Bei's will ran this deep, it was entirely possible.
"First, the merchant house will gather intelligence. After this fight with Yuan Shu's army, it seems we won't be able to trade in Yuzhou or Jiujiang. I'll turn every merchant we have toward Yanzhou, Sizhou, and Guanzhong, and learn the situation there down to the finest detail."
"And after that?"
"They say that in Guanzhong now, Li Jue and Guo Si—the men intimidating His Majesty—are at each other's throats like dog and monkey. Caught between them, the Three Excellencies and the generals still around the young Emperor will, sooner or later, seek to slip those two bandits' grasp and leave Guanzhong."
"Can you be certain?"
"Dong Zhuo died by the will of a single man, Wang Yun, Minister of the Masses. Do you truly think a senior minister of that same will won't appear again in Chang'an?"
Liu Bei nodded and bade me continue, and before I knew it Guan Yu and Zhang Fei had sidled closer as well, ears open and eyes wide.
"Then, if that chance comes, we negotiate with Cao Cao. He will certainly try to set His Majesty up and rule in his name. He takes Yuan Shao's support, and he has no wish to remain, in effect, just another warlord beneath another man's banner—if only for the legitimacy of enthroning the Emperor."
"And we insert ourselves into that?"
"Yes."
Zhang Fei scratched his head and shook it hard.
"Master Baijin, seems to me there's one thing you don't know."
"What's that?"
"While you and Brother Yunchang were wrapping things up along the Huai, a report came in. The one who hit Xiaopei was that bastard Cao Cao. He scooped up them warlord dogs Lü Bu stirred around and beat down in Yuzhou, and pulled their strings from behind to have 'em strike at us!"
"Yide, is that true? That accursed wretch—he ought to be beaten to death!"
I had thought as much. The raid on Xiaopei had been Cao Cao outsourcing the work to the warlords of Yuzhou and Runan. It had failed, but they still had strength, so he would have absorbed them. When Guan Yu and Zhang Fei flared with rage over it, I put a finger to my lips, and made a show of covering my ears as well.
"We pretend we never heard it. We pretend we don't know. We show Cao Cao that nothing happened to us, and we negotiate on the strength of our willingness to help rescue the Emperor."
"He struck us out in the open, and you want us to swallow it?"
"Because the debt Cao Cao owes us has to be spent on saving His Majesty. He'll certainly be suspicious—but I'll go myself to negotiate."
Liu Bei calmed his two younger brothers, swept his hair back, and murmured low.
"We have to pass through a tiger's den full of tigers, and you're asking me to throw them meat and beg to be let through unharmed..."
"Of course, on the road we travel we'll have the cold edge of the Green Dragon Crescent Blade and the 1.8-zhang Serpent Spear, so the tigers won't dare any foolishness. And to any eye watching, we'll have tens of thousands posted with spear and blade."
Liu Bei thought a moment, then rose from the bath. He went out, dried himself with a towel, and gathered his clothes, and Guan Yu and Zhang Fei rose at once and followed. As I too got up, washed, and dressed, Liu Bei—already arrayed in formal robes—spoke to me.
"That plan to rescue His Majesty—we'll do it. I'll go myself and bring him out."
"Elder brother, we'll go as well."
"We must. We have to show His Majesty once more the righteous spirit we showed at Hulao Pass."
The three brothers knew the whole of the plan now, and they burned with the will to carry it out.
"A friend who is forever thinking up grand strategy beyond what anyone expects."
"I'll see to it that Cao Cao agrees. From that point on, in all the realm, only the Governor of Yanzhou and you, Governor of Xuzhou, will be able to rescue His Majesty. And in that moment countless warlords will thrust their blades in from every side, each meaning to enthrone the Emperor himself. It will be the most dangerous hour of all."
Whether it was a tiger's den or a pit of fire, Liu Bei showed the will to throw himself in gladly, for the sake of his loyalty and his chivalry.
"Starting tomorrow, I'll prepare to send the whole of our merchant house into Yanzhou, Sizhou, and Guanzhong. I'd be grateful if you'd see our caravans through the trade roads into the other provinces."
"Mm!"
I paid my respects to the three brothers, finished the bath feeling thoroughly clear, and took my leave. Today's sauna summit, too, had been a gathering in which truly staggering things changed hands.
I gathered them at home, called Lu Su and my brother-in-law Su Shuang, and laid out everything that had passed.
"Oh—you've been preparing a plan of this scale!"
"When I heard it, I truly doubted my ears. It felt as if someone had struck me on the head with a hammer. Baijin's mettle as a merchant seems no less than that of Lü Buwei of old."
Lü Buwei, invoked in the age of the Three Kingdoms—a fair enough compliment. But I moved straight to the matter at hand.
"I've told Governor Liu, so from now on the merchant house goes only into the Central Plains and Guanzhong. We'll make the circuit of Sizhou, Yanzhou, and the Chang'an region, and what we must buy up is warhorses and livestock."
"Baijin, I say this as a man from a house that traded horses. Buy warhorses in bulk all at once and you draw heavy suspicion. Some of the warlords in those parts will demand to know what you mean to use them for, and if you don't lay out more than double in bribes, they'll hold you inside their territory and not let you leave."
"Which is why we buy them together with cattle, pigs, chickens, ducks, and the like. The horses themselves—mix warhorses in with packhorses when you purchase them."
I was explaining, to Su Shuang, a great merchant of this age, the way to buy warhorses for raising cavalry.
"Start with a hundred horses—about twenty warhorses and eighty packhorses. Next time, fifty warhorses. The time after that, twenty packhorses. Split the buying into small lots like that, and the moment they reach Xuzhou, send the warhorses straight to the training camp at Langya."
"Hmm. I see. Even if it takes time, buy them mixed in little by little, and gather them all in one place later. That's what you mean?"
"And we spread the word. If people hear that in Xuzhou now, amid war after war, a benevolent governor is doing everything he can to restore farming and herding, the rumor will travel in our favor."
Lu Su, who had been listening in silence, put in a word of his own.
"Baijin—in Yanzhou, even a single grain of millet we buy, a single chick, will reach Cao Cao's ears. It's dangerous. In Guanzhong there are two vast bands of bandits, Li Jue and Guo Si, and we'll be lucky if our goods aren't simply seized. And as for Sizhou..."
"You mean that since Luoyang burned, bands like the White Wave Bandits and the Black Mountain Bandits have made it a lawless land?"
"You know it very well."
"The Danyang soldiers who survived will go along as escorts, and Governor Liu says he will send gifts and have warriors of some strength accompany us."
"Oh-ho?"
"And once we start buying goods like these, there will surely be plenty of able-bodied men scraping by on a day's hired labor, putting their strength to whatever work they can find. Entrust the hauling to them, and let it be known that great farms and fields await in Xuzhou, and a considerable number will follow."
"You mean to draw manpower for the levy in from outside?"
"I don't know how many we'll manage to pull out."
Lu Su smiled and nodded.
"Then I ought to go as well."
"What—Zijing! You mean to go yourself?"
"I come, after all, from a house that has practiced commerce for generations. And if we want intelligence we can trust, nothing is surer than seeing and hearing it with these very eyes and ears. I have trained in the sword and the bow, in my own way."
I had meant for him to learn the whole of it and then come with me to Yanzhou when the time came to negotiate with Cao Cao. Instead he was stepping out first, from the very start.
"Baijin, I have been waiting all this while to see when this vast design of yours might become possible. It is only right that I, too, stake my life for Han."
"Well, now..."
It was then.
"My lord, a guest has come."
Diaochan's voice.
"A guest, at this hour? Who?"
"He says he is Mi Zizhong of Juxian."
—!
The door opened, and Mi Zhu—a man of fine, imposing presence—came forward with a face full of smiles and offered his greetings.
"Are you all well? I came because it seemed there might be an interesting tale."
"Why—Lord Mi!"
"Zizhong, what brings you all the way here?"
I showed him to a seat and offered tea. He blew on it, drank, and spoke to me with a smiling face.
"Lord Zhang, I turned a fine profit on the oil trade last time, and by a merchant's gratitude I've come to help with whatever I can."
"...Where did you hear what, exactly?"
"Hmm, who can say? Ever since my younger sister entered the Governor of Xuzhou's household as his second wife, the Governor suddenly said as much today. That it would be well if our family aided Lord Zhang's work with all our heart and all our means."
Ha—so Liu Bei had spoken to Lady Mi, and asked that Mi Zhu be set to helping me in earnest?
"Tell me anything you like. I do love an interesting tale."
On the spot I explained once more what Su Shuang and Lu Su had already heard. Mi Zhu's Buddha-like countenance grew even gentler, and the way his ears all but pricked as he smiled gave me the feeling he had seized on something large.
"Hmmm. This is truly dangerous—but it has the scent of a very fine piece of business."
"You'll help us?"
Mi Zhu drew a promissory note from his breast and set it down.
"A hundred thousand coins. I prepared it just in case. Hang it as a bounty on the caravans we send into Guanzhong, and whenever they bring back word of Li Jue, of Guo Si, and of those close to the court, spend it without stint."
"Ha, haha. And here I'd meant to spend my own, digging out the vital secrets of Guanzhong..."
"And the house's trade? I'll open our family storehouses and send our merchants as well. The more men we have gathering information and doing business, the better."
Mi Zhu had his face to consider, so I resolved to put up the same sum. From that day, Liu Bei's army moved as one heart and one body, reaching past Xuzhou toward a far greater board.