That Is War — So Call It War
"Settling Yiyang, once we've occupied it, looks as though it will take an age..."
At Lu Su's words, Liu Bei looked quietly at me. I only shook my head, calm as you please — and then I nodded.
"I'll step forward and see what I can do."
Hao Zhao had volunteered, and Jian Yong, Tian Yu, and the others put their hands up as well.
"Good. However we manage it, this place must be made as peaceful as it was before the war. I'm counting on all of you."
"Yes, my lord!"
Trustworthy men came forward to take the aftermath in hand. Cao Cao's army, already packed for the withdrawal, moved off, and Liu Bei's army departed in its wake.
"Come to think of it, Master Baijin — didn't you have a drink with Cao Cao yesterday?"
Zhang Fei tossed the question out lightly on the road home, and I nodded.
"He try to sound you out, did he?"
"Would he waste his time on anything so pointless?"
I answered evenly, and Liu Bei turned to Zhang Fei.
"Yide. Then when we reach Xu, you might have a cup yourself with the officers under the Minister of Works. Would that not do?"
"You mean me?"
"Are we in any position to scold a man for where his drinking takes him?"
"Nah — I'm just sayin', is all! Just sayin'!"
Liu Bei paid it no particular mind. Calm as ever, he mounted again and rode on.
"Don't think of anything. When we return to Xu, rest well at home. Take your ladies and your children and live at ease."
"Mm."
"This, too, is all war — and we have finished the war. What would you say to a journey somewhere, like your brother-in-law and his wife?"
"Rest too long and I feel I'll go completely slack. Watch for a suitable time, and give me something — anything — to do."
"Hahaha. Listen to you."
That massacre sat badly with me: a little confusion that had turned out, on closer look, to be a rage-virus. Of course, as Liu Bei said, a stretch of rest and I would walk steadily enough toward the next great work on my own. I simply needed the shock to loosen its grip. Call it that.
And so, having annihilated Lu Bu's army, we returned to Xu. Praise poured in. The Emperor commended us. Once Cao Cao presented Lu Bu's head, Lu Bu's forces were formally extinguished.
The heroes left under heaven would now be Cao Cao and Liu Bei, and still the mighty Yuan Shao of Hebei, and Yangzhou, Jingzhou, Yizhou, Xiliang, and the rest.
When the Emperor's commendation was done, I went home.
"I'm back."
Huan Ying came running at once and caught me up in her arms, a sweet fragrance rising thick around her. She was always readier with her hands than the other wives, and the moment she had hold of me she rubbed against me without the least restraint. Zhao Mi's narrow, smiling eyes eased open a fraction. Zhuge Xue flushed, and still she came nearer with their little son in her arms.
I took the still-unnamed boy into my arms as well — Huan Ying was not the only one who needed holding — and, looking down at the baby beaming up at me, I said what had come to mind.
"Humility. Steadfastness."
"Hm?"
"I'll take the names straight from those. Our eldest boy will be Zhang Qian, and our girl Zhang He."
"So they are to be A-Qian and Little He? Humble children, and steadfast... They seem fine names to me."
Xue was the gladdest of anyone to have names set upon the children, and Ying was pleased with her own daughter's name as well. I had my reunion with the three wives, and when the door opened and Diaochan brought tea, my eyes kept meeting hers.
"Why do you look at me so?"
"Nothing. Only... Lu Bu is dead."
"He is a man with no tie to me."
She had been neither wife nor concubine — only one maid among many, a sworn sister to a concubine. That link, too, was finished now.
And so I went into my rest. For the time being, just as Liu Bei had said, I would give my wives a fond swat and see about making a third.
"This month's profit from the trading house."
Su Shuang set his counting rods before me and laid out heaps of coin, and for an instant the memory of Yiyang rose up. I seized a handful and stared as if I might bore a hole through it, and Su Shuang blinked, at a loss.
"What's the matter? Those aren't the debased five-zhu coins Dong Zhuo minted. They're proper coin of the Han."
"No. It's only... money is a strange thing."
"Hm?"
He was plainly baffled, so I shut that subject away and asked instead.
"What were the goods this time?"
"Luxuries. The cherries of Qingzhou and Xuzhou had a bumper year in particular, so not only cherry drinks — we've been carving the wood into go boards, chessboards, crafted pieces, and just now those are the fashion."
Su Shuang oversaw the imperial accounts, and still his gift for trade was inborn. Drop that man into the modern world and he would have been an elite company man, roaming the whole globe. While I took up affairs of state from within the house, he ran the caravan and kept the coin coming, so that our income never once broke.
"This is a go record that's all the rage in Yangzhou. Sun Ce of Yangzhou has been rising fast of late, and the fellow likes go more than you'd think. It's a book of game records."
"People buy and sell this sort of thing?"
"The game records of famous gentlemen and of the regional warlords — to underlings those are treasures out of legend, and to the scholar-gentry a fine amusement. There is nothing in this world that will not sell."
Looking at a record of a game Sun Ce was said to have played himself, I thought I ought to give it to Liu Bei. I went through the rest of the trade as well — household goods, salt, and great whale bones truly brought out of Xuzhou, presented to the imperial household, with the few that remained kept back — and then I handed the accounts back to Su Shuang.
"I'll be counting on you, as always."
"From what I see of Xu these days, the next goods will have to be garlic chives, and in bulk."
"Chives?"
"How short must the supply be, if Imperial Uncle Liu himself is raising chives in his own garden plot?"
"...Well. If there's a good variety, trade in it."
I doubted Liu Bei's gardening meant what Su Shuang thought it meant. As an item of trade, though, it would do well enough.
So the days passed, until a guest came that evening. No ordinary guest: Guan Yu.
Late at night a wine table was hastily laid. Diaochan and Zhao Mi each showed her skill, setting out dishes and wine, and Guan Yu laughed his deep laugh and savored them one by one.
"I didn't think Brother Yunchang would come calling of a sudden, without a word."
"Hah. It has been a long while since I came to your house."
He drained a great bowl in long gulps, then smiled at his ease and pointed at me.
"Baijin. Come to Luoyang with me."
"What's in Luoyang? And before that — aren't you Commander of the Tiger-Brave Imperial Guards?"
"A command from His Majesty the Emperor. In the name of the Tiger-Brave Army, I am to look over Luoyang while the restoration is underway, and see to the peace round about."
"My congratulations. You're finally out to take the air."
"I came to tell you to come with me."
"...!"
Guan Yu was a man who said everything straight out. Never mind my post as Palace Assistant Imperial Clerk — there was this matter and that, so I should simply come along.
"Very well. I ought to get some air myself."
"We leave tomorrow."
"Shall I have a room made up?"
"What need of that? May we not drink the night through?"
"I am not a man of iron, as you are, Brother Yunchang..."
A short while later.
"Hic— I made every last soul in Yiyang... into a mob."
"Hah. So the peerless Lu Bu was hacked and beaten to death under the sickles and hoes of common folk?"
"Didn't you rate Lu Bu rather poorly, Brother Yunchang?"
"I said only that he was no match for me. The title of Flying General was not wasted on that man."
At some point the empty bottles were stacking up, the dishes endlessly refilled, and Guan Yu and I were still matching each other drink for drink as dawn drew on. I had simply needed to talk to someone. He listened, calm as ever, though inwardly a fighting man's regret showed through — I ought to have been the one sent there!
"I don't regret it. Still, something catches. Is it because I stripped the true faces off people I didn't know at all, and made a stage of riot out of them?"
"You're right. It is war."
"And what reason have you to dwell so on an enemy general? Was he not the man who loosed an arrow at you?"
That was true. And as for Lu Bu dying in such a way — once he had occupied that country, how savage must his tyranny have been, how black his name, for the people to rise even to that?
"Had it been land under Imperial Uncle Liu, it would have been unthinkable."
"Let any man post a reward on my elder brother of twenty million cash — not a mere two hundred thousand — and whoever comes for it, I will kill him, and Yide will kill him."
Guan Yu brought it back to me again and again, emptying yet another bottle whole, long past counting which one it was. That day we truly matched drinks deep into the dawn, talking of this and that, until the sky grew light.
"A horse is simply impossible. I'll go by carriage."
"If you feel you'll overturn along the way, say so as many times as you must. I shall go as slowly as can be."
Racked by a magnificent hangover, I left Xu and set out for Luoyang. I lay stretched in the carriage rather than on a horse, and my head split at every jolt, but the wives had packed bedside water, honey syrup, tea — I drank one thing after another and forced my stomach down as best I could.
Xu had been uncommonly quiet of late. With the Commander of the Tiger-Brave absent from the Tiger-Brave Army, the Emperor ought to be safe enough, though what else might arise I could not say.
We were days on the road from Xu. By the time I had shaken off the lingering sickness of drink and we came into Luoyang, the burned and fallen walls and the houses of the people had been swept entirely away, and entirely new works were rising in their place.
"Ten years to fifteen, I should think. If in my lifetime I may see the capital of all the ages restored to life, it will be an honor."
"So we oversee this district and then go back?"
"No. From Luoyang we circle through Hedong, and we will go to Hongnong as well."
"What?"
Only now did I see how particular the route was. This was no mere matter of looking about and finding a suitable man. Guan Yu seemed to be moving under some separate charge from the Emperor. I did not know what it was, but it had the smell of a hidden task.
"Think of it at your ease. You are simply making one circuit of Sili in my company."
Guan Yu set the Green Dragon Blade at his side and mounted the enormous red blood-sweating horse he had received from Cao Cao — the price of an ox rendered to the Ministry of Works — and he moved the whole way with an air of perfect ease.