The Worst Has Come, and Still... Let Us Live to Meet Again

I was in the Censorate, going over the last of the documents.

If I could only get through today's crisis, I would win a private audience with the Emperor, set Liu Bei's report before him, and make the strength of that army known.

"Is the Deputy Imperial Censor within?"

"Ah — Lord Marquis of Buqi!"

Fu Wan, Marquis of Buqi, who held the office of Censor-in-Chief, stroked his white beard as he came looking for me.

"It has grown rather noisy outside. The troops are stirring in a hurry. Something is afoot."

What?

Ah. Ah... ahh.

"You reviewed this, did you? Then I, the Censor-in-Chief, had best confirm it myself."

"Lord Marquis, the situation at present—"

"I know little of it, so do not use the front gate. Go out the back. There is a wall there that joins the rear garden, is there not? You are young and quick, though the wall is so high I cannot say whether you will clear it..."

Quietly, Fu Wan handed me the footstool used to reach the books on the high shelves.

"I shall remain here. Quietly."

A chance to escape — or a chance to go deeper, into the inner palace.

"Censor-in-Chief, Marquis of Buqi, Imperial Father-in-Law of the Fu house — I give you my word. I will save both Her Majesty the Empress and Her Ladyship the Noble Consort."

Fu Wan smiled faintly and waved me off.

"I will live to see you again!"

I caught up the footstool, slipped out the rear gate, and ran like a man gone mad.

So this was how Zhuge Liang felt when Guan Yu died — striking at Jiangdong, marching on Yiling, all for a brother's revenge!

So this was how Cao Cao's strategists felt at Red Cliffs, screaming that it was a trap, begging him with everything they had not to drive straight across the Yangtze!

And Lu Xun, standing before Sun Quan to the very last, pleading that the succession at least follow rank, pressing the matter of the two palaces... Ah, fuck it. Forget it!

"Hurry! By order of the Minister of Works, every senior minister of the court within is to be brought before the throne hall!"

Brought? Rounded up for a public execution, more like.

And I, above all, would be taken as a man to watch.

I had roamed these grounds at will, so the ways were familiar, and I reached an alley the soldiers did not use.

A monstrously high wall. I could trust my vertical leap all I liked; this was beyond me.

I set down the footstool Lord Fu Wan, father of Empress Fu, had given me, planted a foot on it, and began to climb.

Just get a hand on the tiles up there. Just up there...

Clatter!

My foot slipped. A brick shot loose, and at the sound soldiers of the Ministry of Works came running.

"Deputy Imperial Censor Zhang Qian! Seize him!"

"Yes — Zhang Qian is here!"

I roared it for everyone to hear and clawed my way up in desperation, and from above a hand closed on me.

"Wang Zhong?"

"Hold fast!"

A Tiger-Brave Guard on the far side of the wall had seen me and hauled me up at once.

A soldier came pounding in with a spear as I tried to vault over, and a hand locked around my ankle. I kicked free with everything I had and tumbled across.

Crash!

"Ah, my shoe..."

One of them was gone. It didn't matter.

"The Commander of the Tiger-Brave Guards! Where is the Commander?"

"He has entered the Empress's residence in the inner palace!"

"Then I follow at once."

Yes. Guan Yu was still here.

And I had told him myself: if the very worst truly came, the first place to go was not His Majesty's bedchamber, but the Empress's palace.

"Aaaaah!"

"You bastards — do you know where you—"

Slash—

"Guhk!"

The sound of steel. The sound of blood. The sound of slaughter.

Cao Cao's men were already inside.

"Deputy Imperial Censor!"

"?!"

Wang Zhong flung me a sword. I caught it and burst into the room where the scream had risen.

Bang!

Heaven help us...

Corpses lay strewn across the floor.

Eunuchs and palace maids had been butchered outright, fallen in sprays of blood, and the inner chamber where the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Empress kept...

Slash—

"You curs! How dare you trespass here!"

Guan Yu.

He had gone in alone and cut down dozens of them — soldiers of the Ministry of Works and men in black masks, come to arrest Noble Consort Dong and Empress Fu.

"Brother Yunchang!"

"Baijin!"

"Her Majesty the Empress and Her Ladyship the Consort — get them to His Majesty's inner palace first!"

"At once!"

As Guan Yu hurried the two ladies away, I turned to Wang Zhong.

"If troops of the Ministry of Works got in here, then there is a passage. Of course. Cao Cao designed the provisional palace at Xudu from the very start..."

Don't try to scoop spilled water back into the bowl. Soak it up. Wipe it clean. Keep the stain from setting.

"The way the Commander just took Their Ladyships — pile these corpses there and seal it!"

"Yes, Deputy Imperial Censor!"

"From this moment, every force but the Tiger-Brave Guards is the enemy. The only exception is a man cursing Cao Cao. Let that one through."

I gave the order and, before the bodies were stacked, made to follow Guan Yu in to the Emperor.

Then I saw her — a woman sitting blankly where she had been.

The senior matron who had always worn a face-veil, nothing showing but the blink of two eyes. She let the blood-soaked cloth hang loose and bared her face.

Soul-gone, she stared at the corpses of the masked men in black and murmured to herself.

"Why... are there men here bearing the emblems of the old houses? Why would they serve the Minister of Works? What has happened?"

"Madam Matron! Come inside with us."

"It cannot be. I cannot believe it... If that is true, then I am a traitor who deserves to die..."

"We'll reconstruct the scene later. Move!"

"!"

I caught the matron by the arm and followed the way Guan Yu had gone.

Behind us, Wang Zhong and the other Tiger-Brave officers began at once to pile the dead across the entrance.

The Emperor was lost in panic. Cold sweat had soaked him through, and the fingers he gnawed and gnawed were thick with blood.

"It was my fault... I ruined everything... I thought the Minister of Works, too ill to move, was the perfect chance... I endured twenty years, and I could not endure a mere two months..."

"Your Majesty! Your Majesty!"

"Your Majesty, compose yourself!"

He was sunk in the extremity of panic, dry-heaving without cease, biting his own lips until the blood came. And toward that emperor—

Cao Cao's shout.

And the roar of his army, which had the whole palace surrounded.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

The soldiers' cries and stamping grew ever rougher. The whole palace shuddered as if the earth itself were quaking, and they pounded the floor with their spear-butts to stage pure terror.

The Emperor's mind frayed further with every blow. Noble Consort Dong, pregnant, clutched his blood-smeared sleeve, as terrified as he. Empress Fu soothed the two of them however she could.

"Your Majesty!"

"!"

"Come to your senses! It is not over!"

I clapped, hard, pulled every eye to me, and pointed at Guan Yu.

"Your Majesty, the Commander of the Tiger-Brave Guards is here. Issue an imperial command this instant, and order the men of Minister Cao — they have come all the way to the Emperor's own bedchamber — to withdraw. In the absence of the Grand General and the General of Chariots and Cavalry, the Tiger-Brave Guards obey none but Your Majesty."

"Ah..."

"Will you not save Her Majesty the Empress and Her Ladyship the Consort? Hear me, and I can at least keep those two alive!"

"!!!"

One last play.

Since it had come to this — the escape of myself, Guan Yu, and our companions, and, in this very place, the saving of Empress Fu and Noble Consort Dong as well.

Because I had promised.

"Is that... possible?"

"Do you remember? I said I would return loyalty in exact measure to the trust you placed in me. That moment is now."

"L-Lord Guan... Commander of the Tiger-Brave... Guards. At once... silence... the Minister of Works' army that is driving me mad..."

"I receive the imperial command!"

Guan Yu bowed, eyes full of resolve, and strode from the bedchamber.

The Tiger-Brave Guards waiting outside set the Green Dragon Blade in his hand, and his back blazed with a presence that could have held a host of a million.

"Leave the Empress. Kill that insolent consort bitch, and leave the Son of Heaven be."

"Minister, she is a woman who carries the blood of the imperial house. If we are careless—"

"And what did the house of that blood-bearing bitch do to me?"

Xun You, startled, tried to stop him, but before Cao Cao's rage he could not get another word out.

Xun Yu, at his side, had remonstrated more than once. There was no stopping Cao Cao now.

Thud.

Dong Cheng, wrecked by the brutal torture of the Court of Judicial Review, was flung down before the inner palace, and Cao Cao shouted again.

"Your Majesty! Come out at once and give the command!"

Then Dong Cheng, sprawled in his own blood, pushed himself up and cried out.

"Cao Mengde... so in the end you mean to desecrate even the imperial house..."

"I am only finding, within that house, those who agreed to seek this man's life — and dragging out the woman who must die under the law of kin-punishment."

"Vicious bastard... all of it was raised by me alone..."

"Then why didn't you say so in front of the men in the black masks?"

He was mocking the dying Dong Cheng to the last, drawing breath to shout again, when—

BOOM!

The gates of the inner palace burst open, and Guan Yu stood there.

In an instant thousands of Ministry of Works soldiers leveled spear and blade. Guan Yu, eyes wide, drove the Green Dragon Blade into the ground.

"What hall do you think this is, that you dare such an atrocity before the Son of Heaven's inner palace? The Commander of the Tiger-Brave Guards who protects His Majesty commands you: disperse at once!"

Cao Cao looked at him and called out as if he had expected nothing else.

"Yunchang, it's over. For the sake of what's between us, no harm will come to you. Go quickly and tell His Majesty so."

"Cao Mengde! Hear me plainly. Unless you kill me and walk over my corpse, that will not happen!"

At Guan Yu's spirit, that vast host of Cao Cao's flinched.

Cao Cao regarded him with a pained face and gestured.

In that instant some of the Tiger-Brave Guards who had come out with Guan Yu looked at one another — and turned their swords on him.

The Ministry of Works men planted inside the Tiger-Brave Guards were not one or two.

Blades leveled at both his sides. In the moment they thought they had him—

Crack.

"Ghk..."

SHHHK!

With the butt of the Green Dragon Crescent Blade he smashed the officer on his right and broke every rib in the man's body, then took the officer on his left's head with the blade itself in a single stroke.

Drenched in blood, Guan Yu swept a hand down his beard and called quietly to the Tiger-Brave Guards behind him.

"Anyone else inclined to play the fool — step forward."

"...!"

Among them, surely, were men who followed Guan Yu in truth, men who had gone in as Cao Cao's plants, and men who had never wanted any part of this and only wanted to live. Each was different. Here, none of them could think at all.

Follow Guan Yu, and you might live at his back. Heed Cao Cao and raise a blade against Guan Yu, and you died. No exceptions.

"Do I look like a man who dies to a rabble of rebel scum? Does this Guan Yunchang amuse you so?"

Before thousands of Cao Cao's elite he poured out a tremendous killing will — a fight to the death, ready to slay them all and die with them if that was what it took to hold this place to the end.

They had already slaughtered the clans of Dong Cheng, Wang Zifu, Chong Ji, Wu Zilan, and Ji Bi to the last soul, and now they meant to kill the palace woman who carried the Emperor's seed, the one who galled Cao Cao most of all. Guan Yu stood in the way, and Cao Cao's face twisted.

"If I simply kill him, how many troops do I need to hold Xuande once his rage breaks?"

"Minister, the moment you do, we must face Yuan Shao and Liu Bei at the same time."

"Then how do I remove Guan Yu — the most galling man in that scene?"

Xun Yu answered at once.

"A pledge, I should think, that we will not touch Liu Bei, and will send him safely away. A pity, that an emperor he has known for less than two years should weigh against a brother of half a lifetime."

In any case, to end this slaughter, either everyone hanged or this side died.

Xun Yu himself thought it better to take the chance: let the Emperor become nothing but a tool for stamping seals, let the Minister of Works assume every affair, and change the very order of Han.

Cold. But that was politics. They had drawn the sword first; that they should die by it was regrettable, and unavoidable.

Xun Yu branded it into his mind.

"That long-bearded bastard. I've been wanting a bout with him."

"Zhongkang!"

"Minister, I'll bring you that man's head."

Xu Chu loosened his fists, took up his iron halberd, and strode toward Guan Yu.

Guan Yu's face was pure scorn. He tightened his grip on the Green Dragon Crescent Blade.

"Your Majesty. I will ask you once more, here and now."

"Speak. Anything... speak!"

"Your Majesty will live. And I can save Her Majesty the Empress, the imperial prince of one year who is with you now, and Noble Consort Dong, who carries the dragon's seed. All of them."

"T-truly?"

"But the price, for Your Majesty, will be bitter beyond measure. You will lose your imperial father-in-law. You will lose the ministers who have stood with you. Cao Cao will seize the whole of the court. And you will keep an empty throne alone — a year, five years, ten — waiting, and waiting again, holding that seat as the price of having saved them all."

This was sincere. It was also the last scheme I had left, and a gamble.

The Emperor came to me and seized my hand.

His hand was soaked in blood from all the biting and tearing. He gripped me with it, and there were tears in his eyes.

"I will do it. Even if I am left alone, I will keep the altars ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of the state, and I will keep my woman and my child!"

Not the sovereign's we. I, and my. He clutched my hand with everything he had and gave me the truth of him.

An emperor whose every associate had died, burning for revenge.

A foolish emperor, tormented all his life by the wound of a will unfulfilled.

But in this last moment I understood a desperation keener than the history I knew — that he would protect at least his family — and I understood that he was leaning on me.

"And Your Ladyship."

"H-hhk?!"

"It will be truly agonizing, and truly frightening. You will lose every soul of your natal house at a stroke, and in Xudu every blade will hang over you."

"...!"

Noble Consort Dong shook. The Emperor, Empress Fu, and the matron who had shown her face drew her in and soothed her together.

"You must endure. Your body is no longer yours alone. You share it with the imperial child in your womb. Overcome this ordeal. Show the bearing of a mother who can carry on the blood of the Han imperial house, and live in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hope of the day you meet His Majesty again. I will preserve your life in this place so that you may."

"Deputy Imperial Censor..."

"It will be the most painful thing, and the hardest. Overcome it. Your servant will pray with all his loyal heart."

I would save them. Every one of them.

In this desperate hour, the political cards I could play against Cao Cao, the justifications, the leverage to bargain — I would drag all of it out and settle this!

"Your Majesty! Your servant, Commander of the Tiger-Brave Guards!"

And Guan Yu came back of a sudden, painted in blood.

He set the Green Dragon Blade down first and made his greeting, then flung off the battle robe soaked through, unbound his cap, and — in an unstained jacket and trousers — held out what he had brought.

"What... is this?"

"A memorial from the traitor Cao Cao. He swore that only if it were delivered unopened and whole would Your Majesty be safe, and so this commander... could not burn it. I simply brought it."

Emperor Xian took it and at once placed it in my hands.

Cao Cao's ultimatum.

I tore it open and read it aloud to them all.

"!"

"Hm?!"

Stripped of his post as Commander of the Tiger-Brave Guards, where he had held the palace and barred the gates to the last — promoted to general on the spot, and then assigned to Liu Bei.

Guan Yu's face flushed redder and redder. The fine veins stood out. Both fists trembled.

Leave now, and he could meet Liu Bei. Refuse to leave, and he would meet his end beside the Emperor and break the Oath of the Peach Garden.

The realm? His chivalry? His brothers?

Cao Cao had played a truly vicious hand.

Send Guan Yu away. And hand over Noble Consort Dong...

All three were enormous. And the meaning was naked: clear every one of them out, and finish it.

"Th-this..."

"Your Majesty!"

As the three women of the palace showed their tears, I addressed the Emperor.

"Accept the first."

"W-what!?"

"Baijin! You, at a time like this—"

"Then Brother Yunchang can reach Imperial Uncle Liu alive. Of that there is no doubt."

"Baijin, what do you take me for, to say such a thing!"

"And whether it takes years or decades, Imperial Uncle Liu, Brother Yunchang, and Brother Yide will come back to Xudu to save His Majesty again."

"!!!"

The Emperor, who had said he trusted me, took up the bamboo slip and nodded.

"Commander of the Tiger-Brave Guards. You have labored long."

"Your Majesty!"

"I will count the days until we meet again. You belong at Imperial Uncle Liu's side."

Hot tears spilled from both of Guan Yu's eyes, and he beat his brow against the floor again and again.

Then I spoke to everyone in that room.

"Forgive the discourtesy for a moment. I wish to call out to all who are here. I will make my farewell in a single line."

I pressed my hands together and spoke as firmly as I could.

"L-live..."

"Baijin! You must come back alive. My elder brother, Yide, and I will come to save you."

"Once Brother Yunchang has gone, I will follow. After I have secured Her Majesty the Empress and Her Ladyship the Consort."

I said it again, calmly, to Guan Yu as the tears poured from him.

"Brother Yunchang — we'll gather again around Xiaopei or Shuchun, won't we? Live, and let us see each other again."

"B... Baijin... If you die, I will exterminate that enemy's nine clans."

And so we resolved to get Guan Yu out first.

Of the Tiger-Brave Guards, many would follow him, Wang Zhong among them.

Cao Cao would fill the places they left with a new Tiger-Brave Guard and drive the Emperor into a desperation still deeper.

But for the wife and children he loved, and to atone for the mistake he had made now, he had said he would endure to the end.

So from here on, I would open a road to live for those who remained as well.