The Demon King's Castle: Luoyang (2)
I had Xiahou Dun, Zhang Liao, and Huchuquan kept well apart, and spoke with Cao Cao in something close to a whisper.
"You'd left the Prince and the Empress in a Daoist's house?"
I'd thought I was keeping my voice down, but Cao Cao seemed to find even that too loud. He hissed a quiet shh and swept a look around us.
"That's why the elder prince is called Marquis Shi."
Left in the care of a Daoist named Shi Zimiao — hence, Marquis Shi. Come to think of it, they say Emperor Xian, Liu Xie, who grew up under Empress Dowager Dong, is called Marquis Dong. Liu Xie becoming Prince of Bohai and then Prince of Chenliu only happens after his elder brother, Liu Bian, takes the throne.
"And Daoists of unknown origin, come from Ji Province, were coming and going from Shi Zimiao's house?"
"I confirmed that the eunuchs Zhang Rang, Feng Xu, and Xu Feng were visiting as well. The Governor of Henan, He Jin… well, he's the Empress's elder brother, so that much one can allow…"
"The man who elevated her all the way to Empress was Regular Palace Attendant Zhang Rang, so there has to be some thread connecting them."
Cao Cao looked at me as if to ask how I could possibly know that.
"I don't call myself the Great Shaman of Tengri for a joke."
"Ah. That's right. I hadn't imagined you could see even that far."
Of course, this was all built on my knowledge of the Three Kingdoms.
"The wife of Zhang Rang's adopted son — Zhang Rang's daughter-in-law — is the Empress's younger sister."
"So the Emperor and the He clan are in-laws, and the He clan and Zhang Rang's house are in-laws. Which means once we're inside the palace, the ones to watch are…"
"Zhang Rang and the eunuchs around him. Well, I come from that side of the family, so as long as you stay close to me there shouldn't be much to fear."
Cao Cao was the grandson of the legendary Regular Palace Attendant Cao Teng. Plenty of eunuchs still inside the palace remembered Cao Teng's authority, or owed him debts of gratitude. If Zhang Rang ever tried to move against Cao Cao, word would reach Cao Cao's ear through some other eunuch.
So even eunuchs had a code of loyalty among their own, then.
"If we leave the eunuchs of Zhang Rang's faction for Consultant Cao to handle, the ones we really need to watch are the He clan, aren't they?"
"He Jin especially — the man sitting as Governor of Henan right now."
He Jin…?
In most Three Kingdoms adaptations he comes off as a man who rose too fast, a fool who sat in a high seat doing nothing, yanked this way and that until the eunuchs killed him.
What was he actually like?
"That's something words can't convey. See him once for yourself and you'll understand what I mean."
With that, Cao Cao led us to his home. More precisely, he guided us to one of the Cao family's villas outside the walls of Luoyang.
There is a mistake a great many Three Kingdoms adaptations make: inside the city of Luoyang, or Chang'an, there is almost no residential quarter for ordinary people. Tang Chang'an was such a vast city that people tend to draw the Han capitals the same way — but Tang Chang'an doesn't even stand on the same ground as Han Chang'an.
In Han Chang'an, the palaces occupied two-thirds of the city's area. The rest was government offices and markets, more or less. In Han Luoyang, the palaces took up half. Again, the remainder was offices and markets. Here, at least, there was a little room for a residential district — but of course those houses did not belong to common folk. They belonged to people with money and power.
Which is to say, the spectacle of a triumphant general welcomed by the capital's commoners pouring into the streets simply does not exist in this age.
The Cao family did keep a mansion inside Luoyang, but Cao Cao, it seemed, preferred the villas — the better to stay out from under his father's eye.
"Still, if one wants to answer the Emperor's summons quickly, it's better to be inside Luoyang."
When we entered Cao Cao's villa, a young man met us who looked a great deal like Xiahou Dun, only a shade more high-strung and lean.
"Miaocai. Watch these two boys."
Miaocai… Xiahou Yuan only nodded, saying nothing.
"The Xiongnu Khagan and I will go straight to the imperial palace."
So Huchuquan and Zhang Liao would stay under Xiahou Yuan's guard, while Xiahou Dun would protect Cao Cao and me. Cao Cao's own martial skill was said to be excellent, but Xiahou Dun had the bigger frame.
I left the horse I'd ridden at Cao Cao's villa as well. We went on to the palace by carriage, and inside it Cao Cao's talk continued.
"The eunuchs may have their own reasons, but coming and going from the house of Shi Zimiao — the Daoist who sheltered the Empress — would be impossible without the Emperor's will."
"Meaning His Majesty is conveying something to this Daoist Shi Zimiao through the Empress and Marquis Shi?"
"The way I see it, Shi Zimiao is only a middleman. The ones actually dealing with the Emperor are those 'Daoists from Ji Province.'"
Cao Cao paused, then added:
"Xiongnu Khagan. Before I took the post of Gentleman Consultant, I served as Commander of the Northern District."
Where he'd beaten Jian Shuo's uncle to death.
"I picked up a number of… methods, in those days. There is no one who comes and goes from Luoyang whose identity I cannot, in the end, uncover. The ones who took a dead general's orders, rode out beyond the Wall, and colluded with Tanshihuai — I caught them too, eventually."
"But you couldn't find out what kind of people the Daoists from Ji Province were."
"It's the sort of case where I can guess their nature precisely because this Cao Cao could not find out who they were."
In other words, they were more secretive and quicker than Cao Cao himself. These were no ordinary men. And so Cao Cao had narrowed the candidates sharply, down to a group more skilled than he was.
"So Consultant Cao believes those Daoists belong to Taiping Dao. And beyond that… you suspect some bargain was struck between Taiping Dao and the Emperor."
"Taiping Dao's expansion came from treating the sick in every province, free of charge. The treatments themselves were simple enough — drinking water with burned talismans in it, resting in a clean room, and so on — and yet their results were far too good to be explained by that alone."
I remembered something I'd heard from Zhang Jue and Hua Tuo.
"The people's illnesses come from toil and hunger. If you solve those, wouldn't the sickness lift on its own?"
"Sickness is sickness. Even if hunger weakens the body and a weakened body lets illness in, the illness that has already entered must still be driven out. I don't believe Taiping Dao's results were achieved merely by handing out food and ending hunger."
"Then what?"
"His Majesty once ordered the eunuchs to distribute medicinal herbs across the land, because the epidemics were so severe. What if Taiping Dao was the one that received those medicines and used them to treat the sick in every region?"
Hua Tuo had always been a physician. Zhang Jue traveled not as a Daoist but in the guise of a doctor. And those strangely numerous physicians… and the people in yellow headscarves who went with them.
"So Taiping Dao's following grew with His Majesty the Emperor's support?"
"That's how I see it."
Even in the Three Kingdoms, there are accounts of eunuchs colluding with Taiping Dao. Zhang Rang, Xu Feng, Feng Xu — those three were accused of collusion, or executed for it.
And Emperor Ling, Liu Hong, standing behind them?
…The picture was starting to look very strange.
I decided not to mention that I had met Zhang Jue in Changshan, in Ji Province.
"Taiping Dao is, in the end, a gathering of Daoists and the common people who follow them. Is expanding that following really a problem?"
"The moment they strike a 'bargain' with His Majesty, they are threat enough."
There was something odd in Cao Cao's words. It wasn't Taiping Dao itself he found dangerous — it was that Taiping Dao had taken Liu Hong's hand. Which meant Cao Cao, without quite saying so, regarded Emperor Ling, Liu Hong, as the truly dangerous one.
"And that's not all. Daoists who preach wuwei and naturalness gathering into an 'organization' — that has never happened before in history."
The Greater Fangs, the Lesser Fangs… those structures would function as a military organization the moment the Yellow Turban Rebellion broke out.
"And Zhang Jue, the Great Worthy Teacher said to sit at the summit of that organization, never shows himself… which gives this Cao Cao all the more reason to be wary."
It wasn't that Zhang Jue never showed himself. He traveled in a guise Cao Cao would never expect, and so Cao Cao never saw him. Cao Cao, like me, seemed to assume that the patriarch of a sect this vast would dress in some distinctive Daoist fashion.
But the real Zhang Jue just wandered around looking like a farmer. Take away the wise, kindly face and he looked like any other peasant.
"Now. Let me tell you again what you must watch. His Majesty must not realize that I suspect the relationship between the Emperor and Taiping Dao."
Empress He, the prince Liu Bian, and even that Daoist Shi Zimiao had all, I was told, already entered the imperial palace. Meaning that even now, past the fifth month of the year 183, the bargain between the Emperor and Taiping Dao was still in force.
It may even have grown closer. Until the catastrophe of 184, at any rate.
"I came to Luoyang because of a promise — that Taiping Dao's power has swollen into something ominous, and that if the worst comes I will mobilize the Xiongnu army. 'Consultant Cao's suspicions appear to be aimed at Taiping Dao alone.' That's the story."
I watched Cao Cao nod, and asked:
"What is it that Consultant Cao actually wants of me?"
Cao Cao answered with a faint smile, as if pleased to be understood.
"As it happens, the Xiongnu Khagan is eleven years of age. The same as Marquis Shi — Liu Bian. Why not try becoming friends?"
"Get close to the Prince… and while I'm inside the palace, dig up the kinds of stories Consultant Cao would like to hear?"
"If that earns you His Majesty's favor, it would be no bad thing for the Xiongnu Khagan either."
"No bad thing, I suppose."
It would be useful, certainly, if I could expand my influence among the Southern Xiongnu with the Emperor's name at my back, or intervene more deeply in the Central Plains civil war that was the Three Kingdoms.
And yet I couldn't shake the feeling that Cao Cao was throwing me into this dangerous place — the imperial palace of Luoyang.
If we became mutually dependent this way, it would also keep the investment Cao Cao had sunk into me from going to waste. Though if I happened to die, none of it would matter.
Or was Cao Cao testing whether I was the kind of man who could walk out of Luoyang's palace alive?
Well. For me, this was an opportunity too. A chance to intervene in the very course of the Three Kingdoms, starting with the Yellow Turban Rebellion itself.
"Consultant Cao."
The eunuchs offered their respects to Cao Cao, who walked ahead of me.
"Ah."
Cao Cao seemed to remember every one of them. He called each by office or courtesy name, took their hands, and exchanged a few easy words, as if genuinely glad to see them.
The young master of a great eunuch house. That, I realized with certainty, was what Cao Cao was.
Whatever the eunuchs felt inside, they all looked friendly enough on the surface. If they were friendly on the inside as well, it meant they would take Cao Cao's side when he fell into danger. Even if the friendliness was only a surface, it meant they would still grant him various conveniences so long as the Cao family stood strong.
Pretense and ceremony, then, were not evils in themselves.
"Yuanrang, wait here."
"Understood."
Before a certain gate, Cao Cao told Xiahou Dun to stand by. Xiahou Dun, it seemed, could go no farther. Perhaps because of that, Cao Cao himself looked a little tense.
How long did we walk?
We… came face to face with a man.
A few years older than Dong Zhuo, perhaps? This one was a big man too.
"Governor of Henan."
Cao Cao paid his respects.
Governor of Henan… He Jin!
But more than the name He Jin, more than the look of the man, something came rolling off him that made my body want to draw in on itself. A smell — no, smell was too clean a word for it. A residue, something that clung the way a smell clings.
Where had I felt this before?
He Jin looked at Cao Cao, then tilted his body slightly and sent his gaze toward me.
I understood.
This was the feeling of a place where sheep, horses, cattle — animals of every kind — had been slaughtered. Not the butcher's own smell. The feeling of the ground where those animals had died.
How could a human being give off something like that?
He Jin muttered.
…What?
Was he looking at me and calling me… fresh meat?
"…A child raised on fresh meat."
Cao Cao answered in my place.
"Yes. A Hu child from the north."
"I've dealt with the Hu myself. …He looks highborn."
"He is the grandnephew of the Xiongnu Chanyu."
"Hmph."
He Jin made a sound like a snort and turned his eyes back to Cao Cao.
"If you're on your way to see His Majesty, we'll go together."