On Moving the Capital to Yingchuan
Five men had gathered at Yuan Shao's villa in Yingchuan Commandery, Yuzhou. Ever since he had completed the mourning rites for his stepfather and his stepmother—three years apiece, six years in all—Yuan Shao had claimed a fame that would not fade, and young men who styled themselves champions of the Pure Stream had come seeking him in droves.
Yuan Shao had originally lodged, as clan law required, with Yuan Feng—his uncle on paper, his true father in blood—at the Yuan family mansions in Luoyang or Runan. But the Pure Stream worthies had traipsed in and out of those houses so freely that the family itself took alarm. It was his other uncle, Yuan Wei, who finally dressed him down.
"Have you no idea how dangerous it is to traffic with Pure Stream men, after the Disasters of the Partisan Prohibitions fell upon them? Are you truly set on ruining this house?"
And so Yuan Shao had acquired a villa in Yingchuan Commandery, far enough from both Luoyang and Runan to keep his uncles' eyes at bay. There, beyond the reach of Yuan Feng and Yuan Wei, he received the celebrated scholars of the age—and began to pick out the men he would take as his own.
The fruit of that labor was five men who had appointed themselves Yuan Shao's chief counselors. From Yingchuan Commandery in Yuzhou came the brothers Xun Chen and Xun Yu, along with Guo Tu. From Nanyang Commandery in Jingzhou came Xu You and Feng Ji.
Each of them carried his own reasons. Xun Yu, for one, had sought Yuan Shao out to wash away the stain of a marriage his father had forced upon him—a union with the adopted daughter of a eunuch. That the betrothal had been struck before Xun Yu could even speak made no difference. The yardstick of the Pure Stream was mercilessly exacting, and on the road to office by recommendation, Xun Yu was only one rival among many.
What they shared was a hunger to make their own names on the back of Yuan Shao's fame. Some, too, nursed the hope that advancement would come easier in the service of a man who possessed both reputation and a great house behind him. Xun Chen, Xun Yu's elder brother, and Guo Tu were of that stamp.
Xu You had been close to Yuan Shao and Cao Cao since childhood, and had drifted into Yuan Shao's service as a matter of course. Feng Ji had followed his old friend from home.
Of the five, all but Xu You were waiting for him to return with news from Luoyang. They passed the hours as they always did—reading, arguing this point or that, sitting in meditation, strolling the courtyard—until at last the man they had been waiting for appeared at the villa.
"Ziyuan!"
Feng Ji was first to call Xu You by his courtesy name, and at the sound the other three came running.
"How did it go?"
Xu You glanced at the brothers Xun Chen and Xun Yu and gave a wry smile.
"That nephew of yours is a difficult man."
The nephew in question was Xun You. He was older than both Xun Chen and Xun Yu, but by the ranking of generations he stood as their nephew.
Xu You's gaze shifted to Feng Ji.
"Still, we got He Jin moving, Brother Yuandao."
"Well done."
Feng Ji clapped him on the shoulder. Guo Tu, who had stood silent until then with his arms folded, cocked his head.
"What I still don't understand is why Xun Gongda went and attached himself to that butcher."
"Now, now."
Feng Ji clicked his tongue at the word butcher.
"He Jin was Grand Administrator of Yingchuan. Of course he's using the connections he made then in Luoyang. How does cutting the man down for his birth serve the Pure Stream now?"
Guo Tu answered with a laugh.
"Yuandao isn't even from Yingchuan, yet you're remarkably keen on the dream we Yingchuan men cherish."
"It isn't Yingchuan's dream alone. Call it the dream of the Pure Stream entire."
Feng Ji's left hand pointed northwest, toward Luoyang; his right indicated the Yingchuan earth beneath their feet.
"The Liu clan, as Qin Shi Huang once did, took Guanzhong as their center, conquered the Central Plains, and ruled from there."
Guo Tu nodded along—yes, yes—as if he had heard it all before.
"Two hundred years later, the great men of the age helped Emperor Guangwu pacify the realm once more—and in return, they had the emperor move his seat east, to Luoyang."
"But the Liu clan raised eight passes around that city, and so divided Luoyang from the Central Plains."
Just as Liu Hong in Luoyang regarded everything east of the city as a conquered foreign land, so too did the five men at Yuan Shao's villa regard the emperor's capital as a place apart from the Central Plains.
"Another two hundred years have passed. The time has come to move the emperor farther east—at last, into the Central Plains themselves."
It was a distinction that set Confucianism sharply apart from Legalism. The Legalists saw the scholar-officials as nothing more than functionaries who executed the emperor's will. The Confucians saw them as men who might refuse an unjust command, a check against the throne's caprice. That quarrel of ideas had run from the age of the Hundred Schools, through the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States, down to the present hour. When Liu Hong in the west laid bare the hypocrisy of the Pure Stream and condemned their failings, the Pure Stream in the east condemned Liu Hong's autocracy and the rot it bred.
"If the emperor stays holed up in Sili, that kind of government will never come to pass. I may be a man of Nanyang Commandery in Jingzhou, but that is precisely why I say the emperor must come out here—into the open Central Plains, into Yingchuan Commandery."
"Yes, yes. I understand."
Guo Tu's answer was the sound of a man already bored. Beyond his shoulder, though, Xun Yu's eyes had begun to shine. He had followed his elder brother Xun Chen here to cleanse a ruined name through Yuan Shao—yet what he saw and heard in this house set the youngest of the five alight.
Xun Chen smiled gently and laid a hand on the backs of both Feng Ji and Guo Tu.
"Come, that's enough out here. Let's go in and talk. These aren't things to discuss while Brother Ziyuan stands there exhausted."
The five men went inside. When Yuan Shao's servants brought food, Xu You started wolfing it down at once.
"What good is stuffing your face? Talk while you eat—what happened in Luoyang?"
At Feng Ji's prodding, Xu You swallowed with a gulp, wiped his mouth roughly with the back of his hand, and began.
"As Brother Benchu said, He Jin—well, Gongze here would put it as 'a mere butcher,' but it seems he isn't without the ambition to rise as the old imperial in-laws once did."
Guo Tu had, in fact, been about to say a mere butcher. He shut his mouth.
"Xun Gongda seemed to be taking the measure of that ambition and helping He Jin gather strength in his own way. It will take time, but in the end he means to pry the man free of the eunuchs. Brother Benchu and I reached Xun Gongda at just the right moment."
"So you persuaded He Jin with Xun Gongda's help?"
"Something like that. The eunuchs—more precisely, we received word that the emperor is 'in collusion' with the Taiping Dao. Use that, and even if we can't drive the eunuchs out altogether, we can at least put the emperor in a very difficult place, no?"
"The emperor, if only to save face, will pin the blame on a handful of eunuchs and have them killed, and call the matter closed."
It was then that Xun Yu gave voice to a doubt.
"But Brother Ziyuan—wouldn't the eunuchs then harbor a grudge?"
Xu You grinned. He swallowed the words that had risen behind his teeth: Being a eunuch's son-in-law, you would know their minds.
"They would, of course. But when that hour comes, we use two things that are true of eunuchs."
"And those are?"
"The first is that a eunuch stakes his life on the emperor alone. Unless the sovereign is a political monster like the one we have now, the moment the emperor lets go of power, the eunuch's power vanishes with it. Likewise, a eunuch who has lost the emperor's favor is nothing but a castrate."
And so, Xu You went on—
"The way Regular Palace Attendant Zhang Rang took another of He Jin's younger sisters as his daughter-in-law, for instance—ah. Ahem. Ahem."
He had meant to be careful. Xun Yu's earlobes flushed red all the same. Xun Chen patted his younger brother's shoulder.
"I didn't mean to insult you, Wenruo. I apologize."
"You needn't. It's the truth. More than that—I would rather hear more of your wisdom, brother."
Xu You was, for a moment, impressed. This was a younger brother far his junior, a youth who had only lately undergone the capping rite and come of age—and already he knew how to swallow humiliation and still ask to be taught.
"Right. So. When a thing like that happens, the eunuchs will cry, on the one hand, 'How dare they raise a hand against us'—and on the other, they will go hunting for a strong man who will take their side the day they lose His Majesty's favor. Meaning even if He Jin puts a blade to their throats, there will be eunuchs who fawn instead over He Jin, or his younger brother He Miao, or the Empress, or those younger sisters of his—Zhang Rang's daughter-in-law among them—and beg to be spared."
This time Guo Tu pressed him.
"And the second?"
"The other is that eunuchs are not all one faction. The offices a eunuch can rise to are few. Some, like Mengde's grandfather, build a house that struts and prospers. Others spend their whole lives sweeping the palace floors and die old with a broom in their hands."
"So we make use of the rival eunuchs eyeing the dead men's vacant posts?"
"Handle them that way and you never make enemies of the eunuchs as a whole. You simply use, to the hilt, the ones who will take our side. That is all."
Guo Tu nodded. Feng Ji turned Xu You's words over in his mind, then spoke.
"So we drag into the light something that will put the emperor and the eunuchs in a corner—and in that gap, we strengthen He Jin."
"He Jin's family is, well, as Gongze here put it, a butcher's household. He has no backing. And if the Pure Stream offers to be that backing? He Jin has come over to us."
"Then… we press the emperor using the Taiping Dao affair as our pretext?"
Xu You hesitated. Yuan Shao had spoken even of forcing an abdication, but Xu You thought that far too dangerous. Yuan Shao seemed to have the emperor's younger brother, the Marquis of Hefei, in mind for the throne—yet if they meant to keep working with He Jin, wouldn't it be better to depose Liu Hong and raise Liu Bian? Or was He Jin himself, in Yuan Shao's calculations, just another card to be played and thrown away?
"Well, it isn't the sort of thing that happens in a single stroke. Step by step—we ought to think at least as far as seeing the Partisan Prohibitions lifted."
And with that, Xu You glossed the rest away.
"Colonel!"
I shouted toward Yuan Shu, who was galloping alongside the carriage.
"What now, Khagan?"
Cao Cao, at least, had treated me according to my station—a prince, a Huwu held in honor among the Xiongnu. Yuan Shu gave me none of that.
"Give me a bow and arrows as well! I am a Xiongnu—I can fight."
Yuan Shu's brow creased for a heartbeat. Then he tossed me his own bow. I caught it cleanly, and he grinned and slid the quiver gently into the carriage. To do that without losing speed spoke well of Yuan Shu's horsemanship—and offered a glimpse of what the Yuan clan saw fit to drill into its sons.
I ran my hand along the bow he had given me. It was no Xiongnu weapon… but even at a glance it was a piece of expensive craft. Yuan Shu was a man of luxury, yet he was the sort who shared that luxury with the men around him. He had been the same when he pressed tangerines on a young boy renowned for his filial piety.
"Xiongnu! Look to the right!"
I turned my head at Yuan Shu's shout. A band of cavalry had come into view.
"That Erzi bastard may be born under a rotten star, but he isn't stupid. He'll have planned for the chance we'd run for the open country. And outside the walls, there's no one whose face he needs to save."
They were, broadly speaking, soldiers of his own house—yet Yuan Shu only snorted and cut his eyes at me.
"A living, moving target, courtesy of Lord Yuan Gonglu. Go on. Shoot."
I drew the string without hesitation. In the instant the carriage's rattling seemed to slow, I loosed the arrow.