Watch Your Back (3)
The tale that the Emperor had fallen prisoner to the Yellow Turbans carried more weight than the one about him joining hands with the Taiping Dao and casting the Pure Stream aside. Or rather, that was the version the Pure Stream and the scholar-gentry across the realm preferred to believe.
A man might criticize His Majesty's elevation of eunuchs. He might condemn the cruelty of the Disasters of the Partisan Prohibitions. An emperor, even so, remained an emperor.
Surely His Majesty would not have thrown in with the Taiping Dao and forsaken everything the Pure Stream stands for...? That thought drew their hearts toward the second story.
Yes. His Majesty was taken prisoner by the Yellow Turbans while on imperial progress. That was how they chose to see it.
Even so, a crisis remained a crisis. Had an emperor ever been taken prisoner before?
At most there was the siege of Baideng Mountain, when the Grand Progenitor, Emperor Gao, had been surrounded by Modu Chanyu of the Xiongnu. Even then, Emperor Gao had not become a captive. He had submitted to a humiliating surrender, yes—but he had not been taken.
Wang Mang? He had not been captured. He had died in a rebellion, and he had been a usurper who merely styled himself emperor besides.
The King of Huaiyang, Liu Xuan? He had worn the crown for a brief moment, but Heaven's Mandate had never been his. That was why he was murdered, and why the Mandate passed to our Emperor Guangwu.
Wait. The Mandate of Heaven...? A certain shock passed through the minds of some Pure Stream notables.
If the present Emperor, Liu Hong, had been taken by the Yellow Turbans—if he were ultimately killed—to whom would the Mandate belong?
To the Emperor's second son, said to remain in Luoyang—the Marquis of Dong, Liu Xie?
Or would an entirely new dynasty arise, a dynasty of the Taiping Dao? Would the Confucian world collapse, and a Daoist world take its place?
Reactions ran the full range: men who swore such a thing must never come to pass, and men who, in the quiet of their own hearts, whispered, If that were so...
They called themselves Confucian scholars to the world. Inside, they were anything but uniform.
They agreed that a scholar-official's role was to "assist" the Emperor—yet they differed wildly on how far that assistance should reach. Some held that the Emperor need only trust and delegate, that the scholar-gentry should monopolize governance and at last realize the kingly way. Some invoked Confucian principle while insisting Legalist methods of rule were necessary. Some were Confucians who nonetheless honed the doctrines of the Military School. And some, declaring they had seen this coming all along, discarded the Confucian classics they had studied and began to eye the path of the Daoist adept.
Those who fancied themselves a little learned began, one by one, to choose their roads.
"The responses to the proclamation will sort our people from the rest. Your Excellency need only gather those who are 'ours' and lead them."
"...What is the point of all this, Gongda?"
He Jin asked as though he had not understood Xun You at all. The question, in fact, struck the heart of the matter. With the Emperor's alliance with the Taiping Dao all but certain, forcing the Pure Stream into open confrontation with them seemed meaningless. Done poorly, it was nothing but treason. In Ji Province, that was already what it had become.
"The Pure Stream men you speak of, scattered across the land, will fall to fighting one another because their minds do not agree. What possible meaning is there in Pure Stream killing Pure Stream?"
Xun You answered with his head still bowed in courtesy.
"I shall explain in order. First, this becomes a warning sent to the Emperor."
"A warning?"
"A warning that the Pure Stream, too, has strength, and that it must not be ignored. The ideal form would be for His Majesty to lift the Disasters of the Partisan Prohibitions, and for the Pure Stream and the Taiping Dao to divide the court between them, half and half. However..."
"My brother-in-law has already struck his bargain with the Taiping Dao. He thinks he has nothing left to fear, and he will wipe the Pure Stream out without a second thought."
"Your Excellency is quite right. That is why those who have chosen to turn—to the Emperor, which is to say, to the Turbid Stream—will move to suppress the Pure Stream, with release from the prohibitions as their condition."
"Won't that only weaken the Pure Stream?"
"Their numbers will shrink, yes."
He Jin's brow twitched, just slightly.
"But the land and the people left without a master—where do you imagine they will go? Into the ranks of the Taiping Dao? That is possible, I grant you. I believe, however, that if we arrange matters first, the Pure Stream men who have already chosen to turn can take that share for themselves."
Estates vast enough to cross a commandery's borders and rival an entire province. Estates so vast they overran even the borders between provinces.
"The men who will stand at the center of all that are the scholar-gentry of our Yingchuan... and of Nanyang."
In naming Nanyang, Xun You thought of men like Xu You and Feng Ji, natives of that commandery. He was not thinking of them alone.
"I speak out of turn, Your Excellency, but you come from a butcher's house. Even in Nanyang, your own commandery, the notables have not been quick to give you their support."
"That's so."
"If this affair wins you the backing of Nanyang's notables, placing the heir on the throne will become a far simpler matter. Your house, of course, will stand unshakable as the imperial in-laws."
Even as he said it, Xun You believed the support of Nanyang's notables would ultimately flow to Yuan Shao. How long would their pretense last—the pretense of backing He Jin only because Yuan Shao backed him?
Xun You himself was only using He Jin for the ultimate aims of Yingchuan's notables, was he not?
"The Pure Stream's numbers will fall, but the strength of each remaining house will only grow. Once every Pure Stream faction holds power enough to found a state of its own, the Emperor will never dare attempt a thing like this again. Your Excellency need only bind those powers into one, cast off the eunuchs' influence, and take your place as the pillar of the Luoyang court."
It was a pity, but it could not be helped that the roads they had each chosen now forked this way. That was how Xun You saw it. Those who had been shaken by rumor and taken the hands of the wrong men would be destroyed.
Among them would be men who had once shared Xun You's own convictions—about the politics an emperor ought to practice, about the proper shape of imperial power and the power of the scholar-gentry.
Even so, if their sacrifice meant that in the end the great Pure Stream houses could seize again the leading place in the Central Plains, was that not a sacrifice worth making? Xun You thought so. And if the reverse were true—if he himself were the one sacrificed for their sake—he believed he could accept that willingly as well.
He Jin looked down at him for a long moment. Then, as though something had only just occurred to him, he spoke.
"Work the butcher's trade long enough and the smell of blood soaks into you. The reek of grease and raw meat, too. There's one smell a butcher's nose never gets used to, though. Guts. The smell of shit."
"I beg your pardon?"
Xun You lifted his head a fraction, as though he had never imagined He Jin would speak of the butcher's trade.
"...It's nothing."
Xun You bowed his head again, and so he did not see the flicker of contempt that crossed He Jin's eyes.
Plenty of men are ready to see blood. Even this one, it seems, isn't ready for the shit that comes flying when you split a man open.
Huangfu Song, Administrator of Beidi, narrowed his eyes as he read the proclamation.
His uncle, Huangfu Gui, had been caught on the wrong side of a power struggle at the Luoyang court and had lived out an unhappy life. Huangfu Song had taken that life as a lesson. Whatever news came out of Luoyang, he did not believe it easily.
Where so many of the Pure Stream accepted the rumor that the Emperor had become a prisoner of the Yellow Turbans, Huangfu Song began by doubting the intent of the man who had spread it. And he doubted, too, why the proclamation had happened to reach his own hands.
"So they mean to use the Huangfu clan—my uncle's people—rather than Duan Jiong's faction, or Zhang Huan's."
Whoever had written the proclamation had wanted Huangfu Song to do something. To cry out that a terrible thing had befallen His Majesty, perhaps, and go rushing toward Luoyang in a panic.
"If the contents are true, this cannot be a secret edict from the Emperor."
And if the contents were false, it still could not be a secret edict from the Emperor.
Which meant that someone who was not the Emperor intended to move while His Majesty was away from Luoyang. Whatever that move might be. And that someone, right now, needed a military man outside the capital—a man like the present Administrator of Beidi.
To set a military man beyond Luoyang in motion, you would have to throw him a story sharp enough to cut.
"So the rumor that the Emperor has been captured is a lie."
He had reached that conclusion. He had already, however, no wish to remain in Beidi Commandery.
Huangfu Song summoned a retainer who had served the Huangfu house for many years.
"We go to Anding Commandery first. There we gather the men who still remember my uncle's name. I will join them to Beidi's troops and march on Luoyang."
Pretend to be taken in. Go to Luoyang, and watch. If it came to it, seizing the man behind the deception and taking the initiative for himself would not be a poor outcome either.
Zhu Jun, who had been staying in Luoyang, snorted the moment he saw the proclamation.
"The Pure Stream lot can't stand the bans anymore, it seems."
He flicked the cloth on which the proclamation was written back and forth in front of his son, Zhu Hu.
"What will you do, Father?"
"Do? What is there to do? I was growing bored. Time those people living in this pleasant Luoyang—who have no idea how fierce the soldiers of the Southern Yue can be—saw the strength we have built."
"But you are neither an Inspector nor an Administrator at present."
Zhu Hu was right. Zhu Jun had no troops to command.
"Then we gather them from this moment on. Yicong. Righteous followers."
Men who followed righteousness—or who followed out of loyalty. The word was close to "volunteer troops," but there were times when such men did not disband when the work was done, and simply became the leader's household soldiers.
"But Kuaiji Commandery is..."
"Far, yes. This father of yours, however, has had his eye on certain men."
Zhu Jun held up two fingers before Zhu Hu.
"Sun Jian, serving as a magistrate in Xu Province. Tao Qian, buying himself an office in Danyang Commandery."
He meant to have those two raise troops across Yang Province, Kuaiji Commandery—Zhu Jun's own homeland—included.
"Tao Qian is a Danyang man, so he'll bring Danyang troops. Sun Jian already has a name in Wu and Kuaiji for putting down rebellions. Ever since he followed Administrator Zhang—Zhang Min—in crushing the Xu clan's revolt, I have thought, If I could only have that young man under me, how fine that would be."
Zhu Jun grinned.
"The same people who always kept us at arm's length, calling us Yue, come looking the moment they are desperate. We will not simply let ourselves be used."
One man alone rode north toward his homeland with a grave face: Lu Zhi of Zhuo Commandery, You Province.
He would see the Inspector. He would see the Administrators. He would look upon the face of his disciple Gongsun Zan, who was said to be distinguishing himself greatly in the Liaoxi region...
And then, suddenly, Lu Zhi thought of another face: his troublesome disciple, the boy from home. The thought drew a wry smile from him.
"I was always worrying over what that boy would become. The moment trouble starts, I find myself looking for him."
Arriving in Zhuo Commandery and searching for his disciple, Lu Zhi was startled. In the homeland he had not visited in so long, there was no one who did not know the name of Liu Bei.
Merchants, hearing that name, looked fearful and yet strangely familiar. The street toughs who swaggered about calling themselves wandering bravos caught sight of Lu Zhi and slunk away, watching his face.
When at last he found the place said to be Liu Bei's residence, Lu Zhi was astonished—and at the same time thought, Good.
"Master!"
For behind the disciple who had come out barefoot to greet him stood a line of men, muscle shifting under their skin.