Chapter 62

"Ciheng greets Cousin!"

Ciheng's crisp voice could pierce even the soft, unbroken drizzle. This was the first time Fan Xiliang had met anyone of the Zhuo family besides Zhuo Siheng, and a special warmth welled up in him; reading in an earlier letter that his cousin would bring Cousin Ciheng to Jiangnan Prefecture, he'd specially laid in a good many meeting-gifts, now all heaped at the post-station — so of course he hurried to pull cousin and cousin along to go there together.

"Cousin, you look so like my eldest brother!" Ciheng marveled on the way. "More than Fourth Brother even!"

Fan Xiliang and Zhuo Siheng looked at each other and both laughed. "How else do you think I picked my cousin out at a glance among so many candidates that year?" And with that, the joy on his brows only deepened; he turned to Zhuo Siheng: "Cousin, our family's look-alikes are more than just the two of us now!"

"You found Uncle?" Zhuo Siheng understood at once, and was overjoyed too.

Fan Xiliang nodded hard: "Yes! Found him!"

Their uncle — the younger brother of their two mothers, Song Liangyong — had once served as a registrar in Qingzhuo County, Jianmen Commandery, Bazhou. Fan Xiliang's post at Tongtai County, Xiangyi Commandery, Lingzhou lay hard by Bazhou; he'd made inquiries many times over his term with nothing to show for it, and asking after the old address, they'd told him there was no such person.

"But I've sent things over all these years; Uncle never wrote back, yet at the festivals he'd send local produce — how could he not be at the old place?" Zhuo Siheng was puzzled.

"I asked and asked before I learned that in his registrar days Uncle went up the mountains on an inspection with the magistrate, and fell by mischance and hurt both his feet. He can still get about, but must keep a cane always by him; with his crippled body it was hard to hold office, so he left it on grounds of illness, and now teaches at a small academy in Panjiang Commandery, Bazhou." Fan Xiliang sighed, as though moved by how hard the reunion had been — grieved and glad at once. "Only, a pity that I still hadn't found the family when our aunt died of illness two years ago; I couldn't help then. I've since brought Uncle to live and be cared for at the county-yamen residence. He and Aunt had a daughter — our cousin, that is — milk-named Luzhi, only eleven this year, and she looks so like us! Truly the very stamp of one family! It was she who saw to all those parcels of local produce, back and forth."

Wonder and joy, grief and gladness, turned over and over with a few words from his cousin — much as life itself does. Zhuo Siheng's delight at family reunited was real; yet, sensing the bitterness of his uncle's wandering, hard years, a sorrow too wound about his heart, and he wanted only to meet him soon, to see kin once more on his mother's behalf. So he said: "How is Uncle's health? If it's not convenient at your end, bring him to my house in the capital! Let cousin come up to the capital too — with A-Hui there she'd not be alone at least."

"Uncle's health is good, only his legs are bad; Lingzhou is mostly mountain roads, ill-suited to far travel, or I'd surely have brought him for this reporting-of-duty to see you. He wanted to send only cousin, but she's set on serving and caring for Uncle filially — how would she agree? So the two of them stay with me." Fan Xiliang broke into a smile again. "Cousin, you always used to say I was the most careful, the most understanding and caring one — how is it you now doubt I'm caring for our uncle well?"

Listening to the two of them, Ciheng was first grieved, and now amazed. Cousin Fan looked so steady and mild — who'd have known that talking with her elder brother he was like a child, willful enough to tease and make a little fuss! So everyone was like this before her brother; even the most old-headed of them, Fourth Brother Xiheng, would now and then can't-help-it drop low and look, truly and properly, like a younger brother.

Zhuo Siheng had long been used to being leaned on and teased this way, and laughed aloud: "It's not that I don't trust you. I'm worried your family will make trouble for you."

Fan Xiliang's manner had changed from the gloom and dull darkness of before he left the capital; there was confidence now in his ease, and he said with certainty: "From the capital to Lingzhou is three or four prefectures and a dozen-odd commanderies; my father is only an idle official in an idle office — his hand can't reach down to my locality. Caring for my own uncle on my own ground, what have I to fear?"

Zhuo Siheng was overjoyed beyond measure at the change in his cousin's temper, and had not yet opened his mouth to praise it when the carriage reached the post-station, and the three broke off and got down together.

The post-station's board and drink were thin, but there was meat and vegetable both; Zhuo Siheng and Fan Xiliang were both used to plain living and didn't pick and choose. The three of them ate together in one place and talked over the doings of the world in their several years apart, and it seemed three years had passed swift as a white colt bolting past a crack — all in a sudden, as it were.

They talked into the night; Zhuo Siheng told Ciheng to rest early, then he and his cousin left the post-station and walked along the lake-bridge onto a broad dike with an open view. The night breeze was faintly cool at the willows; there was no one about, and far off the lamplights flickered dim. The two each carried a snow-paper lantern, two orange dots shining and swaying side by side as they went, and only in a quiet, out-of-the-way spot did they begin to speak of the things that truly troubled them.

"I've written to have A-Hui look into your marriage." Knowing what Fan Xiliang cared about most, Zhuo Siheng picked that first. "The other party is the second daughter of Lin Pu, Vice-Minister of the Court of the Imperial Treasury; she was raised in the hometown at her grandparents' knee from childhood, and only brought up to the capital when she came of an age to be matched. Lord Lin is a fairly upright official; Academician Zeng has met the family's eldest son, and says he's of proper character — not yet in office, but with promise ahead. Only, Lord Zeng says there's one thing..."

"Miss Lin the second is of concubine birth." Fan Xiliang smiled. "I hear it was a mistake Lord Lin made in the hometown years ago — a daughter by a household maidservant — and for fear of harming his prospects she was only raised at her grandparents' knee."

"Cousin, do you mind it very much? If you do, you may as well tell your uncle-father. You're up half a rank now, only half a rank below your father; he may not be able to order you about as he used to, and can see well enough that your future is bound to rise who-knows-how-far above his." Zhuo Siheng himself minded none of this, but in so great a matter as marriage he felt his cousin's own view was what counted.

"Cousin, if I say I don't mind, will you believe me?" Fan Xiliang turned an open, straight look on him, yet still smiled as if at himself. "I'm only thinking — if my father and mother sought a match for my younger brother, would they be so unconcerned with birth?"

Afraid his cousin would drive himself into a corner, Zhuo Siheng stopped and said in earnest: "Your brother likely couldn't reach so good a match, more like."

"Why do you say that?" Fan Xiliang stopped short too.

"Your father is devoted to that brother, right enough; no wonder you feel it unfair. He begged and pulled strings all over to get your brother Ximing into Xiongya Academy. He's older than our Xiheng but reads worse. Xiheng told me when he came home that the masters and tutors urged your brother again and again to work; he flatly wouldn't listen, talked back a good deal, and once even came back late and was caught on the spot by the academy warden." Zhuo Siheng couldn't help shaking his head as he said it.

These were not things Uncle Fan would ever tell his cousin.

Fan Xiliang listened, dazed, as if he couldn't believe it, and pressed at once: "Truly? But Father writes that all's well at home, that my brother is doing splendidly in his studies, and that in two more years they'll let him sit the exams..."

Zhuo Siheng thought: your father sets such store by face — how would he willingly own that the eldest son he looks down on daily now has an excellent record and a bright road ahead, while the little son he dotes on and boasts of at every turn is a good-for-nothing wastrel? But to say it flat out would only grieve his cousin, so he wound round to a gentler phrasing: "Whether it's from fear of worrying you, I can't say. I only know that every ten-day break, when Xiheng came home, I could always draw out of him some fresh trick of that precious brother of yours. In the end, before I left the capital, his tests at the academy had come out unfit to look at time after time, and he'd already been dismissed and sent home."

For Fan Xiliang this was a bolt from a clear sky. From childhood it had been drummed into him that he wasn't clever, that his brother was the outstanding one; his father always said he expected nothing of him, that it all rested on the brother to bring the house glory. To hear now words that overturned his memory and his whole understanding left him, for a moment, in a daze.

Zhuo Siheng patted his shoulder and comforted him: "I told you before — small cleverness is easily seen, but true great wisdom isn't always shown to others. Still, your brother's affairs are for your two elders to fret over; you just do your own part well. I'll have Huiheng look further into the marriage; if you don't care for it, we can always find a way to refuse."

After a long while Fan Xiliang came back to himself and at last shook his head; he let out a light breath and said: "There's no getting round a parent's word, whatever one does. I only fear that one day my own married life will be like my father and mother's... that would be far too dull a life to live."

Zhuo Siheng had never asked about his aunt and uncle-in-law's affairs, but he could guess well enough: a man like his uncle-in-law was surely no good match, and his aunt's married years must have been hard at heart. What his cousin minded was never the woman's birth or station, but that he had no wish to tread the same road again, back into the kind of household he'd known as a child.

The Fan Xiliang of now was not the one of before; three years out in the world had broadened his mind with his view. He set the past down, took up his lantern again, and strolled on along the dike.

"Enough of that. That thing you had me look into earlier — I've turned up a thread of it, though not much."

Now it was Zhuo Siheng's turn to tense; his voice dropped without his meaning it to, and his steps slowed again: "Is the Li family still in Lingzhou?"

"No, they left late last summer — said an elder had fallen ill and they wanted to seek treatment in the capital, so they moved away, sold house and fields and all, and left nothing behind." Fan Xiliang spoke as he recalled it. "I hear their son Li Hao is in the capital, some minor military officer; which army's ranks he's under, that I don't know."

"The Imperial Guard." Zhuo Siheng said softly. "Their son serves in the Palace Front Command of the Imperial Guard."

"No wonder... In any case they were said to have connections, which is how they got the family into the capital; but since then there's been no more dealing with the old hometown." Fan Xiliang said thoughtfully. "Cousin, who is this man, really? Why have me look into it quietly and make no noise of it? Is he someone of consequence?"

Zhuo Siheng did not tell Fan Xiliang that this man named Li Hao was the assassin who had struck at the crown prince and the princess.

The emperor had given no order for a thorough inquiry into the attack, so the Imperial Guard had only combed its own ranks once over, and found that just one man had left his post without leave that day and afterward vanished — and that was Li Hao. His body had still not been found; perhaps he'd been washed off somewhere by the flash flood, there was no telling. Yet a shadow of doubt always lingered in Zhuo Siheng's heart. Especially after he'd once, in idle talk, asked Zhao Ting'an, who told him this guardsman was forty and still a lowly sentry with no military merit to his name; that he'd served early on at the Court of the Imperial Clan, and later been transferred back into the palace, and had never held any good post.

The Court of the Imperial Clan — wasn't that where the emperor had once been confined, in the South Tower behind it?

More and more shrouded and strange.

Zhuo Siheng always felt there was some hidden key in this matter that he had yet to learn, and that it might serve a use one day; so he'd asked after Li Hao's native place, and it happened to be the commandery next to his cousin's — where the man's family too had melted away without a trace before the autumn hunt: not a thing that could be called anything but uncanny.

Li Hao had not been named an assassin, only reported missing from his post that day, thought to have died in the flood. The attack on the crown prince remained an unsolved case, and by degrees no one spoke of it — which was perhaps the very outcome the emperor most wished to see.

"Cousin?"

Zhuo Siheng was long in answering; seeing his look muddled, not clear and steady as it always used to be, Fan Xiliang tried a tentative call.

"It's nothing — only an acquaintance asked me to look into it, nothing important. Since there's no lead, you needn't go seeking after it anymore." Zhuo Siheng made up his mind and turned back to Fan Xiliang his carefree, spring-breeze smile. "But to come back to it — you've changed a great deal in these three years, cousin. Careful and measured as ever in what you do, but the whole man is bright with spirit, not to be spoken of in the same breath as before."

Praised so by Zhuo Siheng, Fan Xiliang's lantern swayed wide with delight in his hand: "I feel there's something different about me too." He walked on at an easy pace, letting the night willows brush his shoulder; after a joy too great to hold came a satisfied sigh. "Only stepping out of the capital did I learn what the vastness of heaven and earth is, what the ten thousand shapes of the human world are... Don't laugh, cousin — when I first reached Tongtai County I had no ground under my words, forever fearing I'd be cut off or scorned, so I trembled and couldn't sleep at night; I had to work out what I'd do and say the next day before I could close my eyes a while. Half a month of that near wore me clean away. Until the day the county had a downpour, and the mountain road was blocked by slid rubble — cousin, you don't know, in Lingzhou where mountains are everywhere, when one stretch of road dies, the county and the outside are cut off from each other; and spring is just the season for shipping out tung oil, when all the county's people count on that money to buy seed and lay in grain, so everyone was frantic. So I led the yamen runners and every able-bodied man I could muster up the mountain road in the rain to dig it clear; for if we couldn't clear the tumbled rock in time, and the rain kept heavier, it would build into a flash flood and wash the road away, and then it would be too late for anything... I couldn't spare a thought for anything else then, only that I mustn't let the county meet so great a disaster the moment I took up the post and bring the people to grief. A hundred and more of us dug and cleared with our heads down a whole day; the next day a hundred or so came from the farther villages, and so the two lots worked in turns and got the road dug open again before the rain stopped..."

His cousin, meeting a natural calamity the moment he took office — Zhuo Siheng's heart drew tight to hear it, and he'd already turned full to him, pressing: "And then?"

Fan Xiliang smiled a pure smile: "We feared another slide, so we kept watch from a safer spot, and who'd have thought — within an hour the rain stopped, just as the dawn was breaking, and the valley was all gold and red, and across the clear, translucent blue sky there hung a rainbow of seven colors. I'd lived so many years in the capital and seen rainbows arch the sky in the outskirts too; but at that moment I was worn out to my very sinews, couldn't even lift my hand to take the water the folk held out to me — and yet I felt it the loveliest sight I'd seen in my whole life. Cousin, Lingzhou's mountains are so many, layer on layer, rugged and strange, with rivers below going who knows where; where there are mountains the sky seems especially high, and where there's water the valleys seem especially deep. Looking at that open, fairyland beauty between heaven and earth, and then at the elders and folk around me, I thought in my heart: heaven and earth hold such grandeur, and among them such living things — and here I'd penned myself in gloom and rancor and the trifles of home from childhood, refusing to open my heart, and worn myself down with it. How was I worthy of the heaven and earth and the people before me? Or of the charge you once laid on me, to go and do something in the wide high world? From that time I braced myself up."

Zhuo Siheng's own spirit boiled to hear it; he said "Good" three times over and slapped his cousin hard on the back, his voice too all astir: "'The great man is one who does not lose his child's heart' — the truth you've grasped is surely a hundred times stronger than any I put into words."

Before Zhuo Siheng left the Hanlin Academy, the emperor had had the Mencius in hand every day, never setting it down, and Lord Zeng's classics lectures had shifted from the histories to the philosophers, so Zhuo Siheng had reviewed a great deal along with them, and it was that he now brought out. Then, turning it over more, he thought that rather than "the great man is one who does not lose his child's heart," it would be more fitting to say "Having known the vastness of heaven and earth, one still cherishes the green of grass and trees" — but the topic had passed, and there was no need to go back and set it right.

"So now it falls to me to give my cousin a word of guidance." Fan Xiliang said it with the air of one who'd been through it. "You took such pains over me back then, cousin — looked into all manner of Tongtai County's ways for me, and helped me no end. After three years as a local father-and-mother official I've built up a little hard-won sense of things; will you hear a word from me?"

Zhuo Siheng said sincerely: "Of course I will."

The two had walked to the end of the long dike, in melting moonlight and a fine breeze, their thoughts and words alike clear and bright.

"Have you ever heard of cowing the new officer to break his edge?"

"Lord Zeng and Uncle Tong have spoken of it — that when a new official comes to a place, the ones already there will bring out some tricks to make things hard for him, to show off their standing and connections locally, or their power to have the last word, and give the new man a dressing-down, so he won't take a bold hand to anything that would harm their interests." Zhuo Siheng had prepared well for his out-posting.

Fan Xiliang had long reckoned his cousin a man of every talent, and knew he'd surely have thought the matter through beforehand; but he still clapped in admiration when he'd heard: "As one would expect of my cousin — provide against the rain before it falls, act and think as one. That's just the way of it. I took a small loss or two when I first came; but thanks to that mountain rain, afterward the people below mostly reckoned I put my own back into working for the county, a good man at bottom, and so they didn't press me too hard. But mine was only a lower county, mostly minor clerks filled in from local men, with a few document-secretaries and clerks taken on besides — simple folk in the end, who wouldn't do much against me. Where you're going, though, is a commandery-seat: not the governor of a whole commandery, but only a step below the prefect, and there'll likely be many turns and snags in it. You must think out your responses first."

"I've noted my cousin's words." Zhuo Siheng stood holding his lantern and said with a bright smile: "Only, newly come and knowing no one's insides, a single stroke of 'guard' can guard against those who carry a mind to test me — but how is one to guard against a true-born enemy tangled with one over real interest?"

That went beyond what Fan Xiliang knew; he pondered a while and could only answer: "You can't guard against a man set on ill, to be sure, but one must be wary all the same."

"I take my cousin's meaning, and will keep a guarding heart, no fear." Zhuo Siheng said gratefully.

"Anhua Commandery has four counties under it, each bigger than my Tongtai; you must have it all clear in your mind, and give no one a handle."

"Naturally."

"And you mustn't let your superiors find fault. Jinzhou Prefecture is a great crossroads of trade, its sea-shipping thriving, with no end of tangles and snarls mixed in — be careful, and careful again."

"With my nature it'd be a little hard not to be careful."

"And another thing — you're close to Jiangnan Prefecture, so the deadlines for your document exchanges will be short; you must never let them slip!"

Zhuo Siheng laughed out loud: "Cousin, you've truly become a father-and-mother official — you've even taken on the tone of a parent. When my father taught me my books as a boy he never harped in my ear this much."

Fan Xiliang laughed at the teasing in spite of himself; both were easy at heart, and their laughter rang out clear. Far off, an old soldier on dike patrol was slacking under the willow shade, admiring the moon over his wine; the merry sound reached his ear, and he took another sip, thinking: some young master or other has drunk a cup too many and is throwing a drunken fit out there — but it does sound a happy thing to hear, as if the wine went down sweeter for it.

So, in the shining moonlight, he tipped back the last few mouthfuls in his flask.

The next day Zhuo Siheng and Fan Xiliang both fell so busy there was no more time for idle talk.

Zhuo Siheng had his appointment certificate stamped with the seal at the Ministry of Personnel's branch in Jiangnan Prefecture, and with that he could go straight to the commandery to take up his post; Fan Xiliang submitted his reporting-of-duty papers one by one to the offices concerned. His last term had been rated excellent-upper — rare that Lingzhou should have a local father-and-mother official do so well — and the several lords of Jiangnan Prefecture duly gave him a word of encouragement.

A busy rush over, and then a hurried parting; both had to press on without pause to their posts, and the next meeting would likely be three years off. This time, for all the reluctance still in his heart at parting from his cousin, Zhuo Siheng was much more at ease. The cousin of today was not the cousin of before: broad-minded now and of no common insight, with his own record and standing among the people, a footing to stand on and a purpose to serve by, he'd no longer be worn thin and grieved by the straits of the inner household.

He hadn't, after all, pointed his cousin down the wrong road.

And his own road had yet to run on south — over mountains and across ridges before the outcome could be seen.

Taking leave at the wharf of Fan Xiliang, who set off first, Ciheng too felt the pull of it; though it was her first meeting with her cousin, she'd found him uncommonly dear, and thinking of his tireless help in the old Shuozhou days, a parting-sorrow past words rose in her heart.

Chen Rong, following behind the two, waited until they'd eased by degrees out of the grief of parting, and only then spoke: "My lord, shall we hire a sea-ship to Jinzhou? Or rest a day, go back to the post-station, and settle it then?"

But Zhuo Siheng shook his head: "We won't go by sea. We'll take the mountain road south into Jinzhou."

Chen Rong was struck dumb, and for a moment couldn't take it in; after a spell he said: "From Jiangnan Prefecture on it's hardest of all — the five ridges and three rivers, cruelly hard going; except for merchants buying and selling goods along the way, few people travel it."

"You've told me all this; I remember." Zhuo Siheng was always patient in explaining. "But a hard road has its own sights and its own lessons along the way. Newly come to this place, spending a little effort to learn its land and its people isn't so much time wasted; what's got from paper is shallow in the end — better to tread Jinzhou's ground with my own feet, to have it clear in my heart. As for the important baggage that's awkward to carry, hire a boat to send it on to Jinzhou; there'll be people there to receive it. We three will travel light, and set off tomorrow."