Chapter 71

Overnight the officials of Anhua Commandery found that their old life, answering the roll, drinking tea, idle talk, reading the gazette, and going home, was gone for good. The days turned hard to coast through.

After Prefect He left, all the commandery yamen's affairs great and small passed through Vice-Prefect Zhuo's hands. The first day everything went on as before, no meetings, no sitting in council, the handover of power smooth and quiet. But on the second day, Vice-Prefect Zhuo, who had taken just one day to put in order every standing ill in the commandery's government over the past two years, began calling in those responsible, man by man, to talk.

He was gentle, of course, gentler than Prefect He, never raising his voice or bristling his beard. Yet every official who came out of the vice-prefect's hall had sweat on his brow, and clung trembling to the doorframe before he could walk.

They had all been threatened in the gentlest way there is.

He called in the official over the commandery's performance reviews, and said: this year's ratings look copied off last year's. How else would they be exactly the same? I know you're not the sort to take bribes and bend the law and throw the state's rules into disorder. Were you threatened by some other official? If there's anything of the kind you must tell me, and I'll see you righted! What's that? There isn't? Then this is wholly your own doing, as you wished it? I'm new here, and don't know how other places handle the reviews. Why don't I send a dispatch to the Ministry of Personnel and have them take a look, so we can study it together. Ah, you'll redo the ratings by each man's record last year? Nothing could be better. Thank you for your trouble. We must all share Lord He's load, after all!

He called in the official over the commandery's farming and fields, and said: I see the Ever-Normal Granary hasn't bought in or sold out in five years. Is there some trouble with the funds? How strange, though. When I asked the lord over the commandery's money just now, he said all was well, and the silver for the Ever-Normal Granary is all accounted for, in and out. Shall I call him back and the three of us check where that silver's gone? Don't fret, don't fret, I believe you've not lined your own pockets. But those above may not believe it. Before I came I heard the Ministry of Revenue means to put the prefectures' Ever-Normal Granaries in order, and the edict may come any day. If the prefecture's books don't tally, they'll surely come down on our commandery, and then Lord He will be in a hard place and can only tell the truth. Oh, you'll go over the books today and start buying and selling as you should tomorrow? Nothing could be better. Better late than never. If the prefecture can find no fault in the few of us, Lord He won't be troubled either.

Not all of it went so smoothly, to be sure. A few senior clerks who'd served two terms, six years, alongside He Mengchun, hearing Zhuo Siheng call them to account, would not stick to the matter at hand, but traded on their age and made a scene, reciting their years of service and their records, and pleading ill health, threatening to down tools under cover of a rest.

Zhuo Siheng laughed coldly inside. With the work-rate of these local officials, a day at the desk and a day sick at home came to exactly the same thing. He didn't press them to stay. He even said, with tears in his eyes, that he was young and rash, and hoped only that they'd soon be well and come back to help the Prefect.

So a good few of them decided Zhuo Siheng was a paper tiger, all wilted at a splash of water, and settled in comfortably at home to nurse illnesses they didn't have. But after they'd put on their airs two or three days, they found a good many of the commandery's affairs ran hotter than ever without them. Zhuo Siheng had found, among the under-offices and the counties, a crowd of young officials to stand in for them. These men hadn't come up the proper examination road, but mostly by hereditary privilege or yamen testing, and had a far harder time winning promotion than examination men. So at the least glimpse of a chance they bit down and held on, keen as could be, wishing they could spend every ounce of themselves to help Lord Zhuo, who'd given them this chance to show what they were, see his task through.

The "sick men" took fright. They hurried back to the yamen, only to find the real power had passed to other hands, and went to the vice-prefect to have it out. But Lord Zhuo met them with warm concern, and said with deep feeling: you're all Lord He's old clerks and long-serving men. He's no sooner gone than you fall ill. How am I, a newcomer, to answer for it? Do go home and take good care of yourselves.

At that they brought out the law of the land, and said Zhuo Siheng had no right to hand their offices and duties to anyone he pleased.

Zhuo Siheng at once cried that he was wronged. Your offices and ranks are all still yours, he said, and your pay untouched. These men are only raised to the commandery for a time, their posts and pay still by their old county places, not a hair out of order, all strictly by the law of the land. As for setting men in places they shouldn't rightly fill, that too was forced on him. Had you gentlemen not fallen ill, he'd never have come to such a last resort. The commandery's business must be done. It can't all stop because the prefect is away. These men hold two posts at once, doing your work for you sick men, that's all.

They cried out that Zhuo Siheng was abusing his power while Prefect He was away, and that when the Prefect came back they'd have it out with him.

Zhuo Siheng did not lose his temper. He put on a look of fear and dismay, and begged them never to say such a thing. So you do your work only for Prefect He, not for the state? When the Prefect's away you won't work, and only when he's back will you take up your desks? If that got about, wouldn't it saddle the Prefect with the charge of "building a faction to swell his own weight, and gripping his underlings to close off the yamen's government"?

And at the last, he did not forget to add, with the deepest grief: "Can it be that the officials of this commandery know only the prefect's orders, and not the emperor's command?"

After that talk, the men playing sick nearly all truly fell ill.

From fright.

Pan Guangling found, to his glad surprise, that the work-rate of every office in the commandery shot up fast. And Zhuo Siheng's private nickname became "the Smiling King of Hell, the Kindly-Faced Tiger."

Zhuo Siheng laughed aloud to hear it, and said, "It seems Lord He's lifting their letters while he was in office wasn't wholly without merit."

"They're afraid of you, truly. But aren't you afraid, my lord, that when Lord He comes back they'll send up a memorial against you?" His glee over, Pan Guangling had a hidden worry too.

"I'm afraid they won't send it up." Zhuo Siheng smiled. "Let a full desk of dull affairs frighten Lord He off again in the end, and they'll fall back into my hands, and there'll be no more nice talking it over then."

Pan Guangling looked at Zhuo Siheng's smile, and for the first time felt the nickname truly fit.

But these days he'd seen, too, how hard Zhuo Siheng drove himself. Zhuo Siheng slept only two or three of the day's twelve hours, setting the government in order, checking each item, listing every problem one by one. He even took his meals at the yamen, and hadn't gone home to sleep in three days. His sister sent things over every day, and he only asked the messenger whether all was well at home and how his sister did, and never stirred a step, throwing his whole self into this contest with the local officials.

For now, he had won.

But ten days of it, and when Zhuo Siheng went with Pan Guangling to a county to look at the summer field-work, he had none of his old vigor for hill and ridge, and rested a long while in the fields before he had the strength to go on.

For the first time Pan Guangling saw what it meant to spend oneself to the last and forget one's own body. He knew at once that he himself could never match Lord Zhuo's all-round command, and that he had very much still to learn.

That Zhuo Siheng could bring them all to heel before they knew what had hit them rested, at bottom, on his own hard competence. In a single day he'd put years of standing ills in order, found the cure to fit each ill and settled on his counter-moves, gone in person to the counties to get first-hand the fine threads of who was who and how each man stood, and at once moved people in to fill the gaps, foreseeing every turn the thing might take, dividing them to rule them and then holding a sure answer ready for all of it.

How had he done it?

For all his admiration, Pan Guangling could only feel Zhuo Siheng was no ordinary man, with a strength in him he couldn't fathom.

The two walked on together to the hill fields and country villages, and Pan Guangling felt dimly that this trip was not only to look at the fields. There was so much still to do at the yamen, yet Lord Zhuo had made a point of coming out.

"My lord, why not leave the summer plowing to me?" Seeing that Lord Zhuo was no longer the hale, vigorous man of before in look or body, Pan Guangling made up his mind to share his load, and said stoutly, "My own work is never left in arrears, and there's nothing to make up just now. Let me take on more this time, and you go back and rest."

But Zhuo Siheng shook his head, and pointed at a stretch of thriving plants in the distance. "Xiao Pan, what's that?"

He had grown used to calling his subordinate so, fondly.

"That's sisal," Pan Guangling answered, and made to urge him again, but Zhuo Siheng cut him off.

"Coming over the hills from Jiangnan to our commandery, I saw a great many of these. Some households grow it near their homes. They told me sisal can be made into hemp, but a hemp that won't weave into cloth or clothes, so they use it all for rope."

"That's so. Nearly all the well-ropes hereabouts are plaited from sisal, in this part of ours. Toward the sea the ships' cables and sail-ropes are made from the hemp drawn out of sisal too, and very hard-wearing it is." Pan Guangling went up with Zhuo Siheng and touched the sword-leaves of the sisal stabbing at the sky. "In Chaoping Commandery, I hear, some weave it into fishing nets and cargo-sheets too. It has no end of uses. Only here in our hills, all it does is hang outside the mountain folk's houses to cure a little bacon, or serve as the rope on a well-pulley."

Zhuo Siheng seemed to be thinking, and spoke only after a while. "When Lord He is back, I want you to do a thing for me yourself."

To have at last some way to help Zhuo Siheng, Pan Guangling stood straight and said gravely, "Not one thing. A hundred, and I'd do them all for you, my lord!"

"When our lord is back, go and see Song Yunhe again, and have him come to the works to talk with me. Tell him this: the thing he wants most, I have a way to get for him."

---

A day's going-about, and Zhuo Siheng was truly tired. He got home at last and had a good, deep bath, and when the worn-out muscles had soaked soft, he climbed out of the tub hand and foot, and leaned a long while before he had the strength to set himself to rights.

The more tangled the affairs, the more they wear a man, sure enough.

But the result so far was not bad. He hadn't toiled for nothing.

All these days gone on government, he'd had no time for letters or the gazette. Worn and spent as he was, Zhuo Siheng made himself hold out and go to the study, and answered a few letters from the capital and Xingshan Township.

Only Huiheng's second letter from home left him at a loss.

It was but a few days since her last. For Huiheng to write again so soon, there must be some weighty matter, and so there was. Huiheng told him in full of meeting the Grand Princess Xuanyi and Luo Yuanzhu that day at Chanyue Convent, and set out her own doubt and wavering. She did not know whether she should compile the book, whether to agree or refuse, and asked her brother to weigh it for her and help her decide at the last.

Zhuo Siheng knew Huiheng was not a woman without a mind of her own. She asked him this only because she feared her choice might touch his career and the family's fortunes.

And the matter was deep enough to be worth turning over.

Zhuo Siheng took paper and brush and began a long, flowing reply. First he laid out for his sister that the ones to gain from this were the Grand Princess Xuanyi and Noble Consort Luo. One wished to add to her political voice, the other to her political weight. The two had struck a bargain, and the chance could not be better. Then he added his read of the court. He would not go so far as to say for certain that Noble Consort Luo had designs on the succession. The Prince of Zhao could not yet so much as feed himself, far too young, and the crown prince, over a hard pass in his life, had at last begun to improve, enough to content the emperor for now. Noble Consort Luo likely only wished her sister to have more backing, as a political stake for the two sisters to hold. Last, he pointed out to her: the matter was not sinister, but in the end it would drag in a great many. A good many people would use it to climb toward the Grand Princess and Noble Consort Luo, slipping their own girls in, and the thing would grow past managing, perhaps setting off new shifts besides. And then his sister's first good intent would be betrayed, and she'd be caught in troubles that grieved her, the more so as the idea had been hers, fine as it was, a plan good for herself and good for many. But should the time turn murky and hard to read, it might be made a handle against her. So in choosing what to take on she must be careful, and careful again.

He wrote a good dozen sheets, and looking back over them at the last, he felt none of the free pleasure of pouring out his heart, only a bitterness alike in his mouth and in his heart.

In this age, his sister and he were not the same. She had no chance to enter office. She'd won at last so rare a chance to show her gifts and make her name and not fail the learning of her life, and now, for a tangle of political interests, she had to give it up.

By what right?

Zhuo Siheng threw down the brush hard, propped his arms, and buried his head in them on the desk.

By what right must it be so? Was he not too useless a brother? In everything he could only have his sister tread carefully, and so lose her this heaven-sent chance. How much had he truly done of what he'd promised their parents?

Outside the window the wind and thunder rolled. Sudden turns of weather were common in Jinzhou's hills, and a downpour looked near. Zhuo Siheng drew a deep breath and rose to shut the window, and noticed for the first time that the eaves of the local Jinzhou houses were built to reach out further than the dwellings of the capital, to keep a wind-driven rain from blowing in at the window and disturbing the quiet within.

He stood a long while at the window, and when the first drop of rain fell, it came to him like a flash of enlightenment. He shut the window hard, his heart hammering, and thought: am I not meant to be just such eaves, such a jutting window? When the wind and rain come, to shelter the family inside? How can I let the family be these eaves, this window, for me instead? There is no such way in the world for a man to be an elder brother and the head of a house!

His thoughts ran clear as if the lightning had pierced them through. Zhuo Siheng went back to the desk, tore the dozen-odd sheets of his reply to shreds, took up the brush again, and wrote, and wrote.

---

The capital. The Zhuo residence.

Huiheng took her brother's reply with a deep unease in her heart.

She had repented the moment she sent her letter, thinking: my brother must be snowed under with government in the provinces, and here I am troubling him with my own affairs. Is that the way of a sister? Yet in this there was no one but her brother who could light for her the lamp to see through the cold night.

So she could only sit and wait and hope, until today the reply came. Holding it, she dared not open it.

The letter was far too thin. Thin enough to frighten her.

For her brother was the most talkative of men. When was a family letter of his ever anything but a thick sheaf? Down to whether there was rice and flour enough and whether the servants' monthly pay was out, from the clothes Xiheng should add or shed at the academy to reminders about her own daily medicine, he could fill half a page. Let alone the few lines he'd ask about Tong Shipei and Zhao Lanxuan, how the couple got on and whether they'd quarreled, whether Zhao Ting'an's old wounds had flared with the season, how Third Aunt and Lingsheng did, whether his teacher's old ailment had come back, whether Uncle Tong had lost his temper at his son again, and so on and so on. Nothing too small, every side of things covered.

But this time, the letter was light as a feather.

Huiheng knew. Perhaps her asking so had angered her brother. Rare as the chance was, it carried a thread of unclear danger, and she'd half known it and done it anyway. If she was, for the first time in her life, to be scolded by her brother, it was no more than she deserved.

With a heart both anxious and self-reproachful, Zhuo Huiheng opened her brother's reply, and sure enough there was but one sheet inside, with a single line and no more.

Yet she froze, and did not even feel the tears fall unbidden onto the paper.

Zhuo Siheng's reply was just twenty-four characters:

"In what delights you, show your gifts and make your name. Reach out and do it, and never look back. Let it be seen by all under heaven. Your brother hopes for it with all his heart."