Chapter 8

There were indeed only eight people in the hall. Having taken the seat assigned to him, Zhuo Siheng glanced around: the young Zhou was there too, and the rest seemed much of an age with one another — he himself was the oldest and tallest of the lot.

By the rules, the prefecture's Education Commissioner handled only the setting of questions for the prefectural and qualifying examinations; everything else — invigilating the hall and handing out the papers — fell to officials of the registrar's rank. Zhuo Siheng took his paper, gave it a quick look, and at once, sure of himself, picked up the brush and began to write.

Now and then a registrar and a proctor made a token circuit around the few children, but they weren't paying much attention. Some years this little test before the autumn examination drew not a single candidate in Shuozhou; when anyone did sit it, they were mostly the children of officials posted here from elsewhere, taking it for practice. The Taizong reign, out of sympathy for the children of far-posted officials worn out by traveling everywhere to sit exams — and because the qualifying examination ran heavily to the very young — had allowed them to take it wherever their fathers served. But their future prefectural examinations still had to be sat back in their home registries, so whether they passed or failed here had little to do with the local education officials. Making the rounds was as far as the duty went.

Besides, this was a trifling little exam. About two hours in, candidates began handing in their papers one after another. The young Zhou was the first to turn his in. There's a child from a house of books for you, the old registrar thought, watching Vice-Prefect Zhou's younger son present his paper to the collection desk with both hands and bow to each of the officials before withdrawing. From a great household, no question — his manners are perfectly complete.

Most who could sit the qualifying examination in so remote a prefecture came from families of officials or local gentry, started their schooling early and had dedicated tutors; questions like these were beneath them, and perhaps they'd only come to get an early feel for the exam hall.

But even a small exam had its rules. The qualifying examination wasn't so strict as to require recopying the papers onto fresh sheets, but the names still had to be pasted over, and before that was done the invigilating officials weren't allowed to touch them. With nothing to do, he let his eyes wander about the hall — and they fell on Zhuo Siheng.

This child was on the old side for the qualifying examination, and by his clothes came from poor stock. The day he'd handed in his household statement and certificate of guarantee, the registrar had been fighting off sleep; he'd only seen that the guarantee gave Xingshan Township in Ningshuo Commandery, and known the boy came from some small military-colony village. His looks were striking enough, true, and he had the air of someone schooled and mannerly, but with an origin like that there could be nothing much to him — he'd have picked up a few characters and read a line or two of the Four Books and Five Classics, nothing that would pass muster.

Right now this child named Zhuo Siheng had his brows slightly knit, not a stroke written, just staring at his paper — probably genuinely stumped. The old registrar gave a little shake of his head.

Another two hours passed, and after two others had left, Zhuo Siheng finally rose to hand in his paper.

Couldn't hold out, most likely — hand it in early and be done with it. When Zhuo Siheng gave him the proper bow, the old registrar made no particular response, only half-narrowed his eyes and gave a slight nod to signal that he could go.

Zhuo Siheng came out just as the noon sun was at its hottest. Shuozhou lay to the north, but the midday light of June had a temper that gave no quarter, and the glare left his eyes a little dazzled. He glanced back at the hall, its doors closed again, and shook his head. That habit of his — checking the paper over after he'd finished — he still couldn't break, not in his old life and not now. The examinations really prized getting it right in one pass; Zhuo Yan had said that in his own departmental examination he'd nearly failed to finish the policy questions, because in copying from his draft onto the exam sheet he'd skipped a line. Lucky he answered fast, and in the end, rushing it, he'd just had time enough. This little test really was different from the real thing. From the prefectural examination on, the hall would no longer be one big room with open seats, but a single cell where you answered alone — so even experience of the qualifying exam would be of no use.

When he came out, Zhuo Yan was in fact still standing outside — though he'd found the shade of a tree, so the heat hadn't left him too wilted. Seeing his son emerge deep in thought, he hurried over to take the basket, wanting to ask how it had gone but afraid that asking too much would make the boy anxious, and could only say, "Hungry? Let's find a noodle stall and have some lunch first."

Zhuo Siheng guessed the reason behind the look on his face, and was touched and amused at once. Truly, pity the hearts of parents everywhere: here was a father who'd placed near the top of the second rank answering policy in the golden hall — a national-class star examinee — and yet when it was his own son sitting a qualifying exam made up entirely of easy little questions, he didn't know what to do with his hands and feet.

A doting father's heart, and no mistake.

Warm inside, he said with a smile, "Father, the questions were all ones you taught me. I've got them down cold, there won't be any trouble." Then, somehow wanting to tease his old man, he added, "When it comes to the prefectural exam, I won't be out in a single morning like this. Should I have Carpenter Li at the head of the village knock together a bed for you to haul over and wait on?"

Hearing his son talk like this, Zhuo Yan was entirely reassured, and laughed and patted him twice on the back. "Your little sister Ciheng picked up her bad habits from you — always making sport of her father. If you can still joke, I know you must be fine. Only, the prefectural exam isn't held here in the prefecture. You'd go to Yunzhong City in Ningxing Prefecture for that."

Zhuo Siheng was a little surprised. Hadn't he been told the prefectural exam was sat in one's home prefecture and registry? How had it moved to Ningxing Prefecture?

The Great Wei dynasty's territory was vast, the largest of any age, and at its founding Emperor Taizu had first divided the realm into three geographic regions — north, center and south. The central region held Zhongjing Prefecture, the Imperial Capital, seat of the dynasty; and to secure governance and the people's peace in the north and south, he set up in the north Yunzhong in Ningxing Prefecture, also called the Northern Capital, and in the south Jianye in Jiangnan Prefecture, also called the Southern Capital.

Ningxing Prefecture sat at the five strategic crossroads of the northern garrison. To the north it guarded the command seat of the Yanhe Army and the fortress of West Victory Pass; to the south the Jingning Canal ran straight to the heart of the dynasty; to the west it joined Muzhou and Rongzhou, with trading marts and official roads reaching all the way to the Wuliang frontier; and to the east it bordered Linzhou, where the dynasty had first risen. It was a great thoroughfare of the realm, and a strategic strongpoint besides.

This was the greatest city in the north. He'd be sitting the prefectural examination there?

"There's a rule in our dynasty," Zhuo Yan explained to his son. "A small prefecture of two or three commanderies, if it's wide and thinly peopled and gets fewer than a hundred candidates a year, files a permit to sit the prefectural examination in a neighboring prefecture. The four northern prefectures together don't turn out even a hundred candidates each time the examinations open, so in the Taizong reign an edict simply settled it: none of the four need waste men and money building examination compounds of their own; they all go to Ningxing Prefecture to be tested. When that day comes, you'll get to see what a real great city looks like."

---

While father and son were discussing this dazzling future, the papers inside the examination hall had all been handed in and their names sealed over. There were only eight of them, and the questions were nearly all of the kind with a set answer, so the Shuozhou Director of Studies could have graded the lot by himself in no time. The registrar only looked on from the side, wondering which paper was the young Zhou's.

Just then, though, Liu Su — His Honor Liu, Education Commissioner of Shuozhou — walked into the grading hall, and everyone rose at once to bow to their superior.

Liu Su looked younger than anyone else in the room — no more than thirty or so, fair-faced and thin-bearded. But everyone knew His Honor Liu had been posted out here not for being young and able, but thanks to his old mentor at court, Tong Duo.

Before his retirement Tong Duo had held the offices of Minister of Personnel, Grand Councillor, and, by grant, Grand Academician of the Academy of Assembled Worthies; after he retired the Emperor heaped further honors on him, adding the title of Junior Preceptor to the Heir Apparent. Back when he ran the Ministry of Personnel he had thought highly of Liu Su, then a collator in the Hanlin Academy, and had done much to advance him. By rights, coming out of the Hanlin Academy, Liu Su should have been posted to Shuozhou as a vice-prefect of one of its commanderies; instead he went straight in as Director of Studies of the Shuozhou Education Office, and three years later, when the previous holder moved up, was promoted to Commissioner.

His coming was quite unexpected; a qualifying examination needed no attention from the head of the Education Office. But Liu Su had always taken his duties seriously, unwilling to shame his mentor, and having heard that this year a full eight children were sitting the qualifying examination in the prefecture — a record high since Shuozhou was founded — he'd made a special trip to look in.

The qualifying examination required no separately appointed examiners; the prefectural Education Office judged it itself. Since His Honor Liu had come, the others let him read the papers first.

Liu Su took one and looked it over: the hand was decent enough, though the answers were a little off — but only a question or two wrong, no cause to be harsh, so he circled it in vermilion and marked it a pass. The first few papers were much the same. He couldn't help sighing that this place was nothing like his home prefecture of Qingzhou, where every year the qualifying examination needed a whole examination compound of its own just to hold the roomful of children, each and every one turning in a fine, accurate paper. Papers like these would more or less have been thrown out the door by the Director of Studies back home.

Then, all at once, his eyes lit up, and his whole back went straight.

Handwriting this fine was a rare thing to see — disciplined, yet with a keen edge running through it, every horizontal, vertical, sweep and stroke drawn with force. For a child to write such a hand was already remarkable, to say nothing of the earlier short questions all correct, and the dayi and recitation after them worded and phrased with a distinctive precision. Even in a prefecture of flourishing scholarship, a place rich in learning and instruction, this hand and this paper would rank first-rate, the very best.

Who'd have thought remote Shuozhou could produce a young talent like this!

He'd set the questions himself this time. One of the dayi from the Book of Documents was, in truth, a touch hard for qualifying-exam candidates; but if every question were dull and easy, everyone would pass as a matter of course and he'd look as though he were slighting his office, so he'd held that one back. None of the papers he'd read so far had answered it — this one alone did, at length and to the very heart of it.

The question was: In the "Zicai" chapter of the Zhou Documents in the Book of Documents, what are the three analogies, and how are they to be understood?

Unlike the other questions, most of them rote memorization, this one required understanding why the Duke of Zhou had used three metaphors as a way of teaching, to guide Prince Kang in his governance.

The boy who wrote this paper had not only landed on the two key points — "illustrious virtue" and "virtuous governance" — but, most impressive of all, had ranged widely for support, tossing in as a side argument the line from the "Hereditary House of Kangshu of Wei" in the Records of the Grand Historian — he composed "Zicai," to show the gentleman a standard he might follow — and using it to carry the reading of "illustrious virtue" and "virtuous governance" further, then going on to argue that this was one of the origins of the Reign of Cheng and Kang. Truly splendid!

Clearly, at such an age the boy had already dipped into the classics, histories, masters and collections — most rare!

In his delight Liu Su passed the paper around to the other officials, and they were unstinting in their praise. The registrar, whose eyes had likewise lit up on taking it, thought to himself that talent like this could only be Vice-Prefect Zhou's son.

The rest of the marking, next to reading that paper, was rather like chewing wax; but most of the candidates had made no great number of errors and nothing serious, so Liu Su declared all eight of this year's qualifying-examination candidates passed.

Eight people sitting the Shuozhou qualifying examination together was, in fact, already something he could report upward as a mark of his own success in promoting learning. Yet Liu Su kept sighing inwardly at the pity of it: a child this fine must come of a scholarly line, most likely the son of some local official, and when the prefectural examination came he'd go back to his home registry to sit it, so there'd be no glory in it for himself.

But when they lifted the sewn-over name, the rest of the officials were mostly left staring: the name on it was an unfamiliar one — Zhuo Siheng. They fetched the Xingshan Township household register to check, and there indeed the name stood, plain to see.

For Liu Su it was a windfall of pure delight — who'd have thought the boy was of local registry!

So, holding the paper, he announced to them all in a ringing voice:

"If Shuozhou is ever to send its first man to the spring examination, it will be this boy!"

---

None of this did Zhuo Siheng know. The next day he went with his father to see the results, and though his own name there came as no surprise, it made him very happy all the same. But beside him his father's eyes glistened, and he murmured, almost to himself, "A-Yu... do you see this...?"

Something twisted in Zhuo Siheng's chest, and neither father nor son said a word.

Having collected the entry ticket for the prefectural examination and signed the register, father and son went and bought some things to bring back for the three children left at home and for the few township households they were closest to, then found at the city gate a goods wagon heading along the first stretch of the road home, paid a few coppers to ride it, and set out back.

As it happened, the village ox-cart that was to have met them at the post station along the way was late. Having got down from the goods wagon, the two didn't care to just wait around, so they borrowed a rod from the post soldier, caught a few grasshoppers for bait, and went down to a clear creek not far off the road to fish, waiting at their leisure for the villagers coming to fetch them.

Zhuo Yan often took Zhuo Siheng fishing; he said angling nurtured the temper of a gentleman. Zhuo Siheng didn't feel much of that. He'd usually bring a book along and read by the creek while he fished, and reading amid all that bright country scenery he found a greater pleasure than the fishing.

By now the mood of the two of them had lifted. Zhuo Yan told a few funny stories from his own examination days, and Zhuo Siheng laughed hard enough to scare off several fish. But then he remembered that his father still hadn't told him the thing he'd promised to explain outside the Shuozhou yamen, so he asked again: "Father, that His Honor Zhou you know — does it have to do with the case of the treasonous heir and our family, back then?" Only something that large, surely, could have left the two of them staring at each other with nothing to say.

Zhuo Yan didn't seem surprised that Zhuo Siheng would ask. Just now there was nothing between heaven and earth but the babble of water, the thin sound of wind, the rustle of lotus leaves, the twitter of birds and the creak of summer insects — no one else to overhear the low talk between father and son.

"It's about time you knew all this." He gave a soft sigh and laid the rough birchwood rod across his knees. "The story has to start back in the twenty-second year of Guanzheng, in Emperor Xiaozong's reign..."