Chapter 88

"Is it a dispatch from the Ministry of Personnel?"

Zhuo Siheng rode hard back to Quanzhang City and went straight to the commandery yamen, and the first thing he said on seeing Pan Guangling hit the mark.

Pan Guangling had grown used to Lord Zhuo's uncanny ways, but could not help the surprise on his face. He nodded. "It is. It's the appointment certificate and papers for your promotion, my lord."

"No imperial edict?" Siheng asked, his brows drawing together a little.

"None."

Siheng did not answer.

Why move him out of his post now? Was there some place badly short of officers of late? That was it. The Jinzhou prefecture had lately dealt with the spring-exam scandal, and the standing Education Intendant and a whole string of his underlings had all been struck off, a clean sweep with none spared. But by custom, a vacancy in a prefecture's education office was filled by a man the Ministry of Personnel named, or watched over for the time by other officers of that same prefecture. It should not have fallen to him, an officer only of a commandery.

"Yunshan! You're back at last!"

The moment he stepped into the inner hall, He Mengchun, who had been pacing to and fro in a fret, came up to him. "This... everything was going so well. How is it they've gone and transferred you away?" And he held out the Ministry of Personnel's papers.

Siheng took them and read. The Ministry had not raised his rank, but had moved him straight to Education Intendant of the Jinzhou prefecture.

The post was a step up, true enough, but the deeper sense of it was unsettling.

Lu Hui was in the hall too, standing quiet with a stack of registers in his arms, his head turned a little aside, thinking who knew what. For a moment all four in the hall were silent. At last Siheng was the first to smile, and said, "I'm a year short of my term in the provinces, and never thought I'd be leaving Lord He so soon. I'm sorry to go. After we're off duty today I'd like to come and trouble you at your residence, by way of a parting talk. Would that do?"

He Mengchun was delighted, of course, and said yes over and over, then added, "Yunshan, on your trip to Jianyang, did you by any chance..."

"Your humble servant kept it well in mind. I've brought back for you some fine local recipes for long life and good health, told me by a man of this place who's lived a hundred years. They're in the saddle-bag on my horse, and I'll have them sent round to your residence today with the rest." Siheng pretended not to see the roll of Pan Guangling's eyes or the cold curl of Lu Hui's lip, and spoke as mild and genial as a spring breeze.

"Good, good, good. I'll go and see to a feast for tonight. We'll drink till we drop!" And He Mengchun, his worried look all gone, went off well pleased.

"A time like this, and still fussing over his own little nonsense..." Only when He Mengchun's back had vanished did Pan Guangling let out what had been pent up in him so long.

"You've known Lord He more than a day. No need to hold it against him over a thing like this." Siheng put away his smile and looked again at his own appointment certificate. "To set out within ten days. Such a hurry?"

"My lord." Lu Hui, who had not spoken till now, opened his mouth. "The local academy on Futing Mountain in Anhua has only just broken ground, the official road west toward Jiangzhou is still undecided, and the sites for the few new sisal pools we're digging aren't yet chosen. These three are the weightiest things in hand, and ten days will hardly see them done."

Siheng nodded. "I understand. The people's business can't be let slide, and I daren't drag my feet on the Ministry's charge either. We'll just have to tend to both as best we can. Guangling, you're Administrator now, and must keep at the several things here in Anhua, and let nothing slip. I'll arrange matters with Lord He today so he won't come bothering you, but from now on you'll have to see to things in my stead with your own hands." And he clapped Pan Guangling on the shoulder.

Nervous as he was, Pan Guangling, with so much hope laid on him, looked both moved and uneasy. He seemed to want to say something, but in the end only gave a solemn nod for his pledge, in place of any words.

Siheng had watched Pan Guangling grow these two years with his own eyes, and to hand over to him the people's work he had not managed to finish, Siheng set his heart entirely at ease.

Then he looked to Lu Hui, and before he could speak, Lu Hui spoke first. "My lord, I'm only a ninth-rank petty clerk, and my transfer need not go through the Ministry of Personnel. When a man takes up a new post at a new office, run off his feet, he can't do without someone he trusts at his side. Your servant is willing to go with you to Yongming City."

Lu Hui had a keen quickness to him. His response was always fast, and above all he had a born feel for matters of government, as if he already knew the knots of this would be hard to untangle, and in that short space had made himself ready to follow where it led.

"Good. That's just what I had in mind." Siheng felt the quiet satisfaction of a man whose own trained-up subordinates could each stand on their own, and there was at last a lighter note in his voice. "Sudden as it is, I'm not without a thread to follow. You needn't worry, either of you. See to the business in your own hands first. There's time enough yet to plan, no call for alarm."

Siheng's ever-steady, unruffled way of speaking settled both Pan Guangling and Lu Hui a good deal. Watching the two of them go, Siheng himself sank into a somewhat baffled study.

He knew well the move was too abrupt. He did not believe the Ministry alone could shift him out so easily. Was there a word from the emperor behind it, or no? Or was there some other cause still to be proven? If the emperor's will did lie in this arrangement of the Ministry's, then there was only one thing it could mean: the setting right of education had become a matter of weight in the emperor's eyes, and perhaps the man he had in mind was Siheng himself, which was why he had him sent to a posting first to feel the ground.

Sure enough, when he got home he found a letter from Huiheng, and in it the whole of the thing fell out just as he had guessed. His teacher too held that the move must carry the emperor's will behind it, and both his sister and his teacher thought he could put it off for the time, pleading unfinished business at his post. A plea it was called, but it was also the plain truth. Or else he might hold both posts at once until the Ministry sent someone else. That was a sound way. That his sister could think of a stratagem like it showed her year at the compiling had not been wasted, and that his teacher had taught her a great deal of the court's inner workings besides.

Glad as that made him, Siheng had a thought of his own.

He mused a moment, then took up his brush and wrote his reply straight off, and had Ciheng send it out. Then he changed his clothes and set off for the feast at the He residence.

For all He Mengchun was forever saying that a gentleman lifts his cup not for the sake of getting drunk, he could hold his wine wretchedly. Siheng poured a cup or two into him, and the man was reeling and swaying, weeping out some rot about how he'd trusted the wrong fellow all those years and been betrayed by Cui Lu, and how he was in a sorry way yet but glad to have so worthy a younger brother. Siheng, in for a penny in for a pound, poured him flat out across the table, and sent a man to fetch Madam He.

Madam He knew her husband's head for wine was about the measure of his nerve, and was not much surprised at the sight. She had him settled in, and said that Siheng had perhaps not drunk his fill, and that she would call her son to keep him company and lay on a fresh table. But Siheng stopped her.

"I make bold tonight, madam, to put one matter in your charge."

Madam He thought a moment, but was neither flurried nor hurried, and only said, "If it's a thing of the court, better wait till my husband's wine wears off tomorrow, and talk it over with him, Yunshan."

But Siheng smiled and shook his head. "You are a heroine among the imperial clan, madam, a hero among women. You must have seen that these two years Lord He has had little more to do with the commandery's business. It isn't that I've overreached myself and seized the power, but that a good many things are better told to you than to Lord He. You call me by my courtesy name, madam, which is to take me for a junior just as Lord He does, so I'll make bolder still and say one thing more. In the matter of Cui Lu back then, I used your own boldness and decision to work my ends, and I've been deeply ashamed of it since. Tonight I beg your pardon for it, and hope it isn't too late. And I've kept you here because I judge you the better of Lord He in breadth of heart and far sight. So let me be bold once more, and ask: in your eyes, madam, how does the Anhua of two years ago differ from the Anhua of today?"

Madam He was never one for roundabout ways. She was blunt and straight by nature, and with a little thought she saw Siheng's meaning, and said without reserve, "Why, it's been remade past all knowing, not to be spoken of in the same breath. I know my own husband best, and there's no need for you to say more. I'll grant that when Cui Lu made his move, you did mean to use the two of us. But thinking it over after, I saw that if you'd had any ill in your heart then, and shifted the blame onto Mengchun, you'd likely be sitting as head of a whole commandery by now. You didn't. Which shows that whether or not you were glad to serve under my husband, you're a gentleman with a clear conscience. These two years I've watched how you work, always with good government in view, always putting the people's good and the people's living first. If I were to press you now over some small matter from back then, wouldn't it be I who'd lose my Liu family's face, for a mean and petty heart? That husband of mine... let him be an idle man of means and leave it there. He holds a whole commandery's business in hand now, and he was slack at his governing well before, which I was not blind to, only as his wife I couldn't say much of outside affairs, and even a word of counsel from the side had to be careful. And I won't mind your laughing, but in truth I'd rather my husband were the idler, and kept me more company. Call it my own selfish heart at work. But now that you're leaving, if these two years' tilling is to go back to what it was before, wouldn't that betray the hopes of all Anhua's people? That can't be allowed, either. This is the thing you meant to charge me with, isn't it?"

"You see the great right of it, madam. Let me bow to you." Siheng bent low, and before Madam He could demur, said, "I only ask that you counsel Lord He to go on enjoying his ease, and let everything stand as before, so Anhua's good government won't fall away. And if it can be managed, then come next year's review of the provincial posts, Lord He might be raised back to the capital, where a truly easy and pleasant sinecure may be waiting for him."

Madam He had learned Siheng's methods before, and knew well how wrong she'd read him once. This mild, gentle gentleman was no soft bookworm at all, but a hard, watchful hawk-eyed, wolf-turning sort of man. But she knew her own husband He Mengchun better still, and if he'd keep to his place and fall in with Siheng's plan, then with Siheng's hand and Siheng's reach there might well be something already laid up in the capital for him. To get back to his own home ground would make the saying and doing of everything far easier, and an easy, comfortable post truly did suit a husband with no head for business.

Faced with the win for both sides that Siheng had spread out before her, Madam He let out a long breath instead, and laughed freely. "Well then, we'll do it your way. It's no more than a little wagging of my tongue to keep him in line. Whether for the people's sake or for my own house's, it's all to the good. Only, if things should change, my husband can't carry a hard matter, so I'll have to trouble you, Yunshan, to cover for him from the prefecture."

"That goes without saying." Siheng rose, and laughed too, and said with real feeling, "Sister-in-law, if you were the prefect of a commandery, that would be the good fortune of its people. What need would there be for me to go to all this trouble arranging things?"

Hearing it, Madam He was struck dumb. It was a thing she had never once thought of, and now it came from the mouth of the ablest officer she had ever met, which left her startled and amazed. Even after Siheng had gone, she was still turning it over: if she were a governing official, a mother and father to the people, what would she do?

The weightiest matter settled, the next day Siheng set Ciheng to packing, and himself saw to the people and affairs of the yamen. After his two years of setting things in order, the Anhua yamen had long been a thriving place, and though a few, hearing Siheng was to be transferred, began to turn things over in their minds, the sight of the iron-faced, cold-eyed Pan Guangling left in charge was enough to make them drop any thought of slacking off. They groaned to themselves and gritted their teeth and bent to the work again.

What set Siheng most at ease was that iron, unbending justice in Pan Guangling. Yet he did not forget to remind the subordinate he had raised with his own hands that what is too hard will snap, and that a little suppleness is not worldly compromise but a way of finding the give-and-take to settle a matter. He had said this many times these two years, and each time Pan Guangling had listened and answered in dead earnest, and now at the parting charge he was more earnest still. Pan Guangling had a thing to trouble Siheng with, for his part. He had made ready a good many things and a letter in his own hand, saying only that this past year he had not managed to get home, and asking Siheng to call in passing on his own father, Pan Weishan, Administrator of the Jinzhou prefecture, and carry the old man a word, and ask him to look out for Siheng a little as well.

Siheng agreed, of course.

The day he left, Siheng made a point of telling no one else, and set out quietly with Lu Hui.

The two rode the post station's fast horses, meaning to reach the posting as soon as they could, and look first into the state of the Jinzhou prefectural school and its education office before going to the yamen to report with the papers.

Because the promotion had come so suddenly, Siheng, even with Anhua's affairs now arranged, still carried a good deal of guesswork about what lay ahead, and so spoke little on the road. Lu Hui too was a quiet sort by nature.

Luckily it was the season of soft spring rain, and riding side by side to the sound of it was not so dull. Most of the way from Quanzhang City to Yongming City ran along the official road, but there were still mountain stretches that forced them to slow their horses, so that from hard riding it turned into something more like an easy ramble through the rain, taking in the view. Out in the wild hills, Siheng reined in at a bend to look ahead and make sure the road was clear, when all at once he heard Lu Hui, for the first time since they set out, speak to him of his own accord.

"My lord, what sort of man is this Gao Yongqing, in the end?"