“I see,” said Logan. “You only eat animals you like a little, but not too much.”
There really wasn’t anything to say in response to that. Cradling Lily, who was trying hard not to throw up, Jack Seaver walked out of the vegetable garden back to his own house. Elsie had made a chicken pot pie, but neither he nor Lily was any longer in the mood for eating.
Feather, Long Clouds
The eastern sky was still as gray as the belly of a fish when Chang Sheng climbed over the wall. By the time he had finished, the rooster had yet to crow for the first time. The old house, its beams and walls hollowed out by termites and rats over the years, burned easily. By the time the villagers raised the alarm, he was already twenty li away.
The rising sun burned the clouds that were draped across the mountains on the eastern horizon in an unbroken chain to a hue red enough to match his face. Bloodred long clouds, he thought. Even the Heavens are celebrating with me. He laughed long and loud at the joy of vengeance. He felt light as a feather, like he could run forever toward the east, until he ran into the long clouds or into the ocean.
I will need a new name now, thought Chang Sheng. I shall henceforth be known as Guan Yu, the Feather, also styled Yun Chang, Long Clouds.
A month ago, the Autumn Assizes had taken place. Because the penalty for rebellion was death, the Circuit Intendant had overseen the trial himself. The Elder Guan had been hauled into the hall of the yamen in chains and made to kneel on the hard, stone floor while Chang Sheng and his mother watched from among the crowd that had gathered for the trial.
Hua Xiong, now fatter than ever and shaking like a leaf in the wind in front of the Intendant, a young scholar judge fresh out of Luo Yang and filled with the arrogance of the Emperor’s favor, produced the lease for the Intendant’s inspection. He recounted how he had tried to help out the Guan family during their time of need and was dumbfounded when the Elder Guan insisted on setting the lease at 85 percent.
“I asked him, ‘How could you live on that?’ And ?Your Reverence, he told me, ‘Everyone is going to starve if that’—and here he disrespected the Son of Heaven’s name—‘is going to rule the country by the advice of his eunuchs and the flattering courtiers that pass for scholars these days. I might as well give all the harvest to you as to lose it all in taxes. It doesn’t matter. I’ll have a better chance joining the Yellow Turbans and living as a bandit.” He bowed his head before the Intendant and continued to tremble.
The Intendant glanced at the kneeling figure of the Elder Guan below the dais of the yamen, the corners of his mouth turned down in displeasure. “Humph. ‘Flattering courtiers that pass for scholars these days.’ Indeed, peasant, is there no respect for the Emperor and the majesty of the law in your eyes? Have you lost all sense of piety? What do you have to say in answer to these accusations?”
The Elder Guan straightened his back as much as he could in his shackles. He looked up at the severe, young face of the Intendant. “It is true that I believe the Emperor has been misled by unscrupulous advisers who view the people as so much fish and meat to be squeezed for their last drop of wealth without regard for their suffering. But I have not forgotten my duty toward the Emperor or my family’s many generations of service in the Imperial Army, and I would never raise my arm in rebellion to him. My accuser has fabricated these lies in order to impoverish my family and disgrace me, simply because my son had humiliated him in a game. The Emperor has entrusted you with the power of life and death no doubt because you have wisdom despite your youth, and I have no doubt that your wisdom will reveal the truth of my innocence to you.”
Even though he was kneeling, the air that he spoke with made him seem to tower over everyone in the hall of the yamen. Even the Intendant seemed impressed.
Noting the change in the Intendant’s mien, Hua Xiong fell to his knees and kowtowed three times in rapid succession. “Your Reverence, I should never have dared to accuse Master Guan unless I had solid evidence, seeing as how his son and I have been childhood friends. I am merely a lowly merchant, while Master Guan is descended from a distinguished family of generals and scholars in the Emperor’s service. But I was motivated by love and zeal for the Emperor, so much so that I dared to accuse such a man. It was my fear that he would use his family’s glorious record as a shield to cover up all his impious vices. I pray that you would uphold justice.” He kept on kowtowing after this speech.
“Stop that,” the Intendant said impatiently. “You need not fear his family’s history of glory. The Emperor’s law is to be administered blindly and impartially. Even were he the son of a Duke or a Prince, if he plotted against the Emperor, you need not fear accusing him.” He took another look at the Elder Guan, his face hardening. “I have known many evil men like him: puffed up with the honors heaped upon their families by the Emperor for their ancestors’ loyal service, they think they are beyond the law. Well, I will be sure to punish them extra harshly. What other evidence do you have?”
Hua Xiong nodded toward three young girls cowering in the corner behind him. “These young women have seen and heard Master Guan practicing with his ax and machete in the woods. They saw him leaping about, pretending to . . . to . . .”
“To do what?”
“To be visiting those blows upon the Son of Heaven.” Hua Xiong went back to his incessant kowtowing, drawing blood on his forehead.
“That is a lie,” Chang Sheng cried out from the crowd. He was livid at those young girls for agreeing to back up such a blatant falsehood. But then he saw that they were all from families who owed a great deal of money to Hua Xiong. He felt as if the veins in his neck would burst if he didn’t speak. “I was the one—”
“Chang Sheng, whatever happens, do not speak,” the Elder Guan shouted. “You must take care of your mother.”
“Come,” the Intendant called out to his soldiers, “drive that lawless child and his unchaste mother from the yamen. I will not have them make a spectacle of my court.”
To keep himself from striking back, Chang Sheng bit down on his tongue until he drew blood. He tried to shield his mother from the blows of the soldiers as they stumbled away from the yamen.
The Elder Guan was sentenced to death that afternoon for plotting treason, and his head soon afterward was hung on the flagpole outside the yamen. That evening, Chang Sheng’s mother put her head in a loop of rope tied to the beam in the middle of the kitchen and kicked the stool out from under herself.
? ? ?
Chang Sheng had left Hua Xiong alive until the end. After he had dispatched the rest of the Hua household (some twenty people), he woke Hua Xiong from his slumber (pausing first to slit the throats of the two concubines in bed with him with quick flicks of his wrist). In the dim light of the torch that Chang Sheng was carrying with him, Hua Xiong thought he looked like a red-faced demon, a soldier from hell coming for his soul.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he blabbered, and lost control of his bowels.
Chang Sheng used his knife to cut the ligaments in Hua Xiong’s shoulders and hips, completely paralyzing him. He laid the drooping, heavy body back down on the bed, cuddled between the lifeless bodies of the two concubines.
“I will not give you a clean death. You said my father was a bandit. I will now show you how a bandit deals with people like you.”
He proceeded to set fire throughout the house. Soon the smoke was so heavy that Hua Xiong could no longer scream for help. His coughing grew spasmodic and panicked; he was choking on his own spit.
Guan Yu continued to run to the east, where the bloodred long clouds beckoned to him. His heart was light as a feather, and it seemed as if love of the fight and joy in vengeance would never leave him. He felt like a god.
IMPRESSIONS