At Prince Yu’s residence there was much to be done — the most pressing was to conduct the consort’s funeral with proper ceremony, while also working to keep all word sealed tight. No one knew how long Jizhou City’s gates would stay shut.

And yet what needed to leak out would leak out regardless — because the very person who wished to leak the news was the same person who held the power to shut the gates.

The garrison troops sealing all six city gates belonged to Military Commissioner Zeng Ling’s forces. Arranging for a messenger to slip out of Jizhou was trivial for him.

None of this was, in truth, so surprising. Prince Yu had built his foundation on Zeng Ling’s Jizhou army, and yet he had always felt the need to keep Zeng Ling in check, never willing to let him grow too powerful, and had made a habit of cutting him down from time to time.

More galling still to Zeng Ling had been this: to curry favor with a few dogs from the Yuwen clan, Prince Yu had not only given Zeng Ling a cold reception, but had even moved against Zeng Ling’s former subordinate Jiang Ran.

The consort’s death was naturally no good news for Prince Yu — it might cost him the Yuwen clan’s backing. But for Zeng Ling, it could not have been more welcome, because Prince Yu had no choice now but to lean on him even more heavily.

The shift in Prince Yu’s attitude had already made this plain — he had handed everything over to Zeng Ling to manage. To Zeng Ling, that was exactly as it should be.

As Zeng Ling saw it, he needed Prince Yu to understand clearly who was truly indispensable to him. Without the Jizhou army, without him — Zeng Ling — Prince Yu’s grand ambitions would remain precisely that: a dream.

—

At the wine house of the Azure Formation.

Xiahou Zuo glanced at Zeng Ling, then shook his head slightly. “Commissioner, there is no need to say more. I will not be going.”

Zeng Ling sighed. “You and your father — why must it be like this between you? Though His Highness has indeed erred in certain respects, you are the junior party, and juniors must make allowances for the difficulties of their elders.”

He ventured carefully, “His Highness says: if you are willing to stay and help him, he will place the army’s command in your hands. That is something others could not obtain no matter how much they begged for it…”

The “others” he referred to clearly meant Prince Yu’s other sons.

Xiahou Zuo gave an unconcerned shrug. “That’s all right — he can give it to those who are begging for it.”

He rose. “I am heading back to the northern frontier in two days. For those two days, I just want to spend time properly with my mother and my sister. As you know — my sister has come back, and I don’t want anything spoiling that.”

He added, “I should mention — I have a particularly foul temper. Whoever makes my mother unhappy, I will make sure they are considerably more unhappy than she is.”

Zeng Ling nodded. “I understand. You look after your mother in peace — I will speak to His Highness on the rest.”

Xiahou Zuo clasped his hands. “Thank you, Commissioner.”

He stepped toward the door, then turned back at the threshold and asked, “Why didn’t he come and speak to me himself?”

Zeng Ling said, looking somewhat awkward, “The residence has only just suffered such a tragedy — His Highness’s difficulties are ones you understand.”

“Hmm…”

Xiahou Zuo smiled faintly, said nothing more, and walked away.

Zeng Ling watched Xiahou Zuo’s retreating figure, and after a moment he could not help but smile to himself. He murmured, “Your Highness — truly a case of losing on both ends. Nothing gained on that side, nothing gained on this — how difficult.”

—

That evening, Xiahou Zuo heard that Li Chi and the others were going to the garrison’s warehouse to move things, and decided it sounded like great fun and that he would join them — with one condition: whatever he moved, he got to keep.

This had been going on for several days now. Whenever they had a free evening, Li Chi and the others would head out to the warehouse. And still, no one at the armory had come to do an inventory — a testament to just how thoroughly rotten the administration had grown.

Besides which, Li Chi and the others were not foolish about it. They worked from the inside out — so while a section within the warehouse had already been emptied, nothing looked out of the ordinary from the outside. You would never discover the hollowed-out interior unless you walked to the very deepest part. And by “emptied,” the boxes were still there, sitting in place — they just had nothing left in them. Once a box was cleared, the oilcloth was draped back over it, so that at a glance everything appeared completely undisturbed.

As the garrison’s armory grew steadily lighter, the carriage house’s stores grew steadily fuller.

By day they dug the underground cellar; by night Tang Pidi drilled the hundred-odd soldiers. Though these men could all ride, the archery and horsemanship Tang Pidi observed was child’s play to him. To train the soldiers’ shooting skills, he set to work himself and, snatching every spare moment, helped produce a batch of rocking hobby horses. Which sounded absurd, honestly — and yet for training soldiers to shoot arrows from the back of a galloping horse, it was genuinely useful; they could hardly practice cavalry archery openly on the streets of Jizhou City.

The next morning, one group continued digging the cellar while another went out to buy provisions, and Li Chi and the others trained in the courtyard. Xiahou Zuo and Xiahou Yili came strolling over again.

The moment Xiahou Yili saw the hobby horses in the courtyard she let out a delighted cry. She found this whole group of grown men quite amusing — who would have thought they had this playful, childlike side to them?

Xiahou Zuo also found the hobby horses funny. He asked Li Chi, “Are these what you all use for racing? The way to come in first seems to be destroying your thighs.”

Li Chi: “…”

The rocking hobby horses were not small — rough-made as they were, they were quite enjoyable to ride, and Xiahou Zuo swung a leg over one and began rocking back and forth.

After a moment of rocking, he froze, looked at Li Chi, and asked, “When you ride this thing — do you feel a certain sense of shame?”

Li Chi: “…”

Yu Jiuling, watching this, was suddenly struck by an idea. He said with a grin, “Why not have a contest? Ten arrows each, following the usual training format — two teams, whoever hits the most targets wins, and the last-place finisher pays for dinner tonight. How about it?”

Xiahou Zuo laughed. “Something this childish… fine, I’ll compete.”

So everyone — with a degree of self-conscious embarrassment — each pulled a hobby horse to their assigned position and stopped about fifteen paces from the targets, all the rocking horses lined up in a row.

Each rocking horse had ropes attached front and back, and during the shooting, men would tug these ropes back and forth continuously so the horse kept rocking. Keeping an arrow steady while rocking was naturally no simple matter.

Li Chi, Xiahou Zuo, Tang Pidi, Zhuang Wudi — those four competed. Li Chi called for Yu Jiuling to join in too, and Yu Jiuling refused every which way until Li Chi said even if he came last he wouldn’t have to pay for dinner, at which point Yu Jiuling reluctantly agreed — and repeatedly insisted that his participation was motivated not by stinginess but by generosity of spirit.

Five people, five rocking horses in a row, with Gao Xining and Xiahou Yili as referees.

“On my whistle,”

Gao Xining raised her hand and said. “First whistle means start, second whistle means finish. Anyone who hasn’t fired five arrows by the second whistle is automatically ranked last.”

The five gave their assent. When Gao Xining blew the starting whistle, all five immediately scrambled up onto their hobby horses, and the soldiers at each horse’s front and back began tugging the ropes back and forth, trying to make the horses rock as vigorously as possible.

Xiahou Yili let out a little giggle and leaned close to Gao Xining’s ear. “Have you heard that nursery rhyme? Looking at the way they’re all pulling those rocking horses back and forth, doesn’t it remind you of that one — *Pull the saw, push the saw, grandma’s house is putting on a play; come see it but you won’t go, then you end up running there all on your own; get there and they won’t feed you, just boil you a couple of stale eggs.*”

Gao Xining snorted with laughter.

The soldiers were having the time of their lives too — they yanked those ropes with everything they had, trying to get as wild a rock as they could manage. The five on the horses had been fine at first, but as the rocking grew more and more violent, every single one of them began to feel a distinct and creeping sense of shame.

As if — no one over the age of nine would ever do this. It felt embarrassing.

After five arrows each, there was no need to wait for Gao Xining’s finishing whistle. Contrary to everyone’s expectations, the first to finish all five arrows was Yu Jiuling.

Xiahou Yili trotted over to check the targets and called out the results, starting from Li Chi.

“Li Chi — five arrows, five hits.”

“Tang Pidi — five arrows, five hits.”

“My brother — five arrows, five hits.”

“Zhuang Wudi — five arrows, five hits.”

“Yu Jiuling — five arrows, five misses.”

Yu Jiuling made a face. “At least I was fast…”

Xiahou Yili scoffed. “You could have at least hit the target once. All five arrows missed entirely, and the closest shot was still a full stride away from the target.”

Yu Jiuling felt he ought to experience some shame at this moment. Strangely, he genuinely did not.

The second round was more entertaining still. Still on the rocking horses, but now each horse would be carried forward at a run by two soldiers, and they had to fire five arrows while in motion — and the five arrows could not all be aimed at the same target; each had to be aimed at a different one.

“Going in the same order as before — Li Chi, you’re first.”

Xiahou Yili tilted her chin toward Li Chi and scoffed. “You’re definitely no match for my brother.”

Li Chi said, “And if your brother loses, you’ll pitch in for the feast — let’s eat something good.”

Xiahou Yili said, “Fine, you’re on.”

Xiahou Zuo: “Did you bring any money?”

Xiahou Yili said as a matter of course, “Whatever money I have, you give it to me anyway, so it’s still coming from you if I lose. You’re not seriously going to make me pay, are you? Besides, I really didn’t bring any.”

Xiahou Zuo sighed. “You are a disgrace to this family…”

Li Chi rode his rocking horse while two burly men carried him running forward. Rocking horses — even when being carried at a run, they still rocked back and forth with each step. Li Chi loosed his arrows in quick succession: five arrows, five hits, though not all in the bullseye.

Then Tang Pidi: five arrows, five hits, all in the center.

Xiahou Zuo: five arrows, four hits. Zhuang Wudi: also five arrows, four hits. Yu Jiuling: consistent as ever, five arrows, all misses.

“Now…”

Xiahou Zuo felt a faint sting to his pride. Xiahou Yili laughed. “Hmph — all that boasting about being unrivaled under heaven, and look at you. Embarrassing yourself, isn’t it?”

Xiahou Zuo said, “I tied for second place — what do I have to be embarrassed about?”

He looked at Zhuang Wudi. Zhuang Wudi considered this, then nodded. “Same for me.”

Xiahou Yili said, “Yu Jiuling doesn’t count. You two are tied for last.”

Xiahou Zuo looked at Zhuang Wudi and asked, “So how do we settle this? One more round between us two, or do we resolve it in a more impressive, more thrilling, more brutal fashion?”

Zhuang Wudi’s eyes lit up. He wanted to know what the brutal fashion was, so he nodded: “More brutal!”

Xiahou Zuo said, “Right — this is what men do. Riding rocking horses and shooting arrows is honestly far too childish.”

And so the two of them played rock-paper-scissors. Zhuang Wudi won.

Xiahou Zuo felt the world had shown him no kindness. This was no longer a matter of money — this was a matter of honor.

To defend his honor, he decided to cheat.

—

That afternoon, Li Chi and Yu Jiuling and the others went out to buy things — cooked food and pastries — and they also arranged for a carriage to quietly bring Xiahou’s mother over as well.

This was no small dinner. It was a feast for over a hundred people, and by the time the sky had barely begun to darken, the men of the carriage house were already beside themselves with anticipation.

Everyone looked to Tang Pidi — this man who had naturally been the smiling sort and yet had been putting on a cold and stern face for days now finally let a trace of genuine warmth show.

“No extra training tonight — eat and drink well, every one of you. But tomorrow night we add half an hour, and the night after as well — until it’s all made up. We’re all men here, and a man stands by his word!”

A roar of cheering rose from the crowd.

Sometimes, contentment and happiness could be as simple as sitting together for a meal.

Sometimes, even that simple thing was hard to manage.

When people were still scraping together coins to eat, gathering like this came naturally. When people no longer had to worry so much about money, the gathering itself was what had to be worked for.

—