“Yellow Sky”: Crisis for the Han Dynasty sample (Act I) -- T. P. M. Thorne
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“…He covets the throne,” Cao Jie said with a praising tone. “You’ve
thought quickly once again. If your petition fails, one need only have ‘Mother’
and ‘Father’ speak to His Majesty privately… and that will be that.”
Wang Fu laughed and said, “We agree. But I’ll do it properly first…
after all, we can’t afford to be seen to circumvent protocol, as poor
Commander-in-Chief Dou Wu once did, can we…?”
The two eunuchs enjoyed a moment of humour before Wang Fu put his next
plan into motion.
“Aiee…! Wickedness!” Yuan Shao
exclaimed as he read a hastily-scrawled message from an older friend within the
court. He was sat with Cao Cao; the two had been enjoying heated wine before
the message had arrived.
“What…?” Cao Cao wondered.
“…Two things,” Yuan Shao murmured. “First, the eunuchs may be getting
close to discovering our ‘halfway house’ in the capital… I shall have to tell
Father.”
“That would be most dangerous,” Cao Cao supposed.
“Everybody that is newly named as a ‘partisan’ is put there while we
find somewhere safer,” Yuan Shao explained. “…To lose that place would be to
jeopardise everything, and even my father’s position as Excellency of Works
would not protect him from harm if he were implicated. Obviously their interrogation
techniques are becoming harder to defy.”
“What was the second thing?” Cao Cao prompted.
“Wang Fu has petitioned the emperor via a ‘friend’,” Yuan Shao reported
angrily.
“Who is a ‘traitor’ now, I wonder,” Cao Cao sighed.
“…The Prince of Bohai,” Yuan
Shao replied with some lingering disbelief.
“They’re trying to slander a prince…?”
Cao Cao chortled. “Is there no limit to the abuse these evil beings intend to
inflict upon the court? Why under Heaven are they doing that?”
“Everyone… including my father… and no doubt yours as well… must pay the
creatures bribes,” Yuan Shao
explained.
“I suspected as much,” Cao Cao said glumly. “Father tries to be-”
“The point, Mengde, is that everybody pays, because they know what will
happen if they don’t… evidence will be invented, and they will be named as
‘partisans’,” Yuan Shao continued. “We do what we can to protect others, and as
I said not long ago, men have to be well-stocked themselves in order to feed
others. We pay because it keeps the wolves from the door, and for no other
reason. The list of people that the creatures extort money from is very long,
and includes nobles and yes, even princes; I had assumed that the Prince of
Bohai would be exempt because his wife is the aunt of the current Empress…
evidently not.”
“…And if you do not pay, then they punish you, no matter who you might
be,” Cao Cao said thoughtfully. “But… if they are to slander the Prince of
Bohai… what of his niece by marriage, the Empress…? What of… what of my own
family, whose links now endanger us…?”
“You know that I’ll help you if the worst occurs, Mengde,” Yuan Shao
promised.
“I don’t want to hide in secret compartments for the rest of my life!”
Cao Cao retorted. “This will inevitably leave not a good man standing! They’ll
not stop until they’re the only ones left alive!”
“I wonder if there’s truth in that statement now,” Yuan Shao fretted.
“They are obviously devoid of sense… destroying the Prince of Bohai can only
lead to their fearing the Empress seeking vengeance… they’ll want to destroy
her too, and then anyone that might avenge her… you’re right. The question is
no longer ‘When does it stop?’ …The question now is ‘When can it stop?’”