Strategy
"The strategist, Your Highness."
The epithet has an edge of condescension to it. Zhuge Liang hides a smile. He has a name as well as a title, but while he is a petitioner at the court of the Duke of Wu, the title becomes him well enough.
He brushes past the minister who led him here, assessing his character in a single glance masked as polite thanks. Red-clad and hostile, the curled point of his beard trembling with what Zhuge Liang recognises as righteous anger, the minister meets his gaze for the space of a heartbeat before he looks away. It tells Zhuge Liang more than he needed to know.
The minister hesitates, but a short command from Sun Quan has him scampering away, red robes swirling. He does not look back. Zhuge Liang watches him hasten along the corridor. Only when the minister turns a corner and vanishes from sight does Zhuge Liang breathe easily. He lifts his hawk's wing fan and flaps it back against his chest. The fragile strength of the feathers calms him, and with a lighter heart he enters the Duke's private quarters.
Accustomed to the easy intimacy of Liu Bei's court, where men speak their minds freely, the court of Sun Quan feels like a trap. A comfortable trap – the kingdom of Wu is rich and generous with its gifts – but he senses the strings that pull tight and the iron teeth ready to snap. Zhuge Liang considers this, and measures it against his knowledge of the capital. How much worse it must be for Emperor Xiandi, caged within palace walls, hidden behind city walls, and jealously guarded by Prime Minister Cao Cao.
Sun Quan sits near the window of the narrow antechamber. He wears the same robes as earlier, but has put aside the beaded headdress in favour of a lacquer and velvet cap wrapped around his topknot. He still looks like a prince, and the weight he carries through his shoulders is a prince's burden.
Zhuge Liang moves closer. Though the shutters are drawn against the night, a draught creeps in and disturbs the air. The room is illuminated by dozens of soft-scented candles. Their trembling light falls in a circle around the Duke, as if keeping him safe inside, or perhaps they're keeping Zhuge Liang out. On the table before Sun Quan is a game of go, half played. Zhuge Liang studies the board and notices the white pieces encroaching upon the black. Sun Quan stares at the game with glum acceptance before he stirs from his thoughts and looks up.
The Duke of Wu is a difficult man to read. Zhuge Liang smiles and tilts his fan towards the board. "Would you like a game, my lord?"
Sun Quan flicks him a glance. "With you? I think not. It would serve no purpose."
"It would pass the time while we spoke of other matters."
"And I would lose." Sun Quan speaks calmly and with detachment. There's no trace of the temper he displayed earlier that day in the audience hall. "Doubtless that is what you intend. A moral lesson of some sort." Another glance. "Sit with me."
Zhuge Liang sweeps back his sleeves and kneels on the wooden floorboards. Placing the fan in his lap, he arranges his hands neatly folded in front of him. "What possible gain would I have in defeating you?"
"So you would endeavour to lose, just to give me face?" Sun Quan turns the board around, examining the state of play from the opposing side. It seems to give him no pleasure either way. "That would be a poor strategy. An obvious strategy."
"Sometimes the obvious may be overlooked, and be all the more surprising for it."
Sun Quan raises an eyebrow. "Nevertheless, I will not play with you."
"No." It's an opening, and so Zhuge Liang takes it. "But you will play with your kingdom and the lives of your people."
He expects a reaction: anger, bluster, the threat of eviction from the palace. Instead, Sun Quan begins to collect up the pieces from the board, arranging them in piles upon the table. "Be careful what you say, Zhuge Liang. We are no longer in the audience hall; you no longer have an audience."
Zhuge Liang smiles again. "An audience of one is more than enough."
Sun Quan snorts. "Is that so? I don't believe you. I think you are a man who enjoys acting. An actor without an audience would wither and die."
"Does a tale need a listener for it to have meaning?"
"Yes." Sun Quan stares at him.
Zhuge Liang shrugs. "I disagree."
"Naturally. Disagreement is what you do best."
His smile comes easier this time. He has not enjoyed himself this much in months. Liu Bei is a worthy master, but he sees the good in everyone and draws back from a challenge. Liu Bei accepts everyone at face value and acts for the common good. Sun Quan is mistrustful and cautious, like a child poking holes in a paper lantern to see the flame burning inside. He is a challenge, and he challenges. Zhuge Liang relishes both opportunities.
"I am not so unpleasant as to disagree with my host," he says, pitching his voice in a deceptively mild tone.
It doesn't fool the Duke. Sun Quan gives him a sharp look. "Of course. You seek only to persuade."
"A far more civilised pursuit." He watches as Sun Quan removes the final go pieces from the board. It is time to press his advantage, if that is indeed what he has here. "With eight hundred thousand men, Cao Cao believes himself above the need for both persuasion and disagreement. He can afford not to be civilised, too."
One of the black pieces tumbles free and skitters across the table. Sun Quan scowls. "Let us not speak of him."
Zhuge Liang raises an innocent gaze. "Forgive me, Highness. I thought we were doing so already."
Sun Quan almost laughs. He covers the moment with a cough and gets to his feet. He breaks the circle of light and moves around the narrow room with the same restless prowl he exhibited earlier in the day. Zhuge Liang has seen caged animals stride back and forth, man-eating tigers pacing endlessly as if hypnotised, searching for a way out of their captivity, for an exit that doesn't exist.
Just as he's beginning to feel sorry for the Duke, Sun Quan turns and looks at him, not with the gaze of a trapped beast but with a hunter's eyes.
"Your mode of dress," he says, gesturing to Zhuge Liang's plain linen robes of cream and grey. "Do all of Liu Bei's men dress themselves so simply?"
"Even Liu Bei himself shuns extravagance."
Sun Quan leans against the doorway. He fingers his own robes, the cloak of midnight blue edged with gold and, beneath it, the burgundy damask and white glossed silk. "Ah."
Zhuge Liang can't help but chuckle. "A man cannot be judged by the quality of the brocades he wears."
"Of course he can." While the look Sun Quan gives him is knowing, sadness lies behind it. "You judged me, when you saw me this morning."
For the first time since he's entered the room, Zhuge Liang hesitates. Instinct usually serves him well, guiding him into falsehoods as well as towards the truth. He knows how he felt when he first saw Sun Quan, but to speak those feelings aloud might be dangerous to them both.
He looks at the Duke now and sees the same thing again: a young man, handsome, wary, strong in unpredictable ways and yet fragile in others, a man defeated by the expectations of a dead family – a powerful father, a revered elder brother – before he'd even been tested. In some ways, Sun Quan reminds him of Liu Bei, but there is something else there, too; something that exists between them, something that had been shining in Sun Quan's eyes when they'd faced one another in the audience hall.
Zhuge Liang feels the echo of it now, and struggles to find the words to express himself appropriately. "That's not true, Highness. I did not judge you. I had no need to, for I already had the measure of your character."
Sun Quan looks pleasantly startled. "How?"
"Rumour."
The Duke's cynical laughter stirs the air. The flames on the candles flicker in response and then bow again as he pushes himself away from the wall and resumes his pacing. He doesn't go far. This time he comes to rest against the doorframe leading into a second room beyond the antechamber. "I'm surprised you rely on such an unstable source."
"Strategy is nothing more substantial than rumour, my lord. Surely you know that." Zhuge Liang allows a pause to build before he strikes. "Your father knew it. Your elder brother..."
"I know it." Sun Quan turns his head and looks away into the darkness of the second room. The line of his throat is perfect, limned by candlelight and smudged with shadow. When he speaks again, his voice is tight. "I am not yet its master, but I know the power of rumour. Cao Cao dismisses me as a coward because of it. My ministers are divided because of it. Even I..."
He stops, his breath catching in almost-pain before he continues, "I begin to doubt my own abilities because of it."
"And yet I came here to you on the basis of rumour," Zhuge Liang says, rising to his feet to give emphasis to his words. "I believe in you."
"You would have believed in my brother more readily, I think."
Zhuge Liang clutches at his hawk's wing fan, taps its leading feathers against his chest. "Not at all. He was brave, but he lacked forethought. He was strong, but he had no vision. The mightiest warrior needs to understand why he's fighting if he is to win more than land and possessions."
Sun Quan grunts and shakes his head. "Some say that's all that matters."
"Then they are wrong." Dropping his fan onto the go board, Zhuge Liang moves in close. "You, my lord – you consider your actions and reactions long before you make a decision."
He sees a flicker of response in Sun Quan's eyes. "Go on."
"You have anticipated our meeting for days, perhaps for weeks..."
Sun Quan interrupts. "Cao Cao did nothing to hide his ambitions. Of course I expected an offer of alliance. My ministers have been urging treaties and alliances for months."
"But not with Liu Bei."
At last, Sun Quan relaxes. "No."
"Allying yourself with the strongest power..." Zhuge Liang lets his voice tail off. "Most people would make that decision."
"But I haven't."
"Not yet."
"No." Sun Quan glances at him, a look as sharp as lightning. "Not yet."
Hopeful, anticipating much but assuming little, Zhuge Liang ventures closer still. He knows he's about to close the deal, but as yet he can't tell what it will mean for either of them.
"You don't trust Cao Cao. His duplicity is too clear for you to blind yourself to it." He stands in front of Sun Quan now, looking at him with earnest honesty. "You are not a coward, my lord. You are a man who sees far into the future. This is a curse, I think: while you scan the horizons, you miss what is standing right in front of you."
Sun Quan looks at him and smiles. "You?"
Zhuge Liang answers with a smile of his own. "Me."
* * * *
Zhuge Liang has a theory, long believed, that a man's true character is only revealed in bed. In his experience, women are the more honest sex. It's men who lie, who keep their characters hidden. He knows the reason is simple. Women have nothing to lose but their virtue, so they can be transparent in their desires and circumspect in achieving them. Men are encouraged to behave in direct opposition to their needs. Discreet ambition is admired, but open ambition is feared. Better to conceal that ambition and pretend at humility than to strive and strive and alienate those who offer support.
Only in bed is the artifice stripped away. The test of a man's character is not in his ability to govern or in his capacity to love, but in the way he fucks.
Sun Quan is gentle. Zhuge Liang feels lost when the Duke touches him. It's been years since he's been handled with such exquisite sensitivity, and it's not what he expected. Looking at the Duke that first time in the audience hall, he'd been so certain that Sun Quan would be a savage lover. Instead he's delicate, thoughtful; he makes love with the same focus and energy that he displays in politics.
Zhuge Liang acknowledges that his theory needs a few amendments. Not all men conceal their true characters. Some are as honest in all their dealings as they are with themselves.
"Tell me the truth," Sun Quan says at the beginning of the hour of the Ox. His voice is warm, his words soft as they hush over Zhuge Liang's naked skin. "You wear plain robes on purpose, to enhance your looks."
The idea is preposterous, and Zhuge Liang laughs. "No, my lord."
"Oh." Sun Quan lies down beside him, one hand covering Zhuge Liang's hip in a gesture almost possessive. "I think you wouldn't admit it even if it were true."
"I came here covered in dust," Zhuge Liang reminds him.
"It only added to your appeal."
They laugh together, united by a sense of the ridiculous. It brings them closer again. Streaked with sweat and seed, their scents mingling, their bodies touch with a casual, intimate ease that makes Zhuge Liang shiver in delight.
"This," says Sun Quan, his eyes reflecting the gleam of the candlelight. "What we did tonight... Did you do it for Liu Bei?"
Zhuge Liang tucks his hands beneath his head to stop himself from reaching out to caress Sun Quan. His fingers splay through the tangled length of his unbound hair. It's hot and damp at the nape of his neck. "No," he says. "I did it because I was curious."
"Curious. Yes." Sun Quan seems satisfied with this answer. He asks no more questions. His half-smile catches in the light before he settles beneath the quilt. There's silence between them for a long moment, and then Sun Quan adds, "You may stay with me tonight."
His words wake Zhuge Liang from the edge of dreams. He remembers who he is and what he's doing there. "Yes, Highness."
Sun Quan chuckles and turns onto his side. Soon his breathing evens out. He's asleep.
Zhuge Liang lies awake. His fan is on the go board on the table in the other room. He wishes he could get up and fetch it.
* * * *
Dawn breaks halfway through the hour of the Rabbit. Zhuge Liang watches the light bleed beneath the window shutters and slide, grey into yellow into white, down the wall to track across the floor. The night is over, and he is free to leave.
When he eases out from beneath the quilt, Sun Quan doesn't stir. Zhuge Liang dresses quietly, facing the bed. He wants the Duke to wake and see him standing there. He lingers in the bedchamber after he's finished tying the length of cloth around his untidy topknot, but Sun Quan remains asleep.
Zhuge Liang has no reason to disturb him, and so he backs away, leaves the room. He collects his fan on the way past the go board.
Lu Su is waiting for him outside. His expression one of patient enquiry, he lifts himself to his feet as soon as Zhuge Liang appears. "Well?"
"Well." Zhuge Liang walks a short distance before he halts. He turns as if recollecting something and lifts the fan so the tip of one feather almost brushes his mouth. "His Highness will form an alliance."
A visible tremor of relief washes through Lu Su. "When?"
"I don't know." Zhuge Liang lowers the fan and looks beyond its tawny and white feathers at the sunlit courtyard. Behind the safety of the palace wall lies the wilderness of Wu; a beautiful, deadly place.
Zhuge Liang trades in quiet illusions that, given certainty and belief, often come to pass. This kingdom is the same. If he can give Sun Quan certainty, if he can make the young duke believe, they will all be saved and Cao Cao will be cast down.
But men are not as durable as mountains; not as deep as rivers. Their actions can be as impenetrable as the forests and colder than the winter snows.
Zhuge Liang faces Lu Su. "I don't know," he says again. "There are still many details to be decided."
"But the Duke has agreed?"
He manages a small smile. "Yes. He has agreed."
"Then it will be so. The Sun family do not give their word lightly."
Zhuge Liang nods and strides on, leaving Lu Su behind. He walks to the wall and looks down at the kingdom of Wu, at the fertile fields and the glitter of the river, the distant cliffs of humped mountains. The sun spills over the land, and everything is golden, everything is good.
He stands for a moment, not in admiration but in fear of what could happen to Wu, what could happen to Sun Quan. Before he came here, his concern was only for Liu Bei. Now he must worry about another country, another man, for another reason. His strategy must change in order to serve two masters.
Lu Su calls out to him, and Zhuge Liang starts to pace again. He walks the walls as if he can meet the horizons. He holds the hawk's wing fan tight against his chest, shielding his heart.
end