Chapter Thirteen: Family Feud
Hell hath no fury like a Mother scorned.
"My Lord, Liu Xuande and a small fleet of Shu officers will be arriving at Wu within this week."
Sun Jian nodded, before wearily dismissing the courier and turning to his court to see whom among them was brave enough to deliver that message to the impetuous bride-to-be.
Gan Ning, smartly, was the first one to back out.
"Hey, why's everyone looking at me?" he demanded nervously. "I mean, I've already served my duties as matchmaker by going over to Shu and proposing the engagement to Liu Bei!"
And before anybody could answer that, Gan Ning had already excused himself by claiming he had to walk his horse, then dashing off in a jingle of golden bells.
Sun Jian next turned to his eldest son. Cocky and valiant Sun Ce, usually so brash and eager to dive headfirst into danger, bluntly refused.
"Ah…no!" he announced, before his father could even say a word.
Sun Quan feigned a sudden cough and conveniently "lost his voice," and when Sun Jian turned to Lu Xun and began to solemnly ask, "Boyan, can you go into Lady Sun's court and—" the youngster promptly squeaked and fainted.
Finally, Zhou Yu stood up and declared, "This is absurd. We are the same generals who vanquished Cao Cao's million-men army at the Battle of Chi Bi; surely there must be one among us with enough courage to deliver a simple message to Lady Sun!"
The other officers merely gawked uncomprehendingly at Zhou Yu, who, with an exasperated cry, decided in a rough voice, "Fine, then. I'll go!"
Fifteen minutes later, Zhou Yu returned…with two black eyes and a swollen upper lip. The other Wu officers stared in wide-eyed shock as their strategist limped along, supported on either side by a footsoldier.
"What happened?" Sun Jian asked with concern, but Zhou Yu could only wheeze out one word: "Mother."
A wave of confused murmuring rippled across the ranks, before Sun Ce's voice was heard rising above the rest.
"What, did my baby sister beat you up so badly that you want to crawl back to your mother?" he smirked impertinently.
The others, who'd been discussing that perhaps they should send in Huang Gai next—surely Sun Shang Xiang wouldn't dare hit an elder?—stopped and roared with laughter at their first prince's cheeky joke.
Zhou Yu glared at his sworn brother, before gritting out, "I was talking about Lady Sun's mother!"
The laughter abruptly stopped.
Sun Jian froze in his seat and turned white, gasping, "What!"
But it was already too late. The doors of the assembly hall were abruptly slammed open with a bang, and there stood the redoubtable Lady Wu, wife of Sun Jian and mother of Sun Shang Xiang.
Quickly, the rest of the fearless warriors of Wu spouted off one lame excuse after another and scrambled off, until only the unhappy husband and sons were left behind to deal with the matriarch's unconcealed wrath.
"Little Sis, you tattletale," Sun Ce growled under his breath, as his mother began to speak.
"I recover from my illness today," Lady Wu began in an acid tone, "only to find out that my daughter's been betrothed to a virtual stranger this week! Care to explain how this curious event came to be about?"
She tapped her folded fan menacingly against the palm of her hand while impatiently glaring at the male Suns, who lowered their heads and refused to make eye contact with her. This only seemed to infuriate Lady Wu even further, and she proceeded to light into the hapless men.
"Peons! Worthless and incompetent peons!" she screeched in a fury. "What sorts of inept politicians are you that you have to resort to bullying a girl into marriage in order to work out an alliance! And not just any girl—your own little girl, Wentai!"
Sun Jian visibly cringed under her verbal abuse. Fortunately for him, though, Sun Ce spoke up just then.
"But it wasn't our idea, originally—Zhou Yu was the one who planned it all!" he protested, appealing to his mother with his most innocent look.
Lady Wu stopped in mid-tirade.
"Was it, now?" And an odd little smile started to form on her face.
At the same time that Sun Jian and his sons were bending to maternal rage, chaos also reigned in the Shu courts…albeit for a vastly different reason. Engagement gifts were being bought, felicitations were dealt with accordingly, and servants scurried to and fro, forever busy at one task or another.
Inside the kitchen, the harried cook was trying to grab a hold of someone to take some tea to Liu Bei. When she finally spotted the newest handmaid, who apparently had nothing to do, the old cook gratefully plunked a tea tray into her hands and shooed her off.
Xi Tian, who'd avoided doing any work so far by hiding out in the flower gardens, smiled brightly at the buxom woman, before setting the tray down, picking up the porcelain teacup, and languidly taking a sip. The cook stared boggle-eyed at Xi Tian for one moment, then nearly blew the roof off as she hollered, "You stupid little wench! That tea is for our Lord Liu Bei!"
Xi Tian scowled, offended, before retorting, "How dare you raise your voice at me, you peasant woman? Not even my amah used to chastise me in that tone!"
The cook raised one work-roughened hand as if to slap the impudent handmaid before her, then abruptly lowered it when a thought came to her.
"You had an amah? What kind of rich handmaid are you?" she demanded suspiciously, peering down into the girl's face.
Xi Tian gulped as she realized her mistake, before hastily picking up the tea tray and stammering, "Uh, Lord Liu Bei must be thirsty; I'll just hurry up and bring him his tea now."
With that, she tripped and tottered her way toward Liu Bei's court, ungracefully sloshing about half the tea out of its cup in her hurry to get away from the suspicious cook.
Back south of the Chang Jiang, Lady Wu had summoned the black-and-blue Zhou Yu, and was railing at him for meddling into her daughter's affairs and trying to use the kingdom's only princess as some pawn of war.
She rebuked the unfortunate young man until his head was hanging down in shame, and he finally cried out in self-defense, "But it wasn't me who actually went to Shu and played matchmaker! It was General Gan Ning!"
"Is that so?" And that wicked smirk once again sprang onto Lady Wu's face.
Liu Bei critically examined his reflection in the mirror in front of him. Although he was a handsome man, on that day, none of his features seemed to please him too tremendously.
"You know," Zhang Fei's voice drifted in from the doorway, "if you want to look younger, Elder Brother, all you have to do is keep the Veteran General Huang Zhong by your side when you meet Lady Sun."
An embarrassed flush crept up Liu Bei's neck and cheeks when he turned around and realized that both of his sworn brothers were standing at the entrance, and had witnessed most of his primping attempts.
"That's not what I'm worried about," he quickly stammered.
His expression turned serious again, as he added thoughtfully, "I'm just concerned about what this marriage to Lady Sun might mean. I don't believe we're ready for such a binding alliance with Wu. After all, we can't forget that our two kingdoms were rivals a short while ago."
Before he could speak any further, a small head peeked inside, and Xi Tian entered, balancing a tea tray in her hands.
"For you, my lord," she spoke with a spirited laugh, putting on her most innocent smile with the hopes that Liu Bei wouldn't notice that she'd stolen the dried date in his tea.
Liu Bei accepted the white porcelain cup that the girl presented to him.
"Thank you…Lotus…no, Orchid, is it?" he asked, recalling that she was the one Zhao Yun had brought back from Guiyang with the suggestion that Shu could present her as a handmaid to Lady Sun.
A dimple and a sunny curtsey were his reply, before Xi Tian turned to leave, just as Liu Bei drew his cup to his lips and gave it a strange look…probably wondering why three-quarters of his beverage, along with the dark red date that the cook was usually fond of placing into her teas, was curiously missing.
In Wu, Gan Ning had been readily summoned to be berated by his queen for running off and trying to play love god without so much as even consulting the women involved.
"But I didn't even know about this marriage alliance until the two princes forced me to draw matchmaking lots!" the hapless ex-pirate pointed his finger at Sun Ce and Sun Quan, who glowered at him while muttering under their breaths, "Traitor!"
Lady Wu's left eyebrow twitched.
"The two princes already know never to interfere with their sister's love life again," she reassured him haughtily, and behind her, the younger Suns bowed their heads.
Gan Ning gulped.
"Oh. Well, I wasn't the one who came up with the idea to marry Lady Sun to Liu Bei either; Zhou Yu planned the whole thing!" he disclosed, pointing his finger at the strategist next.
Lady Wu's right eyebrow twitched.
"And after today, he'll have learned to be more discreet about offering my daughter's hand in marriage," the stern matron snapped.
Gan Ning began to sweat. There was nobody left to shift the blame to!
Unless...
Xi Tian slipped outside after delivering the tea, eager to escape from the suspicious and intimidating old cook.
Somewhere in the city square, a wandering troupe of acrobats was performing its well-practiced act to a delighted audience. Xi Tian, hearing their noise and laughter, eagerly began heading that way, hoping to avoid both the cook and doing any more housework.
No sooner had she gone a few steps, however, than a tall man with a large straw hat obscuring his features stepped in front of her path, directly blocking her way.
"Mei gu niang(1), may I interest you in some beautiful crafts?" he drawled dashingly, at the same time holding up some rather garish knickknacks with one hand.
Xi Tian wrinkled her nose in distaste at the tacky trinkets, and started to move away. However, before she could do so, the man swiftly moved to grab her wrist. With his free hand, he tipped up his large hat, revealing a cruelly beautiful face hidden behind it.
Xi Tian started at this sight.
"You must be General Zhang He," she finally spoke, in an uncharacteristic whisper.
"…I only went because General Taishi Ci made me—he said that a loyal warrior always does his leader's bidding," Gan Ning lied through his teeth, implicating yet another luckless Wu general.
1. Fair maiden.