From Yijing (易京) to Xudu (許都) was a thousand li.

The procession that bore Guo Jia's (郭嘉) coffin at its head came down south a beat slower than an ordinary march. Xun You (荀攸) bent his knee twice every morning — before the march, and before the coffin. Xiahou Dun (夏侯惇) tied the cloth over his one-eyed socket tighter than usual. Zhang Liao (張遼) held the rear guard and turned to look north twice each day.

Cao Cao (曹操) followed a step behind the coffin. None of his men could stand closer to him than that. He had not forbidden it. A strand of heaviness upon his shoulder pushed that step back, naturally.

On the fifth night of the march, at a small relay post, Cao Cao received a letter. The night wind outside was cool. On the roof, a sparrow was building a late nest. Cao Cao read the letter by a single candle, and heard, in the silence between his breaths, the tiny sound of the sparrow settling its twigs.

It was a report on the situation from a border commandery in the north. A former general of Yuan Shao (袁紹) had been hiding in the valleys and had plundered a neighboring village. A month earlier Cao Cao would have halted his horse on the spot and sent one of his generals breaking north. Today he did not.

He unrolled the letter and read it through. Then he handed it to Xun You.

"Gongda (公達). This matter — leave it in the hands of the commandery's own governor. Let us not ride far for it."

Xun You received it with both hands clasped.

"Had Fengxiao (奉孝) been living, he would have said the same today."

Cao Cao nodded without answering. His eyes turned again toward the distant north.

On the sixth day, the procession crossed the Yellow River (黃河).

On the northern bank, Cao Cao reined in his horse and looked long down into the water. Twenty years before, as a young man of twenty, he had crossed this very river on his way into Luoyang (洛陽). That day came back to him more sharply than any other. At that time Guo Jia had not yet been at his side. Nor Xun Yu. His own name was not yet the name of the realm.

On the southern bank, a welcoming line out of Xudu was already waiting. Xun Yu's (荀彧) banner stood at its head. Behind it, Cao Cao's eldest son Cao Pi (曹丕) and second son Cao Zhi (曹植) stood side by side.

Cao Cao crossed. Cao Pi dropped to his knees first. Cao Zhi dropped a beat later, behind his brother. Cao Cao looked down at the two of them for a long while.

"Your father has today come back bearing Fengxiao."

Cao Pi lowered his head. Cao Zhi lifted his face. That face, not yet sixteen, was strangely deep.

He reached the Chancellor's residence at Xudu on the evening of the seventh day.

Cao Cao had Guo Jia's coffin placed, for a time, in the western courtyard of the residence. It was the spot where Guo Jia used to spread out his maps with Cao Cao. Beneath a single crape myrtle tree in that courtyard, the coffin was set down this evening.

Cao Cao did not weep. He did not call out "Aigo, Fengxiao," as he had at Yijing. He only stood for a long while beneath the crape myrtle. The flowers were abundant. They were red.

"— Fengxiao. These flowers — I did wish you could have seen them."

Saying this, Cao Cao went into the inner part of the residence.

Within that night, Cao Cao sat long.

The scroll Guo Jia had handed him at the last was spread out upon the desk. Jingzhou (荊州) · Jiangdong (江東) · Xiliang (西涼) · Liu Bei — four strands of characters read larger today than before. Cao Cao laid his hand upon each of the four in turn.

Last of all, he laid his hand longest upon the name of Liu Bei. He left it there for a long while, and then drew a single circle around it in ink. One circle remained quietly under the western lamp of Xudu that night.

That name, still, was called aloud nowhere.

The owner of the name, within a small walled town at Xinye (新野) in Jingzhou, was this day too only walking a round of the yard with his eldest son Liu Shan (劉禪) by the hand.

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