On the morning after his arrival at Xudu (許都), a dispatch came up from the west. The sun had not yet fully risen above the eastern window. Two or three sparrows in the courtyard of the Chancellor's residence took turns pecking at a single crape myrtle petal that had fallen the day before. The air still held the cool of night; the light on the paper of the dispatch was gray and even.

The rider had come from the frontier at Chang'an (長安) in Xiliang (西涼). His horse's four legs were caked in dust. The dispatch was brief. Ma Teng (馬騰), Grand Administrator of Xiliang, had levied fresh troops twice within the last month and had posted his two sons Ma Chao (馬超) and Ma Xiu (馬休), together with his nephew Ma Dai (馬岱), separately in three commanderies.

"He has not raised a banner against the Son of Heaven." The messenger clasped his hands. "He is only choosing his horses again."

Cao Cao (曹操) gazed long through the western window. The morning light had just come to rest upon the crape myrtle blossoms in the courtyard. Until yesterday, Guo Jia's (郭嘉) coffin had stood beneath those red flowers. At dawn today, the coffin had already been borne to the western tomb.

Cao Cao summoned Xun Yu (荀彧) to the main hall.

He spread the scroll open on the desk again. The four names he had circled in ink yesterday were still there. Second from the right, four characters: Xiliang · Ma Teng.

"Wenruo (文若). Fengxiao spoke this name to me."

"What did he say?"

"Do not leave him in his own seat. In his own seat he is a tiger; seat him in Xudu, and there he becomes a single stick of dry kindling."

Xun Yu clasped his hands.

"My lord, take those words heavily once more today. For now, Ma Teng of Xiliang is only choosing his horses in his own seat. Even the end of the reins in his hand — which way it will turn, he himself does not yet know."

"So the beat of summoning him to Xudu, we defer for today."

"Just so. That beat, two years from now, will be needed in a larger seat."

Cao Cao fell long silent. Then he took up his brush, and beneath the two characters Ma Teng on the scroll, he added a small single line.

待時 (Await the Time)

He read those two characters once, and then once more. On the second reading he spoke them aloud, just audible. Xun Yu read them after him.

"Inside Fengxiao's beat, those two characters had already been written."

Cao Cao nodded.

Around noon that day, another rumor from the Xiliang direction reached the Chancellor's residence.

Ma Teng's eldest son Ma Chao (馬超), only twenty-two, was already leading his father's vanguard. He was said to stand nearly nine feet tall. His face was said to be like white jade, his lips stained red, so that the soldiers of Xiliang called him "General Jade Face (面玉將軍)." On horseback, it was said, he became one body with the horse.

Xun Yu relayed the rumor to Cao Cao.

"A face like white jade, you say…"

Cao Cao laughed briefly. Within that laugh, admiration and wariness were mixed in equal parts.

"Had Fengxiao been living, he would have drawn this name too, inside the circle."

That afternoon, beside Ma Teng on the scroll, Cao Cao added three more characters: Ma Chao (馬超). Beneath them he added a single line.

待面 (Await the Face)

He read the three characters once more. Five names now stood upon the scroll. Liu Bei (劉備) · Liu Biao (劉表) · Sun Quan (孫權) · Ma Teng (馬騰) · Ma Chao (馬超).

Beyond the western window of the Chancellor's residence, the afternoon light lay down long. One blossom of the crape myrtle in the courtyard fell in the wind. Cao Cao looked long at the fallen flower.

Fengxiao's seat was still empty. Beside that empty seat, today, five names simply lay in a row.

Far at the western edge of the sky, it was only beginning to be morning in Xiliang.

Inside his own stable, Ma Teng (馬騰) was stroking, slowly, with his own hand, the foreleg of a four-year-old young horse. The horse did not yet have a name. His son Ma Chao (馬超), standing on the threshold of the stable, watched his father's back. Inside the eyes of the twenty-two-year-old Ma Chao, a stretch of far sky — one his father had never seen — had already entered.

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