On the morning after the empty crown of Shouchun had been laid upon the ground, a single horse was running along a back road of the western gate toward Jianghuai (江淮).

Upon the saddle sat Yuan Shu (袁術). Inside his bosom a fragment of jade seal (玉璽) was held. It was a fragment of the Seal of the Transmitted State (傳國璽) that Sun Jian (孫堅) had drawn up long ago from a well inside Luoyang. Sun Jian’s last breath had been pressed upon its surface; and this morning, a usurper-king’s last breath lay upon it as well.

The road of Jianghuai was lightly wet with earth. Yuan Shu rode through one night and one day without rest, seeking to reach the seat of Yuan Yin (袁胤). The breath of the running horse grew short. Yuan Shu’s two eyes sank deep. His mouth let slip a low murmur. “A usurpation (僭稱) was a breath shorter than the breath of a single horse.”

The horse reached a low village beside a river. At the mouth of a well an old woman was drawing water. Yuan Shu dismounted and asked in a low voice. “One bowl of water, please.” The woman raised her head. “Today’s well has no water to drink. It has been a long dry spring.” Yuan Shu bowed his head quietly. His hand took hold, lightly, of the fragment of jade seal inside his bosom.

The woman dipped a thin strand of yellow water into a bowl and held it out. Yuan Shu received the bowl with both hands and brought it up to his lips. The yellow water swayed lightly before his nose. Yuan Shu could not drink that water. The mouth that had lived for a year under the name of a usurpation had become a mouth that could not swallow a bowl of yellow water.

Yuan Shu set the bowl down. A line of blood rose from his throat. His body tilted upon the saddle. The single horse of Jianghuai carried his last breath.

Yuan Shu came down from the horse onto the ground. His hand took, for the last time, the fragment of jade inside his bosom. That fragment left his hand and fell upon the earth. The fragment of jade seal touched, for the first time, the soil of Jianghuai. Sun Jian’s last breath and Yuan Shu’s last breath were laid together upon the surface of that fragment.

At the seat of Yuan Yin, a late envoy arrived too late. He had ridden from three provinces away, changing horses twice and not sleeping for two nights, only to arrive at a single body already laid upon the earth of a river bank. Yuan Shu’s body had already cooled. The envoy bowed his head and lifted the fragment of jade from the ground. A thin layer of earth upon its surface was wiped off inside his hand.

That night, the fragment of jade entered the bosom of an envoy and set out toward Lü Bu (呂布) at Xiapi (下邳). It was a line of Yuan Yin’s judgment. “This jade, which has cast off the name of usurpation, is closest in its next move to the bosom of Lü Bu, the greatest power in today’s Xuzhou.” That judgment would, one day, become the first line of a water-attack (水攻) at Xiapi.

Meanwhile, at Xiapi, Lü Bu was drinking a cup of wine inside his tent and had laid a map upon the table. The horse of an envoy coming from Jianghuai was drawing near a corner of that map. Chen Gong (陳宮) stood before Lü Bu and spoke low. “My Lord. If that jade enters Your Lordship’s bosom, the blade of Cao Cao of Xudu will take its next step toward Xiapi. A move of refusing the jade is also open.” Lü Bu laughed low. “Refusal is not the grain of me.”

Outside Lü Bu’s tent, the Sky-Piercing Halberd stood upright in the sand beside the flap, its edge catching a low lamp from within. The shaft did not sway. For many seasons it had been the first thing a visitor saw when approaching Lü Bu’s seat; and for many seasons it had said the same thing to each visitor without speaking: that this house did not refuse jade, did not refuse gifts, did not refuse the admiration of travelers, and refused nothing that arrived with its own weight. When the envoy from Jianghuai reached the flap within two evenings, he would see the halberd before he saw the tent. He would not ask whether the house would accept what he carried. He would know.

The sixty-fifth night of Book 3 deepened quietly beneath the death of a single horse of Jianghuai. The three characters Ganghwaima (江淮馬, the single horse of Jianghuai) were planted as a seed: the breath on which a bowl of yellow water, a fragment of jade seal, and an envoy’s horse moving toward Xiapi lay at one seat. After the fall of the empty crown of Day 64’s Suseongnak (壽城落), this night a usurper-king’s last breath lay together with it upon the earth of Jianghuai.

—