A few mornings later, Dong Zhuo mounted his carriage and went into the palace at Chang’an to attend to state affairs. Lü Bu (呂布) followed behind with his halberd, as usual. While Dong Zhuo held long talk before Emperor Xian (獻帝), Lü Bu’s eyes crossed the sky outside the palace gate. He gripped the shaft of his halberd. He stepped outside the palace gate, mounted his horse, and turned his head toward the residence.

He tied his horse at the residence and walked straight into the rear hall with his halberd. An attendant tried to block him, but upon seeing his face, stepped back. From inside the rear hall, Diaochan heard his step first. She half-opened the door and whispered low, “My Lord. Wait for me beside the Fengyi Pavilion (鳳儀亭) in the rear garden.” Lü Bu nodded and walked to the rear garden.

The Fengyi Pavilion was a small pavilion at a corner of the residence’s rear garden. A curved railing turned between its pillars, and beyond the railing a lotus pond opened quietly. Lü Bu stood aslant beside the railing. He gripped the shaft of his halberd with his right hand.

After some while, Diaochan came out, parting flowering branches and pushing aside willow branches. Her step halted beneath the pavilion. She looked up at Lü Bu’s face. A tear came down from her eyes first.

“Though I am not Minister Wang’s own daughter, he has raised me as his own. After I received his permission to carry the broom and dustpan of Your Lordship as a bride, I believed the lifetime wish of this body had already been fulfilled. But unexpectedly, the Grand Preceptor held a foul heart and defiled this body. This body wished to die on the spot, and only for one reason has it not yet died. Because it had not spoken a word of parting to Your Lordship.”

Diaochan’s hand seized the curved railing. Her body tilted toward the pond beyond the railing by one step. One step. That step, this morning, showed how thin a single sheet of window-paper’s thickness could at last become.

Lü Bu threw his body, too late, and held her. His halberd clattered upon a stone beside the railing. His arm clasped hard behind Diaochan’s waist. “I have long known your heart. Only, to my grief, we had never spoken a word.” His voice collapsed beneath the pavilion’s roof.

Diaochan pulled at Lü Bu’s sleeve. “If I cannot be your wife in this life, let us make a promise for the next.” Lü Bu shook his head. “If I cannot take you as my wife in this life, that is not a hero.”

Diaochan dropped another tear. “This body passes each day like a year. Take pity on me and save me.” Lü Bu drew a low breath. “I have slipped out only for a moment. If the old traitor should learn I am absent, he will suspect; for now I must return quickly.”

Diaochan took his sleeve again. “If Your Lordship so fears that old traitor, then this body will never see the light of day.”

Lü Bu halted. He did not pick up the halberd. He only tilted his body toward the railing again. “Let me slowly devise a good plan.” Diaochan steadied her breath and nodded. Yet her next sentence pushed the air of the pavilion back once more.

“Within the deep women’s quarters I had heard Your Lordship’s name full in my ear like thunder. I knew you only as the one unique man of this age; yet, unexpectedly, Your Lordship today is bound beneath another’s hand.”

When that sentence ended, tears fell from Diaochan’s eyes like rain. Shame filled Lü Bu’s whole face. Holding the halberd in one hand, with the other he drew her quietly close again. The two leaned against each other beneath the curved railing of the pavilion, and for a long while could not let go.

The distance of one step beneath the Fengyi Pavilion was a seat where the thickness of yesterday morning’s single sheet of window-paper had, within a day, thinned further. A blade with no master was, for the first time, receiving back through its ear the heat of its own hilt within the distance of two people’s embrace. That heat was not the heat of a fresh forge, nor of the old campaigns of his twenty-sixth year. It was the heat of a hilt remembering that a hand upon it could choose, someday, a different master.

The third morning of Book 2 deepened quietly beneath the curved railing of the Fengyi Pavilion. The three characters Bonguibo (鳳儀步, the step of the Fengyi Pavilion) were planted as a seed: the breath on which the thickness of one sheet of window-paper thinned into the distance of one step. The length of the spear of Day 32’s Ilgeokgeo had been narrowed, this morning, further into the length of one step.

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