After Sun Jian (孫堅) drew the seal from the well and placed it within his bosom, he called quietly, beneath the lamp of his camp above the site of the Jianzhang Palace (建章殿), for his old lieutenant Cheng Pu (程普). “Cheng Demou. Examine this jade.” Cheng Pu received the jade with both hands. His face set white above the eight characters.

“My Lord. This is the Imperial Hereditary Seal (傳國玉璽). In days of old, Bian He (卞和) of Chu (楚) saw a phoenix alighting upon a stone below Mount Jing (荊山), mined that stone and offered it up; in the twenty-sixth year of Qin (秦), a jade-worker carved that stone into a seal; Chancellor Li Si (李斯) inscribed the eight characters upon it in seal-script. From Qin Shi Huangdi onward, this jade became the token of the Son of Heaven. In the rebellion of Wang Mang (王莽), the Empress Dowager hurled this jade at Wang Xun (王尋) and one corner was chipped; that place was filled with gold. Emperor Guangwu (光武帝) found this treasure at Yiyang, and it has come down to our day.”

Cheng Pu lowered his voice. “Lately, during the trouble of the Ten Regular Attendants, when the young emperor fled to Beimang (北邙) and returned, this jade was said to have vanished. Now Heaven has delivered this jade into my Lord’s hand. Surely my Lord holds the aura of the jiuwu (九五, the seat of the Son of Heaven). This is no seat to linger upon. Return swiftly to Jiangdong (江東) and plan a great undertaking apart.”

Sun Jian’s fingertips lingered once more upon the jade. He placed it again inside the vermilion box and wrapped it carefully in a silken pouch, then slid it into the deepest place of his own bosom. “Tomorrow I leave. I shall plead illness, take leave of the chief, and return.” Cheng Pu bowed his head and silenced the surrounding soldiers.

The night deepened. The single point of light in the well had already been drawn up. Yet one man inside this camp did not miss that light tonight. He was a soldier from a village that shared its home-country with Yuan Shao (袁紹). This night he wished to turn that point of light into the seat of his own advancement. He slipped across the camp’s back gate quietly and rode toward Yuan Shao’s camp outside Luoyang.

At dawn, within Yuan Shao’s tent, a small piece of gold changed hands. Yuan Shao laughed broadly beneath that piece of gold. He left the soldier in his camp in silence. Tomorrow morning, he decided, he would call Sun Jian to his seat and ask this one thing directly. Beneath his own broadly-written style “Benchu” (本初), he had already written tonight, inside his head, the first line of a letter. The first line was simple: “Stop him on the road. That jade must not cross your border.” The recipient was the Governor of Jingzhou (荊州).

The next morning, Yuan Shao called Sun Jian into the chief’s tent. A light smile hung upon Yuan Shao’s face. “Wentai (文臺, Sun Jian’s style). It is said that at the Luoyang palace site yesterday, a strange object was taken up. As chief, I must see that object.”

Sun Jian’s eyes narrowed. “There is none. I have picked up nothing.”

Yuan Shao laughed. “Wentai. Swear by Heaven. If truly there is none, Heaven will rebuke you.”

Sun Jian looked up at Heaven and swore. “If I have hidden this object, may I some other day fall beneath a blade’s edge.” At the end of that oath, a cold sweat rose upon Sun Jian’s brow. Yuan Shao noticed, yet uttered no line. The two men’s eyes looked upon the same sky; yet the grain of those two skies had already split into two strands.

After that morning, Sun Jian folded his camp quietly and began his southern march to Jiangdong. Upon the back of his horse, the vermilion box moved silently inside the silken pouch. Yuan Shao’s first line of a letter had already crossed ahead to the Governor of Jingzhou. Upon Sun Jian’s road, a waiting stood quietly beyond one border-line.

Among the five hundred who rode with Sun Jian, none asked what the jade at their Lord’s bosom was. The silence of the column was different from the silence of the early evening camp. It was the silence of men who had chosen, together, not to look toward the one object they knew was there. At the head of the column, Sun Jian looked only forward. He did not turn back toward the burnt capital, nor forward past the border-line. His gaze held to the next few li of the road. That, for this day, was the whole map a man carrying a seal could afford to read.

The twenty-seventh night of Book 1 deepened quietly across two seats: the mouth of the well at Luoyang, and the border-line of the southern road. The three characters Jeongjunggwang (井中光, a point of light in a well) were planted as a seed — the breath in which the light of a seal, having entered one man’s bosom, crossed into the first line of a letter inside another’s tent. The single character 獨 of Day 26’s Hoejeondok extended, this night, into the single character 璽 of one jade.

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