After the evening of Gwae-in, the three walked quietly up along a country road to the north. Horses and steps mingled; some twenty close followers came behind them. In case a warrant from the court should come down, Liu Bei had the company folded inside one long grey cloak.

Within a single day a rumor crossed northward faster than any step. “The seat of the defender of Anxi, and the seats of both the registrar and the aide, have emptied — all three at once.” Upon the paper of the court, the three empty seats had joined into one wider space. The line that the official seal of the county hung upon a pillar traveled as far as a frontier military camp to the north.

At a frontier camp at Beiping (北平), one man heard that rumor. His name was Gongsun Zan (公孫瓚), style Bogui (伯圭), grand administrator of You Province (幽州). He had been an old fellow student beneath Lu Zhi (盧植). Gongsun Zan spoke a single short line. “That one will walk this way. The last crossroad of the northern road is this place. Open the gate of the camp.”

At the dawn of two days later, the three reached the gate of the Beiping camp. Gongsun Zan himself opened the gate and took Liu Bei’s hand. One hand of an old fellow student beneath Lu Zhi met another. The years of more than a decade, when two young men had shared one desk, flowed between those two hands.

“Xuande. The seat of county defender was too small for you. Behind this Gongsun Zan’s camp, a better seat is waiting. It is the seat of County Prefect (縣令) of Pingyuan County (平原縣) — one step above the seat of defender. From tomorrow morning, one more line may be written down beside your name.”

Liu Bei bowed deeply. He did not speak at first, but looked long and quietly upon Gongsun Zan’s face.

“Elder Bogui. Behind this step of mine, the face of the people of Anxi is folded quietly. To keep that face one more time, I accept the seat at Pingyuan. Yet — may the grain of this acceptance be placed not upon the lane of a court’s single line, but upon the lane of the common people’s seat.”

Gongsun Zan nodded. At the center of the camp a hearth-fire burned on. The grain of that fire settled upon the shoulders of the three. Liu Bei tapped lightly the shoulders of Guan Yu and Zhang Fei. Three empty seats were turning, this morning, into one seat now filled.

At the center of that seat, before the hearth, a familiar face stepped in. A tall and broad-shouldered young fellow. His two eyes were deep as a clear pool, and a spear hung quietly at the side of his waist. His name crossed over: Zhao Yun (趙雲), style Zilong (子龍). A man of Zhenting (眞定) in the Changshan (常山) region, a captain then staying in Gongsun Zan’s camp.

Looking at the three faces, the inside of Zhao Yun’s eyes grew quietly moist. Eyes that had long looked upon another face standing behind the seat of two sworn brothers he had never met were reading the grain of faces he would keep in memory for years. That reading drew out no single line this morning. Only — the tip of Zhao Yun’s spear tilted naturally toward Liu Bei. The tilt of that spear had already opened, before any word was spoken, the grain of a promise waiting to be made.

Liu Bei turned his head toward Zhao Yun. Without a word they met eyes. Before the hearth this morning, the seed of a fourth face was being planted quietly. Behind the grain of the three in the peach garden oath (Day 4), a fourth seat was being prepared. Only — this morning they did not speak that seat’s name. The name would cross over on a seat of some day after tomorrow.

The fire in the hearth bent low, as if to listen. Outside the tent, the frontier wind moved in a different register from the wind of Anxi; it was a wind that had blown for years across grass and bone at the border. In the quiet between two sentences, Liu Bei and Gongsun Zan traded no words for a long while. Yet in that silence, the long decade of their shared desk under Lu Zhi was neither memory nor nostalgia, but a seat that bore, at this very moment, the weight of an accepted post.

The eighth dawn of Book 1 opened quietly before the hearth of the camp at Beiping. The four characters Samseok-dong-gong (三席同空, three seats emptied at once) were being carried over, today, into the single line of the prefect of Pingyuan. The seat of the hanging pillar of Gwae-in (Day 7) had crossed to the front of a new seat before the hearth. The seed of a familiar face was coming one grain closer to the seat of tomorrow.

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