The day after that single night of Tanjungjong, Wang Yun (王允) began to move. He had a craftsman take several dozen bright pearls from his house and fashion them into a golden crown, and he sent the crown secretly to Lü Bu (呂布). Lü Bu, greatly pleased, came to Wang Yun’s house in person to give thanks. Wang Yun greeted him at the gate and led him to the seat of honor in the rear hall.

Lü Bu replied modestly. “This Lü Bu is only a captain under the Shangfu. You, Minister, are a great minister of the court; how do you treat me so richly?”

Wang Yun smiled. “In today’s all-under-heaven there is no other hero but Your Lordship. It is not your office I honor; it is your skill I honor.”

Lü Bu was greatly pleased, and drank.

When half the wine had gone round, Wang Yun sent away those about them, leaving only one or two attendants to serve. “Bring the child here.” Soon, two attendants in green-silk robes brought out Diaochan (貂蟬). Diaochan was beautifully adorned. Startled, Lü Bu asked, “Who is this person?” “She is my daughter Diaochan. Since you have regarded me kindly, I, thinking of you as a relative, bring you to meet her today.”

Wang Yun had Diaochan pour wine for Lü Bu. Diaochan took up a cup and brought it to him. For a breath the two exchanged their eyes. The tip of Diaochan’s eyebrow moved. Lü Bu’s gaze did not miss that movement.

Wang Yun half-pretended to be drunk and spoke. “Take the child’s plea, and drink a few cups together with her. Our whole household relies upon you.” Lü Bu offered Diaochan a seat. Diaochan, as if to withdraw within, stepped back. Wang Yun checked her. “Your Lordship is my closest friend; if the child sits, what harm is there?”

Diaochan sat down carefully beside Wang Yun. Lü Bu’s eyes did not leave her face. A few more cups went round. Wang Yun pointed at Diaochan and asked Lü Bu, “Your Lordship. How do you see this child’s face?” Lü Bu bowed his head deeply. “This child’s face is a lamp of all under heaven.”

Wang Yun smiled. “Your Lordship. If you regard this child so highly, I would like to offer her to you. Yet one thing — a lucky day must be chosen, and a seat of matrimony arranged; wait only a few days. In that interval, even if another should covet the child, your name has already been placed upon this seat; fear not.”

Lü Bu rose from his seat and bowed twice to Wang Yun. “This Lü Bu shall never, in a lifetime, forget your kindness.” At the end of that line, a small lamp rose inside Lü Bu’s chest. Diaochan’s face sat quietly at the center of that lamp.

That night, after Lü Bu had returned home, Wang Yun called Diaochan out into the moonlight of the rear garden. The moonlight was settling white upon a pillar of the Mudan Pavilion. Diaochan stood beneath that moonlight. Within her gaze, the small dawn-star of the night before was still rising.

“Child. The seat has begun. In the coming days, a greater man from the other side will call for you. Answer him, too, in today’s grain at that seat. In the middle of two men, your two feet will tread two separate roads at the same time.”

Diaochan bowed her head deeply. “I have already promised ten thousand deaths. Tonight, the woman beneath the moonlight stands upon those two separate roads.”

Wang Yun’s cane pressed into the earth. Its tip did not tremble. Yet within the old minister’s chest, a truth was rolling slowly, like a stone: that he had just sent a young woman he had raised since her childhood into a seat from which no ordinary daughter’s life could return. He did not say this aloud. He only looked once more at the moonlight upon her sleeve. Somewhere in him a second sigh began — the sigh no plan could ever carry away — and he swallowed it behind his teeth.

Wang Yun stood with her beneath the moonlight a long while. He spoke no more lines. He only watched the white of the moon upon the pillar and upon the tip of Diaochan’s sleeve, and he felt within himself a thing he had known for days: that a minister’s single sigh was not enough, by itself, to strike down a usurper, and that the quiet movement of a young woman’s hand could reach into a place no minister’s sigh could. He did not tell this to Diaochan. She already, quietly, knew.

The first night of Book 2 “The Woman Beneath the Moonlight” opened quietly in the moonlight of the rear garden at Chang’an. The three characters Wolhanyeo (月下女, the woman beneath the moon) were planted as a seed: the breath on which yesterday’s seed of Tanjungjong put forth a sprout in the posture of one person standing beneath moonlight. The thirty seats of Book 1 lay, this night, quietly beneath one woman’s two feet. From tomorrow, the thirty seats of Book 2 would begin to be laid, one by one, upon her hand.

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