Several days had passed since Dong Zhuo entered Luoyang. In that interval, the inside of the palace was quiet. Yet it was a quietness that pulled at the back of one's neck. In the streets beyond the palace, people now spoke with pauses between their words. Each time a sentence passed into another's ear, both the speaker and the listener glanced first to see whether someone might be hiding at its end. In these few days, that had become a new custom.

That evening, Dong Zhuo opened a banquet in his own name inside the palace. About a hundred of the Three Excellencies and Nine Ministers (公卿) were summoned. Grand Tutor (太傅) Yuan Wei (袁隗) came; Minister over the Masses (司徒) Wang Yun (王允) came; other ministers came without exception. Not one minister failed to answer the summons.

The wine went around one round, then two. Until the third round had passed, Dong Zhuo did not open his mouth. Only, after setting down his own cup, he always lifted it again a grain late. That lateness slowed the breath of every person at the seat by a grain. He had set his sword that evening against one wall of the hall. Upon the hilt were several old marks of the blade.

At about the fourth round, Dong Zhuo at last rose. He stepped toward his sword, laid his hand lightly upon the hilt, and turned to face the seat.

"You ministers. Hear my words. The present August One (皇上) is young and weak. Though his age is fourteen, none have yet seen him lift even the weight of one character of his own name. Is it fitting that the seat of the master of all under heaven rest upon such shoulders?"

The cups of the Three Excellencies and Nine Ministers seated around, in the hands of several, shook at once.

"Therefore, following the old precedent (故事) of Yi Yin (伊尹) and Huo Guang (霍光), I act today. I set down the reigning Emperor Liu Bian (劉辯) as Prince of Hongnong (弘農王), and set up in his seat the Prince of Chenliu, Liu Xie (劉協), as Emperor. Any who will not follow, I behead in this very seat."

Dong Zhuo's hand closed hard upon the hilt. The whole air of the hall settled heavily downward. Grand Tutor Yuan Wei closed his eyes. Minister over the Masses Wang Yun stroked his beard slowly, and placed one small sigh in one corner of that beard. No one opened his mouth first.

The first to tear that silence and rise was a young Colonel-Director of Retainers (司隸校尉). Yuan Shao (袁紹). The nephew of Grand Tutor Yuan Wei. The youngest face; the one who held the fastest sword.

"General. His Majesty has only lately been enthroned; he has not yet lost his virtue. To set down the proper heir (嫡長子) and set up a son of a lesser line (庶子) — if this is not itself named rebellion, then by what could it be named?"

Dong Zhuo's face flushed deeply. For the first time, something like a smile rose to it. Yet within that smile, two teeth ground against each other.

"The matter of all under heaven rests at this moment with me. I say I will do this thing; who dares not to follow? You. Does my blade look dull to you?"

Yuan Shao too drew his sword. The two blades met at the center of the banquet, their tips barely crossing. The lamps sprang up red upon both edges.

"If the general's blade is sharp, mine has never been dull either."

Grand Tutor Yuan Wei rose slowly and took his nephew's arm, quietly. "Yuan Shao. Fold the seat first." Yuan Wei's voice was small; yet within it the deep night of one old clan settled.

Yuan Shao held Dong Zhuo's gaze for a long while. Then he lowered the hilt, slowly. The speed of that lowering was so slow that every person at the seat realized only later that he had been holding his own breath.

"Today, my blade folds the seat. Yet the folding of this blade happens only today. A second time, it will not be lowered."

With that line left behind, Yuan Shao turned his back upon the seat. While his back crossed the banquet door, the heads of the hundred remaining ministers bowed down together, by a grain.

When that night ended, the moon of Luoyang hung whiter than usual. Beneath that moon, for the first time, two Emperors' names lived at the same hour. Liu Bian and Liu Xie. Upon the name of one person lay the name of another. Both names belonged to two children who had never thought themselves to be the objects of deposition and enthronement.

In one corner of the palace that night, an old palace-lady was quietly folding a set of Liu Bian's court robes. Upon the end of one collar, a single tear fell without sound. She had been the one who clothed this young Emperor from the day he first came into the palace. Tonight, she was folding that robe perhaps for the last time. From this evening on, that robe would take a long while before it was spread again.

The twelfth night of Book 1 deepened quietly within the banquet hall of the Luoyang palace and before the hands of the old palace-lady in its corner. The three characters Ssangjeya (雙帝夜, the night of two Emperors) were planted as a seed: the posture in which upon one person's name another name is laid. The halfway gap of the gate in Day 11 had crossed, this night, into the meeting of two blade-tips at the center of one seat.

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