Chapter Ten Long Live the Emperor

CHAPTER TEN

LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR

If my coronation weren’t tomorrow, if my absence wouldn’t ruin all the plans in place, I suspect Qin Zheng would have conjured a blade again and slit my throat on the spot.

His silence is more foreboding than if he were screaming at me. He wheels me back to my residence himself. Unsure if Sima Yi actually knows the full truth of the Hunduns, then wary of talking about it in the open air, I don’t speak until we’re in my room.

Right as I’m about to argue my case, Qin Zheng hauls me out of my wheelchair and hurls me onto the bed. I land hard against the mattress in my armor, terror shooting through me as if I’ve been tossed into a winter lake.

“I-it’s not like I actually revealed the truth to Qieluo!” I push myself up.

Qin Zheng slaps a hand on the bed and leans over me, forcing me back.

“Address me correctly,” he says, his voice and gaze depleted of warmth. Not that he exuded any warmth to begin with, but I now see the stark difference between being a game piece to him and being the target of his world-consuming fury.

“Your Majesty,” I make myself say, my mouth moving against the veil of my mask. My body trembles on its odd angle, unable to move higher but also unwilling to collapse.

Qin Zheng hovers over me like a tiger that’s pounced upon prey, staring at me with bloodshot eyes. Is he going to…?

No . He said he wasn’t attracted to me.

But sometimes it has nothing to do with attraction and everything to do with imposing power.

I shiver when he touches my bottom lip through the metal strings of my veil. His fingers go ice-cold as the network of meridians on his face blackens with Water qì, but they swell and shrink in pulses, as though he’s desperately holding his power back.

“There will not be a next time,” he says.

I nod.

“ Say it! ”

A sharp breath slices into me. “All right, there won’t be a next time! I get it, Your Majesty!” I stammer out through chattering teeth, sounding nothing like myself. I hate it. I hate what he does to me.

His other hand flexes in and out of a fist. Paradoxically, the sight calms me, bringing me to a numb acceptance of the worst to come.

“Does Your Majesty want to hit me?” I say. “Go ahead. Prove you’re no better than the men you look down on.”

He shuts his eyes and breathes in a deliberate rhythm, inhaling for a few beats, holding for a few beats, then exhaling slowly. After a few repeats, his fist loosens. He lingers for a few more stifling seconds before whirling away, taking my wheelchair with him.

“No one is to speak to her,” he says to the guards outside. Then he slams the door with a force that quakes the walls.

I swing up on the edge of my bed, grasping my freezing mouth beneath my veil, shaking uncontrollably. Then I flinch at the sight of my armor, remembering the sensation of being caged in by it. Instinct screams at me to take it off and throw it as far as possible, yet that would mean giving up on the power it could grant me and the protection it gives.

Protection against anyone who is not Qin Zheng, that is.

Tears gather in my eyes, burning hot. Tomorrow, I have to marry this man.

I swear I’ll find a way to learn all his powers and put him back in the ground where he belongs.

My imperial wedding is a much more somber farce than my Match Crowning with Shimin.

Even though every electronic device carries a danger of being hijacked by the gods, Qin Zheng and I accept the convenience of watching the symbolic bridal procession on a mounted screen in the Chrysanthemum Room, where so much has happened. I wonder if he keeps dragging me to this room specifically because he’s seen my memory of dealing with Gao Qiu in it, and he wants to make me uncomfortable. I wouldn’t put it past him.

My body double sits still as a statue as cameras follow her across the bulletproof windows of her electric carriage. She’s wearing a spray-painted replica of my Yellow Dragon armor and a gold-dusted red bridal veil that matches her red cape. Her masked face is barely visible beneath the translucent silk. I have the same veil in my lap for when I’ll need to put it on. Other carriages trail after hers, carrying Qieluo, Liu Che’s partner Wei Zifu, and the female pilots of the other Chrysalises we brought to Chang’an. It’s like the way the daughter of a prominent family would bring her childhood servants into her marriage, except I never actually got a chance to meet most of these ladies-in-waiting.

Overall, this feels more like a ritual than a wedding. The musicians along the street don’t play chirpy tunes on brass suǒnà but drums and cymbals in a menacing rhythm. No firecrackers go off. No one cheers or heckles from the buildings on either side, unlike the procession during my Match Crowning with Shimin. We were paraded that day in the reverse direction, from the Gao Estate to the Golden Lotus hotel. The carriages prowling after ours had been plastered with ads. Qieluo and Yang Jian’s carriage flaunted an airbrushed image of her holding a tube of eyeliner from Gao Enterprises’ Mirror Flower makeup line. Xiuying and Zhu Yuanzhang’s carriage—I wince extra hard at the memory of them—displayed a dynamically posed shot of a Black Tortoise model kit.

It all seems so silly now.

No ads taint my body double’s procession. No ads survived anywhere. The soaring skyscrapers of Chang’an used to be covered in digital promotions for the latest commodities or entertainments. Now, their oversized screens display military posters and the revived Dragon Head Flag. Many slogans accompany them:

Fight corruption until the end!

The Yellow Dragon descends once more!

His Majesty will lead us to victory!

Portraits of Qin Zheng appear on many posters, either pointing into the distance or looming over Chang’an like a disappointed father. One big screen transitions between a newly taken photo of him and a grainy historical one I’ve seen in army promo videos and Wan’er’s history textbooks. Little things like this smack me with a fresh reminder of how bizarre it is that he’s here, defying logic, defying gods, defying time. The persistent drumming and cymbal clangs resound deep into my bones. I keep an eye on him in my periphery. The production crew failed to conceal his lack of sleep. It only makes him look more unsettling, like death itself walking in mortal light. He hasn’t spoken a word to me since last night. It’s been the best I could’ve hoped for.

When the procession reaches the winding mountain roads that lead up to the estate, that’s our cue. He gets up, chair screeching against the floorboards. Instead of traditional wedding clothes, gold-embroidered red capes hook to our armor’s shoulder guards, a phoenix sewn across mine and a dragon sewn across his. His cape whispers over the floor as he marches to the door ahead of my wheelchair.

The screen on the wall blacks out.

“ Wu Zetian ,” a mechanical voice drones from the speakers.

We whirl around.

“ Go be a dutiful wife, Wu Zetian. Be a dutiful mother. Rein in your renegade husband and restore the balance you destroyed. ”

“Show yourself!” Qin Zheng lunges toward the screen.

It flicks to an image of Shimin in the fluid-filled tank, his shattered body suspended by thick tubes and wiring.

The sight hits me like a bolt of lightning, stopping my heart, my breath, my mind. A sickness rushes through my blood. Yet I can’t look away. Can’t let go of the hope in the shuddering signs of life in his heart and lungs.

I have to kill this hope. I have to set us both free. I have to, I have to, I have to .

“Stop trying to trick me!” I yell with the same vigor as Qin Zheng. “I know you’re dangling a corpse! I know he’s as good as dead!”

The voice gives no response, but the glow of the tank changes from spectral blue to alarming red.

Horror stretches within me when Shimin’s eyes flutter open above his heavy black oxygen mask. They scan around, sluggish at first, then awareness and panic surge into them.

“No—” My hand flies to my mouth.

Bubbles gush around him as his limbless body thrashes in place, shifting the tubes and wires attached to him.

Stop! I try to say, but the plea tears out of my throat as an incoherent sob. The room sways. I double over in my wheelchair. I can’t breathe. There’s not enough air to breathe.

Qin Zheng’s voice comes muffled, as though I’m drowning. He’s yelling at me, shaking my shoulders and clutching my face to scrub away the tears leaking out of my mask. He says something in warning. I don’t process what I hear until his hand leaves my cheek and then flies back in a slap.

I seize his wrist before his palm makes contact.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” I say between wheezes of breath.

Drumbeats pick up outside, as harsh and relentless as my heartbeat. We have to go. The cameras are expecting us. Huaxia is expecting us.

But Shimin is still on the screen, warping my every sense. Can he see me as well? How useless I’m being?

A large vase near the door wobbles in my vision. With an anguished cry, I use both hands to hurl it at the screen. It shatters against the image, creating an avalanche of gleaming glass and porcelain shards.

A muted pink glow recedes from my gauntlets, a blend of Metal white and Fire red.

Qin Zheng and I both gawk at my hands. But if he’s impressed by my first successful conduction of qì through this armor, he stops showing it the next second.

“Gather yourself together,” he commands before shoving my wheelchair out of the room.

The drumming gets louder in the hallway, numbing my ears. Regret wells up inside me as we leave the screen behind. I should’ve demanded more answers from the gods. I should’ve looked for more clues about the Heavenly Court in the video feed. Yet all I want to do is vomit.

Qin Zheng stumbles slightly. I didn’t expect him to be so affected as well.

I can’t believe we’ll have to convince Huaxia to bow to us like this. I throw the bridal veil in my lap over my head. The translucent red silk tints my world.

Upon spotting us, two maidservants pull apart the bead curtain at the throne room entrance. One of them makes a quick gesture to alert someone inside. The drums cut off by the time we enter, blocked from public view by the throne and dais.

“Introducing the Chairman of the Council of Sages, Sima Yi!” Yizhi’s voice broadcasts through the grand chamber.

I can’t see past the dais, but I hear the susurration of silk. I picture Sima Yi strutting in front of the dais in his dark purple Sage robes. He starts giving a speech. The words barely stick in my brain. Something about Huaxia having gone without guidance for too long. The corruption and decadence we’ve fallen into. The miracle of Qin Zheng returning to lead us again.

“Now, on behalf of the new Council of Sages, I hereby proclaim the restoration of His Majesty’s rule!”

The drums resume with the force of a thunderstorm, vibrating into my chest.

“Breathe,” Qin Zheng whispers while pulling me to my unsteady feet.

From the back of my wheelchair, he unlatches and passes me a ceremonial scythe he made from the Yellow Dragon, its dull, curved blade hovering several heads taller than me. It’s meant to let me represent the rural peasant class, though I used a scythe only a few times in my life before my family learned not to allow me near sharp objects. I did more threshing and milling during our harvests. Qin Zheng himself morphed out a sledgehammer to represent urban workers. Apparently, he used to work in a factory as a small boy before becoming a pilot, then he outlawed child labor after coming to power. The Peasant Empress and the Worker Emperor. That’s what we’re supposed to be.

Using the scythe like a staff, I take a tentative step on my half-healed feet. I will not be sitting through this coronation in my wheelchair. I can’t kneel in a wheelchair, and kneel I must.

Qin Zheng slaps a hand on the small of my back to push me around the dais and into open view. At once, two blocks of the central court officials—the top scholar-bureaucrats in Huaxia—drop to their knees on either side of a long carpet and kowtow with their palms and foreheads to the floor. Near a pillar to our side, Yizhi and Sima Yi do the same.

“May my emperor live for ten thousand years, ten thousand years, ten thousand upon ten thousand years!” the court chants in sync, the words echoing and layering through the hall until it’s as if the entirety of Huaxia has gathered to this one chamber. And that may as well be the case. This is being broadcast from every screen and radio in the empire.

The production crew handling the cameras, microphones, and lighting equipment lower their postures as much as they can without messing up their jobs. Only I remain standing with Qin Zheng, keeping myself upright with my scythe. It’s not my time to kneel. Not yet.

“You may rise!” Qin Zheng stamps the long handle of his sledgehammer against the ground, facing a camera on the carpet running from the dais to the doors. Through my veil, I see vague figures of ourselves in a monitor beneath the camera, our ceremonial tools held to our sides the way Qin Zheng dictated during the rehearsal. The crew looks as though they might pass out at any moment from the direct force of his scrutiny. They’d better not. If I can’t, they can’t either.

The shifting of silk robes cascades through the hall as the twin blocks of central court officials get up. Metallic footsteps ring through the silence that follows. Qieluo and Yang Jian stride in my direction in their smooth White Tiger armor; Liu Che and Wei Zifu approach Qin Zheng in their skeletal Azure Dragon armor. They all wear capes the color of their most dominant qì.

Although Liu Che keeps his head especially low, that doesn’t stop my hackles from rising when he gets closer. My mind feels as shattered as the screen Shimin was on, my thoughts like grinding shards. I force myself to focus on getting a proper look at Wei Zifu, the only Iron Princess I haven’t formally met. Qin Zheng didn’t let them come to the same rehearsal as me. She looks younger than her thirteen years, her cheeks soft with baby fat. Her feet are bound, though not in the extreme way mine were; they’re just unnaturally narrow. She can walk without a cane on the wide soles of her armor. I wish I could speak to her, figure out if she hates me as much as Liu Che, and if I can do anything about that. Though, after Xiuying’s betrayal, I know better than to bet on one half of a Balanced Match being much different from the other.

Once the four of them stop on either side of me and Qin Zheng, they snap their left fists up near their ears in what I’ve learned is the “laborist salute.” Qin Zheng and I return their salutes. Then they pivot into military stance, hands clasped behind their backs. With that, Qin Zheng’s intended tableau falls into place. The six strongest pilots in Huaxia united before the throne, a visual declaration that pilots are back in charge.

Qin Zheng steps ahead of us and speaks. “When I awakened in the Yellow Dragon and discovered that I had slumbered for two hundred and twenty-one years, I expected to see a much greater Huaxia than that which I left behind.” His voice comes out raspier than usual, but his pronunciation remains carefully controlled, every syllable wrestled close to modern radio-standard Hanyu. “I expected the war effort to have thundered beyond the Kunlun Mountains and reached the western ocean of our legends. I expected humanity to have liberated itself and restored the great heights we once achieved, heights to rival the gods. Yet the reality I found brought me utter disappointment.”

The temperature drops several degrees. I’m not sure if I’m imagining it or if he’s causing it with his Water qì. Many officials lower their heads further, like reprimanded children.

Qin Zheng goes on. “Instead of a society thriving in freedom, what have I found? An inequality of wealth hundreds of times worse, a larger amount of resources concentrated in even fewer hands. You have developed the technology to produce food and construct housing on a scale we could only dream of in my time, yet you would sooner destroy edible food than give it to the starving, and rather leave homes empty than shelter those on the streets! Where is the sense in this?” A microphone on a long pole above our heads conducts his words like mountain echoes. “Worst of all, you have forgotten that we are at war for our survival, and that war is not entertainment ! You worship my name, yet you have betrayed every ideal I fought for!”

Even my own face burns as if slapped. To be honest, growing up on the frontier, I was too busy hating everyone in my immediate vicinity to think much about rich oligarchs and corrupt officials. They were too far off in the cities, too abstract, and anyone who got more than a little money or power absconded as well. People do not stay at the frontier if they have other options. No one wants to be the first to be crushed by the Hunduns. We mostly made our own things and grew our own food, sharing among the village and going hunting and gathering in the woods if needed. The things we ate may have been bland as cardboard compared to what I get nowadays, but at least we didn’t have to smell anyone having a feast next door. I imagine it’s different for those who grew up impoverished in the cities, where the rich flaunt their wealth in front of them every single day.

“From this point onward, there shall be a new order in Huaxia!” Qin Zheng declares. “There shall be revolution ! My citizens, you have been deceived into thinking the richest among you deserve their fortunes for so-called hard work, when the truth is that there is a level of wealth impossible to achieve without exploiting those working far harder for far less! I am not opposed to prosperity, but one must not prosper by keeping others in desperation! According to this principle, basic sustenance and shelter shall be guaranteed for every citizen. Individuals who own multiple residential properties must select one for personal use and relinquish the rest for public housing. You shall be eligible for compensation depending on investigations into the funds with which you acquired the excess properties. Turn in your ill-gotten gains like Imperial Secretary Gao, or prepare to face justice!”

He points his sledgehammer at Yizhi, who gives a deep bow.

An increasing stir runs through the officials as Qin Zheng goes on, talking about nationalizing banks, natural resources, and health care. This is getting a lot more specific than I expected. He didn’t give this full speech during the rehearsal. I thought he was just a fan of killing rich people. What is this about canceling all medical and educational debt?

“May no more talent languish from a lack of access to resources!” he shouts, almost hoarse. “This includes women, who must no longer fester in unproductive existences! They have bodies capable of work and minds capable of thought. They ought to put those to use in service of Huaxia. This means the opening of public education and careers to them, and the banning of the degenerate practice of foot-binding, effective immediately!”

I swear my spirit momentarily leaves my body. Can Qin Zheng really stop the horrors and change the very anatomy of the world with a few commands?

He tried before, but that was different. Huaxia didn’t have the shame of failure hanging over us. Maybe, just maybe, families will listen this time.

“Working people of Huaxia, you have forgotten your power. You have let your outrage grow dull while numbing yourselves with mindless consumption. Gather your dignity!” Qin Zheng strides closer to the camera, pointing his sledgehammer. “The profitizers have fooled you into thinking them generous for providing you with work, but it is in fact your labor that moves the world and sustains their luxuries. They are nothing without you. So stand together! Your enemy is not the Rongdi willing to accept lower pay out of greater desperation. It is not the colleague campaigning for higher pay for a job you consider less worthy than yours. There is no sense in fighting each other for scraps while the true hoarders of wealth laugh at your in-fighting from their gilded storehouses!”

He falls silent for a moment, breathing hard, dragging a look of contempt over the trembling officials. The first few rows are in purple robes while the rest are in red, colors of the highest ranks of Huaxia’s bureaucracy—ranks that take considerable connections and resources to reach. When he speaks again, there is a dark, low challenge in his voice.

“The parasites will not part with their extravagances willingly. They will resist any change to the old order they benefited from. So teach them that mercy is no longer theirs to give, but yours . You have my blessing and protection—gather in councils at your workplaces, produce a list of demands for your employers, and do not work until those demands are met! Yes, I declare a general strike! Furthermore, report the misdeeds your authorities have gotten away with for too long! Rise against the profitizers. Rise against the corrupt. Rise against those who have everything in the name of those who have nothing. Rise, rise, rise, rise !”

His sledgehammer momentarily turns into a sword as he pulls it back and thumps it down at his side. Tingles spread in waves down my scalp. I imagine his words rippling through laborers with aching backs, factory workers with cramping hands, servants and clerks with sore faces from false smiles, and so many others barely getting by in Huaxia. I picture them looking at Qin Zheng on their screens as though seeing the sun for the first time.

Many officials have gone ghastly pale, yet they have no choice but to drop to their knees at the production crew’s cue. “May my emperor live for ten thousand years, ten thousand years, ten thousand upon ten thousand years!”

Qin Zheng turns to extend a hand to me, gaze smoldering with a determination to wage war and win. War on multiple fronts, against the Hunduns, against the greediest among ourselves, and, secretly, against the gods.

My heart pumps fast and hard, my blood feeling electric-charged, incandescent.

I’ve gotten too used to thinking of Qin Zheng as the guy who comes into my room every few days, insults me, and then leaves. But he is more than a man; he is a force that bends destiny, capable of toppling empires or raising them, and two hundred years of existing as a legend have only amplified his power over the minds of the masses. Now I understand why Yizhi chose to give me up to swear loyalty to him. If I put aside my conflict with Qin Zheng regarding the Hunduns, I do agree with the rest of his ideas. It’d be nice if people could stop wondering where their next meal will come from or where they’ll stay for the night. If every little girl after this will be spared the pain I lived with. I’d make those happen myself if I could, yet if I tried…

Something breaks inside me as I face the truth that the public would sooner worship his corpse than accept me as their leader. I don’t need to guess at how quickly I’d get put down for being hysterical, delusional, and dangerous for uttering the same words Qin Zheng just did.

They hate me for every reason they love him. I’d have to spend so much time and effort to fight against that, and I might never succeed. I told myself I crushed the Sages to bring change to Huaxia, but truthfully, I wasn’t thinking of much beyond the necessity to kill the Sages before they killed me. I had no concrete plans for afterward. Ultimately, I did it for myself. I want to take Qin Zheng down for the same reason, but how much will that delay progress for the masses, who he actually has plans for? I don’t know if his plans will work. But he certainly has more experience running a country than me.

I close the distance between me and Qin Zheng, put my hand in his, and bow my head. I shudder at how his armor contour emerges in my senses. Instead of unveiling me like a regular groom, he makes a thread of spirit metal unspool from the back of my collar to yank the veil off. The silk drifts behind me to the floor. The throne room’s full colors fill my vision.

“This woman is the one who reawakened me from my slumber!” Qin Zheng lifts our joined hands, squeezing mine so tightly I have to suppress a wince. “Through this union between a son of urban workers and a daughter of rural peasants, we liberated the Zhou province, and she shall continue to fight at my side as my empress!”

He turns us toward each other.

Kneel , he mouths, looking at me with as much disdain as he aimed at the officials.

A jumbled concoction of feelings washes over me, nausea the most potent of all.

“ Go be a dutiful wife, Wu Zetian. Be a dutiful mother. ”

I shake the gods’ words out of my head. I won’t let Qin Zheng render me into that. This is just a formality, a show for the masses. I won’t stay so far behind him in capability forever. Anything he knows, anything he can do, I can learn. Even if it takes me years.

He’s a good shield while I build myself up, at least. Yizhi had a point in that I’d have a lot more to worry about if Qin Zheng weren’t standing invincible before me. I can’t imagine having to deal with these seething officials myself before I’m ready.

I lower myself to my knees, the greaves of my armor thumping against the center carpet. My wedding cape pools behind me. I rest my scythe on the ground. Qin Zheng morphs his sledgehammer into a tall antlered crown that matches his own. Unlike all other pilot crowns, his was never designed to be split in two.

My hair has been pulled into a topknot so the crown’s cylindrical base has something to pin to. When Qin Zheng holds it above my head, I get a flash of Shimin doing the same. My heart seizes up, but maybe this is worth pushing through for him as well. Qin Zheng must have a plan to confront the gods. I know it.

“Wu Zetian, may our hearts—”

His sudden pause stretches for too long.

I look up. His eyes are shut, and he’s biting down on his lip, as though he’s struggling to hold in a breath.

Before I can react, a cough rips out of him. He rushes to cover his mouth, but not in time to stop blood from splattering onto my face and the crown that’s supposed to be on my head by now. We lock eyes for a bewildered instant, then another cough rattles him. Then another. Then another, more blood spurting from his mouth each time. He collapses to his knees and falls toward me. I barely manage to catch the weight of him. My crown slips from his hand, the bead veils at its front and back splaying across the carpet. Still coughing, he clutches his chest like he wants to dig his fingers in and hold his lungs in place.

“Cut the feed! Cut the feed!” Yizhi screams, bolting toward the main camera crew.

Everyone else reacts a second later.

“Your Majesty!” the officials cry out. A few lunge out of formation to come help him, but most don’t.

Qin Zheng continues to cough and shudder in my arms. A flat screeching noise goes through my mind, accompanied by a single thought: You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

There goes any hope for change in Huaxia.

No…

No, not yet! During the rehearsal, Yizhi said the livestream would have a ten-second delay.

I hurl Qin Zheng off me and pick up my scythe and blood-splattered crown.

“Generals, get His Majesty onto the throne!” I call to Qieluo and Yang Jian while pulling myself to my feet with my scythe. “Chairman Sima, get over here and do a closing speech! Camera crew, get a close-up on Chairman Sima. Capture His Majesty in the background, but out of focus so he’s blurry! Officials, stay in formation! You’re not helping!”

Like a whirlpool suddenly stopping before spinning in another direction, everyone dashes to do what I say. With my crown under my arm, I scuttle after Qieluo and Yang Jian as they carry Qin Zheng up the dais to the throne, his arms slung over their shoulders.

“Can you look normal long enough for Sima Yi to close this off?” I whisper to Qin Zheng, wiping smears of blood from his mouth with my cape. At least it won’t show on the red fabric.

His eyes stay tensed shut, but he nods and shifts into a more solemn posture on the throne. I pray that the stream cut off before his collapse. If my plan works, it should give the impression that the feed simply glitched out during my crowning.

Much less gracefully than planned, I crown myself, fumbling its tall hollow base over my topknot. Once I connect the thread of spirit metal from my collar that Qin Zheng used to unveil me, the crown sits weightless on my head. At last, I’m officially the Empress of Huaxia. I wipe his blood off my face and armor and straighten beside his throne, holding my scythe at my side.

I hope I look powerful. One of us has to.