Chapter Fifteen Doomed to Secrecy

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

DOOMED TO SECRECY

I don’t return to Qin Zheng’s quarantine chamber for the night. I need to start getting Yizhi’s help with our plan to reach the Heavenly Court.

At least, that’s my best excuse to meet privately with him.

“Tunnels, midnight, don’t bring electronics,” I whispered to him under cover of the stadium noise. I didn’t add what I wanted to talk about, just that Qin Zheng approved of the meeting.

Once I get back to the palace in a heavily guarded carriage, I go to Gao Qiu’s old residence, a grandiose single-story manor that was supposed to serve as mine and Qin Zheng’s imperial quarters. On the lantern-lit stone porch, a pair of soldiers opens the double--doored entrance. This leads to a receiving room that bombards my vision with red: red candles, red cloths on the table and chairs, jade pendants hanging from red strings, and red draperies everywhere. A bloody husk of an imperial wedding cut short.

In the lavish bedchamber, bigger than all the rooms in my family’s house combined, an intricate gold and crimson carpet leads to a round, absurdly large bed on an elevated platform. Translucent red silks stream down over it from a circular bronze frame on the ceiling, the ends of the fabric secured around the platform edges. I grimace. Would Qin Zheng have demanded we consummate the marriage despite our mutual disgust? I’m glad he’s the one bound to a prison now, no matter how it’s made us both more vulnerable.

I try not to imagine the gross things Gao Qiu once did in this bedchamber. I would not have chosen to move here if not for its one key feature: easy access to the tunnels beneath the estate.

While waiting for midnight, I ask Wan’er for a writing lesson. We moved all our study materials to a desk in the bedchamber. My reading might be improving briskly under her tutelage, but writing remains a different beast, like trying to draw faces from memory. Which is frustrating, because if I could write fluidly, I could pass Yizhi notes instead. That would pose less risk than saying things out loud.

On Wan’er’s advice, I practice the names of the Huaxia government’s six ministries and the titles of the hierarchy of officials in charge of them. It’s a bit embarrassing, how little I know about how our government actually works. I can’t let that stay the case if I’m to seize any sort of real power.

We have a saying at the frontier: “The mountains are high and the emperor is far.” It means the squabbles of politicians are so distant we don’t give them much thought beyond when government clerks come to yell about taxes or spirit pressure testings. Now, my head spins as I sort out the system: scholars qualify to become bureaucrats through civil service exams, then they work their way up from their municipal government to their provincial government to the central government to perhaps the Council of Sages. Theoretically, the advancements are based on merit, but the old order was so dependent on connections that most scholar-bureaucrats never made it past the municipal level. The revolution is supposed to change this, but who knows how well that will work?

I remember Shimin once dreamed of breaking into these rings of power. I wish I’d spoken with him about politics more. Handling this precarious situation I’m in would be so much easier with him here.

Wan’er is a good teacher, though. It feels better than learning from Qin Zheng, or even from Yizhi back in the woods. Call me cautious, call me paranoid, but I never fully trusted Yizhi until he showed up to help me at the Great Wall. I was always wary of a hidden agenda within him whenever we met up, especially since he knew how dangerous it was for me. I took the gamble because I desperately craved the knowledge he brought. In reality, on his part, I suppose he assumed he could simply buy me from my family if they ever caught us.

“Ugh.” I grimace at my latest attempt at writing “Ministry of Finance.” The characters look like they’re wobbling in fear, much as the actual ministry must be after the policy changes Qin Zheng ordered.

Wan’er manages a polite smile at my writing, dimples curving in her round cheeks. “No need to press so hard, Your Highness. Keep your wrist light and free, like this.”

She takes her own pen and inscribes much more elegant characters beside mine. I have no idea how it’s possible to write so prettily while gripping a pen, not an inkbrush designed for traditional calligraphy. She and Shimin would’ve been great friends.

I wish I could practice writing with Wan’er all night, but midnight soon approaches.

Having also moved into the manor, Wan’er retires to her own chamber on the other end of the building. A few minutes after she’s gone, I find Gao Qiu’s closet, where Yizhi said the tunnel entrance is. At the flick of a switch, golden hues light up around every shelf and cabinet. The closet is the size of a whole other room, though it’s mostly been emptied. There’s only a rack of spare conduction suits, for both me and Qin Zheng, and a selection of casual robes.

I search the dark wood floorboards until I see the small gap Yizhi told me to find. I get down from my wheelchair and use the gap to lift a floorboard like a lid. There’s a lock and chain in a concrete nook beneath, a key already in place. I unlock it and use the chain to haul open an entire section of the floor. Cold, stale air gusts into the walk-in closet. A light turns on by itself over a concrete staircase spiraling deep into the ground. A crevasse beside it holds a bare-bones elevator, made of little more than a rusty metal frame, wire mesh, and a panel with two buttons. I unlatch my cane from my wheelchair and, bracing myself for some pain, make my way down the stairs until I can cross into the elevator. I hesitate when it sways under me, but if this were dangerous, Yizhi would’ve warned me. And I’m certainly not taking the stairs to the bottom.

I press the down button.

The scent of mildew rushes up at me as the elevator plunges through a dark shaft. I drop to the floor and brace against it for dear life. A single light bulb in the elevator illuminates the rough stone streaking by. I shiver in my armor as the wind whooshes colder and colder. The drop continues for so long that I start getting outraged that this—of all the ways, after everything I’ve been through—is how I’ll die. But eventually, the elevator slows to a stop.

I wobble out into a tunnel, almost vibrating with residual motion. A long stretch of darkness looms before me, but there’s a shifting light at the other end. Yizhi—confirmed by his familiar spirit signature—shuffles toward me, wearing a pale cloak and carrying a swaying electric lantern. An urge to call his name catches in my throat, throttled by caution.

Light bulbs automatically flicker alive on the rough concrete walls ahead of his brisk pace. I itch to rush toward him, but my healing feet force me to wait in place as the darkness between us shrinks shorter and shorter.

“Your hair—” is the first thing out of my mouth once he gets close. He’s disguised as a maidservant again, his hair fastened in twin bundles at the sides of his head. But how is that possible after what he did in the stadium?

“Clip-ons, Your Highness.” Without meeting my eyes, Yizhi detaches one of his side bundles, revealing how it was clasping an elastic-tied stub of his real hair.

I can’t help but laugh. I didn’t know they made things like that. “Well, you still look good.”

“Thank you, Your Highness.” Yizhi gives a small bow.

My attention wanders to a half-open metal door beside us, thick and tarnished. “These tunnels…did your father build them?”

Yizhi shakes his head. “They’re a remnant of the Warring Era, when people had to go underground regularly to avoid flight-capable Chrysalises from other human nations, like the Yellow Dragon.”

Curious, I push at the door. It swings back with a whine that echoes way louder than expected.

I snap alert, activating my spirit sense, though there are no signatures this deep underground aside from Yizhi’s. Judging by the way sound travels through this tunnel, it’d be pretty impossible for someone to creep up on us, anyway.

I slip past the door. No automatic lights switch on inside. Yizhi follows me, his lantern glowing like an ember through the shadows, illuminating cobwebbed equipment, rusted chairs, and empty shelves. A chill settles over my bones, as though I’m intruding into a tomb.

“Your father could’ve hidden here from me,” I whisper, feeling like louder words might disturb vengeful ghosts. “He could’ve saved himself.”

“He was never the type to cower,” Yizhi says, equally hushed. “He didn’t even maintain the bunkers in these tunnels properly. He took a gamble. It didn’t work out. It happens when you play games of power.”

There’s so much I want to say to that, yet nothing I dare speak.

I find myself scrutinizing Yizhi as Qin Zheng would, trying to discern his motives and judge his loyalty. From now on, his short hair will be a constant visual declaration that he’s willing to shed anyone’s blood in service of Qin Zheng, even that of his kin. No one will cross him as long as Qin Zheng lives, but neither will they trust him again.

The question is—how much of it was an act?

I didn’t miss the intensely personal hatred in his eyes for the three men he condemned today, now languishing in prison infirmaries while on standby for proper trials. They were corrupt, no doubt, but Yizhi didn’t choose them entirely out of righteousness. He saw an opportunity for vengeance, and he took it.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness,” Yizhi suddenly says.

I jump. “For what?”

“For whatever’s making you look at me like that.”

Something within me comes undone. With a huff, I lower myself to the ground and place my cane beside me. “I’m just…worried,” I say, rubbing my arms.

“Are you cold, Your Highness?” Yizhi sits down as well, setting his lantern between us.

“Uh—” I thread my fingers together. Although my armor gives my body good protection and support, it does nothing to keep me warm.

Yizhi goes to unfasten his cloak.

“Don’t!” I blurt.

At his confusion, I take a deep breath and say, in a more composed manner, “Don’t do things like that for me anymore, Secretary…Zhang.” I remember to use his new name.

His hand falls away from the buckle at his collar. A fresh wave of hatred for Qin Zheng roils through me.

Once again, as in the mountains, Yizhi and I are sitting across a small yet insurmountable gap from one another, forced to keep our feelings under lock. Except it is so much harder now that we know what it’s like to breach that distance. We should be holding each other, grieving for Shimin, yet there’s no shelter to do so as long as Qin Zheng can access my memories every time we link up. My mind itself is not safe. If Yizhi betrays even the slightest hint of crossing the line with me, Qin Zheng won’t hesitate to kill him.

How is it that our relationship will always be doomed to secrecy?

The silence between us stretches for so long that the tunnel lights switch off outside, leaving only the lantern glow to paint us out of the darkness.

“Are you angry with me for what I did today, Your Highness?” Yizhi murmurs.

“Of course not,” I whisper. “What I am is scared for you. You’ve stuck a huge target on your back.”

“The target was on me the moment I traded my family’s fortune for His Majesty’s favor. I might as well make the most of it.”

“Those men today…they did terrible things to you, didn’t they?”

There’s a small pause before Yizhi answers, “They did terrible things to a lot of people. You heard the cheering, Your Highness. Huaxia was overdue for a cleanup.”

I don’t press further. I don’t know why I pried in the first place. What I need to believe is that Yizhi is unyieldingly loyal to Qin Zheng’s cause. Only then will Qin Zheng believe it as well.

At least the three of us will always have one common enemy: the gods.

How do I ask Yizhi for help with the plan without sounding suspicious? Although we’re as far from the gods’ scrutiny as possible, I don’t want to risk talking explicitly about what Qin Zheng and I are aiming to do.

“Speaking of corruption,” I say, “do you happen to know someone really, really good at calculations? There’s a lot to be done if we want to win against it.”

While pretending to scratch my head, I point firmly upward.

Yizhi’s eyes widen in the lantern glow. I hope it means he’s realized which enemy I’m truly plotting against.

“Uh, my second oldest sister Taiping might be of help, Your Highness. She’s a genius with numbers.”

“The one who refuses to get married?” I think he’s mentioned this sister a few times.

“Yes, Your Highness. She was a top logistics manager for Father’s enterprise, so good at it that he kept agreeing to delay her marriage. And now…”

I smile. “Now she’s free to do what she wants.”

“Indeed. She wanted to meet Your Highness when you stayed here before, but Father wouldn’t let her.”

“Typical.” I snort. I’m not new to being isolated like a plague source.

“ Stay away from the Wu family’s second daughter ,” the parents in my village would warn their children. None of them let their daughters be friends with me. Especially not after I got caught kissing Xu Hui, a girl who lived a few houses down, when we were seven or eight and playing on the edge of the woods. We weren’t really old enough to understand the significance of a kiss, but it added an infestation of panic on top of my existing infamy as a “difficult child.”

“She sounds perfect for the job,” I say. “Can’t wait to meet her.”

Yizhi cracks a faint grin. “The feeling is mutual, Your Highness. I can assure you of that.”

“There’s something else, though…” I think of how to phrase my next request subtly, but there’s no way to get it across without being blunt. I blow out a long sigh. “Do you think you can find the person who received Shimin’s kidney after it was harvested out of him?”

Yizhi’s smile fades. A crease forms between his brows, but he’s too careful to voice his confusion.

“He’s been haunting me,” I say, which isn’t a lie. “I can barely sleep. I think knowing what happened to this last trace of him on the planet might…help.”

Yizhi nods, his eyes gaining a wet sheen. I don’t know if he can deduce the full depth of my intentions—using Shimin’s spirit signature as target practice to pinpoint the Heavenly Court is pretty out there —but he says, “We own the government databases now, Your Highness. I’m sure we can find out.”