Chapter Twenty-One Nonsensical

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

NONSENSICAL

Although Strategist Huo praises my kill stats and apologizes for not seeing my “intricate strategy,” I don’t sleep well after the battle. Not even with my body exhausted of so much qì. My nightmares churn together, Hunduns closing in on me while speaking with the voices of those I killed, Qin Zheng choking me while I’m suspended in a dismembered body like Shimin.

When Qieluo shakes me awake in the morning, I stare at the ceiling for a long while before dragging myself up. I gaze out the loft windows at the ocean sparkling peacefully in the daylight. Because of what I did, the Han province isn’t a chaos of refugees fleeing like my ancestors in Zhou two hundred years ago. I proved there’s no sense in hindering girls on the battlefield. That has to count for something.

“There’s about to be an address from the throne.” Qieluo gestures at the big screen in the loft. It displays the Dragon Head Flag, which takes over all screens in Huaxia before Qin Zheng’s speeches.

I maneuver into my wheelchair and let her and Wan’er help me over to the couch.

The sound of drums picks up when the feed cuts to Qin Zheng. He appears in full armor and cape at a podium with his throne dais blurred in the background. I honestly can’t tell if he’s there for real. It’s surreal to experience these broadcasts like an ordinary citizen after witnessing the technical chaos behind the scenes.

“Good morning, my citizens,” he speaks, his voice echoing in a way that may or may not be artificial. “Through the spectacular battle last night, my empress has shown you the untapped potential of female pilots, how they are perfectly capable of commanding Chrysalises in their own right. For this reason, I hereby announce that conscription to the Human Liberation Army shall no longer discriminate by gender! Every girl between the ages of twelve and twenty-four who demonstrates a spirit pressure over five hundred units is now eligible to be called into service, the same way her male counterparts are.”

Noises of surprise escape from Qieluo and Wan’er. My blood slows, chilling in my veins. This isn’t what I meant when I said to do a sweep for girls with high spirit pressures! Whether those girls would enlist was supposed to be voluntary!

“No longer shall we waste the potential of our worthy girls!” Qin Zheng continues on the screen. “In addition, every non-Chrysalis-capable young adult between the ages of eighteen and thirty, regardless of gender, shall now serve a minimum of one year in our army’s infantry units! You do not have to be a pilot to fight for the revolution, and Hunduns are not the revolution’s only enemies. To defeat all who would oppose the working people, we all must do what we can to the best of our abilities. Only when we rise as one can we win true liberation. Strength in solidarity! Glory to Huaxia! Freedom to humanity!”

The broadcast ends.

“Well.” Qieluo is the one to break the silence. “That is equality.”

“Is it?” Wan’er frowns. It’s the first time I’ve seen her look conflicted about one of Qin Zheng’s policies.

“Let’s fly back to Chang’an,” I say as calmly as I can manage. “I need to have a word with our dearest emperor.”

Once we’re back at the palace, I discover that, in the weeks I’ve been gone, construction has finished on the throne room’s quarantine chamber. Qin Zheng moved there from the university’s medical school. Yizhi tells me the entire hallway behind the throne room, along with the private rooms there, has been incorporated into the sterile zone, so no one can enter from that end anymore. I go in from the balcony instead, pushing through its paper screen doors.

I wince as sunlight ricochets off a massive wall of glass in the middle of the chamber, spanning up to the high rafters and sealing off everything surrounding the throne and dais. I breathe in, breathe out. Talking to Qin Zheng about the war will always be dangerous.

He looks up from his desk high on the dais when I wheel down the center carpet.

The fury brewing inside me evaporates at the absurd sight of him. He has apparently given up on maintaining his appearance, ditching his armor for a simple black robe and wearing his hair in a messy bun instead of a neat topknot.

“Welcome home, empress.” His voice comes through speakers on the ceiling. He wobbles as he gets up.

His robe is alarmingly short.

Hissing, I raise a hand to block him from the waist down. “Will you put some trousers on? I can almost see your junk!”

He looks around his desk with a frown. “I keep my rubbish in the back rooms.”

“That’s not what I—Whatever. Never mind.”

“Oh! Hold on, I understand now. You and your future colloquialisms.” He puts his hands on his hips and widens his stance. “Your hypocrisy knows no bounds. Would you tell a woman how to dress?”

“I said never mind!”

He picks up a book and staggers down the dais in fuzzy slippers. I cannot tell if he’s drunk or sleep-deprived or both. His robe slips looser, exposing a swath of his chest. I nearly yell at him again, but I get the feeling he’d look me in the eye and open his collar even wider. It’s what I would do if someone complained about me showing too much skin.

Once at the bottom, he plants himself across from me and opens a transparent box built into the glass wall.

“Here.” He slides the book into the box. His voice now emerges from an intercom above the box instead of the ceiling speakers. The shadows under his eyes hang deeper and murkier than when I left.

“I see Your Majesty is coping well with life in quarantine.” I open the box from my side and take the book. “What is this?”

“ Collected Discourses on Labor and Exploitation , also known as the Book of Laborism , featuring writings by many classic laborist thinkers. I annotated it so even a nine-year-old could understand it. I refuse to have any more political conversations with you while you remain ignorant of basic concepts, such as the difference between private property and personal property.”

I scowl, but tell myself not to let his condescension rile me up. I flip through the antique book. His handwriting is so dense and frenzied in the margins that I’ll need Wan’er to help decode this.

“Uh.” I shut the book. “Thanks.”

“So…would you like to come to bed with me?” Qin Zheng says in a mocking lilt, though I don’t make the mistake of failing to take the question seriously. The icy edge in his gaze is obvious.

He wants to confront me about almost fumbling the battle. I want to confront him about expanding conscription to girls. Neither of us can risk arguing about the war outside the privacy of a dream realm.

“Oh, yes. I’ve been thinking about it all day,” I coo, then peer to the far end of his quarantine zone, where there’s a partitioned section and a pair of narrow beds on either side of the glass divider. “Are those for us to use?”

“Obviously. Behold—” He goes to the back of the quarantine chamber and turns a metallic dial on the wall. The glass in front of both beds goes opaque.

“Wow,” I say in genuine awe.

“I know.” He strides back to the glass wall and leers at me like I’m an easily impressed simpleton.

Maybe I am, but is he any better when it comes to technology?

“How does it work?” I ask.

His face stiffens.

“Science,” he says, after an unnatural delay.

I can’t help but smirk. “Your Brilliant Majesty has no idea, do you?”

“Do you ?”

“No. But I’m not bothered by that.”

“Of course you’re not,” he says, like it’s supposed to be an insult.

I snort and wheel toward the blacked-out section. “Does Your Majesty have a bedtime at all, or have you just been working until you pass out at random hours?”

He shrugs. “One can never know if their next dip into the void will turn into another two hundred missing years.”

He says it like a joke, yet there’s a flash of real haunting in his eyes.

“Yes, what a tragedy it would be if Your Majesty’s ‘next dip’ ended up being permanent,” I say.

Fighting down the reluctance I always feel when getting closer to him, I push through the door to the partitioned section. A sharp smell of antiseptic washes over me. Aside from my bed, the section holds a bunch of medical equipment, some steel sinks in the back, and a rack of protective gear. There’s a transparent door with a complicated-looking locking mechanism in the glass divider separating me from Qin Zheng. This must double as an area where medical staff can sanitize themselves before coming in contact with him. There’s something comforting in realizing this section wasn’t built solely for me.

Through the divider, I watch him go up the throne dais to gather a stack of papers, then down to stuff them into the box on the glass wall. He pushes a button near the box. A few minutes later, the throne room doors swing open, revealing Yizhi.

My posture goes straight and rigid in my wheelchair.

“Your Majesty, Your Highness,” Yizhi acknowledges while fetching the papers from the box. A discomfort hangs over me, as if he’s interrupting a game he wasn’t supposed to witness.

“Go do your job,” Qin Zheng commands him, unnecessarily loudly. “And tell the guards not to allow any disturbance to us unless it’s a realm-shattering emergency.”

He comes to the bed on his side and yanks a thick black curtain closed behind him, blocking out Yizhi and the rest of the throne room.

I wait for the sound of Yizhi leaving through the balcony doors before I react.

“Did you have to yell at him?” I say near an intercom between the beds, my chest feeling stuffed with something heavy.

“I was not yelling.” Qin Zheng shoots me a puzzled look while he sits down and pulls his hair free from its bun.

“You were. Which is interesting to me, because doesn’t being rude to your workers go against your entire ideology?”

“Excuse me, I doubled the salary of every staffer here! Without benefiting much from their services, mind you! That assistant of yours drives a tough bargain as their union leader.” He shakes his hair loose and combs his fingers through it. “I must do my own laundry and clean my own floors in this preposterous situation.”

“Wow. I can’t imagine how Your Majesty is enduring such suffering.”

“Regardless, I will not be lectured on manners by you of all insolent souls.” He unfastens his waist sash and throws his robe off his shoulders, revealing his bare back and the golden spinal brace trailing down to his narrow waist.

I almost choke, blocking the sight of him with my hand once more. There are some things I don’t need to see. I bite my lip to stop myself from questioning his sleeping attire. Or lack of it. It’ll only get worse if I make it a big deal. I just know.

Eyes half open, I take off my crown and mask and place them on a steel cabinet. The rest of my armor I keep on. I’d like to get out of here as soon as I wake up.

Even with the glass divider between us, getting into bed beside Qin Zheng violates every sense of self-preservation that I’ve honed through my life. As he leans near the glass and burrows a thread of spirit metal through it, my skin prickles and my blood pumps with the impulse to fight or run. Yet I take the thread, because maybe telling him what I saw in the ocean will change his mind in some way.

When I look up, he’s staring at me in deep concentration.

“What?” I blurt, keeping my gaze firmly above his neck.

“So it’s true that you must receive the laser multiple times to be rid of excess hairs for good.” His scrutiny roves over my face. “We ought to get you in for another session. How is it that you grow visible hairs on your upper lip despite being a woman?”

“Oh, fuck off!”

“Insolence! You dare speak to me with such language?”

“What, is Your Majesty going to come over here and discipline me? Because I’ve got some fresh new germs from the Han frontier hot and ready for you.”

I drag my tongue up the glass divider.

This is part of a quarantine zone. It should be clean.

If not, whatever I’m licking up is worth it to witness the combination grimace-shudder that takes over Qin Zheng. I swear he goes red at the ears, though I don’t quite confirm it before he smacks the lights off, plunging us into darkness.

“Go to sleep, you vile harlot!”

“I will if Your Majesty would stop being such a massive dick!”

There’s a beat before he says, “Well, I’m flattered by that assessment, but what does the size of my manhood have to do with any of this?”

My brain sputters trying to process his words.

After a longer silence, he says, much more quietly, “Colloquialism?”

“ Yes ,” I say.

Unbelievable.

I don’t notice the exact moment I slip from fuming about Qin Zheng to walking in a dream. I give a start when I realize I’m heading down a busy street with no memory of how I arrived.

“At last.” Qin Zheng examines his hands beside me, our golden dream thread trailing from his wrist. His dream form appears in black-and-red robes in the style of his time, the heavy fabric cinched at the waist by a thin belt. A tall headpiece slopes up from his topknot and is fastened under his chin with long, trailing strings.

It’s like we traveled back in time. People walk the street in rough, homespun clothes. Smoke spews from brick buildings among wooden structures. Carriages clatter and wobble over the unpaved road, tugged by horses instead of propelled by electricity. The sole indication that electronics exist at all is an absurdly thick screen broadcasting something black-and-white in a shop.

“Where are we supposed to be?” My dream form appears in antique fashion as well, my hair gathered loosely behind me and my robe wrapping several times around my body, like a crimson blanket with wide black hems.

“Handan, where I was born and raised,” Qin Zheng answers.

“Oh? Never heard of that city.”

“That’s because I razed it to the ground.”

A colossal crash shakes the ground with the force of an earthquake as a Chrysalis lands in the street, crushing a stretch of buildings. A gale force of dust blasts out from the impact, throwing me backwards. Qin Zheng catches me by my shoulders. Screams erupt everywhere. Footsteps stampede to get away. In the drifting smog, the Metal-white Chrysalis pushes itself up on house-sized hooves, shaking its antlered head. The groan of its spirit metal rings over rooftops. It faces the direction it fell from, rising to a height that rivals the Nine-Tailed Fox’s Standard Form, seven or eight stories tall, dwarfing most buildings in this era. Its massive shadow spreads across the rapidly emptying street. It has a dragon’s head but the body of a horse swathed in fish scales. It must be inspired by the qílín , a chimera of legend.

A second Chrysalis—the Three-Legged Crow—swoops down from the sky, black wings spreading as it lands opposite the qílín with another earth-shuddering rumble. Wooden beams fracture in buildings. Handwritten store signs clatter to the ground. Fire-red qì seethes under the Crow’s oil-slick feathers, sending ripples of heat through the dusty air. The wind blows hot in my face, stinging my eyes.

The qílín charges at the Crow, ramming its razor-sharp antlers into the Crow’s chest. The Crow pushes back with fierce flaps of its wings and scratches at the qílín with its third claw, situated ahead of the other two. The battle’s monstrous shadows waver over the shrieking, fleeing masses. I burn to join them, but Qin Zheng keeps us rooted in place like a boulder in a roaring river.

“In my time, this was not a rare occurrence.” He raises his voice over the booming clashes of spirit metal. “The seven nations sent tribute to the gods independently as we sought technological advantages in our wars against one another. Battles broke out constantly, alliances shifted on a yearly basis, and peace was negotiated at bloody prices, but never lasted as long as the roots of division remained. So you see, the only way to end war for good is to win decisively .”

Buildings burst into flames from the Crow’s heat and crumble beneath its brawl with the qílín . Fire races across wooden shops and homes as wind tunnels through the street.

Beyond a storm of ash and debris, the Yellow Dragon soars onto the scene, an enormous serpentine silhouette against the hazy yellow sky.

“Wait—if you grew up here, why are you attacking your own city?” I yell.

Qin Zheng’s hands dig harder into my shoulders. “My mother was captured in war and made to service the enemy soldiers here. She was not released back to the Qin kingdom until a prisoner exchange when I was nine years of age.”

My mouth hangs agape. The only thing the legends mention about Qin Zheng’s mother is that she was a prostitute. I didn’t know the reality was much worse.

As the Yellow Dragon dives toward the city, disjointed sounds and images flash through a deeper layer of my mind.

A hot, stuffy factory full of industrial looms spinning at precarious speeds. Getting pushed dangerously near them by other child workers.

“ Crawl back to Qin, whore spawn! ”

A long journey on a train guarded by soldiers in unfamiliar black uniforms. A crowded facility. Getting dragged away, screaming for a mother sitting with her arms around her knees among other hollow-eyed women.

“ This one shows metamorphic potential. Enroll in the experimentations. ”

Jolting awake, bound to a bed. Fighting against leather straps. Getting prodded with medical instruments by men in loose white robes with clipboards in their arms and folded black hats on their heads.

“ Test subject two five nine has emerged as the victor. Results are favorable, but subject displays a high degree of emotional volatility. Proceed with caution. ”

Being observed across a glass wall by a pilot king with a red bead crown and his chief Sage, the wealthiest industrialist in the seven nations.

“ Taking the clan name of a woman like your mother is unseemly. From now on, you are a son of Qin. You serve our mighty state. Your name shall be Qin Zheng. ”

Having electrodes attached to the head. Being connected by the spine to a chunk of spirit metal. Struggling to transform it.

“ Conjure a sphere in one minute, Qin Zheng. ”

Spasming with shocks of electricity. Burning alive with crackling pain.

“ Conjure a cube in twenty seconds, Qin Zheng. ”

Forging a spiked ball instead and hurling it at the observation window on a liquid line of spirit metal, shattering the glass. Charging through the jagged opening. Plunging a glass shard into a scientist’s throat. Stabbing him again and again, getting splattered with hot blood until soldiers burst in.

“ Subject has developed unprecedented abilities, with a spirit pressure level no longer measurable. A successful metamorphosis at last. However, we may have neglected subject’s psychological stability. Subject may be too dangerous to entrust with a Chrysalis. An older female mentor might provide pacifying guidance. ”

Being approached by a stern-faced woman in form-fitting black armor that flares out at the shoulders like feathers. Attacking her. Biting her arm. Getting wrestled under control.

“ You will never be free, you will never see your mother again, unless you prove yourself capable of handling your power. Do you hear me? ”

Being escorted through a military camp after months in a lab. Blinking at a now unfamiliar sky. Overhearing mutterings everywhere.

“ Is that the lab boy? Heard he came out of one of those tainted women. That means he’s the spawn of an enemy soldier. ”

“ Have you seen the way he looks at people? No kid with eyes like that is normal. ”

“ Did you hear what he did to Doctor Xia? He frightens me. ”

Crossing swords on a sparring ground with the black-armored woman. Brawling with her. Training in dream scenarios with her. Learning to read with her. Being regarded with astonishment as her lessons stick with ease. Receiving a faded, nondescript book from her in a dim room. Hearing her speak in an unusually soft yet urgent cadence.

“ Let no one discover this in your possession. The Sages may be discussing the prospect of confirming you as heir to the throne because you are the strongest pilot of your generation—no, among all of us—but every ruler is, in actuality, beholden to the bankers and industrialists, who will not hesitate to arrange for your disposal if you challenge their interests. Bide your time. Read this and understand the necessity of revolution. It is not state borders that divide us, but class. Owners and workers. Exploiters and the exploited. With you on our side, we can win. ”

Reading more books. Many, many more books. Writing pamphlets under different names. Making speeches in factories in disguise. Talking in secret with other pilots. Convincing a legion of them to defy orders. Defeating an Emperor-class Hundun against all expectations. Manifesting the Yellow Dragon out of it.

“ There’s no turning back from this point. They already suspect you. Claim what is yours by right. ”

Stepping over the old pilot king’s corpse, flicking blood off a sword. Being pointed at by the industrialist Sage. Witnessing him shout for the soldiers and other pilots at his side to attack, only for them to turn their weapons on him instead.

“ Seizing power as someone with your abilities is the easy part. Rulers come and go. It is what you do with your power that decides the true meaning of your reign. ”

“How could you have been so foolish?” Qin Zheng’s real voice slashes through the deluge of memories.

Winded, I reorient myself in the dream realm. The city has been burned and crushed to heaps of cinders and bricks. He’s clutching my wrists. Drifting sparks reflect in his wild black eyes.

I don’t know if he realizes the scope of what I just saw. That woman—General Mi, I assume—she looks weirdly like my mother, if my mother had ever been so confident…

Qin Zheng shakes my wrists. “You could have endangered the entire Han province!”

I fight his grip. He must’ve peered into my memories as well. “So you saw what happened when I was in the ocean.”

“Your behavior was incomprehensible, and you should be very glad you are still alive to—”

“The Hunduns understood me! If you saw my memories, you can’t deny that!”

The desire to bring him to the moment pulses out from me. Water crashes over us. The ground gives away, though Qin Zheng doesn’t let go of me. The next second, we’re floating in the ocean, surrounded by the hundreds of Hunduns that glowed like lanterns around the Fox for that precious span of peace. I marvel at the recreation, surprised by how easy it was to summon.

The same can’t be said for breaking free from Qin Zheng.

“They could feel that I didn’t want to kill them!” I wriggle against his grasp, my words emerging despite the water. “If the Whale Bird hadn’t interfered, things could’ve gone differently!”

“How so?” Qin Zheng’s hold remains iron-tight. “You and the Hunduns would have backed off from one another to go about your merry ways? Are you honestly so naive as to believe such a truce could last? To give up on the war is to spit in the face of every pilot who came before us!”

“But this whole war is based on a lie! It’s completely nonsensical! You said yourself that the gods get us to fight it for their benefit, so why not try to communicate our situation to the Hunduns and battle as little as we can until we can take down the gods? Why expand the war? Why conscript girls instead of just taking volunteers? However the gods use the spirit metal we give them, generating more tribute will only make them harder to defeat!”

Qin Zheng’s grip slackens the slightest bit before tightening again. “Generating more tribute will allow us to maintain the element of surprise as we plan our attack. All war is nonsensical! It is victory that gives a war its meaning.” Ghostly traces of other pilots drift behind him, replacing the Hunduns. They grow in number until they fill the ocean. “No matter the truth, our predecessors gave their lives for a dream of freedom. Their hopes and yearnings were real. Their resolve was real. If you do not wish for their sacrifice to crumble into history as that of mere swindled fools, you must do your part to bring their dream to fruition!”

The water pressure gets crushingly heavy. Everywhere I look comes the weight of stares from phantom pilots, unavoidable, as if thousands of years—is that even how long we’ve been on this planet?—are winding up like a trap around me.

The next thing I know, I’m back in the Nine-Tailed Fox, battling back-to-back with the Whale Bird, killing Hunduns so they don’t kill us first. With each death I deal, terror and anguish blow back through me like shots of toxin. Except this time, they overwhelm me past the point of fighting on. I can no longer move.

“ Is this what you want? ” Qin Zheng’s voice resounds from everywhere and nowhere. “ To torment every other pilot in Huaxia with the truth when there is no way out but to persist until victory? ”

The Fox collapses in the sand. Hunduns burrow through every stretch of its surface. I feel every scrape of their legs and every burn of their qì blasts. A death by a thousand cuts.

“ This war was no fault of those of us born into it. Once both the gods and the Hunduns are defeated, the dreams of pilots past will become reality, and that reality shall be the only one that matters. Let the truth die with us, empress. Falter again, and I shall execute you for treason. ”

The Hunduns puncture the Fox’s cockpit. They squash me as easily as a bug.