Chapter Twenty-Six To Hold Up Half the World

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

TO HOLD UP HALF THE WORLD

With my ceremonial scythe in hand, I stand before a line of seven girls in the palace’s central courtyard, where I first gazed upon Gao Qiu and his party guests a lifetime ago. It’s surreal to think those people are all either dead, destitute, or on the run now. The buildings around three sides of the courtyard have been converted to government offices.

A stinking breeze sweeps my cape against my armor and stirs the white-hemmed black pilot coats the seven girls are wearing. They stand at rigid attention, pressing their palms against the sides of their legs. We collectively ignore the rotting odor hitting in waves from the severed heads impaled on the roofs. None of the production crew confessed to leaking the footage, so Qin Zheng followed through with his threat to execute them all. I can’t believe how stubborn the reactionaries are, that they would rather drag their innocent colleagues into death with them than fess up and lead us to Zhuge Liang. Are they that determined to topple Huaxia into civil war so people like Gao Qiu and Ye Xingzhen can make the masses their playthings again?

While my fake crowning looks decently realistic, no amount of denouncing the leaked footage can erase the doubt it must’ve planted in many minds. A breach like that cannot happen again.

The empty stares of the rotting heads don’t dissuade some of the girls from beaming with pride. They range from pale to tanned, from half my height to towering over me, from the daughter of fruit merchants to the daughter of a mid-level official. What they have in common are their Chrysalis-capable spirit pressures. They are the first girls conscripted in Chang’an after Qin Zheng extended the criteria beyond boys.

They are the future Iron Widows I’ll be shaping into my most powerful supporters.

The days of Chang’an being a hotbed of conscription-dodging are gone. All families with children ages twelve and above have been ordered to report to testing centers to get their spirit pressure values recorded. Off-duty pilots stand by during the tests, activating their spirit senses to ensure the values are accurate. No more paying off testing teams to jot down fake values.

I grip my scythe tighter to keep myself upright for the cameras around the courtyard, operated by a new, carefully selected production team to capture this historic moment. The Empress of Huaxia, speaking to the first girls in modern memory to be conscripted as commanding pilots. Until my fake pregnancy can be announced, I’ll have to survive on these grand displays of war contribution.

“My sisters!” I address the girls. “For far too long, you were told that your place is in the home and out of the public eye, and thus you could not join the war effort unless it was in service of a male pilot. This was a blatant, counterproductive lie by the old order to mask its own failures. Such divisions have no place in war! Your tests revealed that you are strong, and that you are more than capable of commanding your own Chrysalises, just like the female pilots they called Iron Widows two centuries ago. Tell Huaxia your spirit pressure values, sisters!”

One by one, the girls call out their numbers while giving a raised-fist salute.

“Five hundred and thirty-five!”

“Five hundred and eighty-nine!”

“Six hundred and twenty-four!”

“Seven hundred and fifteen!”

“Eight hundred and forty-two!”

“Eight hundred and eighty!”

There’s a lull before the final girl reports hers. Full-figured and lovely with a wide round face, a small mouth, and slightly downturned eyes, she basks in the moment. Then she takes a deep breath and raises her fist.

“Three thousand four hundred and sixty-three!”

The clicking of camera shutters intensifies. I can imagine the exclamations across Huaxia. Crossing the two-thousand threshold means she’ll enter the army as an Iron Noble. An Iron Countess, specifically.

The girl regards me with such bright intensity I almost can’t bear to meet her eyes. I must mean something to her. In the same way Qieluo’s existence comforted me before I became a pilot, this girl must’ve seen me on broadcasts and felt a resonance within herself. Guilt eats at me, a feeling of having deceived her. Power is not as easy to wield as it looks on camera.

“What is your name, sister?” I ask.

“Liang Yuhuan, Your Highness!”

“Welcome to the ranks of the Iron Nobles, Countess-Sergeant Liang.” I return her raised-fist salute. “The fact that the old order would have let you languish is why they never won the war. In this new era, let us show how women can hold up half the world!”

Wrongness burns the back of my throat. These aren’t women. They’re girls. None of them understand the carnage that awaits them on the battlefield.

But at least they’ll have their own Chrysalises. At least they won’t have to serve a man, won’t have to leave their lives in his hands. Whatever fate they run into, at least they’ll have some power to steer it.

When I lift my chin, keeping my fist raised and trying to look invincible for the cameras, I swear I see a ghostly figure beyond the courtyard, shaking her head before vanishing like wind-blown mist.