Chapter Twenty-Seven Pieces Left Behind

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

PIECES LEFT BEHIND

While staying in Chang’an for my qì-recuperation period, I avoid being alone with my thoughts as much as possible.

In the evenings, after my lessons from Wan’er—eight hours max, as per laborist principles—Taiping joins us for dinner with a big grin and an agenda to piss Wan’er off. She seems to really enjoy the sight of Wan’er flushed with anger. While we were at the front, Taiping got her own foot-reconstruction surgery in between annoying Wan’er with messages, so she’s using a wheelchair as well. Her feet weren’t technically “bound,” but surgically amputated years ago, diagonally, from her big toes to her heels. That’s how rich girls achieve the Lotus Foot look, with much less permanent pain and risk of infection.

Well. It’s how they used to achieve the look. The same cosmetic surgeons that did those procedures now reverse them with prosthetics at no charge to the girls. The government pays them much less than what they used to fleece from rich folk, but they don’t complain. They don’t dare.

Although Taiping doesn’t wear silk anymore, she wasn’t afraid to be sarcastic about the revolution the first few times she visited us. That changes when, one day, she shows up blank-faced and wearing a yellow sash around her waist, like the revolution’s most fervent supporters in the streets. She greets us with a raised-fist salute and stays rather quiet through the whole dinner.

It takes me some prodding to find out that Gewei Bu agents arrested one of her friends. Qin Zheng was serious about grouping every five households into a Mutual Responsibility Unit and collectively punishing them for any crimes. Taiping’s friend failed to alert the government that her neighbors were missing for over forty-eight hours. Likely, they fled Chang’an without a permit to join a counter-revolutionary cell.

“I can’t.” I shake my head when Taiping hints at whether I can get her friend a pardon. “It wouldn’t be fair to everyone who doesn’t have connections to an empress. We’re not supposed to be like that anymore. She knew she was expected to watch her neighbors, yet now they’re off with their money to do heaven-knows-what against the revolution. People need to take their duties more seriously, or the reactionaries will run rampant. Haven’t you been keeping up with what’s happening?”

The reactionaries have gotten bolder since Kong Zhuxi showed up. The approval of a Sage has made them feel more legitimate. Guns have gone missing from armories. Factory workers who’ve reported their bosses for abuse have found their equipment mysteriously broken. Rail tracks have been smashed, and roads have been blown up to prevent goods from reaching cities.

Taiping sighs. “I guess.”

“She’ll be fine,” I say, gentler. “The revolutionary tribunals see cases way worse than hers every day. They’ll probably just take all her money and sentence her to community service.”

Taiping winces at the mention of money confiscation, but mumbles, “I hope so.”

Honestly, no one should be relying on me to rein in this revolution. Whatever concerns can be raised, Qin Zheng has talked through a dozen times with his officials.

I focus on my own goals, checking up on the new Iron Widows every day through Wan’er. The Chang’an conscripts have been dispersed across different frontiers. I’d go visit them, except I haven’t learned enough from Qin Zheng yet to come off as a good mentor figure. I head to the throne room every night to remedy this.

It’s almost become a game between us to see who can hold off going to sleep for longer. Unfortunately, my battle-exhausted qì makes it harder to win.

What’s infuriating is that Qin Zheng may sleep at unearthly hours, but he always gets up at dawn for the morning assembly—without waking me up as well, no matter how much I demand it.

“You need your rest,” he says, as if he isn’t in danger of having another stroke at any moment. Fucking hypocrite.

I cannot describe how disconcerting it is to startle awake to the sound of a hundred officials yelling at each other about employment programs. If the side section I sleep in couldn’t tint itself opaque from the outside, they’d be leering and laughing at me every morning.

There’s also something worse that happens whenever Qin Zheng fades out of a dream realm without me, something I can never admit to him. When I’m not connected to him, nightmares descend on me like monsters given free rein after being held back and starved. Buildings crumbling, Hunduns shattering, people screaming. Those I’ve killed, those I’ve failed. My mother, my grandmother, Xiuying. Big Sister. Shimin.

Shimin’s memories make up their own class of haunting. Over and over, I’m trapped in the cramped apartment I know by instinct to be his, the home where he grew up with his father and brothers until the day everything shattered into a before and an after . The discolored walls and narrow rooms warp and shrink, crushing me alive. No matter how I scour its same few rooms, I can never find a way out. Those violent moments that ended the life Shimin had known and began his passage from cage to cage, they come to me again and again, almost seeming to call to me.

And so I answer the call. I decide to visit the apartment for real. Even if it doesn’t ward off the nightmares, it’ll strengthen my spiritual connection to him, which will help me hunt down the Heavenly Court. None of the misery to do with the war will end, in any way or another, until I end the gods.

Shimin’s hometown of Longxi is a three-hour carriage ride from Chang’an. I would’ve liked to have gone alone with Yizhi, but Qin Zheng refuses to let me leave the palace without Qieluo as a bodyguard.

Our carriage splashes over rain-drenched highways, weaving automatically between heavy-duty trucks transporting goods. But partway there, the trucks ahead slow to a stop in a long, congested lane.

“What’s going on?” I peer through the front window, being cleared continuously by thumping rain wipers. In the distance, a column of smoke rises against the stormy sky.

Frowning in his Wan’er disguise, Yizhi scrolls on his tablet, occasionally writing with his stylus. After a while, he sighs. “A bomb went off in a truck ahead.”

“Oh.” I blink.

Qieluo groans. “Not again.”

Even with the threat of collective punishment exposing many schemes against the revolution, the reactionaries still find ways to strike.

“How far is it?” I touch my door handle.

“You want to go there?” Qieluo whirls toward me.

“Are you joking? I can’t miss this photo op!”

We put on our cloaks and veiled hats for the trek, with Qieluo pushing me in my wheelchair. Once we reach the burning truck, I reveal myself as the empress to the soldiers already on the scene, give some encouraging small talk to the paramedics tending to the injured, and yell about how the reactionaries want us all to starve while Yizhi films me on his tablet and Qieluo watches for threats in the crowd around the perimeter. Since the reactionaries insist on slandering me at every opportunity, it’s only fair I repay the favor. Unlike them, I’m not even lying.

“This is what they do to the food our hardworking farmers toil for!” I shove a handful of charred rice toward the camera. All the disruptions and sabotage have forced us to impose purchase limits on staple foods to ensure there’s enough to go around.

It’s an unwitting reminder that no matter how well I improve my ability to sense Shimin’s spirit signature, we need to take out the likes of Zhuge Liang and Kong Zhuxi before we challenge the gods, or the revolution will fall apart right after we go. And I don’t know how we’re supposed to defeat them if not by being as ruthless as possible.

After riling up the crowd with cries of “The revolution will persist!” we end up reaching Longxi two hours later than planned. Once we enter the city, an implausible feeling of recognition thrums stronger and stronger within me. It’s less overcrowded than Chang’an, with shorter buildings and fewer neon signs competing for attention, their shining shapes hazy through the carriage’s rain-streaked windows. Legions of motorbikers weave through the sopping streets in raincoats. Small shops and restaurants operate with their lights on in the storm’s dimness.

You’ve been here before , every sight and sound seems to murmur to me. Don’t you remember?

I find myself understanding signs with characters I haven’t learned to read yet, recognizing stores I had no concept of before. The only sights that ground me in the present are the revolution’s impacts. A slogan-filled poster of Qin Zheng shining at a bus stop here, a smashed-up jewelry store there.

When I first proposed this trip, Yizhi did some research and discovered that Shimin’s family apartment is no longer inhabited. Which is good, since it means we don’t need to barge into an occupied home. The bad news is the reason it’s not occupied is because the property firm that used to manage the building turned it into a tourist attraction. Apparently, there’s a steady stream of people eager to pay to see Li Shimin the Iron Demon’s Original Crime Scene.

“My ladies, I want to stress that very little of the stuff in there is original,” Yizhi says once we park beneath the infamous building. “They did a deep clean after the…incident…and rented it out again at first. It was only after Shi—I mean, after Pilot Li got drafted into the army that they turned it into a tourist thing. The blood, the kitchen knives, it’s all fake.”

“The blood ?” Qieluo questions while hauling my folded wheelchair out of the carriage.

“They tried very hard to recreate the spectacle,” Yizhi mutters.

I can hardly bear to keep my eyes open during the elevator ride up to the fifth floor, overwhelmed as I am by a swooping ache of nostalgia. If Qieluo wasn’t pushing my wheelchair, I doubt I could’ve made it into the hallway.

“Your Highness, are you sure you want to go in?” Yizhi thumbs the key in his hand when we get to apartment 502.

I suddenly realize I failed to consider this from Yizhi’s perspective. He doesn’t have a link to Shimin’s memories. To him, this place is a plain mockery.

“Do you ?” I look up into Yizhi’s eyes, even though he won’t meet mine in return.

He bows his head lower. “Whatever will help Your Highness.”

In my heart, I promise to tell him about every memory that came to me on this trip the next time we’re alone.

None of my nightmares prepared me adequately for Yizhi unlocking the door. The moment I lay eyes on Shimin’s apartment for real, my head spins, experiencing it from multiple points in time.

The first pool of fake blood is right outside the kitchen, poured over a white-taped outline of a person on the floor tiles. Simultaneously, I see the real sequence of Shimin’s father chasing him with a cleaver and slashing him in the chest, then Shimin striking back with his own knife. He was aiming for the arm, yet the blade sank into his father’s chest. Afterwards, nobody would believe it wasn’t intentional. His father didn’t bleed out so cleanly in one place, either. As Shimin frantically tried to help him, he swung his fist into Shimin’s jaw. Then he teetered after Shimin, cursing, collapsing, crawling, before finally falling still near the balcony. The forgery pales in comparison to the blood that actually splattered and smeared everywhere.

But beyond the horror, I also see softer, more mundane moments. At the kitchen sink, Shimin’s father teaches a toddler Shimin how to scrub chopsticks by rolling them as a bundle between his palms. At the dinner table, Shimin and his brothers laugh and fight with their food as their father half-heartedly scolds them. At the tattered living room couch, Shimin’s father relents and plays Shimin’s favorite childhood story on the family tablet for the countless time. Much later, in the same spot, he brags to his liquor-drinking friends about Shimin’s reading level and tries to figure out a way to send Shimin to a good school.

I’m scarcely conscious of rolling my wheelchair into the middle of the apartment, or how Yizhi is fumbling with the switches near the door, which have turned on eerie shifting lights and creepy music. When I catch sight of a particular bedroom door beyond a corner, it’s all I can focus on. The turn is too narrow for my wheelchair to make, so I push to my feet and totter there, bracing one hand against the faded wallpaper. I hear echoes of a girl’s muffled screaming behind the door. When I grasp its handle, visions of Shimin’s trembling hand flicker over mine. We turn it together with the same tense dread, three years apart in time.

White tape marks out two more bloody outlines in the tight space between a bunk bed and a loft bed suspended over a desk. A fierce struggle flashes behind my eyes. Limbs grappling, a head cracking against a metal bed frame, a knife plunging through flesh and bone. My mind sways. My knees buckle. I drop myself onto the bunk bed’s bottom mattress.

“Ze—” Yizhi’s hand flies out, but he quickly retracts it. I didn’t even notice him following me in.

“I’m okay,” I say. “I’m just—”

Blood blooms beneath my armored hand on the bed. It’s spreading from Shimin’s older brother Jiancheng, half draped over the bed, choking and gasping.

I shake my head. The blood and body vanish.

“You know what?” Qieluo says rather loudly from the doorway. “I’ve seen enough of this nonsense. Your Highness can take your time, but I’m going to keep watch outside.”

She turns around, though casts me a knowing look over her shoulder. I give her a nod in gratitude.

After the metallic crash of her closing the front door behind herself, Yizhi sits down on the bunk bed as well, though as far from me as possible. I lay my hand in the gap between us, dreaming of him taking it without consequences.

“Is Your Highness sure you’re all right?” His voice drops out of its feminine disguise. “It’s not any bad reaction to the shots?”

“Oh.” My hand goes to my hip. He must be worrying about the injections Doctor Hua is making me get every day to keep me as clear of pathogens as possible. A safety precaution for filming more footage with Qin Zheng. “It’s fine. Well—I’m not sure. I don’t remember what it’s like to feel good and normal, so how can I tell what’s a symptom of the shots and what’s a symptom of…existing?”

Rain patters against the bedroom window, dashing speckles of shadows over us.

“I’m sorry,” Yizhi says.

“No, no, don’t be,” I say. “I wish you could see what I can see. The real things that happened here, beyond the murders. The ordinary stuff.”

I see Shimin sitting at the desk, writing on his school-loaned tablet, determined to finish an essay despite his older brother throwing rice crackers at his head. I see them laughing at a video together with their youngest brother. I hear the drawl of their nonsensical tangents of conversation as they lie in bed, deep in the night. So many moments in three lives, overlapping in one room.

“I have my own ways to see.” Yizhi takes out his tablet. “There are some pictures I want to show you, ones I got from a few of Shimin’s relatives.”

“He still has family alive?”

“Some distant ones. They were easy to track down with my access to the state databases. It was also easy to get them to hand over pictures when I sent the demand as a notice from the Gewei Bu.”

“You are so abusing your power.”

A brief grin slips past Yizhi’s cautious facade. I etch it into my mind, not knowing the next time I might see him smile. I scoot closer to him as he flicks through windows on his screen.

“Is that Shimin with long hair?” I gasp. Seeing a picture of it is different from knowing it through his memories, like looking into a mirror for the first time. Here, his face is much softer and his chin has yet to show any capacity for stubble, but it’s undeniably Shimin. He appears about twelve or thirteen, his long hair half up in a style like the one Yizhi used to wear, though no one would mistake him for Yizhi. He’s in an ill-fitting robe, the fabric scrunched up near his backpack, and he’s standing awkwardly in front of the entrance to his school.

“Yeah, that was his first day at Longxi High School,” Yizhi says.

He further explains the context of each picture while swiping through them. Shimin at a sports festival, squinting against the sun. Him holding a trophy he won for his calligraphy. Him jutting out in the back of a group photo with his class. Him standing beside a strikingly handsome older man.

“That’s an uncle of his, Li Zhi, who gave me most of these photos,” Yizhi says. “He was the only relative of Shimin who still had nice things to say about him.”

I zoom in on Li Zhi. I’m not sure why he transfixes me so much. I guess we’re pilot in-laws in a way, though thinking about him as such would probably send Qin Zheng into a homicidal rage.

“He should’ve come to our Match Crowning,” I remark.

“If only. But I think he would’ve had a hard time with the rest of his family if he’d been invited.” Yizhi swipes to the next picture.

As we continue through the gallery, one thing becomes clear: Shimin has never been comfortable getting photographed.

“Sorry—” I can’t help but laugh at a photo from a Li family trip to a peach orchard, where Shimin’s brothers are posing like they think they’re cool but Shimin is looking wide-eyed at the camera with clearly no idea what to do with his arms.

“It’s okay, I understand.” Yizhi nods gravely, eyes squeezed shut. “I love him, but his sense of style is a tragedy, and the wrong camera angles commit actual crimes against his image. Thank heavens he was so much better-looking in person.”

“Not everyone spends as much time in front of a mirror figuring out their optimal angles as you, Zhang Yizhi.”

“I could say the same to Your Highness.”

“Hey, I only started practicing my posing for political purposes!”

We laugh together for the first time in an eternity. Yizhi places his hand beside mine on the bed.

“I miss him,” he whispers.

“Me too,” I say, bending my head close to his, but not touching. “It’s not fair.”

“It never has been.”

The sound of rain fills the silence where Shimin once existed. It’s incredible, how someone could be gone from this world, literally whisked away from the mortal earth, yet leave so many pieces behind. Including me and Yizhi.

I’m not scared of Qin Zheng seeing this moment in my memories. Even if he did, I doubt he’d understand the depth of it.