Chapter Thirty-Eight In Solidarity We Rise

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

IN SOLIDARITY WE RISE

I try not to get my hopes up too high about the broadcast’s impact, lest I be disappointed. Yet by the day after, so many people have reached out to the Phoenix Alliance that the donation platform crashes for a few hours. A flood of female Yellow Sashes—the revolution’s fiercest defenders—take to the streets to campaign for more. In spontaneous mobs, they go door to door to wealthier families to ask if they’ve contributed.

Huaxia hasn’t become equal overnight. Far from it. Even Qin Zheng doesn’t think he can dismantle all markets and abolish the concept of money with a snap of his fingers. So far, Gewei Bu investigations have concentrated on the richest of the rich and the most egregiously corrupt, leaving the majority of business owners untouched. Those in the sectors Qin Zheng nationalized merely downgraded from owner to manager. As long as they do real work in running their operations, they continue to fetch handsome pay. However, now the rich fear the poor instead of the other way around. They have to stay on their best behavior. A single report of “counter-revolutionary sentiment” could land them on the Gewei Bu’s watch list. A confirmed report gets them paraded to a prison like the Tianlao, where I hear Warden Lai has gotten very efficient at getting inmates to confess and repent.

Let’s just say those with the means to donate are highly incentivized to do so.

It wasn’t my intention for the Alliance to start off like this, but I’m not going to say no to funding. I do a second broadcast reminding the Yellow Sashes to register as volunteers before taking any action in the name of the Alliance, so we have at least a little more control over them. The Alliance staff organizes them into group chats. When everyone in a group knows each other, it’s easier to guard against rebel double agents. A common strategy of theirs is to slip into a crowd and deliberately incite violence to sour people’s opinions of the revolution. I can’t play into their hands.

Some part of me laments having to urge moderation, though. The chaos the revolution unleashed has long confirmed what I’ve always believed: that there is more rage simmering within women, barely contained under their strained smiles, than men would like to think. Teenage girls are especially ferocious, starting a trend of carrying rolling pins and bamboo staffs while campaigning for the Alliance in packs.

With the funds they reap, we renovate a building inherited from one of the charities I absorbed and open the Alliance’s first official outpost. It’s situated in North Gate, the largest slum in Chang’an. On the day of the opening, my freshly hired all-female production crew follows me, Qieluo, the Alliance’s management council, and a team of Yellow Sashes as we hand out supply packages to female residents.

Many women show up in hard hats and neon vests, grime on their faces but in high spirits. There are signs of construction everywhere. Instead of bulldozing slums and dispersing the residents, as the old order tried many times—which always led to another slum springing up elsewhere—the revolution is supporting the residents in upgrading the densely packed shanty homes according to their wishes, creating more stable structures with safer utilities. Although some North-Gaters left for opportunities in rebuilding the Zhou province, most would rather not move from the homes they’re used to or lose the community ties they depend on. Turns out the best way to lift people out of poverty is to involve them in decisions concerning their lives. Shocker.

I smile and nod and thank my way through not only endless congratulations and pregnancy advice, but also earnest confessions of resonance with the experiences I spoke of in my speeches. It’s not the most comfortable thing, realizing every stranger in Huaxia can now picture the ugliest parts of my life, yet this is the one advantage I have over Qin Zheng: the ability to walk among the people. I’d be foolish to not make the most of it. When I peer up through laundry lines and haphazard roofs at a cluster of skyscrapers gleaming in the sun, knowing they can no longer loom without a care as to what’s down here, for the first time in a long while, I don’t feel like I’m doing something terrible.

I pack my schedule with aid expeditions, including some to mountain villages like the one I’m from, which are critically lacking in medical knowledge and supplies. I grew up thinking every woman used wood ash to absorb her bleedings and that there are no ways to avoid pregnancy. Only after my first trip to Chang’an did I discover anything different. Thus, I show up at villages with trucks or hovercrafts full of better absorbers and silicone menstrual cups in addition to vaccines, antibiotics, and contraception. I am not letting another woman be robbed of control over her body if I can help it, and I am tired of the shame and secrecy around our bodily functions. I talk openly about how these supplies ought to be used as my production crew follows me through my visits.

Naturally, not everyone everywhere is happy to see me. In a village in the Song province—a reactionary-infested headache almost as bad as Han—I’m nodding through an old woman’s tale of how she has divined my fetus to be a “girl who will transform the universe” when in the corner of my eye, I catch sight of a man hurling something at me.

“Tyrant!” he cries.

I lurch back just in time to avoid getting hit in the face. The thing explodes on my armor instead, covering me in a thick red liquid that drips to the ground.

The crowd pounces on him faster than Qieluo and my other security staff.

“You make a mockery of laborism!” he cries while wrestling against them, tears streaming down his face. “There’s not supposed to be a hierarchy with an emperor and empress at the top! Power should be with the working people, not torturers and executioners!”

I fall stunned, my hands hovering before me in defense. That’s not what I expected to come out of his mouth.

“You’re still taking our grain and making us toil in the factories and mines! You’re just calling the boot on our necks ‘the people’s boot’! You’re worse than the old order! You’re—”

One of my guards stuffs her glove into his mouth, but the damage has been done. The crowd that rushed to restrain him backs away, their arms dangling at their sides and their faces blank.

“Your Highness.” Qieluo shuffles back to my side. “We need to get that off you now .”

I sniff at a splatter of red on my gauntlet. It just smells like tomato.

“ Power to the laboring class !” the man utters, the words muffled in his throat but obvious after we’ve all been hearing it as a greeting.

Surveying the dumbfounded crowd, and mindful of the cameras trained on me, I do the only thing I can think of to defuse the tension—I laugh.

“Pretty words! So easy to say!” I shout. “But what are you actually achieving? Stopping me from delivering aid to these good people! The revolution is indeed not perfect, but that’s because we keep getting sabotaged by shortsighted fools! Did you think you could cow me? No! I’m staying right here and doing something productive for the revolution, unlike you!”

“Long live the revolution!” Qieluo calls out.

“ Long live the revolution !” the crowd repeats, because no one wants to be seen failing to do so.

Still, I can tell they’re much more relaxed, even revitalized, as a pair of my guards drag the man to the nearest magistrate’s office.

“Long live the empress!” some chant of their own volition.

“What do we tell His Majesty?” Qieluo mutters to me while the crowd cheers.

“Nothing,” I whisper, suddenly wary of an overreaction from Qin Zheng. If he finds out, I’ll deal with it then, but I won’t tattle on purpose. “It’s not a big deal. Just tomato sauce. That guy probably hid a pouch near his stomach so none of you caught it during the pat-downs.”

“So do we…let him go?”

I imagine what could’ve happened if I’d failed to deflect his words. The doubt that could’ve festered in these people if he’d gone on shouting these things in the village square.

“No,” I say. “Keep him locked up.”

Despite the occasional negativity, I remain undeterred. The Alliance continues our strategy of converting the offices of the organizations we absorbed into new branches across Huaxia. Out of the locations available for a second Chang’an branch, I realize I can pick one close to Tang Anding’s xiǎoqū . I then persuade her to work for us as a receptionist by sending a letter citing her “exceptional standing in the community.” It gives me the perfect excuse to constantly be in her vicinity so I can hone my spirit sense. Meanwhile, Taiping quits her job at Gao Enterprises and comes to work for the Alliance as well, bringing her logistics management skills and business connections to keep every branch stocked with supplies.

I’m looking through a budget report with Taiping and Wan’er one day, training my sense of the trace of Shimin’s spirit signature in Tang Anding outside my office every few minutes, when a commotion breaks out at the front of the building.

“What’s going on?” I open my door, scythe in hand. Taiping, Wan’er, and Qieluo follow me out to a scene of a group of Alliance staff standing around a red-faced army officer. A junior lieutenant, judging by the insignia patches on his olive-green uniform. He must be one of the low-born soldiers Qin Zheng has been promoting to replace the old order’s army leadership, because his peers entrusted him to be a Revolutionary Vanguard as well. A tricolor sash encircles his waist, and a dragon head pin gleams near his heart.

The staff scoots in either direction to open a path for me.

“Your Highness,” Tang Anding glances between me and him, “he said he’s—”

“Looking for my wife,” says the lieutenant between heavy breaths. “Didn’t know Your Highness was also here.” He raises his fist in salute. “Power to the laboring class.”

His other hand flexes near the gun at his hip.

“In solidarity we rise.” I hold up my free hand, gesturing for my staff to shuffle behind me.

“His wife came to take shelter with us,” one of them whispers near my shoulder. “Said he beat her and threatened to kill her. I saw the bruises.”

“That is nonsense!” The lieutenant points. “Your Highness, my wife must’ve been exaggerating. She always makes a big deal out of nothing! First they cry, second they make a scene, third they threaten to hang themselves. You know how it is.”

“No, I don’t know.” I stamp my scythe more firmly on the ground, making a crisp ping against the tiles. “Did you or did you not put your hands on her?”

“It’s not what Your Highness thin—”

“It’s a yes or no answer.”

“She hit me first! Shoved me right here!” He slaps his chest.

“What were you doing when she shoved you?”

He makes an indignant noise. “Right, the whole world gets outraged when a man hits a woman, but when a woman hits a man, suddenly nobody cares!”

“I didn’t say I don’t care. I’m literally asking you to explain the situation because I want to know more. What were the two of you doing when she pushed you?”

His flushed face goes even redder. “I was just trying to get intimate! Does Your Highness have any idea how long it’s been since she’s put out, even though I’m laboring for the revolution every day?”

I take a sharp, harsh breath. “So…you tried to force yourself on her, she fought back, you beat her up and threatened to kill her, and therefore she ran here?”

His mouth opens, closes, opens. “Don’t—don’t make me sound like the bad guy! Are men not even allowed to want their wives anymore? I’m sick of these double standards! You don’t want equality; you want special privileges! You want to make women a new class of oppressors by controlling men’s right to sex and fatherhood! You—” He spots something behind me. “Put that camera away!”

I look over my shoulder. Wan’er is filming him. She takes a step back, but doesn’t lower her tablet.

He shoves me aside, hand going to his gun.

Qieluo lunges for him as I stumble, but I sharpen my scythe with Metal qì and swing it.

The curved blade lops off the lieutenant’s head, sending a splatter of blood across the staff. Screaming, they back away. His body hits the floor with a heavy thud . His gun clatters beside him, sliding across the tiles.

Blood gushes from the stump at his neck, forming an expanding scarlet pool. His severed head rolls near my foot, eyes and mouth still open. Drenched sideways in red, Wan’er blinks blankly a few times, then cleans her camera lens and angles it toward the head. She zooms in with two fingers.

More blood drips from the tip of my scythe. A metallic stench permeates the air.

“Nice.” Qieluo is the first to say something. Lifting her cape, she wipes blood off her face.

The staff breaks into confused applause.

One of them retches. Tang Anding helps her to the nearest trash can.

“Sorry,” I say, shaking my scythe above the pool of blood. Then I coordinate the cleanup, send Tang Anding to tell that poor woman what happened, and ask Wan’er to upload her footage to support the statement I’ll make about this being self-defense.

“Cut the part where everyone clapped,” I mumble while heading back to my office with her.

“We need better security.” Taiping trails after us, empty-eyed. “At every branch.”

“Well, the army’s too preoccupied with reactionary insurgencies for that.” I dry my scythe with my cape.

“I can train the staff and volunteers in self-defense,” Qieluo suggests. “A lot of other women in my tribe have fighting skills as well. I can recruit them to help.” She looks to Wan’er. “What about you? Know any fighters in your tribe?”

“Uh, my mother and I don’t really interact much with the tribe.” Wan’er scratches her head.

“That’s too bad.” Qieluo closes my office door and speaks more quietly to me. “You think His Majesty will be mad about this? That was a Vanguard.”

“That was a man who touched his empress while pulling out a gun.” I let out a bitter laugh. “He’ll be mad he didn’t get to kill that guy himself.”

After the incident goes public, there’s some outrage over what I did, but nothing that stops me from recruiting combat trainers for the Alliance.

Interestingly, aside from Rongdi women, a lot of trainers end up being well-muscled women who Taiping tells me used to patrol in front of Club Lily to ward off trouble-seekers. I discover that I have quite the following among these clubs, even before I became empress. I get the Alliance to sponsor the reopening of Club Lily and other places like it, because it feels like everyone who frequented them is in the same struggle. They no longer have to live so discreetly, since Qin Zheng’s new legal code dropped the old order’s obscenity laws. It was easy to persuade him to do that once I explained Wan’er’s and Taiping’s different experiences of them, demonstrating how those laws were disproportionately used against the poor. He can be reasonable sometimes.

As the Alliance’s ranks grow by the day, we take inspiration from our teenage supporters and issue bamboo staffs to everyone as a nonlethal but intimidating weapon, along with a uniform consisting of a short red tunic, baggy maroon trousers, and a shawl of phoenix feathers lined with gold thread. It makes our members readily identifiable by any woman who needs help. Upon hearing a report of abuse, our people can march in a pack to seize the offender, deliver him to the local magistrate, and make sure no one waves the case away.

I’m not saying I’m building a militia. But it’s always better to have a militia than to be caught without one. If Qin Zheng can have his Revolutionary Vanguards and Yizhi can have his Gewei Bu agents, then I can have my Phoenix Ladies.