Chapter Forty-Seven Nothing that Won’t Be Over Soon

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

NOTHING THAT WON’T BE OVER SOON

“End the terror. Blame it all on me.”

The more I think about Yizhi’s last words to us, the deeper they go. He’s giving us a way out of our political conundrums. We can paint him as the villain responsible for everything ugly about the revolution, a trickster who deceived Qin Zheng for power and then went mad with it and edged the government into tyranny. The mass executions: Zhang Yizhi’s fault. Unpopular new policies: Zhang Yizhi’s fault. Inflation and shortages: Zhang Yizhi’s fault. When in doubt, blame Zhang Yizhi and the other Gewei Bu agents.

After sending so many to their deaths with wiretapped secrets and torture-extracted confessions, the agents themselves become the last to be executed on livestream in the Phoenix Nest stadium. Lai Junchen and the Brotherhood underlings, who ran the Tianlao like the eighteen levels of hell, get paraded along the well-worn path from the prison gate to The Hammer. Qin Zheng personally reads out their charges of treason and “crimes against humanity” before condemning them, as if he had nothing to do with any of it. The audience, fully packed after months of waning attendance, explodes into cheers at The Hammer’s every fall.

It provides the catharsis of upheaval without us having to give up any real power. Hopefully, this is enough to prevent reactionaries from being able to stoke another insurrection.

However, Yizhi himself has seemingly vanished from the surface of the world. Every single person in Huaxia should recognize his face and know the reward for his capture, yet weeks pass without a single legitimate sighting. Qin Zheng even sends envoys beyond the Wall on horseback—the only means of excursion that doesn’t alert the Hunduns—to contact Rongdi tribes, yet none have seen him either. My best morbid hope is that he’s dead in a forest somewhere, decaying peacefully into the earth, because if Qin Zheng finds him alive, he’s in for a fate that’s much, much worse.

When Qin Zheng becomes especially frustrated with the search, he threatens to execute Yizhi’s siblings. I have to talk him out of it with logic—if Yizhi could be ransomed with the lives of his siblings, he wouldn’t have left them here. Besides, most of them are children, who we didn’t execute during the worst of our terror, never mind after our turn to clemency. Even Liu Che was allowed to live after reading a self-criticizing proclamation on camera. Qin Zheng then sent him to a youth reform center far north in the frigid Qing province, where he attends discussion groups on laborist texts with other delinquent kids, writes repentant essays, and does farm work to “learn the value of labor” from peasants.

It’s better than getting The Hammer.

Many other big changes come with Qin Zheng’s freedom, and we let the masses assume they’re in response to the insurrection. Gradually, he starts taking trips outside the palace, beginning with a visit to those hospitalized by the Battle of Chengdu. Then he shows up more and more at factories, farms, large construction projects, and disaster zones to meet with local Vanguard leaders and make speeches. It’s better if he goes out with a more positive image among the masses. The fact that he can pilot the Yellow Dragon again is a relief, since I wasn’t sure I could reassemble it in presentable condition, but we continue to reserve it for emergencies, such as when heavy storms cause a flood along the Chu River. As we use the Dragon to reinforce levees and rescue families from the roofs of their drowned houses, it’s the first time I’ve felt unburdened in a Chrysalis since finding out the truth of our world.

I maintain correspondence with every Iron Widow who gets conscripted, but aside from spending the night with Qieluo once in a while to relay Qin Zheng’s dream training, I don’t really have much to do with the war after I’m declared “too pregnant” to go off to battle. The influx of female pilots has taken a lot of pressure off the frontiers, and Qin Zheng doesn’t like being apart from me, anyway. He makes me come along on every trip and stand beside him during broadcasts. Wherever we go, though, I arrange at least one solo visit to a local Alliance branch. I always aim to make my own headlines. If the people speak of me after I’m gone, let them not remember me as a nameless accessory.

Since he insists on reviewing every speech I record before it gets broadcast, I force him to listen to arguments for matters such as the need for more paid parental leave and government--subsidized child care. Although I personally cannot be more uninterested in raising a family, I can’t ignore how it’s an important part of many women’s lives and a major obstacle to raising education and employment rates among them. Qin Zheng’s not the only one who can talk about something for hours. At least some of my points get through to him, becoming actual policy. I find that the trick is to speak in terms of improving productivity across society instead of moral obligation.

Through the work of Taiping and other new officials, the economy grows steadier. She introduces a new currency, merits, which can only be earned through work and cannot be transferred to others. The tougher the job, the more merits someone can gain. Then they can exchange them for luxuries available exclusively from a government catalog. It’s a way to encourage people to do those jobs while fairly distributing what’s been confiscated from the old-order elites. It also rescues the luxury industries, which have been floundering since rich people became terrified to look rich. It’s no joke that soon the only people who can afford jade bracelets, silk robes, top-grade food, and penthouse condos will be miners, garbage collectors, and scientists. Those will no longer be symbols of wealth but symbols of contribution to society.

None of this goes perfectly—there will always be countless problems no matter where we look—but as conditions improve, guerilla skirmishes fade in intensity over the months. No one wants to fight if they can live in some semblance of peace. Regrettably, we’ve also had to break up and ban Yellow Sash rallies, and workplaces remain far from egalitarian, but we’re out of time to let the will of the people burn freely. The world they dream of is possible only if we succeed in taking down the gods.

When the new year approaches in layers of frost and flurries of snow, Sima Yi relays the gods’ demands for us to continue the annual tradition of leaving nine girls as tribute on Mount Tai, the most sacred mountain in Huaxia.

In our dream realm, Qin Zheng and I briefly entertain the idea of sending a spy up among the tributes, but it’s too obvious a move. We decide not to risk it. We don’t even take part in the tribute selection, usually left up to the provinces. And, honestly, I don’t want to be involved. I could easily imagine myself as one of them. Maybe in a different universe, there’s a version of me being left on that mountain with a hidden blade in my hairpin.

The gods never take our tribute with any camera drones in range, so the offerings always seem to vanish by divine magic once we look away. This year, however, I think back to how Qieluo described seeing an aircraft appear out of thin air to snatch up the shattered remains of the Vermilion Bird’s head. As I imagine the girls experiencing the same, an unsettling thought comes to me: What if that’s how Yizhi got away? What if he vanished from the surface of this world in a literal sense, whisked up the way Shimin was?

Have they had some sort of reunion?

On the night of the New Year’s Festival, as families gather around their best meal of the year and children set off firecrackers across Huaxia, I glare at the stars from the throne room balcony, silently demanding answers I know they won’t give. None of the girls taken up ever sent a word back. No inkling about what the Heavenly Court is like. I could stomach it better if I felt sure they went up for a good reason, yet I know nothing except the terrible fact that they’ll miss out on being safe by just a month. That’s how long is left until the scheduled day of our strike. Now they’ll likely die with me and Qin Zheng. And Shimin. And maybe Yizhi. And hopefully all the gods.

“What’s on your mind, empress?” Qin Zheng comes up behind me, arms circling above my seven-month pregnancy padding.

“Nine families are missing a daughter at their reunions tonight.” My breath leaves me in cloudy blooms. “Do you think they’re grieving while having to listen to other families celebrate through the walls?”

Silent, he holds his palm out to the night. Snowflakes drift onto his gauntlet, the crystals brighter than the rest of the palace. All the staffers and guards went home to their families. Only a single building remains lit like an ember on the periphery, where Taiping is hosting a gathering with what’s left of the Gao family and her friends from the clubs, who don’t have families to go home to. Every so often a burst of collective laughter carries on the frigid air.

“Every family has mentally prepared to eventually give their daughter away since the day she was born as a daughter,” Qin Zheng finally says. “I doubt they are much bothered.”

I twist out of his arms and glower at him.

He makes an offended face. “I am attempting to comfort you!”

“You’re bad at it!”

A hint of color nips at his cheeks. “Which you should not be surprised by! This is not your first day of knowing me!”

I put the heel of my hand to my forehead. “I should’ve gone with Wan’er to Taiping’s dinner party.”

He huffs out a swirl of vapor. “Yes, I bet they would have appreciated you intruding upon their family affair.”

“They invited me! They just backtracked a second later because they realized I shouldn’t leave you to be alone on New Year’s!”

His expression goes slack.

“And you agreed?” he says, oddly quiet.

White puffs gust out of my mouth as my brain catches up to what I said. I gulp, fists curling. “Don’t read too much into—”

His mouth muffles my words.

Before I know it, I’m catching glimpses of the throne room’s high, shadowed ceiling over his shoulder while his body rocks mine against the bed that never got moved out of my side chamber. Sensation rolls through me in waves as he mutters things he can’t possibly mean against my skin.

Distantly, fireworks go off. Tears bead at the corners of my eyes when I picture families surrounded by much more warmth and light than what’s in this frigid throne room, watching colors erupt in the sky together. My panting mouth finds his, and I drink him in like a drug to chase away everything else I’m feeling.

I understand Shimin more than ever. Self-destruction starts making sense when thinking with full clarity is worse.

I spew curses at Qin Zheng and scratch at his back like a wild animal. These are the only occasions when I can channel my rage at him to my heart’s content and have him laugh it off while kissing me deeper. Many arguments and training sessions end with our armor and clothes on the floor when my frustration reaches a peak.

Once we’re done, neither of us can be bothered to trek back to our residence through the snow. We settle down on the bed, just big enough for the two of us.

He holds me close and kisses me on the head. “I am glad you stayed with me,” he whispers.

“Okay,” I grunt.

I roll in the other direction. He doesn’t try to keep me in his arms. He’s used to me having a bit of an attitude every time we do this.

Sleep doesn’t come easily. Fireworks go off throughout the night. I imagine New Year’s back at my village, the feast my mother and grandmother would’ve cooked up with the aunties in our extended family. Roasting one of our pigs in the backyard, braising the biggest fish in our ice cellar, caught by my father in the mountain streams. In the festive atmosphere, even he would burst into loud laughs and commend my mother’s cooking after a few shots of liquor. It would be the happiest she’d look all year.

I imagine her telling me how proud she is that I finally learned to compromise and accept a husband as well.

Tears spring to my eyes. I fail to stop my shoulders from shaking.

Qin Zheng stirs beside me in the dark.

“Empress?” He touches my arm. “Are you still thinking of the girls?”

“I’m thinking of my mother,” I admit. “My family.”

He’s quiet for a moment before turning me toward him. “Empress, come here,” he says in an almost pleading voice. “You did what you had to do.”

I let him gather me to his bare chest, cutting off my thoughts about how, in that moment, he chose to sit back and see if I’d go through with it. I can’t blame him for not taking control when I was the one who wanted power. I made the decision to crush them. It’s me who has to live with it.

I don’t push away from him this time. It shouldn’t be possible to drift off to sleep in the arms of someone who represents so much of what I hate, but the throne room is very cold and he is very warm.