Chapter Six Stress-Induced Metamorphosis

CHAPTER SIX

STRESS-INDUCED METAMORPHOSIS

“Is this too tight?” Qin Zheng says with his fingers on my waist, his chin low but his eyes flicking up at mine. Meridians sprawl black across his face as he conducts Water qì to adjust the suit of Yellow Dragon armor he’s put on me.

“A little,” I wheeze. The icy metal pieces clutch me like a torture device. Shivering, I almost fall back on my heels. I’m kneeling upright on my bed in front of Qin Zheng—absolutely not a position I want to be in, but since I can’t stand on my feet, this is the next most convenient pose for molding armor pieces around my body. I just have to lift my knees one at a time for him to encase my legs.

I push my own qì through the hair-thin needles freshly embedded in my spine, trying to shift the countless square pieces of my armor. The Earth-type spirit metal refuses to budge. I’m utterly baffled as to how Qin Zheng slid it over my body like molten gold. Though I guess I’m still weak from the hunger strike. I had to recover for a couple of days, slowly introducing food to my system, before I could even get up like this.

When my armor finally loosens to a more comfortable fit, I can tell it was by Qin Zheng’s mental command instead of mine. It stops being flexible the moment his fingers leave my waist. Coldness recedes from the metal. A throttled breath escapes my lungs, and I rub the gaps between my gauntlets and shoulder guards, kept connected by thin strings. I swear he squeezed me on purpose. I’m starting to regret demanding this armor, but the protection and power it offers are too crucial to give up.

I don’t know why I was imagining getting my Vermilion Bird armor back. Even disregarding the dubious condition it’s in after Yizhi broke off a portion of it to smite his father, I can’t wear anything associated with Shimin anymore. I’m supposed to be paired with Qin Zheng now.

Yang Guang, Shimin, Qin Zheng. I’d curse the world for binding me to man after man after man, yet I can’t deny that with all three there was a moment in which I consciously chose them. Enlisting to be Yang Guang’s concubine. Trusting Shimin. Awakening Qin Zheng. As I meet his eyes, I can’t help but think: There’s a reason they call me the Iron Widow. You’d be number three .

But there’s a lot worth learning from him before I fulfill that title again. I won’t survive outside this room if I can’t wield my armor with ease. And if I can’t even wield this armor, I can forget about ever piloting the Yellow Dragon without him. He must have some special tips and tricks.

Carefully, I sit down on the edge of the bed.

“How did you learn to do this?” I examine my golden gauntlets, as pliant as snakeskin gloves thanks to its complex texture.

Qin Zheng crosses his arms. “The manipulation of qì and spirit metal was considered an art in my time. We pilots honed our mastery of qì to ensure we did not burn our lives out in a few short years. I’ve been told that, these days, it’s believed that pilots are doomed to perish before twenty-five years of age. That is nonsense. I know— knew many older pilots. Those of you in the future are mere shells of what you could be.” He drops his voice. “Clearly, certain forces do not wish to see individual pilots grow too powerful again.”

I glance toward the ceiling. Is he saying the gods interfered with the pilot training system to prevent another like him from challenging them?

“Well…how do we fix that?” I say in a near-whisper.

“Do not rely on so-called ‘strategists’ to do the thinking for you, for a start. What would a gaggle of flaccid scholars who never set foot on a battlefield know about wielding a Chrysalis? We pilots trained each other, the more senior ones mentoring the more junior.”

“Really? Who trained you ?”

His expression turns more sullen. “Have you heard of a pilot named Mi Xuan?”

“No?”

It’s a while before he speaks again. “She was the commanding pilot of the Three-Legged Crow. Queen class, General rank.”

My next breath catches in my throat. “You were trained by a female pilot?”

“Indeed. Are you certain you have no relation to anyone by the family name of Mi? It’s written like the character for ‘half,’ except the top strokes are different.”

I shrug. “I honestly can’t tell you. My family lost our ancestral records when Zhou fell. They had to evacuate with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Why are you asking?”

He stares intensely at my face. “Wishful thinking, I suppose.”

What is even happening in the recaptured Zhou province? I feel like I should ask, yet I can’t summon the will to process what I might hear. Why burden myself with the knowledge? No way I could make the mighty conqueror Qin Fucking Zheng budge on matters of war.

His fingers tap against his elbow. He looks like he wants to say more, yet is hesitant for some reason. “The historical documents say those who competed for power after my disappearance blamed her for what happened to me,” he finally says. “They executed her for it. Severed her at the waist and threw her into the streets to rot. Her absence, along with the fact that many pilots succumbed to the same flowerpox outbreak that caught me, played a large role in why Zhou fell. Yet, after the fall, the reactionaries persisted in their blaming. They executed many other Iron Widows and expunged their military achievements from the public record.”

Nausea and shock churn at once in my chest. “Did you just say ‘Iron Widows,’ plural?”

“Yes. Such is what we called powerful female pilots in command of their own Chrysalis units. We had quite a few more of them, since the yīn-yáng seats weren’t calibrated with unequal inputs.”

“Wait, they weren’t in your time? But the Yellow Dragon…when we switched seats…”

“It made no difference.”

“Then why were you all offended about it?” I splutter.

“Since it made no difference, I had no clue why you were demanding that I switch! I was not in the mood to move around without a reason!”

“Unbelievable.” I smack a hand over my face, though I’m breathing so heavily I feel like there’s a volcano inside me. Just as I believed, Iron Widows existed before me, but they were erased. “How did this happen? Why did the Chrysalis engineers start making the inputs unequal? It makes no sense!”

“Since when did we as a species abide by good sense? Why do cowardly men strike their wives after a reprimand at work? Why do mothers scream at their children after a beating by their husbands? Those unable to conquer their misfortunes take their fury out on more convenient targets. It does not surprise me that women were forced into stricter subservience after Huaxia suffered a major defeat.”

I search his eyes, wishing I could peer into his mind, or that I’d been able to catch a memory of the Iron Widows during my pilot link with him. What they were like, what they were capable of. I hate to think the sole remaining traces of their existence are in his head.

“Teach me everything Mi Xuan taught you,” I plead, a tender warmth quavering at my lash line.

I don’t realize I’m reaching for him, for the ghost of her within him, until my hand touches his armored chest. He startles, as if I’ve singed him, but steels his composure within a second.

“Eventually,” he says, massaging his forehead. “When I have time. For now, I must keep my focus on matters of state. I am unhappy with nearly every single one of those spineless moderates in the central court, and finding suitable replacements will take much effort. If I allow myself any distractions, the court will certainly plot against me.”

“Who would dare plot against you ?”

He drops his hand from his face and glares at me with dead eyes. “Who, indeed? What kind of insolent cretin could possibly show no respect for me?”

My cheeks flush. “Just because I don’t roll over to do whatever you say doesn’t mean I’m plotting against you!” I say, hoping it sounds convincing. “We’re on the same side. And surely you can spare, like, twenty minutes out of your day to help me…become more useful against the political machinations you face. Come on, I’ll start calling you ‘Your Majesty’ again.”

“You should never have stopped!”

“I’ll do it with extra enthusiasm as long as you train me, Your Majesty ,” I say in a sweet, high-pitched voice, because that allegedly works on men. “Or would you prefer Master Qin? Qiiin-shīfu ?”

A whole-body shudder goes through him. “Not like that.”

“Well, then,” I continue in the same voice, “if you train me, I will stop.”

He bends toward me with a scowl. “You should not take this so lightly, insolent girl. The ways of my time are much more intense than yours. We had to battle not only the Hunduns but other humans and their Chrysalises as well. We had no leisure to pose for photos, showboat in front of crowds, or sell commercial products ,” he says with utmost disgust. “Falling behind in pilot skill meant defeat and subjugation, and subjugation by fellow humans can be worse than being overrun by Hunduns. The Hunduns give a quick death. Humans may keep you alive in ways that make you wish you were never born.”

“I’m well aware,” I say, my tone colder and flatter. “So, tell me what you did to get so good with spirit metal. What made you…you?”

He straightens, appearing to weigh his next words very carefully. “I was nine years of age when I was first tested by drafters, and they estimated my spirit pressure to be around four hundred units.”

“Four hundred?” I question, unsure if I heard right. “Was the scale different? Because nowadays you need at least five hundred to pilot a Chrysalis.”

“The scale was the same. They took me precisely because my spirit pressure was close to the threshold but did not reach it. They used me in experiments studying stress-induced metamorphosis, the rare phenomenon of an extreme change in spirit pressure under extreme duress. They could not afford to risk Chrysalis-capable draftees on such experiments, but those like me had prime potential. They dropped me into a dungeon with nine other children, mostly orphans and street rats. A stream of water began pouring from a spout in the wall.” Qin Zheng traces a circle in the air. “It was a small stream. Would have taken days to fill the dungeon. But they told us the hatch on the ceiling would not be opened until there remained only one of us alive.” He tilts his head like he’s trying to remember something. “To our credit, we made it to at least the second day before we began to kill each other.”

My blood runs cold. The memory of his mind realm floods back to me—the frozen ocean, the hungry ghosts.

Qin Zheng goes on. “We tried plugging the water spout with our clothes. We tried bending it in on itself. We tried to open the hatch by forming a human pillar up to the ceiling. Nothing worked. In the end, it came down to strangling each other, bashing each other’s heads against the wall, and holding each other beneath the water. I emerged as the final survivor with a spirit pressure in the thousands. The overall success rate of the experiments, however, was rather low, so I discontinued them after I seized control of the army.”

I sit in silence, staring off to the side. Stress-induced meta-morphosis . I think that might be how my own spirit pressure got so high.

“Still itching to be trained by me?” Qin Zheng says with a slight smirk, but there’s something broken about it, like I’m seeing it in a cracked mirror.

I’d rather scramble far, far away from him. But then I imagine myself as one of those children in the dungeon, floating limp in the bloody water as he climbs to victory. There is no room in his world for weakness. There is no way out except by whatever means necessary.

I gather my wits and say, “That can’t be the only way you got so powerful. You said they couldn’t afford to risk Chrysalis-capable draftees, so your training after that must’ve been something other than death battles.”

“Acute observation. My subsequent training was less deadly, true, but no less strenuous. The hottest fires forge the strongest weapons, they say.”

“If you could handle that, so can I.”

“We shall see.” He turns to leave, but then stops and gives my face a long, troubled look.

He touches my armor’s high collar. A thin layer of spirit metal liquefies and slithers up the back of my neck. As I squirm at the sudden coldness, it diverges over my ears to form a mask around my eyes. A veil of fine strands drops from the bottom of the mask, dangling over the lower half of my face.

“Hey, what the fuck?” I pry at the mask.

“ Language ,” Qin Zheng chastises. “You are to become my empress. By tradition, no other man can touch you or see your face.”

“Are you serious? Get this off!” I push at the mask from below, but it’s so perfectly adhered to my face it won’t budge. “Since when did you care about tradition?”

“ I do not care, but the masses do. Having this as part of your new image will comfort them, and it will make it easier to pass body doubles off as you. We found a candidate with a figure similar to yours, but her facial features do not quite match up.”

“You just want people to see that I’m under your control!” The veil of the mask dribbles like rain against my lips with my every word. This is going to get very annoying if I can’t get rid of it.

“Which is an effective tactic to ensure your safety, is it not?”

“Wow, how noble of you!”

Qin Zheng flashes a smile. With deceptive nonchalance, he slides his hand around my neck and forces my head back. I inhale sharply at the iciness of his touch, my spine tensing onto an arc.

He leans until our faces almost touch. “My patience for your antics has limits. Understand this: I care not for whatever…queer liaisons…you were involved in before, but now that you belong to me, I will not tolerate any insult to my honor. We have an image to maintain. You will not be seen in the company of other men. You will not speak to me in your insolent way in public.”

My pulse thrums against his hand. I should keep quiet and nod. That’s what he wants. But I cannot let him think he can frighten me into submission, that he can make me belong to him by threatening me with violence.

“You call other men cowardly for laying a hand on their wives, yet here you are,” I remark through the pressure of his grasp.

His hand slackens but doesn’t leave my neck. “Do not reach for such a false equivalency. They do what they do to cope. I am doing this because you are an aggravating child who desperately requires discipline.”

“I hope you know that, these days, it’s very creepy to call your bride-to-be a child.”

“I shall cease to treat you like a child when you cease to act like one!”

“And when will you stop treating me like property? A bit hypocritical, isn’t it, when you claim to be for abolishing private property?”

“ What? How is that relevant?” He recoils, releasing me, then squints. “Do you not know the difference between private property and personal property?”

I fold my arms, refusing to admit I’m confused by the question.

“Those are not the same!” he says, now sounding more annoyed than angry. “Private property is land, factories, utilities, infrastructure—resources needed by the whole of society but subject to the whims of private owners, giving them disproportionate and often unearned power. Things such as your clothes, furniture, jewelry, those are personal property, those are possessions that give you no economic power over others, and I have no intention of taking away…” He looks off in a vague direction. “Excuse me, I need to go reform the education system.”

I shrink away from his weird outburst. “I didn’t go to school.”

“I can tell!” he yells over his shoulder while storming to the door. “Learn to manipulate the metal if you wish to adjust your armor!”

The moment the door slams, I double over, soothing the lingering chill around my neck. But my own touch is cold as well, startling me. I look down at the golden pieces enveloping nearly every part of my body. A sense of claustrophobia closes in. I thought this armor would be my strongest weapon, but if I can’t learn to control it, it will be a cage only Qin Zheng can unlock.