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Chapter Twenty-Three: Utter and Mutual Misery

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

UTTER AND MUTUAL MISERY

“No!” Yizhi, Sima Yi, and I exclaim at once.

“This is an order.” An Lushan keeps scowling at Li Shimin. “Get on a shuttle and head for the Vermilion Bird. Immediately.”

Soldiers pour into the room like clots of blood in the red light, but not all of them point their guns at us. The ones who came with Sima Yi turn around, guarding him. The two sides hold each other at gunpoint, but confusion and uncertainty flicker across the soldiers’ faces and stances.

“Pilot Li is in no condition to battle!” Sima Yi hops off his stool and marches in front of the bed. He would look a lot more assertive if he weren’t dressed like he’s on a midnight trip to the lavatory.

“He was certainly well enough to beat up two of my pilots yesterday.” An Lushan approaches, steps shockingly light and nimble. My body screams with the urge to back away, toward Yizhi, toward some semblance of safety. But I cannot betray that level of weakness. I stay rooted in place, bracing myself with Sima Yi’s stool to keep from falling over.

“He’s going through alcohol withdrawal now.” Yizhi pushes to his feet, stool screeching back. His fingers linger on Li Shimin’s shoulder.

“Oh, I know.” An Lushan’s eyes crinkle. “But this is an urgent situation. A pilot must always be ready to give their all for the sake of Huaxia.”

“It’s been only two days since their last battle!” Sima Yi says in his bone-jolting commander voice. His personality makes it easy to forget his true stature in the army sometimes, but this tone never fails to slam in a reminder. “Two. Days. Strategist An, are you mad, trying to send them in again?”

An Lushan shakes his head slowly. “Strategist Sima, the fact of the matter is, the unnatural transformations of the Nine-Tailed Fox and the Vermilion Bird have agitated the Hunduns beyond our normal defense capacities.” His scrutiny slicks past me, leaving my skin crawling. “A compromise must be made.”

“No.” Sima Yi’s eyes slash into daggers. “No, you are not tributing him!”

“Well, we, the Senior Strategists of Sui-Tang, who actually know the intricacies of this frontier, have just reached a majority agreement that this would be for the best. Pilot Li has been impossible to control. Every time he’s summoned for battle, it’s like trying to take a bull to slaughter—when it’s not even his life that’s at risk! We cannot factor him properly into our tactics at all!”

“Highest spirit pressure since Emperor-General Qin himself, and you want to tribute him? In the name of Central Command, I will not allow this!”

“When under direct and active threat, local strategists reserve the right to deploy any pilot as deemed necessary.” An Lushan’s nostrils flare. “And we have deemed this necessary to protect our troops and our people!”

Sima Yi is not winning this argument.

An Lushan and his soldiers seem to close in like figures in a blood-tinged nightmare, even though their boots haven’t budged. My knees wobble, and I try to gulp down breaths to calm myself. But urgency froths over in me, and I have to do something.

“Hey.” I jut my chin. “Does tributing a pilot mean what I think it means?”

An Lushan’s glare slices into me. “Shut your mouth. The men are talking.”

Rage charges my body, scattering my fear, setting every muscle on edge. I scan the soldiers and their guns, wondering if it’d be worth getting shot to break An Lushan’s nose.

“Tributing is the ultimate coward’s way out, is what it is!” Sima Yi responds without taking his eyes off An Lushan.

“With all due respect, Strategist Sima, we don’t have time for this. Huaxia’s safety is at stake.” An Lushan tilts his head, an eerie scarlet glint dancing in his eyes. He makes a gesture at a soldier beside him.

The soldier brings a full bottle of grain liquor out from behind his back.

Wheezing out a gasp, Li Shimin lunges for it.

Exclamations erupt from Yizhi and Sima Yi as they hold him back. I falter against Sima Yi’s stool, head spinning, pulse quickening with explosive force.

Why do they have that bottle ready?

An Lushan takes it from the soldier and dangles it by its neck. He shoots Li Shimin a pitying look. “You want this, don’t you? You know the deal. Go battle like a good boy, and this is yours.”

Bile scorches up my throat.

This has happened before. This is why the Sui-Tang frontier has enabled Li Shimin’s drinking: they’ve gotten him to go into his Chrysalis and sacrifice girls by using liquor as bait.

I stomp through the pain in my feet and smack the bottle from An Lushan’s pinching fingers. It smashes on the floor in an eruption of glass, fluid, and noxious fumes.

He gapes at me. Then his arm jerks.

The slap collides with my already-bruised cheek, flinging me against the foot of the bed. Heat and pain shatter through my face. A ringing drawls through my skull.

“Zetian!” Yizhi rushes to my side.

“Rich Boy, get her! Go, go, go!” Sima Yi drags Li Shimin off the bed and charges for the door.

There’s only a brief flash of bewilderment in Yizhi’s eyes before he scoops me up.

“You can’t shoot me; I’m from Central Command!” Sima Yi shouts, ramming through the soldier standoff.

“You can’t shoot me; I’m rich!” Yizhi slips through the opening created.

They haul me and Li Shimin into the hallway, bathed a darker red than the room. Boot steps clatter after us, but they remain slow and hesitant. The soldiers must be confused by this power struggle between Central Command and the local strategists. An Lushan bellows curses over our heads. The mighty sounds bounce around the walls.

I dip and sway in Yizhi’s arms, my weight curling him over. Li Shimin staggers on with Sima Yi’s help.

Our eyes meet in a moment of utter and mutual misery.

Maybe it’d be better to throw our lives away in the Vermilion Bird after all, just to stop being so helpless.

But then I’m furious. I’m this way because my family crushed my feet in half when I was five—how did he end up like this?

Sima Yi scans his wristlet at an elevator.

Beep.

He shoves Li Shimin through the opening doors. Yizhi carries me in, then collapses to the ground, gasping for breath. Sima Yi jabs a button repeatedly. The doors start gliding shut as the soldiers approach.

Close! Close! Close!I scream in my head.

The doors slide past their faces, but someone’s hand darts through the final gap.

Just as I’m about to tear my hair out, Yizhi stabs it with a syringe from his robe pocket. The hand slithers out like a startled snake.

The elevator rumbles, then scrapes downward.

Heavy breathing. Buzzing metal.

“You!” I stagger upright and shove Li Shimin on the chest. He’s so weak he crashes against a wall, rocking the whole elevator, and slumps to the ground. I ignore the protests from Yizhi and Sima Yi. “You’ve let him manipulate you into battle with that trick before, haven’t you?”

With labored effort, Li Shimin sits up against the wall. He wrings his shaking hands together and presses them to his forehead. No answer.

Yizhi reaches for my shoulder. “Ze—”

“You sacrifice girls like they tell you to so you can drink again when it’s all over, don’t you?” I scream louder, batting Yizhi’s hand away.

“That’s never the whole reason!” Li Shimin chokes out, chin snapping up, smeared with vomited blood as if he just devoured a freshly extracted heart.

“Stop it!” Sima Yi barges between us, barring my chest with his arm.

“It seems to me like it’s a pretty strong factor!” I keep yelling. “You knew that a girl would die every time you activated a Chrysalis! You knew that, and yet you decided that your liquor was worth more than their lives!”

“Zetian!” Yizhi raises his voice.

I flinch. He has never spoken to me like this.

His eyes soften immediately. “Zetian, he’s legitimately ill. The brain is just another organ, and his is sick. He can’t will his mind to stop wanting alcohol any more than someone with a cold can will their lungs to stop aching. It makes him not himself. Please try harder to understand.”

“No…she’s right…” Li Shimin rises on his knees, glaring at me from under his wild hair. “This is exactly who I am. But…it was never the alcohol that I decided was worth more than those girls. It was me. I let them die to save myself. Every. Single. Time. That’s the truth you want me to admit, isn’t it?” He coughs. Blood splatters out of his mouth, which he shields with his wrist. “Well, there it is! Happy?”

He lashes his bloody arm to the side. His hoarse voice rings into oblivion. The elevator grinds deeper and deeper, swaying.

The trails of tears shining down to his jaw are too much to look at. Eyes wedging shut, I thump backward against the wall. My heart throbs, a small and lonesome thing in the hollow of my chest.

“Are you two done?” Sima Yi says, sullen.

“Where are we going?” I mumble, cupping my head with both hands.

“The concubine quarters. Prince-General Yang Jian doesn’t keep any, so they’re empty. We can hide there until the battle ends, then An Lushan won’t be able to do anything anymore. But I don’t think you two understand how important it is to get over whatever qualms you have with each other.” He vibrates with barely contained rage. “He was right about one thing: for the Hunduns to attack again this soon, they’re reacting as if you’ve managed a real level-three transformation in the Vermilion Bird. They, too, can sense that we now have the potential to take out their nest in Zhou. They’ll attack and attack until we either lose enough Chrysalises to lose our advantage or actually gamble everything on a counterattack. But until you two get your act together, your potential won’t translate into substance! Chief Strategist Zhuge and I will be powerless to stop you from getting tributed when things get worse! Do you hear me?”

“Is being tributed exactly what it sounds like?” Yizhi repeats my question from earlier, and I’m grateful. Because I can’t find the strength to shape any words.

Sima Yi massages the bridge of his nose. “Yes, it’s when pilots are deliberately and abruptly pushed into battle in subpar circumstances. So the Hunduns can feel their deaths happen and be appeased. Obviously, it’s not talked about openly, but it happens. Especially to pilots deemed too difficult, or too uncooperative, or getting too old.”

My stomach pulses against my lungs. Twenty-five. That’s the age the brain stops developing, stops being malleable enough to command a Chrysalis well. The age pilots almost never pass. Even twenty is hard enough.

This information chills deep into my core, yet when I think about how things are, how quickly pilots spin in and out of media coverage and popularity, it’s not that surprising.

Yizhi rakes his hands through his hair, messing up his half-do. “Can’t—can’t you get the Sages to order Strategist An to leave them alone?”

Sima Yi shakes his lowered head. “Not all the Sages believe in the idea of launching a counterattack. Not even all of Central Command. If it doesn’t go right, the Hunduns would decimate our forces, breach the Wall, and we’d almost certainly lose Tang. Just like we did Zhou.”

Blood drains in a tingling tide out of my face. When he puts it that way, I get it.

“It’s our lives against everyone’s.” My knees buckle. I slump to the ground, just like Li Shimin. “Everyone in Sui and Tang.”

“But that’s the coward’s way of thinking!” Sima Yi says with surprising force. “How will we ever win the war if we don’t gamble on powerful pilots? You both have astronomically rare spirit types, and you’ve come together. There won’t be another chance like this in hundreds of years. I am not giving up on you two!”

The elevator clatters. Once again, my eyes and Li Shimin’s find each other in misery.

I can’t kill him. Not even in a Chrysalis. Clearly, a good portion of the army would rather tribute the pilots they don’t like than use their power, no matter how rare and incredible it is.

Maybe he and I are truly like two wing-sharing birds, those pitiful creatures that hobble around the forest floor with one wing and one eye, who can only take flight if they find a mate to lean on.

I let out a growl of frustration, digging the heels of my hands against my temples. This is wrong. All wrong. He and I are the two most powerful pilots in Huaxia, by a gigantic margin.

He should be the Iron King, and I should be the Iron Queen.

Yet Iron Demon and Iron Widow is all they’ll let us be.

This will not do. I will not let this power go.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned so far, it’s that brute strength means nothing on its own. It just makes everyone else want to strike you down.

I need friends. Allies. Someone actually from the Sui-Tang frontier, instead of Sima Yi and Chief Strategist Zhuge, who are no doubt pissing off the Sui-Tang strategists harder by overruling from above. I need someone who can convince these strategists to reverse their emergency vote to tribute us.

I need help from someone like Dugu Qieluo.

When Sima Yi turns on his livestream again, I watch the White Tiger intently. I think, of all people, Qieluo would understand me best. She was the most powerful female pilot before I came along, after all. And she must’ve gotten familiar enough with the Sui-Tang strategists in her seven years of service to potentially change their minds.

It’s about time I paid her a visit.

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