Chapter Twenty-Four: The Tigress

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

THE TIGRESS

An Lushan is of course livid at the stunt we pulled. But with Chief Strategist Zhuge Liang on our side, he couldn’t do much against us after the battle ended.

We can’t coast on that forever, though. The various frontiers and their local strategists may technically be under the authority of Central Command, but Central Command answers to the Sages, and can’t claim to know the intricacies of each region. If every single senior Sui-Tang strategist insists it’s a better idea to tribute us than to risk our continued existence, the Sages will take their word, even if Central Command is an all-star team of the best and most experienced strategists from across Huaxia.

We need to start changing attitudes fast.

Even though the Kaihuang watchtower is right in front of the Tiger Cage training camp, some rigid rule forces Qieluo and Yang Jiang to relocate from their luxury loft to a camp bunker all the same once they’re qi-exhausted and off-duty, so there’s an opportunity to catch Qieluo at the communal showers. With a jade necklace as incentive (courtesy of Yizhi, after we waited out the battle), the auntie who manages the showers alerts me the next time Qieluo shows up.

When I push through the showers’ translucent vinyl curtains, naked, I find half a dozen women and a few children in the steam. Mostly servant aunties, I’m assuming—and Dugu Qieluo.

She’s impossible to miss. She’s sitting on a short wooden stool away from everyone else, shampooing her hair. The Metal-white spinal brace from her White Tiger armor runs like a strip of porcelain down her back. With that on, and its connection needles constantly in her spine, she’d only have to lean against the rest of her armor to reconnect with it. This saves pilots from having to endure the jab of the needles over and over. The needles are thin enough that they don’t impact the regular mobility of pilots.

I stand rooted to the tiled floor for a few moments, gripping my basket of small glass toiletry bottles. Despite the whole baffling list of things I’ve been through, Qieluo’s presence makes me feel like a simple frontier peasant again, unworthy of gazing upon a Princess-General, the highest status a girl could achieve.

Until you, I remind myself.

I grab a stool and totter over to her.

Her shampooing hands halt when I clank my stool down beside her. A caged heat lamp seethes in a crevasse in the wall, infusing the steam with the taste of wet metal. Slowly, she turns to me, features stiff with offense. But upon catching sight of my face, she abruptly slackens with surprise. Her irises sizzle with her Wood-green qi—a spinal brace still works to conduct it.

I struggle not to make the same expression, because, oh skies, Dugu Qieluo is looking right at me.

“Uh, hi.” I clear my throat, carefully sitting down on my stool. “I’m Wu Zetian. I’m new.”

She narrows her eyes, which are even more deep-set and blade-like than Li Shimin’s, given her full Rongdi heritage. “Yes. You.”

My mouth dries up. I catch sight of her feet, unbound in wooden slippers. We Han folk scoff at the Rongdi for being “barbarians who let their women run around everywhere,” yet right now, it’s me who wants to tuck my deformed, “civilized” feet out of sight.

“Um…” I sputter out, “I just thought we should meet, Miss. Ma’am. Lady Dugu.”

She juts her sharp chin. “It’s Princess-General Dugu.”

Heat whooshes to my head. “Right. Princess-General.”

She turns on her shower with a shrill squeak. “What’s wrong with your face?”

“Oh.” I touch the monstrous bruise on my cheek. “I got attacked. Twice.”

She rinses her hair aggressively. “And you think I care?”

I bite my lip to stop myself from pointing out that she was the one who asked. “No, I’m not expecting you to.”

“Then why are you here? Trying to get on my good side to get favors from me?”

My flush deepens. That’s not untrue. “I just wanted to meet—”

“Let me tell you something, fox girl.” Her gaze slashes into mine, crackling a brighter electric green. “I know your type. So it’s best that you stay away from me, and especially away from my partner.”

“What?”

“Stay. Away. From my partner.”

“What—I—how is that relevant?”

“You think you’re the hottest new shit? You think you’re special? The Iron Widow of the Nine-Tailed Fox?”

“If you’re talking about the stuff in the media, that’s completely beyond my control! I was locked up for almost two weeks with no knowledge of it whatsoever!”

She wrings a towel on her lap. “You know what I saw in my battle link yesterday? You. You, in my partner’s head.”

Fury, blackened by disappointment, rushes through me like toxic smoke. “And—and that’s my fault? Are you kidding me? I’m here, trying to talk to you girl to girl, yet you—are you incapable of using your brain for anything but a man?”

Her arm moves too fast.

My head crashes into the tiled wall. Pain bursts through my skull. My stool skids, tangling in my legs. I slip and collapse to the slimy floor, winded by agony.

“Stay away from my partner, you man-killing whore,” Qieluo snaps, towering over me.

She leaves me in a puddle of cold, clammy water, her unbound feet slapping assuredly over porcelain, the way mine never can.