Fullepub 
Chapter Four: Ready to Serve
CHAPTER FOUR
READY TO SERVE
Adim chamber beneath the Great Wall. A metal platform cluttered with testing equipment. A shining game screen on the ceiling, one I must focus on while being swung up and down on a tilt table.
I swear I’m about to vomit all over my wispy new concubine robes when the tilt table finally jerks to a halt. I clamp a hand over my stomach while lowering the sticky game controller. My senses slosh by inertia. I can see why this test was supposed to be done when we first arrived, but they were having trouble with the machine, so they resorted to prettying us first.
“Six hundred and twenty-four!” Auntie Dou, a senior maidservant, calls out my official spirit pressure value from behind the spectral glow of her screens. The number reverberates off the chamber’s metal walls.
Shock pulses through me, and whispers of surprise flutter out of the five other girls on the bench down from the testing platform. So far, their tested values have mostly been in the double digits, with one exception of 118.
When I was fourteen, a mobile testing team came to my village and tested all us children, but I didn’t expect their grandiose-seeming estimation of me to be accurate. Spirit pressure is a measure of mental power, of the level of force someone can use to channel their qi. Only some 3 percent of people pass the 500 mark, the minimum required to activate a Chrysalis. I almost laugh at this absurdity.
If I were a boy, I’d be living a dream. I could fight mecha-aliens in my own giant transforming war machine, be loved and praised as a celebrity, and get serviced by a watchtower full of concubines.
But I am not a boy, and this value only means I’d survive a few more battles than most concubine-pilots.
Which is not what I came here to do.
Auntie Dou totters around her screens and comes to me. Her hair is drawn into a high, tight bun. Her shadow grows on the back wall as she approaches. The gold hems and knot buttons on her dark green tunic gleam under the game screen’s spotlight.
“Congratulations, Lady Wu,” she says while removing the wired probes attached to my head. “You’ll be entering Prince-Colonel Yang’s service as a full-fledged Consort.”
Huh. Even Big Sister was only Concubine rank; my starting salary will be quadruple hers. My family will be ecstatic.
For a few days, at least. Ha.
“Remember, though: this is not an absolute measure.” Auntie Dou repeats the same spiel she gave the others. “Things may be different once you get into a Chrysalis, depending on how well you match with Prince-Colonel Yang. You may under-perform due to an inability to empathize with his mind. Or you may undergo metamorphosis, rising closer to his value. My best advice is to understand him, support him, and be there for him no matter how bad the battle gets. Do your part, and you may even turn out to be his Iron Princess.”
I barely stop myself from snorting. Even in the face of hard numbers, she’s trying to delude us into wobbling toward our deaths with bright smiles, believing we could be that special exception.
I leave the controller and shift my legs off the tilt table’s cracked leather padding. Limp by limp, my new embroidered silk shoes clink like pins down the platform’s patterned steel steps. Heat scatters from me, robbed by the chilly air. Gooseflesh shudders out of my skin, extra-startling with my pores ripped clean of hair. The bloody taste of rust somehow makes it to my tongue.
The other enlistees huddle on a long bench attached to the wall, hugging their chests. The pale auras of screen lights haunt them from afar. Their shadows skulk on the glistening metal behind them, like predators about to snatch them up.
The next girl to be tested wrings her hands and rises from the bench. We pass each other, the ruqun we’re wearing ghosting in different directions like pastel vapor, green and yellow and white—Yang Guang’s colors. The loose robes are considerably brighter and gauzier than the aunties’ garments, flowing like watercolor on our scrubbed, waxed, examined, and perfumed bodies. With the collar as low as our chests, the ruqun exposes more skin than I’ve ever shown in front of others. A smoke-green silk garland wreathes around our arms, dipping at our backs.
Waves of nausea keep twisting me up, but I push through all discomfort. I can’t show any sign of not being ready to handle this. I may be starting off as a Consort, but Yang Guang could easily favor and promote another girl. If I don’t attract his favor, I could be forgotten among the herd of servant girls in his watchtower.
It’d be way harder to find a chance to slaughter him.
“You are here to provide comfort and companionship to one of the greatest heroes of our times.” Auntie Dou’s introductory speech replays in my mind, from when we first gathered in a trembling line before her. “From this day onward, you exist to please him, so that he may be in peak physical and mental condition to battle the Hunduns that threaten our borders. His well-being should be the most prominent subject of your thoughts. You will bring him meals when he is hungry, pour him water when he is thirsty, and partake in his hobbies with him with lively enthusiasm. When he speaks, you will give your full attention, without interrupting or arguing. You will not be moody, pessimistic, or indifferent, and—most importantly—you will not react negatively to his touch.”
I sit down in the widest gap between the other girls. Cold steel scalds the backs of my thighs. I cross my legs tightly, trying to calm my racing pulse. My mind roils with a storm of thoughts—if Yang Guang might recognize my sister in my face, if he’d really choose me to serve him, if the blade in my hairpin is sharp enough to rupture his jugular.
No one speaks. We haven’t spoken much since the maidenhood tests hours earlier by the aunties. One girl didn’t pass. She swore in screams and cries that she never did anything with a boy—which made me doubt the accuracy of the checking system—but she was officially disqualified from becoming a concubine-pilot, and then they took her away. To where, I don’t know. Hopefully not back to her home. Her family would probably drown her in a pig cage.
I shudder to imagine what might have happened if I somehow hadn’t passed their arbitrary standards either. I can’t shake the memory of my family assaulting me with questions about Yizhi as I elbowed through them to get to the hovercraft’s rope ladder in our backyard.
“I never crossed the line with him,” was the only thing I said, my cheeks burning.
I don’t know how he handled them after the hovercraft whisked me away. But it doesn’t matter when they can’t get to me anymore.
Yizhi will see those photos. And the comments, picking my appearance apart, judging if I’m worthy of being with Yang Guang.
I hope Yizhi gets disgusted enough to forget me.
The awful screeches and booms of the tilt table resound through the chamber again. Bathed a gloomy blue by various equipment, the other enlistees and I watch the girl get seesawed while trying to control a butterfly on the ceiling screen. She has ten minutes to get it as far through a tunnel of obstacles as possible. The game’s colors fluctuate on every metal wall. I have no idea why this is considered the best way to test spirit pressures. Maybe it’s got something to do with the effort it takes to concentrate while being swung.
I keep a hand on my stomach. Anxiety swishes in my chest like a dog’s tail. I don’t know if I wish time would speed up or slow down. The thought of actually being done and lined up in front of Yang Guang makes me want to stop existing this instant, but the preparations have also taken long enough. It must be deep into the night by now. Yang Guang is nocturnal—most Hundun attacks happen at night.
I reach absently for my engineering marvel of a hairstyle, consisting of two oiled swirls on top of my head like fox ears, the volume made by fake hair bundles pinned beneath. White crystal lilies serve as the “fur” in the middle of the ears, and silver pins with glittering tassels skewer everything in place. I run a finger over my original hairpin, the only dull thing in the shiny clutter.
“Are you sure that pin goes well with our makeover?” the girl beside me suddenly whispers.
Chills shock through me like I’ve been thrown into a frozen lake.
Did she notice something? Did the blade part peek out?
I brush the juncture where it would come apart. Still smooth. Thank the skies.
“It’s a memento from my mother.” I toss out the soft, flat lie that worked on the aunties. My hand drops slowly, casually, though my fingers have gone as cold as the bench beneath us.
“Yeah, but don’t you think it seems a little out of place?” she says with her hand on her chin. The white powder covering our blemishes smears onto her palm. Our lips have been rouged and glossed like fresh berries, and our eyes have been lined with feline flicks and shadowed with peach pink.
“Where else am I supposed to put it?” I furrow my brows, probably messing up the scarlet lotus painted between them. “These robes don’t have pockets.”
“You could leave it with Auntie Dou. I’m sure it means a lot to you, but it doesn’t look precious enough to be stolen.”
I recall this girl’s name—Xiao Shufei. She’s the one with the spirit pressure of 118.
“It’s fine where it is,” I hiss, despite knowing I shouldn’t risk stirring trouble. She needs to drop this. “Why do you care?”
“Hey, I’m just trying to look out for you.” She straightens, prettied face warping into a scowl.
“Who asked you to? Worry about yourself.”
She gapes. “Do you think you’re better than us or something? Do you think we’re jealous of you?”
The other girls on the bench are gawking at us now, three pairs of paint-lined eyes slick with fear and machine light.
“Well, I do now. Or why would you bring it up?” I squint. “What is there to be jealous of? My spirit pressure?”
“Please. No one needs such a big pressure to be a good concubine.” She sweeps a leer down my figure, which, thanks to the snacks Yizhi brought over, never shrank much, despite my family’s best attempts at starving me.
One girl covers her mouth in shock.
But I don’t care. I laugh.
This is just sad.
“You think six hundred and twenty-four is big?” My mouth twitches into a stiff grin. “You realize Yang Guang’s is over six thousand, right? I am nothing. We are all nothing.”
Xiao Shufei shifts uncomfortably. Her fingers curl over her robes. “Don’t call our master by his name.”
The term hits me like a punch to the gut. I crush my lips together, blinking stars out of my eyes from a flash flood of fury. A hundred words rush up my throat but get stopped at my teeth. I can’t afford to insult him out loud.
I eye Auntie Dou. Still concentrating on running the test. But we’ll draw her attention if this goes any further. Releasing a tense breath from my nose, I turn away from Xiao Shufei.
Yet it only cranks up her audaciousness.
“I can’t believe your attitude,” she says, louder. “We’re here to serve a Prince-class pilot. Are you really going to get all cleaned up, only to leave that ugly pin in your hair? Could you be less obvious about being peasant trash?”
“We’re all peasant trash!” I snap under my breath, whipping my glare back to her. “Including him! No rich people let their sons be drafted! The noble title, the pretty robes, the fancy jewelry—they’re just shiny distractions to make us feel better about dying young. Which we will! Maybe that’s even why you’re trying to irk me, but let me tell you: you should really be spending your limited time better. Go ahead, feel as classy and dignified as you want.” I wiggle my fingers near the silver tassels in her hair. “Because the only reason they gave you all this is because you won’t need it for long!”
Frigid silence presses down on us. The beginning of a sob creases Xiao Shufei’s forehead and mouth. Guilt squeezes me for an instant.
Then she snatches my pin out of my hair.
Horror almost slams me to the floor. My gaze veers in a panic. I barely dare to look back. Though the pin has, miraculously, held in one piece.
It eases my spiking nerves, but doesn’t stop every flux of warmth and adrenaline in me from slowing to cold, dragging shards. I raise my chin. Peer down the slope of my nose at this foolish little girl. She gawks at the pin in her hand as if stunned by her own act. She angles away, evading my eyes.
I smack the bench with a resounding clang.
“I would seriously give that back to her.” A chuckling male voice echoes at the doorway. “That girl does not seem like one to be messed with.”
Our heads turn in sync, but dread breaks over me long before I see him standing there, arms crossed, leaning against the wall.
Here he is.
The boy I must kill.
