by Zoe Marriott
His shoulders loosened, and he raised his sword so that it hung above Lu Wan Hua’s neck. “Stay? Try to fight me? And you and she will both die.”
He was right. My fingers clenched to the point of pain on my sword grip as I realized it, cold sweat springing up on my lip and brow. I had never reckoned on facing Wu Jiang in an open fight. His strength and skill were beyond my level even if I had been at peak fitness. And though duty told me I should, must, try anyway … Lu Wan Hua lay beneath his foot. He would kill her before I could even complete my first strike.
I couldn’t win.
Are you a coward, daughter?
Slowly, shaking and clumsy, I bent and laid my sword down on the rug beside my feet.
Lu Wan Hua gasped. “No!”
“Quiet!” Wu Jiang jabbed her with his foot. She curled up around the kick, choking for breath.
“Let her up,” I demanded.
He turned that same glowing look on me. “I will. I will. But first you must show me you mean it. Show me … your face. Your real face.”
The emperor sobbed dryly.
No. No. No. Fine tremors of fear and revulsion rocked my body. Are you a coward, daughter?
I whispered, “All right.”
Thread by thread, I unravelled the qi that made up the surface of Zhi’s face. It felt like pulling away the fibres of my own skin, clawing away layers of vein and muscle to expose the vulnerable, beating flesh of my heart.
“Yes,” he whispered. What did he see? Whatever it was, whoever it was – I knew it wasn’t me. He had never seen me. “Yes. You are as beautiful as I had imagined.”
His foot lifted from Lu Wan Hua’s chest as he stepped towards me, his sword point moving away from her throat. I let him approach, lowering my eyes modestly and tucking my hands together at my waist, though the dark, borrowed clothes had nowhere to hide them. I didn’t want to meet his eyes.
“Look at me,” he said softly. “So lovely, my orchid, my Zhilan.”
I lifted my face to his, but kept my eyes closed. “Wu Jiang…”
Fingers caressed the loose strands of hair that had escaped from my topknot to fall around my face. I felt his larger frame curving around mine as yang embraces yin, and then his parted lips pressed against mine. My hands went to his shoulders to steady myself. I felt the muscles beneath my palms relax, ever so slightly.
Are you a coward, daughter?
I brought the bony point of my knee up between his legs as hard as I could.
No, Father. I am of the House of Hua.
Wu Jiang’s breath left him in an explosive huff as he doubled over. I clamped both my hands down on his right forearm – his sword hand – throwing my whole weight on to it, digging desperately into the tendons of his wrist, trying to make him release the sword.
Wu Jiang was too strong. His open left hand dealt me a stunning blow to the side of the head that jerked his sword hand free and sent me sprawling back on to the rug.
“Whore…” he said, gasping, face twisted with fury. Tears stood out in his eyes. “Lying, traitorous…” He raised his sword above me in a powerful two-handed grip.
I am of the House of Hua.
I flung up my hand, drawing up qi with every bit of training and strength I had, all my rage and desperation, fear and heartbreak. And then … I let it go.
A cloud of dense nothingness burst from my palm. It was the dark that had cloaked my father’s house the night the assassins came, and the dark of the dried black blood in that little house in the bamboo forest. The blackness of my endless, soul-destroying journey into the Leopard’s caves, and the choking toxic smoke of the smelting tower. It was the darkness of Wu Jiang’s own eyes. All the darkness that filled my nightmares, now, and always would. The darkness that had formed me, again and again, and made me who I was. It was inside me.
The illusion expanded like a thundercloud born on a storm wind, and enveloped the Young General’s upper body. It wrapped around his face like a mask – the dark mirror of my own.
He screamed, dropping his sword and clawing at the shadows. He was blind.
The blackness writhed and swarmed, reforming and growing around him. Darker, darker. I did not have to push it, or force it. There was no need to hide any more, no need to hold back as I had always done, ready to disappear. My enemy was before me, and Lu Wan Hua was here. The energy poured out of me in a river of shadows, endless. Wu Jiang turned, stumbling, trying to run. But there was no escape.
The flagon of drugged wine hit the floor with a shrill shattering sound, spilling scarlet droplets everywhere. White chrysanthemum petals scattered, flecked with red. Lu Wan Hua was on her feet. She lunged towards the column of shadows in a single, fluid movement – and buried the black-and-gold dagger deep.
I rolled out of the way as Wu Jiang let out a harsh grunt of pain and crumpled where he stood, falling to the rug. My fingers curled, drawing the dark tide of qi effortlessly away from him. It flowed back into my skin like smoke, and disappeared. I pulled the warm, living qi of my shadow face – no, my real face – back into position with relief, then swiftly looked down.
Wu Jiang was still alive, but no longer a danger to us. His face was grey, agonized, and he shuddered, hands clutching at his side, at the blood-smeared hilt of the dagger with which he had meant to murder his aunt. He grunted again, clearly holding a cry behind his teeth.
Lu Wan Hua made a move towards the sword that Wu Jiang had dropped. I could see her intention in her squared shoulders and clenched jaw. She was going to finish him off. Impulsively, I put out my hand to hold her back.
Her gaze met mine, questioning. I shook my head. Understanding flashed between us, that strange unspoken understanding the two of us had always shared, even with all our secrets and misunderstandings. Maybe it was pity. Maybe it was something that, in another life, could have grown into love. But I did not want to see Wu Jiang die at Lua Wan Ha’s hand.
Her fingers found mine and clasped them tightly for a moment. Then she kicked the sword out of Wu Jiang’s reach, swiped at her still bleeding nose, and stepped away. “I’ll find some cords to tie him up, just in case, before I summon the city guard.”
Beside me on the bed, the emperor dragged herself over into a slumped, half-sitting position. She supported her weight on the bedpost with shaking, clenched fingers, breathing heavily, her hair still hanging in her face as she stared at me. Her expression seemed mostly of disbelief. But there was something else in her face, too. Something that might have been … admiration. Something that might have been awe.
“Bring bandages, too,” she ordered Lu Wan Hua, her voice hoarse. “He must live long enough to be properly punished for this.”
A low groan escaped the Young General at the emperor’s threat. But his twisted face was turned towards me, not her. “No … Zhilan … my orchid…”
Wu Fen let out a ragged laugh, one broken with something terribly close to tears. “That is no flower, you fool. It is a praying mantis.”
“And my name,” I said fiercely, “is Hua Zhi.”
Epilogue
here. That is my tale, complete at last, told in all of its strange, misfit truth. Just as your parents – or was it your aunt? Your teacher? Well, no matter – requested me to relate it to you.
It isn’t much like the ballads, is it, child? Oh, there was love, and there were great battles, and there was betrayal and friendship and nobility, just as you might expect – but … somehow in real life things are never quite as simple, as clean, as the songs and stories make them out to be. And the more songs and stories they make up about you, the less truth seems to end up in any of them. For all that they are my stories, they still have the power to surprise me.
What’s that? No, of course things didn’t end there; you see me before you, don’t you? A wrinkled old warrior, scarred and tanned, long in years and grey of hair. Nearly fifty years have passed since we finally choked Feng Shi Chong’s rebellion to death, Lu Wan Hua and I. A miserable campaign that was, fighting
all through the winter, through battlefields where the fallen drowned in icy mud before their injuries could kill them, and frostbite and exposure stole more men than the enemy did.
But without the Young General to direct the rebel troops and feed them tactical information, the ill-disciplined, badly trained army of criminals stood little real chance. Though they did damage enough before the end.
I began the campaign, at the emperor’s order, as a captain, with my own hand-picked company. Lu Wan Hua was my sergeant. By the time we dragged the Leopard back to the City of Endless Serenity for trial – in an iron cage of his own, which brought us some satisfaction, I can tell you – I was a colonel. Field promoted, of course, but still no mean achievement. No mean achievement for anyone, let alone a soldier who had been revealed – as they saw it – as “female” before the entire court. Even after saving the emperor and unmasking Wu Jiang, by rights a person who had lied about their legal identity as I had should have been, at the very least, sent home in disgrace.
But Wu Fen liked me. I think. As much as an emperor can like any mere mortal.
She decreed that if a female could be the Daughter of Heaven, there was no reason those with the talents possessed by Lu Wan Hua and me shouldn’t be soldiers, too. And if part of me wanted to argue that I was not truly a daughter, Lu Wan Hua’s warning look and my own common sense kept that objection between my teeth, at least in the emperor’s presence. It wasn’t a very popular move, at first. But she commissioned her court poets and musicians, and artists and weavers to create every kind of art from the story of what I, and Lu Wan Hua, had done. By the time the war was over, we were more than two oddities who had defied law and convention. We were legends.
The Noble Warrior Maiden, the Lady Banner-Breaker, the Shadow Soldieress… My, they did give me a lot of names. In time I learned to live with them, though they never truly felt right, felt like mine. I envied Lu Wan Hua. They just called her Dou Xianniang, since that name already had its own power.
But there’s always another war. Another uprising. Another fight. First it was a short-lived but messy rebellion in the eastern provinces, and then the invasion attempt from the Land of Clouds. We were promoted again, and I was offered a seat in the war cabinet. I took it, of course. My father was so proud. Bewildered, but proud. My mother, when she brought my littlest brother to meet me at last, nearly fainted at the finery of the chambers where Lu Wan Hua and I lived. She was more impressed by the thickness of the carpets than by any of my official honours – and I can’t really argue that she was wrong.
Why should comfort, and home, be less important than glory?
A few more years passed before I finally understood the choice my own father had made, to walk away from it all. I think it was after we put down the Plains Rebellion that I began to realize I wanted more than to be a soldier for the rest of my life. Even a general.
The emperor was not entirely happy. But the legend of Dou Xianniang and the Noble Lady Warrior was still powerful enough to offer us some protection and, as I said, I do think she liked me. Just a little. And so, to Mother and Father’s joy, I returned home.
I had been at war for twelve years.
I never married, of course. Well, they wouldn’t let me marry Lu Wan Hua, would they? There was some idea at one point that we might both marry our neighbour Wang’s son, and live as sister-brides under his roof; it would have been an easy way to become a family legally, and to have children. He was a handsome young man, too. Unfortunately, young Wang was quite clearly more frightened of us than his parents were keen for such a prestigious match. His bugged-out eyes might have made Lu Wan Hua giggle charmingly, but it simply wouldn’t do.
She always accused me of putting a stop to the plan because I was jealous. Well, maybe I was. Or maybe I just could not bear to be forced into that unambiguously female role – bride, daughter-in-law, wife – after I had come to accept myself as someone else entirely. The thought of donning a gown, a wedding gown, even for a single day, made me miserable. I am human, even if the stories dispute it.
Instead, we built a new wing in my family’s home, and Lu Wan Hua was adopted by my father. Then we, in turn, adopted our daughters with the help of the women of Dou Xianniang’s safe house. My little butterflies, those girls. How proud Lu Wan Hua was of them. How proud.
Wan’er was the child of a man executed for treason. Her family were exiled, and in their hurry to escape, they abandoned her as worthless. She is now the prime minister of our nation. And a very gifted poet. I put that down to Lu Wan Hua’s influence, for she was ever the lover of poetry herself. Remind me to give you a volume of Wan’er’s works. I have several lying around here somewhere…
Ai was left on the steps of a temple as a baby – probably because her family had too many children and did not want another girl. She is married, with three daughters and two sons of her own now, and very happy. When she brings her family to visit, and they mix with my nephews and nieces and great-nephews and -nieces, the old house feels like a zoo. My mother would have been very glad to see such a healthy, numerous family. It was what she wanted for me – what she had always wanted for herself. She saw it begin, at least.
How I miss her, these days.
Your face seems troubled, young one. Have I shocked you? Or do you have any questions left to ask?
You want to know about Wu Jiang?
Of course you do – though that part of the story brings me little satisfaction. He was executed, obviously, but not until the palace interrogators had made him spill all his secrets. I would say his death came as a kindness by that point, but the emperor did not grant him a kind death. He had to be made an example of.
I never dared ask the emperor about her nephew’s story, that grim tale he confided in her bedchamber that night. I never dared say his name in her presence at all, after the grim spectacle of his death was finished. She may have liked me, but not that much.
Although your question does remind me… Thinking back, the emperor did mention the Young General, and his mother, to me once. Just once. As it happens, it was shortly after I had requested retirement. I was waiting on her in one of her more private receiving rooms, and some of her waiting women were playing a new piece for us – a ballad involving a recent though minor victory on the battlefield against some truly moronic bandits. Under cover of the music, she asked me:
“Do you truly believe that you can happily retire to some provincial town in the mountains, and spend the rest of your life … weaving and … and raising goats and brats? You will be driven to the edges of sanity in a month, and crawl back to the City of Endless Serenity begging for your sword and your men.”
This was a stinging rebuke, made all the more so by the genuine annoyance – and perhaps even hurt – in her voice. She seldom allowed such emotions to surface. Not after Wu Jiang. So it was with him in mind that I replied, “My emperor, there may be times when I grow bored and restless, and regret my decision. But you no longer need me, or Lu Wan Hua, here. The empire is at peace. My great battles have been fought. Let younger, fresher soldiers take their place at your side. Give them the chance to glory in serving you, as I have.”
“Your tongue grows as silver as your hair. Perhaps you are getting old,” she murmured acidly, staring beyond me, with bleak eyes, at the young, pretty girls who laughed over their instruments on the other side of the room. Fine, powdery lines of white make-up gathered in the marks of age on her face. She was still beautiful, but she was no longer anything like a girl. And she was right. Though I was not yet thirty, bright silver already streaked my hair.
“Perhaps so,” I said, unruffled. “Great generals should die young, lest they invest too much in fighting and death, and come to resent the peace that they have helped to build.”
Her eyes flickered closed for a moment, and I was suddenly sure that she was thinking of Wu Jiang, and perhaps of Feng Shi Chong. “Then you are not a great general.”
“No. But good generals may survive to retire �
� because they know when the time to leave the battlefield has come.”
She opened her eyes with a sigh, and looked at me, really looked at me, for what was to be the last time. “I loved him, you know. No matter what he believed, I did love him.” Staring into those unforgettable eyes, pinned by their humanity, I dared not respond. But I believed her. After a long pause, she whispered, “Just as I loved his mother.”
Then she looked away again, at the dancing, singing, laughing children. “Very well. You are a fool, but you have my leave to go. Go … and remember me fondly.”
And then she reached into her long, bell-shaped sleeve and withdrew a small object – an object I recognized with astonishment as the bronze hand mirror which I had inadvertently left in her keeping well over a decade before. She pressed it into my hands, stood, and walked from the room.
It was the last time I was ever alone with her. But the mirror is over there, see, in the cabinet next to the fire. It is still one of my most cherished possessions.
I puzzled over her words for a long time. They were not, by any means, a confession – but I was sure they contained an answer of some kind. The emperor loved Wu Jiang. That did not save him from a grisly death. The emperor said she had loved his mother, too. And she had also died.
Whatever the truth, I do know I made the right choice that night in the Dragon Chamber.
My, how the time has flown! Night is drawing in. I expect the servants will be in to light the lamps soon, and my granddaughter will come to chide me, bid me drink one of those vile cordials the doctor mixes up, and make me rest.