In the pale dawn light, Xie Yuzhang’s snow-white feet arched and tensed, cramping.

Wuwei was powerfully built, with seemingly inexhaustible energy. The sound Xie Yuzhang made — no man who heard it could keep his composure. When this bout was over, he still wanted more.

Xie Yuzhang said languidly: “The other Khans are still waiting to bid you farewell, you know.”

It was the second day after the wedding. Wuwei had no choice. He lingered for a while in tender closeness, but eventually got up and left.

He had kept her awake all through the wedding night, and the early morning had brought no rest either. After he left, Xie Yuzhang slept through a long, luxurious second sleep. When she woke again and called out, two women came in to help her rise — and they turned out to be Wan Xiu and Yue Xiang.

Xie Yuzhang was surprised: “What are you two doing back here?”

The two women said: “We have come to attend to Your Highness.”

Xie Yuzhang drew the bedclothes around herself and gently chided: “You are both wives of men in my service now. You shouldn’t be doing things like this anymore.”

The day before her wedding, the two had come to her together, red-faced, wanting to speak to her about the intimacies of married life.

Xie Yuzhang had pulled out a pillow book and tossed it at them outright: “The Nanny had it all arranged for me before she left.”

She added: “You can take this back with you and have a look — it’s a secret treasure from the palace, and really quite instructive.”

That sent the two of them scurrying off in mortification.

Yue Xiang had not forgotten to swipe the booklet as she ran.

Yue Xiang now laughed: “We’re only wives of a pair of company commanders — the way you talk, you’d think I’d married a Vice Minister or a Minister.”

In Yunjing, the wife of a company commander and a princess were as far apart as cloud and mud — she wouldn’t have been able to lay a hand on the princess’s shoes.

Xie Yuzhang’s only intention had been that, because she valued Wang Zhong and Li Yong, she didn’t want their wives to continue doing the work of servants.

Wan Xiu said: “With Nanny gone, these young girls don’t know anything. We had to come.”

Yue Xiang said: “A’Fei Sister is waiting outside — we stopped her from coming in.”

Weighing the lesser evil, Xie Yuzhang had no desire to let Lin Fei handle the personal matters of her chamber — so Wan Xiu and Yue Xiang it was.

Wan Xiu and Yue Xiang helped her bathe.

The marks left on Xie Yuzhang’s body made the two of them flush crimson and click their tongues in astonishment: “Mobei men are really too — too rough…”

“It’s fine.” Xie Yuzhang said, “My skin has always been like this. The slightest touch and it goes red and bruised-looking — frightening to look at, but actually nothing.”

Xie Yuzhang did indeed have naturally delicate skin, and had been this way since childhood.

The two of them thought about it and relaxed.

All three of them were married women now, and inevitably fell into the comfortable, knowing conversation that comes with that.

Lin Fei had been waiting outside for a long while. She came to the inner chamber entrance and asked: “Are you still not ready?”

The three called out in unison: “Don’t come in!”

Then all three burst out laughing together.

Hearing the laughter, Lin Fei knew Xie Yuzhang was all right, and her heart settled.

She turned away with a flicker of irritation, thinking — what was so extraordinary about it? She’d already found those sorts of instructional picture books hidden in a secret compartment of her father’s and brothers’ bookshelves when she was ten years old. If not for the lack of practical experience, in purely theoretical terms, she was quite confident she knew more than all three of them put together.

“You’ve been at it long enough,” she called. “The medicine is nearly done — I still need to go and invite Zhadayali.”

Xie Yuzhang said: “All right, all right — I’ll come out now. Go ahead.”

Lin Fei went.

Zhadayali heard that Xie Yuzhang wished to see her and was mildly surprised.

Lin Fei was very respectful: “I apologize — it should properly be Your Highness who comes to you. But some things are inconvenient to carry back and forth, so we had to ask you to come to us instead.”

Zhadayali’s tent and Xie Yuzhang’s tent were among those closest to the Great Khan’s tent, and were not far from each other. The people of the grasslands observed far fewer formalities than those of the Central Plains — but when Xie Yuzhang and her people showed Zhadayali this kind of respect, Zhadayali found it agreeable regardless.

She followed Lin Fei to Xie Yuzhang’s great tent. The moment she stepped inside, she caught the smell of medicine.

“What is that smell? Is someone ill?” she asked.

Xie Yuzhang rose to welcome her: “Sister.”

They had been mother-in-law and daughter-in-law before; now they were sisters — only in a land as untamed as the grasslands could something so absurd come to pass.

She invited Zhadayali to sit, and a handmaid brought out a bowl of thick, dark medicinal brew.

Zhadayali’s gaze fell on the bowl. “What is this?”

“I asked Sister here today precisely to speak openly about this matter.” Xie Yuzhang said. “I don’t know whether Wuwei has already told you — on the day the National Diviner presided over our match, Wuwei made a promise to me that he would not have me bear children.”

Zhadayali said: “How can a woman not bear children.”

Xie Yuzhang smiled slightly and replied: “What use would children be to me?”

She said: “If one speaks of being cared for in old age, my own people will naturally tend to me. If one speaks of an heir — we already have Dielitele, do we not?”

Zhadayali’s gaze grew deep and still, scrutinizing Xie Yuzhang intently.

Xie Yuzhang looked back at her.

She was a typical woman of the grasslands — whatever she had been like before, motherhood had rounded her out completely. She always wore a warm, loving smile, like a kindly, affectionate matriarch.

In front of others, she showed every deference to Wuwei, yielding to him in all things and never overstepping. Wuwei, in turn, displayed all the vigor and boldness expected of a strong man.

Yet in her past life, Xie Yuzhang had lived within the shelter of their combined affection — small and unthreatening, no danger to either of them. And so, in her presence, they had often not bothered to conceal things.

How much influence Zhadayali truly wielded over Wuwei, behind that warm and kindly face — Xie Yuzhang had sensed it dimly in her past life.

In this life, when she had been forceful with Wuwei, she had caught a flicker of instinctive flinching in his eyes. It was entirely… a reflex formed since childhood.

Wuwei had been taken into Zhadayali’s arms and raised from the age of five or six. When his mother died before he reached ten years old, Zhadayali had taken on both roles — mother and wife — single-handedly.

The Xie Yuzhang of this life was different from the Xie Yuzhang of the last, but she had no desire to be seen by Zhadayali as a rival or an enemy. There was simply no need for that.

Their lives sought different things. But at least, when it came to Wuwei, there was absolutely no conflict of interests between them.

What Xie Yuzhang had invited Zhadayali here for today was precisely to make this point clear.

“This is a recipe from the Central Plains, called the Contraceptive Decoction.” Xie Yuzhang lifted the bowl. “If a woman drinks it within twelve hours of lying with a man, she will not conceive.”

“Those in the grasslands may find it unusual — but we in the Central Plains observe distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate children. Typically, before a primary wife has borne a legitimate son, no concubine is permitted to produce an elder illegitimate son first and seize the right of succession.”

“This will be kept regularly in my tent. I cannot speak for others — but I will not give birth to a rival for your Dielitele.”

When Xie Yuzhang finished speaking, she tipped her head back and drank down the entire bowl of medicine.

By the time she set the bowl down, Zhadayali’s eyes were so tender they looked as though they might brim over.

“You dear child…” she sighed, smiling.

……

Lin Fei opened her notebook, dipped her brush in ink, and blacked out the entry for “Zhadayali.”

“How long before we can go home?” she asked.

Xie Yuzhang calculated, and sighed: “Going by what I lived through before — seven more years.”

Lin Fei’s brush paused.

Seven years of a person’s life — how many seven-years does one have in a lifetime? And how many seven-years does a woman have in her youth?

She sighed: “What’s the situation down south right now?”

Xie Yuzhang cast her mind back: “In Yunjing, Father has already become a puppet, good for nothing but affixing his seal to imperial decrees. Huang Yungong must have piled up titles for himself by now — I wonder if he’s got Three Ducal Ministers yet?”

Lin Fei didn’t care at all about Yunjing — there were no longer any family members there she cared about.

She asked: “And Hexi?”

“No idea about Hexi,” Xie Yuzhang said. “What I know is from things people told as stories later on. But around this time, Li Ming should certainly be dead. Whether the Hexi chaos has finished settling, I’m not sure — if it has, he should be marrying Li Da Niang now. And there were the later Consort Cui and Noble Consort Deng — supposedly he took all three of them at once. Though after entering Yunjing, Li Da Niang was ultimately bested by Zhang Fen and failed to become Empress.”

“The way you describe it, the Hexi Faction’s influence seems dangerously large,” Lin Fei said. “Even as the core faction, once he became Emperor, he could never allow any one faction to grow too dominant — he would certainly balance them against each other.”

Xie Yuzhang rested her chin on her hand. “And besides, however you look at it, he and Zhang Fen were true husband and wife. But he and Li Da Niang… nine times out of ten it was nothing but an empty title. Making Li Da Niang Empress just always seemed strange.”

Lin Fei said drily: “You might find it strange. Li Da Niang might not.”

“Fair enough.” Xie Yuzhang said. “I never thought about it before — I’d never actually touched power back then. Born a princess, everything just… came to you, given by others. It’s only now that I’m starting to feel it properly. If you told me to give up my guard right now, give up my subjects, I’d be utterly wretched.”

She said: “Later, in the palace, Lady Li spent her days burning incense and reciting sutras. Yet when you think about it, it was she who managed Li Gu’s entire inner household before he entered Yunjing — and then she handed it all over to Zhang Fen, and just… This, when you think it through, the burning incense and reciting sutras…”

It’s rather pointed.

Lin Fei gathered the threads together and raised several key questions: “When does the news of Li Ming’s death reach us? When does the news of the capital’s fall come? When does Li Gu lead his troops into the capital? When does the news of the end of Great Zhao reach us?”

Xie Yuzhang thought back: “The news about Li Ming and the news about the capital came together. The chaos in Hexi had broken the trade routes for a while — the people here in Mobei simply found it odd that the Central Plains merchants hadn’t come. Next spring, the merchant caravans will come through again, bringing news of Li Ming’s death and the situation in the capital.”

“Li Gu will begin his southern campaign in winter. The Hexi people are tough in the cold — marching south in winter actually gives them an advantage.”

“His campaign will take until the year after next. From what I heard, when he’d pacified the capital region and was preparing to formally ascend the throne, he finally brought his household women together — and it was then that he laid eyes on his son for the first time. The eldest imperial son was a remarkably healthy and intelligent young man, taller than other boys his age. I saw him a few times.”

“Was he named Crown Prince?” Lin Fei asked, curious.

“By the time I died, still no. But… it should have been him, in the end.” Xie Yuzhang sighed.

“And why not?” Lin Fei pressed.

Xie Yuzhang said: “The three equal wives from before his entry to the capital all failed to become Empress. So… the eldest son was not born of a legitimate wife.”

Lin Fei said: “Tragic, that.”

The Cui family of Hexi, the Deng family — not quite the old Huo family or Wang family in rank, but they were nonetheless among the great houses of Da Zhao with names that were known. Lin Fei herself was of aristocratic descent and felt the weight of this.

Being given as an equal wife to a man was already cause for sighing, for the legitimate daughters of such great houses as the Deng and Cui clans. But an equal wife was still, at least, a wife.

Yet to be made an imperial consort — seemingly so exalted — was in essence a demotion from wife to concubine. The children they bore would lose their status as legitimate heirs.

“Zhang Fen produced a legitimate son, and the fight over the Crown Prince was fierce for years.” Xie Yuzhang sighed. “Thank goodness Li Gu was still relatively young — there was no desperate urgency to name a Crown Prince. But Zhang Fen… Zhang Fen… ah.”

Lin Fei looked at her.

Xie Yuzhang said: “A’Fei — from my past life, other than Ma Jianye and Xia’erdan, I truly didn’t feel particular hatred for anyone else.”

Lin Fei said: “…Because you saw their endings?”

Xie Yuzhang said: “Yes.”

Zhang Fen and she were almost one after the other.

Xie Yuzhang still remembered — by then she could no longer get up, and her head was perpetually heavy and muddled.

That news was something Lin Fei had whispered right into her ear.

Zhuzhu… our Empress Zhang… hanged herself in the Central Palace.

She had watched as her mansion rose.

She had watched as she feasted her guests.

She had watched as her mansion fell.