Li Zhenzhen moved into the palace assigned to her and said to her maidservant with feeling, “Shiyi Lang has become the Emperor.”

Cui Yingniang and Deng Wanniang, in their own separate chambers, let out the same quiet words of wonder: “Our husband has become the Emperor.”

Their personal maidservants, as though they had all consulted one another, spoke with one mind and asked: “Then — who will become the Empress?”

Truly an excellent question.

Li Zhenzhen’s maidservant asked it most calmly, with more curiosity than anything else.

Cui Yingniang’s maidservant’s eyes shone with hopeful light.

Deng Wanniang’s maidservant’s brow furrowed lightly, shadowed with worry.

Deng Wanniang sat with her head bowed in silence. Cui Yingniang softly reproved her maidservant, telling her to “watch her words.”

Li Zhenzhen said, “This kind of thing has never been for the women to decide.”

The maidservant let out a soft “oh.”

Li Zhenzhen looked at her and asked with quiet amusement, “Do you think it will certainly not be me?”

The maidservant was startled, then fumbled: “Well, it’s just that, Da Niang Zi, you and…that is…”

“Because Shiyi Lang and I are not a true husband and wife?” Li Zhenzhen asked with a smile.

The maidservant collected herself and nodded timidly.

Li Zhenzhen’s smile remained. “And what of it?”

“An Empress need not be beautiful. Need not be virtuous or talented. Need not even necessarily have the Emperor’s affection — nor necessarily bear children,” Li Zhenzhen said. Her eyes were lit with something.

That light — the maidservant had never seen it before. It stirred in her, inexplicably, a faint dread.

Li Zhenzhen said, “An Empress, at the end of it all, comes down to who has the harder fist.”

This personal maidservant of hers, born of second-rank servants, was clever enough, but how broad could her experience truly be? She heard these words and could not help but feel confused — did becoming Empress require fighting and killing, the way men did?

On the first night the three principal wives arrived in Yunjing, with Commandery Princess Niuniu and Qingque included, a family of six sat down together for a reunion dinner. Hui Niang and the others, having been placed as concubines, had no standing to attend.

When the dinner ended and everyone returned to their own palaces, Deng Wanniang’s maidservant asked, “Tonight, will His Majesty…”

Deng Wanniang closed her eyes and said, “Do not wait. He will certainly have gone to Cui Shiqisan’s side.”

Li Gu’s affection for his first son was plain for all to see, and Cui Shiqisan had accomplished something of the first importance. He would surely shower her with redoubled favor.

Even back in the residence in Liangzhou, he had gone to Cui Shiqisan’s rooms more often than he came to hers.

But contrary to her expectations, she had barely dried her hair when Li Gu arrived.

Deng Wanniang saw him, and after her astonishment, tears she had held back for more than a year burst forth all at once. She threw herself into his arms.

Li Gu held her and asked, “Who did she look like?”

Deng Wanniang choked with tears. “Like you — she had very long eyebrows, like yours!”

Li Gu was silent for a moment, then said quietly, “If you want to cry, cry. I know you are hurting.”

Deng Wanniang wept aloud.

Her family had been so disappointed when she bore a daughter. And when the daughter died, their disappointment only deepened.

If the child had not died, she would at least have been the eldest daughter. Better than nothing.

Before this journey, her mother had earnestly urged her to be gentle and sweet, to hold Li Shiyi’s heart, and to have another child soon. Cui Shiqisan had gotten there first — she must not let anyone else bear a son before her.

They were all thinking only of that position.

No one still remembered her daughter. That soft little bundle, so pink and white — how precious she had been.

And no one had stopped to think that she was a mother who had lost her child, that she still grieved, that she had no wish yet to bear another child to take the place her first had held in her memory.

These tears had been pent up for far too long. Deng Wanniang had finally found this chest, this shoulder, against which she could lean and let her grief go unmasked.

Deng Wanniang cried herself to sleep.

The next morning she woke in Li Gu’s arms.

He kissed her face and said, “We will have more children. I will give you another.”

In the early morning light, he gave her that.

That first night, Li Gu had not gone to Cui Yingniang’s side. Cui Yingniang’s maidservant was very disappointed and complained, “We bore the first imperial son — how is it he went there first?”

Cui Yingniang smiled faintly. “She lost her child. His Majesty naturally went to comfort her first.”

The maidservant said, “It has been more than a year already.”

Cui Yingniang did not pick up the thread. She kept a faint smile on her lips and said quietly, “Shiyi Lang — cold on the surface, soft-hearted within.”

The maidservant did not believe it.

The blood on Hexi’s Li Shiyi Lang’s hands could dye an entire river red.

The Huo household, the Wang residence — not even a rat had escaped.

Who would dare call him soft.

Li Zhenzhen knew, and laughed lightly.

“That is exactly it,” she said. “And it saves Cui Shiqisan the trouble of getting above herself. Shiyi’s mind is as clear as still water.”

Hui Niang and the other two had arrived only a few months before Li Zhenzhen’s group — they had not even been given names in the household yet, and no one had taken charge of palace affairs, which had all been in Li Weifeng’s hands.

Now that Li Zhenzhen had arrived, she took the management of the inner palace from Li Weifeng’s hands, much to his enormous relief.

Li Gu’s formal enthronement ceremony was almost upon them, and everyone was rushed off their feet. Li Zhenzhen made no trouble, and set about putting the inner palace in good order.

It was only after Li Gu formally ascended the throne and proclaimed himself Emperor that Li Zhenzhen called Li Weifeng in and asked, “Has the matter of the Empress been decided?”

Li Weifeng said, “Not yet — still being fought over.”

He said, “Here in the Hexi faction, the Deng family and the Cui family have nearly beaten each other’s brains out over it. It turns out that when aristocratic clans get truly agitated, they are just like us — rolling up their sleeves and throwing punches.”

Li Zhenzhen asked, “Is it Deng Wu, or Cui Shiqisan?”

Li Weifeng gave a sly smile.

“Neither,” he said. “It is you.”

He explained: “The Deng family and the Cui family cannot accept the other’s daughter sitting in the Empress’s seat, so in the end they all put you forward together, and everyone agreed.”

Exactly as Li Zhenzhen had anticipated. She smiled faintly and asked, “Who are my rivals?”

“There are plenty vying for the position,” Li Weifeng said. “But none of the other factions have a real chance. Zipeng says that the only one who can contest it with you is the Yunjing old faction. Though word has it they haven’t sorted things out among themselves yet — there may be some internal conflict.”

Li Zhenzhen’s smile deepened.

Li Gu had ascended the throne, and now came the time for everyone to divide the fruits of victory. Long before Li Gu entered the capital, the old nobility of Yunjing had begun taking down their household placards. The former Zhao titles were all null and void, the old nobility’s hereditary land was to be returned. Da Mu was newly founded, and the table of power was being reshuffled entirely.

The framework of the Three Departments and Six Ministries had been put in place. The most important Central Secretariat and the Department of the Imperial Chancellery were split evenly between the Hexi faction and the Yunjing faction, with only the less critical positions parceled out to the other factions. In the Council of State, these two factions spoke loudest and could be said to hold equal sway.

Yet when it came to military power and troops, no faction could hold a candle to the Emperor’s own Hexi inner circle.

Da Mu’s strongest forces were all in the hands of the Hexi people.

Li Weifeng and Li Zhenzhen naturally assumed Li Gu ought to favor Hexi. In their minds, the Yunjing old faction and all the others were “outsiders,” while the Hexi people were “their own.” How could Li Gu not take the side of his own people?

But they had both forgotten — Li Gu was no longer merely Hexi’s Li Shiyi Lang. He was the Emperor of half a realm.

The Hexi faction and the Yunjing old faction both belonged to him. He could not afford to favor only one side, still less allow either to grow too powerful.

Li Gu had never received a formal emperor’s education, but he possessed an innately sharp political instinct and a broad view of the whole. Just as, when he was in Hexi, he had chosen to yield to Li Er Lang in order to preserve Hexi’s collective interests — and just as, during the rare once-in-a-lifetime encounter in Mobei with Ashina, the enemy revealed and himself hidden, he had chosen to put himself at risk and snatch fire from the flames.

As in his past life, the position of Empress fell in the end to Zhang Gong’s granddaughter, Zhang Fen.

Zhang Gong was now the Central Secretariat Director of the Da Mu dynasty.

In the Zhao dynasty, he had been Prime Minister. When Huang Yungong occupied the capital, he had been Prime Minister. Now, with Da Mu newly founded, he remained Prime Minister all the same.

Only in this life, when the Yunjing old faction was deliberating over candidates, there had indeed been internal conflict, just as Li Weifeng had learned. But the niece of the former Duke of Xunguo, Yang Changyuan, still lost to Zhang Fen, and was only appointed to a consort position.

Yet all those involved had held far grander hopes.

The name list was sent up to Li Gu. His vermilion brush came down: Zhang Fen as Empress, the three principal wives as Imperial Consorts, the three concubines as secondary consorts — none of this was disputed. Only the women being newly sent into the palace were all placed below the rank of secondary consort, at no higher than the level of Beauties and Talented Ladies.

Truly — those who arrived early had the advantage.

Everyone was stunned.

The old faction, behind closed doors, cursed: What petty-minded country bumpkins, these Hexi people!

Chen Liangzhi was walking through a long palace corridor, hands tucked in his sleeves, speaking to Mantou: “He ought to find some way to let out this resentment, after all.”

Mantou said, “What is there to be resentful about — the more beautiful women the better. Not one of the ones being sent in is anything less than a beauty! Who could be resentful about that?” That people dreamed of having, and yet here they were, actually put out about it.

Chen Liangzhi smiled. “Things are different now. They no longer call the terms when they want to negotiate. Those who sent these women should understand by now where they stand.”

Yang Huaishen did not return to Yunjing until after Li Gu’s enthronement.

Before this, he had slipped back secretly to help in the taking of Yunjing — at that time the household placard had still read “The Imperially Commissioned Duke of Xunguo’s Residence.” This return, it was simply the Yang Residence. In accordance with his current standing, anything that exceeded the proper rank had been taken down and removed. Every trace of the former dynasty had been erased from the passage of time.

Yang Huaishen had barely arrived home when he heard the news about his cousin being sent into the palace, and went straight to the study to argue with Yang Changyuan.

“She is not going — we are not going!” Yang Huaishen’s face was tinged with anger. “Our Duke of Xunguo’s household has produced Empresses for three generations — when have we ever produced a concubine?”

“An imperial consort is not to be compared with an ordinary concubine,” Yang Changyuan said. “And another thing — stop bringing up this Duke of Xunguo. There is no such title in our dynasty!”

Yang Huaishen said loudly, “A palace concubine is still a concubine! ‘Consort,’ ‘secondary consort’ — it is nothing more than a beauty. No better than a concubine — hardly different from a servant girl!”

Yang Changyuan did not want to hear it. “Hold your tongue!”

“I will not!” Yang Huaishen shot back immediately.

Once, this dissolute son had been like a mouse before a cat whenever he saw his own father, terrified of some new escapade coming to light and earning himself another beating.

But now, he stepped forward and squared himself directly before Yang Changyuan without flinching.

“Father!” His face was taut as he said, “If there is one lesson I have learned these past years, it is only this — whatever men must do, men must do themselves. Do not push it onto women!”

He said, “What standing does Zhuzhu hold? What use was there in sending her to that savage wasteland among barbarians? What use?! Do you know that she has now married twice over — married into a father and son? And what good did it do for us? If not for Shiyi…”

If not for Li Gu cutting down the old patriarch, news of the internal chaos in Hexi and the fall of the capital would have reached him, and could that old man have stood by watching with folded arms? Though Hexi did not fear him, his constant harassment would have been a drag. And how could Li Gu have swept south to the northern banks of the Great River at such breakneck speed?

But Yang Huaishen caught himself at this point and stopped short.

Li Gu’s assassination of Ashina Sulif had never been made public, and to this day only his most trusted inner circle knew. Though Yang Huaishen did not know Li Gu’s reasons for concealing it, since the Emperor had chosen not to let people know, he could not let it slip carelessly.

Good thing he caught himself in time.

As for the matter of Xie Yuzhang, Yang Changyuan had already been told when Yang Huaishen slipped back to Yunjing before. He had wept sorrowfully over it then.

Now, thinking of his niece, far away beyond the frontier walls, forced to follow the customs of the Hu people with no one beside her, he wept again: “Ah, Zhuzhu, Zhuzhu…”

Yang Huaishen took a breath and said, “When Aunt passed away, you wept too, and said the palace was a place that devoured people — that Aunt had been consumed and killed by the palace. Since you believed that, how could you bear to send Weiwei into it as well?! Aunt was the legitimate Empress. What would Weiwei enter as?!”

“Father!” Yang Huaishen stepped forward another pace, pressing close before Yang Changyuan, without giving an inch.

“Now our household has you in the Department of the Imperial Chancellery as its Director, and Elder Brother as a Secretary in the Central Secretariat — both positions of distinction and standing. And I am in the Flying Tiger Army. Though I captured no title in this round of enfeoffments, there is still half a realm in the south left to take — plenty of battles still to fight, and no shortage of opportunities. Even if I cannot claim a marquessate in the end, I will at least come away with an earldom.”

Li Gu’s first round of enfeoffments after ascending the throne went only to Li Da Lang, Li Wu Lang, Li Qi Lang, Li Ba Lang, and Jiang Jingye — and they had only received marquisates. Nothing higher was granted. But no one was in a hurry about this. Half the realm still waited to be taken, and those titles were naturally being held in reserve.

“Father, our ancestors were heroes of the highest order, and it is only through our own descendants’ failings, growing by degrees accustomed to ease and comfort, that their illustrious name was gradually brought low,” Yang Huaishen called out. “Now a new dynasty is being founded, and everything is to be rebuilt from the ground up — will you carry the decayed customs of the former dynasty into the new one?”

To be questioned in this manner by his youngest son struck Yang Changyuan like a thunderclap.

He closed his eyes. After a long while he opened them, and looked at this son who had once been a dissolute and aimless young man.

He had truly grown up.

“You are right,” Yang Changyuan said, feeling the weight of age settle over him, and said quietly, “Go — tell your Fourth Uncle that Weiwei is not going into the palace. Tell your Fourth Aunt to stop weeping.”

Yang Huaishen finally smiled, let out a breath, and agreed.

Yang Changyuan sighed again. “Only regarding His Majesty’s side…”

Yang Huaishen said, “I’ll go speak to him. Shiyi Lang would never trouble himself over such trifles!”

Yang Changyuan thought for a moment, then nodded. “I leave it to you.”

Yang Huaishen then went to speak with Li Gu. He said, “Zhuzhu has gone so far beyond the frontier walls — we will never see her again in this lifetime. I do not want there to be another sister of mine who, though close enough to see, I can never see in all my life.”

Li Gu looked up. “Zhuzhu?”

It was only then that Yang Huaishen realized he had carelessly let slip Xie Yuzhang’s childhood name, and said hastily, “Baohua — I meant Baohua.”

This was a matter of no consequence whatsoever to Li Gu, and he agreed without a second thought.

After Yang Huaishen had left, he sat at his desk.

For a long while, he turned it over quietly on his tongue: “…Zhuzhu.”