The Zhaoyang Palace held too many sorrowful memories. The Hall of Qianyuan entombed the spirits of emperors past.
I did not wish to rebuild new palace chambers on the ruins of the former dynasty, nor to relive the joys and sorrows of a former life beneath familiar eaves and corridors.
Three days later, Xiao Qi issued an edict ordering the crumbling walls of both palaces razed to the ground. A new, auspicious site was selected to build the imperial sleeping quarters. The name Zhaoyang Palace was abolished. The central palace of the Empress was renamed the Hall of Hanzhuang.
The old servants of the palace had suffered greatly through the upheaval and turmoil, and had witnessed too many secrets of the inner palace. I had not the heart to keep them imprisoned in the deep palace to die there, nor to face those faces morning and evening.
Three months later, Xiao Qi issued an edict dismissing the palace servants of the former dynasty and returning them to their hometowns.
The treasonous subject Song Huai’an was executed. His wife, of the Xiao clan, died in chaste martyrdom and was posthumously titled Princess Xiaom.
At my earnest pleading, Song Huai’an’s three children, on account of their youth and ignorance, were spared from implication in the crime. They were reduced to commoner status and sent with their clansmen into exile in western Shu, never to be permitted to leave.
The late Emperor’s remains had been destroyed in the fire. Xiao Qi, also in accordance with my wishes, erected a funerary mound with the clothing and personal effects of Emperor Suzon and Empress Chenghui in the imperial mausoleum.
The old servants of the Hall of Qianyuan and the Zhaoyang Palace had either died in the rebellion or been consumed by the fire. No one remained who knew the truth of what had happened on that day.
Xiao Qi never made any further inquiry into Zidan’s death.
Everything followed as I had wished — truly, in every matter, my heart’s desire was fulfilled.
The only regret was that my brother had not come home.
The Prince of Jiangxia — so elegant and carefree in bearing — had chosen of his own will to remain far away in the cold northern frontier, never returning to his homeland.
When Xiao Qi had turned back to suppress the rebellion, he had driven the Turks out of the northern desert, pressing all the way to the great wilderness of the far north.
He was only three months away from annihilating the Turks entirely, from wiping that people completely from the face of the earth.
Yet Song Huai’an’s rebellion had abruptly halted Prince Yuzhang’s iron cavalry’s northern advance and turned the direction of the sword’s edge.
Internal strife had ultimately caused one of the age’s great sovereigns to fall just short of his goal.
Perhaps it was fate that the Turks were not to perish. Xiao Qi had gained the imperial throne and the realm — but in the final moment, he had been forced to let slip the great wish of his lifetime.
To flatten the Turks and unite all under one rule had been the grand ambition of his life. This great northern expedition, which had mobilized such enormous forces, had in the end not fulfilled that wish. If he were to raise arms again in the future, it would not be an easy matter.
Helan Zhen, who had fought to the death without surrendering, finally sent Xiao Qi a letter of capitulation, begging on his knees to cede territory and submit.
The years had changed everyone — even Helan Zhen was no longer the man of absolute resolve he had once been, and had brought himself to bow his head before his sworn enemy.
He had in the end become the true sovereign of the Turks, and between private grievance and his people and homeland, he resolutely chose the latter.
Xiao Qi accepted the submission and concluded a treaty with the Turks, fixing a border.
Helan Zhen led the remaining members of his tribe far into the frozen north, yielding the vast and fertile lands of the northern desert in their entirety to our dynasty.
I did not believe that Helan Zhen had truly accepted defeat. A man like him was like the lone wolf of the steppe — always biding his time and waiting for his moment, never abandoning his goal until the moment of death arrived. This temporary submission and retreat was only to preserve his remaining strength.
He had once again slipped out of Xiao Qi’s net. Over ten years, neither of them had been able to kill the other.
Xiao Qi was a hawk soaring in the sky. Helan Zhen was a venomous serpent concealed upon the ground.
Perhaps he would come again.
After the border was established, Xiao Qi issued a decree.
This decree changed my brother’s fate. It changed the fate of tens of millions of people. It changed the fate of the northern lands.
He designated the territory north of Ningshuo and south of the far north as a region of mingled settlement for seven peoples. Large numbers of Turks who had lost their herds in the war were relocated southward to north of Ningshuo, where they were taught farming and set to opening up wasteland. Han people who had lost their lands and homes in the war were relocated northward to the fertile expanses of the north, where they built towns and promoted commerce. First, overwhelming military force was used to compel the submission of the various peoples. Then they were forced to gather and live together in mixed communities, so that their customs and education would mutually blend and permeate, making mutual dependence necessary for survival, until at last they laid down their enmity and coexisted and embraced each other.
A sovereign’s long sword can cleave earth and divide territory, but it cannot sever the bond of desert-dwellers to their homeland, nor the ties of kinship that have flowed through the blood over a thousand years.
That evening outside Ningshuo City, I had once ridden with Xiao Qi out into the frontier beyond the pass, gazing across the open wilderness to see the cooking smoke rising from the Turkic herdsmen’s tents. Though many years had passed, I still remembered the words he had spoken that day: “The Hu and Han peoples are as close as lips and teeth. Over hundreds of years of mutual conquest and warfare, no matter who won or lost, it was always the common people who suffered. Only by dissolving the barriers of territory, allowing bloodlines to merge and customs to intermingle — you within me, me within you — forming a people of mutual kinship and harmony, can killing be stopped at its very root.”
At the time, I had thought this was nothing more than a grand and distant dream.
Yet in the end, he had done it.
Grand Princess Hejing had been bestowed in marriage to the Turks by the late Emperor — but when the two nations went to war and broke with each other completely, and even after the Turks were defeated and submitted, the marriage had never taken place. She held the imperial edict of betrothal but had never become the Turkic queen. A solitary, beautiful woman, with no place to belong, and no place that was truly home.
In accordance with the treaty, Helan Zhen bestowed upon Grand Princess Hejing the wolf-fang royal staff and conferred upon her the title of Queen of Kundu.
From that day forward, the dynasty’s Grand Princess Hejing became the Queen of Kundu to the Turkic people — looking south toward her homeland with one gaze, and guarding the northern people with the other.
Kundu — which in the Turkic tongue means “guardian deity.” I still remembered that woman in the fine rain over the capital, her brow and eyes like mist, turning back one last time to look upon her homeland before she left… Familiar faces, yet none I know — I linger, singing, longing for Caiwei. In this turbulent and chaotic age, how many women’s lives drifted and spun with the tide. Compared with those scattered, fallen beauties, Caiwei was among the most fortunate.
The Queen of Kundu, in the name of her guardianship, remained in the capital city of what had once been the southern Turkic kingdom, and renamed the city Kundu. The ancient and imposing city of Kundu lay in the vast central expanse of land north of Ningshuo and south of the far north, governing three commanderies and four cities where the seven peoples were gathered, in correspondence with north and south alike. With the queen as the Heaven-bestowed sovereign, standing in place of the divine spirit to protect her people, the peoples would be devoted to the dynasty for all generations.
Behind the power of divine authority stood the Prince of Jiangxia, commanding three hundred thousand heavy troops, bearing the prestige of the imperial dynasty on high, exercising the responsibilities of pacification and governance — the true sovereign of the northern lands.
Fate had in the end granted Gu Caiwei her heart’s wish. Or rather, it should be said — Xiao Qi had granted Wang Su his heart’s wish, had granted my family their heart’s wish.
When Xiao Qi withdrew his troops southward to suppress the rebellion, he had entrusted his brother-in-law with three hundred thousand soldiers and left him at the northern frontier, forever as a rear support.
From that day forward, the elegant and romantic young nobleman was gone from the capital with its gentle wind and fine rain. But in the vast, high-skied open frontier, a grey eagle had risen, wings spread, soaring against the wind and clouds.
The former Gu Caiwei had been willing to marry into the Turks rather than swallow her pride and accept an arrangement not of her choosing.
The former brother of mine had known he had lost the one he loved, yet would not extend his hand to hold her back.
The upheaval of war — it had changed everything.
Having lived through life and death together, two equally stubborn people had at last broken free of the past, and found rebirth, and found each other.
Only — the price they had paid for it was a lifetime of being together yet never truly joined.
They could see each other morning and evening, yet they had no bond of marriage between them — the Queen of Kundu, in performing her sacred duty of divine protection, was required by Turkic law to make her vow before the gods to remain a virgin all her days and serve forever before the divine, by which means she could obtain divine absolution, be released from the name of imperial betrothal, and have her purity restored to her.
From the moment they had brushed past each other in fate, it had been determined: she could never become his wife.
Yet at least they still had the long, long years that lay ahead — to stay by each other’s side, to ride side by side across the vast and free frontier, to grow old together in each other’s company… That, already, was enough.
Perhaps my brother should be grateful to Helan Zhen’s southward invasion, which retrieved for him and Gu Caiwei a bond that had seemed beyond all hope.
Helan Zhen should be grateful to Song Huai’an’s rebellion, which gave him and his people one last lifeline.
Zidan, too, should be grateful to Song Huai’an’s storming of the palace, which allowed him to take advantage of the chaos to escape from the palace prison and reclaim his freedom.
And I should be grateful to Helan Zhen for that abduction of long ago — without it, there would have been no reunion between Xiao Qi and me.
— In the affairs of this world, everything circles and turns, entangling grace and grievance. Who can say where it all leads?
In the second year of Jiande, on the ninth day of the fifth month, Prince Yuzhang Xiao Qi offered sacrifices to Heaven in the southern suburbs, and ascended the throne at the Hall of Taihe. The Princess Consort of Yuzhang, of the Wang clan, was elevated to Empress. A general amnesty was declared throughout the realm. The reign title was changed to Taichu.
In the sixth month of the first year of Taichu, Xiao Qi issued an edict abolishing the official imperial harem system. Below the Empress, no consorts or concubines of any rank would be appointed.
In the seventh month of the first year of Taichu, the firstborn imperial prince, Yun Shuo, was invested as Crown Prince.
The abolition of the six-palace system shook the court and the wider world, overturning conventions of imperial succession that had stood for dynasties past. Even at the height of the power of past dynasties’ maternal clans, there had never been an Empress so singularly favored.
Since the Zhou dynasty of antiquity, every dynasty had followed the rites of the Zhou and adopted the precedents of Qin and Han. From the beginning of Xiao Qi’s reign, he issued edicts to reform the six principal defects of the former dynasty’s inner palace system, abolish the bloated and extravagant expenditures of the imperial court, and reorganize the inner palace ranks. He then proclaimed: “Abolish the six palaces, leave the concubine quarters empty, appoint no three consorts, and let the Empress alone hold her rightful position.”
In the eyes of all under heaven, Xiao Qi’s treatment of me already far surpassed the favor an emperor extended to a consort. He wished he could give me half the realm, could give my family lasting glory for all generations, could promise the imperial position early to my son.
Had it not been for the prestige of the dynasty’s founding, I would surely have been denounced long since by remonstrating officials as a bewitching Empress.
In the Hall of Hanzhuang, a gentle breeze brought a cool respite. Though outside the crystal bead curtains it was the scorching heat of the seventh month, the summer still blazed like a furnace.
“This minister presumes to speak — I beg the Empress’s pardon. This minister cannot possibly record it as dictated.” The court historian who had been kneeling at the desk to record my dictated words set down his brush for the third time and stubbornly remained prostrate on the ground, unwilling to write what I had spoken.
I sat composedly, my eyes half closed, feeling a quiet stir of admiration in my heart.
I was dictating that he record the crimes of Empress Wang — her external interference in court affairs and her internal dominion over the inner palace. Yet he would sooner die than comply. This elderly court historian with his white hair, past seventy years of age, having lived through the transition of two dynasties, was still as forthright and principled as ever.
I leaned forward, meaning to rise and support him myself, but found I lacked even the strength to bend down and take his arm — I was even more frail than this man of seventy.
The old historian prostrated himself on the ground in silence, not speaking a word.
I sighed softly and lowered my gaze to trace the pattern of phoenix feathers wrought in gold thread at my sleeve’s edge. The magnificent palace silk only made the pallor of my fingertips all the more apparent.
The court historian understood better than anyone that even though the Emperor had the unrivaled achievement of founding a dynasty and bringing all four seas into submission, in the matter of personal virtue, he was still not safe from criticism by later generations.
For a sovereign to bestow exclusive favor upon the consort of the pepper-fragrant apartments was already a grave deviation from propriety — and moreover, the knees of the court held only Che’er, the sole imperial heir to this day.
Since ascending the throne, Xiao Qi had governed with diligence and dedication, and was the most industrious sovereign I had ever seen.
I understood his thinking. Even with the abdication edict, even with Song Huai’an’s rebellion serving as a convenient scapegoat, he still feared the endless talk of the world — he did not wish to be seen by people as a usurper who had murdered his sovereign. And so he governed with ever-greater diligence, and ruled with ever-greater benevolence toward the people.
It was easy to win the common people’s praise, but winning the acknowledgment of men of letters and the scholar class was the hardest thing of all. Those down-at-heel men of learning were always nursing grievances over his practice of elevating those from humble origins and demoting men of the great clans. Unable to find fault with his governance, they took to privately censuring him for favoring one consort and providing too little for succession — they always had to smear him somehow.
Perhaps in the eyes of the world, I was an Empress who had seized exclusive dominion over the inner palace, jealous and lacking in virtue — monopolizing the sovereign’s favor, expanding my maternal clan’s power.
Only Xiao Qi and I understood: we were simply guarding a vow of faithfulness to each other.
And perhaps for Xiao Qi, it was also about making amends for a remorse that would never fully leave him…
“We pay our respects to Your Majesty.” The attendants before the hall abruptly knelt in one mass.
Apparently without any announcement of his arrival, Xiao Qi had already drifted into the Hall of Hanzhuang.
Except during court assemblies, he had never been fond of wearing the bright yellow dragon robes. He still dressed as he had in former days, in plain, simple dark robes with wide sleeves, year in and year out.
The years had not diminished his elegant and clear-eyed bearing — his manner was only more dignified and composed.
He glanced at the court historian kneeling on the ground, and his brow furrowed slightly. With a wave of his sleeve, he dismissed everyone to withdraw.
I shook my head and smiled helplessly. He had always been impossible to keep things from.
“Your fierce jealousy — it is enough that I know of it. There is no need to write it down for later generations to see.” He leaned down and murmured in my ear. A single offhand remark — and at once my eyes grew hot with tears I could not quite keep back.
He gently drew my shoulders toward him and said nothing more. Our hearts had long been open to each other.
I had fallen ill on the day of his return. While I lay in a stupor, the imperial physicians had already pronounced the worst to him.
Much later, A’Yue told me that she and the children had been brought back to the palace — and had found Xiao Qi sitting in a daze at the bedside, watching over me as I slept, his face streaked with tears.
I finally understood why, on that day when I woke, it seemed as though he had aged ten years overnight.
The imperial physicians said that my body had been worn down by illness and injury, further burdened by the toll of childbearing and the suffering of sorrow and anxiety, until at last the lamp had burned out its oil. They feared I might not survive the coming winter.
I envied my brother and Caiwei. Even though fate had played its tricks on them, keeping them near yet forever apart, at least fate had given them the long years of the second half of life, to watch over each other.
Yet Xiao Qi and I had fought so hard to arrive at this day, had gained everything — and fate would not give us the time to be together.
Xiao Qi had never let a trace of sorrow show before me.
He laughed off the imperial physicians’ alarming words, making me feel that there was nothing to worry about, and every day he simply smiled and coaxed me into taking my medicine.
He never again asked about the things I had done. The people I wanted to protect, he no longer harmed. Everything I wanted, he placed before me with both hands. Every wish of my heart, he did all in his power to fulfill.
And I indulged selfishly in his doting, serenely accepting the reputation of jealousy and unworthiness, stubbornly guarding the promise we had made at the beginning.
He had promised that in his lifetime he would never take another wife. This was the vow he had made to me.
I did not want later generations to criticize his personal virtue. He should be an emperor revered through ten thousand ages.
And so — let the court historian’s brush assign all blame to me, let me bear this unworthy name, so that no one might destroy our vow.
Summer yielded to winter.
Spring arrived. All of creation was lush and vibrant, heaven and earth resplendent.
The imperial physicians had said I would not live to see the winter past. Yet at this moment, I was still sitting beneath the flowering trees outside the Hall of Hanzhuang, watching Qinzhi running joyfully across the pale green lawns of the garden, flying a paper kite.
Xiaoxiao clapped her little hands, laughing in high, clear peals, toddling forward to grasp at the kite soaring in the sky. Che’er tilted his head back and watched the kite with a faraway look, babbling sounds on my lap that none of us could understand.
The paper kite was fashioned into a lifelike soaring eagle, wheeling above the palace walls.
It was a paper kite sent from ten thousand li away by my brother — he still remembered that every fourth month, he was to make a kite for me.
As for the “beautiful woman kite” of former years, I did not know whom he fashioned one for now.
Along with the paper kite had come plum blossoms sent by Caiwei — those strange flowers that resembled plum, their petals alternating between two colors of purple and white, without leaves, growing in the bitter cold of the frontier lands. They never faded in color, never withered.
Xiao Qi said that the northern frontier had gradually settled into peace, and my brother would soon be able to slip away and come to the capital to visit us.
In the first month of that year, Aunt passed away peacefully at a great age, dying quietly in the Palace of Perpetual Joy.
A pity that my brother had not been able to hurry back in time to see Aunt one last time.
Father was still wandering somewhere beyond the world, with no word of him anywhere. There were even stories circulating among the people that he had entered the immortal mountains to cultivate himself and had already ascended as an immortal.
Lost in these thoughts, I was interrupted by Qinzhi’s joyful cry: “Father Emperor!”
I turned to see Xiao Qi strolling toward us, with the young General Xiaohe following behind him, upright and fine-looking.
Qinzhi’s face flushed a delicate pink. The tip of her nose glistened with tiny drops of perspiration. She pointedly turned to one side, pretending not to notice Xie Xiaohe’s presence, and held up the paper kite in her hand, smiling as she asked Xiao Qi, “Father Emperor, do you know how to make a paper kite?”
Xiao Qi startled slightly. “This… We… do not.”
A laugh escaped me.
Xiaohe also lowered his head, the corner of his mouth curving deep.
“Father Emperor is hopeless! Mother Empress, make Father Emperor learn to make you a kite…” The teasing smile on Qinzhi’s face held a sensitivity and precocity far beyond her years.
Xiao Qi stared at her in exasperated amusement.
I looked over at Xiaohe and raised a brow with a light smile. “Why not let Xiaohe make one for you instead?”
“Mother Empress!” Qinzhi’s whole face went bright red. She gave Xie Xiaohe one look, then turned and ran.
“Go along and attend upon the Princess.” Xiao Qi put on a stern face and gave the instruction to Xiaohe.
The moment Xiaohe had turned and walked away, Xiao Qi let out a low laugh of his own.
Xiaoxiao sidled over, brushing against his robe hem, and looked up at him with a smile, stretching out her arms.
Xiao Qi quickly bent down and scooped that small figure, white as jade and snow, up onto his knee.
Wind passed through the treetops, stirring the branches full of pink-white blossoms, sending petals falling in a gentle flurry all across the front of my robes.
I tilted my head back, breathing in the faintly sweet fragrance on the breeze.
“Hold still,” Xiao Qi said suddenly in a soft voice.
He leaned toward me, looking at me attentively, the depths of his dark eyes reflecting my face.
“A’Wu — are you some flower-sprite in disguise?” He reached over and plucked a fallen petal from the center of my brow. “You don’t seem to grow old at all, always this beautiful — and yet I already have white hair!”
His temples were indeed showing a thread of silver white. Yet the aggrieved look on his face as he spoke was entirely that of a child. He never called himself “We” when talking with me.
I gently pulled out that white hair and looked at him earnestly. “Yes — I am a sprite.”
He laughed and pinched my cheek.
“Sprites live a very long time. So I will keep clinging to you, for a long, long time.” I took his hand, lacing my fingers through his, holding on tightly.
One winter had already passed. I would keep on striving to live — even a day, a month, a year at a time… Every day I could gain was another moment of being together.
He said nothing. He looked at me deeply, tightened his grip on my fingers with all his strength, and there was the faint glimmer of moisture in his eyes.
Epilogue
In the first year of Taichu, the Shenwu Founding Emperor ascended to the throne. The four seas were at peace and all under heaven returned to him. The Emperor reigned for sixteen years, reformed institutions and laws, promoted the people’s welfare, opened the path for those of humble origin who were worthy, and reformed the evils of the clan-rank system. He abolished the six-palace imperial system and accepted no consorts or attendants for the entirety of his life. His personal conduct was strict and frugal, and the Emperor and Empress were deeply devoted to each other. Empress Wang, of the illustrious Langya Wang clan, matched his virtue and reputation, embodying the exemplary virtues of a consort. She gave birth to the Crown Prince and Princess Yanxi. In the seventh year of Taichu, the Empress passed away in the Hall of Hanzhuang at the age of thirty-two. The Emperor mourned deeply, suspending court for seven days, and the grief of the assembled ministers was profound. The relevant offices submitted the posthumous title of Yi Empress; the Emperor specially issued an edict declaring it “Jing,” and the posthumous title became Empress Jingyi.
In the ninth year of Taikang, the Emperor passed away and was given the posthumous temple title Shenwu Founding Emperor. He was buried together with the Empress in the Yong Mausoleum.
The Crown Prince ascended the throne, inaugurating the “Chongguang Reign of Good Governance.” The realm was at peace within its borders, and the beginning of a great age of prosperity was opened.