Character Index

  Datan: Heli's guardian, mentor, and right-hand man.

  Heli: The sixteen-year-old Chieftain of the Pugu tribe.

  Tuhezhen: Heli's nephew, in his thirties. He was killed by Hu Qing on a request from Heli and Datan.

  Shelun: A prominent clan leader of the Pugu. Fanning the flames of dissent against Heli.

  Tiezhen: A prominent clan leader of the Pugu. Working with Shelun to depose Heli.

  Anagui: A prominent clan leader of the Pugu. Working with Shelun to depose Heli.

  Geleng: A Pugu warrior and herder. He had went North with Tuhezhen, and it was his suspicions about Tuhezhen's death that kickstarted the current anti-Heli movement.

  Sima Qi: Currently masquerading as Zhu Shiwu, a hapless young translator.

  Dulan: A Pugu warrior and herder, Geleng's distant relative and childhood friend. An ardent anti-Heli dissident.

  Ashina: Personal name Ibilga. Princess of the Eastern Turkic Khaganate, Kayla's wife. Unlike her sister Halime, Ashina is primarily known as the "Turkish Princess" and by her family name Ashina, as her husband's station is lower than hers (does not obscure her royal title) and because she was the initial representative bride for the political alliance.

  Chuluo: Khagan of the Eastern Turkic Khaganate. A man of great but unclear ambitions.

  Halime: Princess of the Eastern Turkic Khaganate, Ashina's half-sister. Her mother hails from a Persian noble family that sought refuge at Chuluo's court. Poised to become the Royal Consort of Emperor Yunqi.

  Zhou Yunqi: The Emperor of the Wu. Formerly the overlooked Fifth Prince.

  Zhou Ying: Posthumously titled Emperor Xuanzong, the previous Emperor.

  Zhou Kuang: Posthumously titled a Grand Prince, Yunqi's older brother who had nearly become heir-apparent.

  Tao Qian: Kayla's guard and Head Retainer.

  General Yan: Commander of the reinforcements sent to Chuluo. Currently Hu Qing's commanding officer.

  Hu Qing/Liang Hongfei: Lord of the Liang clan, Oversight Officer in General Yan's army. Tasked with escorting Princess Halime to the capital.

  Consort Huang: Daughter of the Governor of Shaanxi, a new consort in Yunqi's harem. One among three that the court pressured him to marry.

  Empress Dowager: Formerly the Royal Consort of Emperor Xuanzong, Kuang's birth mother.

  Wise Consort: Posthumously titled an Empress Dowager, Yunqi's birth mother.

  Cao Shuyi: The widowed Third Princess Consort. Now living in Kuang's fief, close to her own family home, with her and Kuang's son Chenqian.

  Sir Yang: An old eunuch who had served and then betrayed Emperor Xuanzong, now serves Yunqi.

  Empress An: Yunqi's Empress and formal wife. She is Kuang's relative, from his maternal clan.

  Qiu Jinwei: Yunqi's eccentric strategist and advisor. Lives in the palace, a highly unusual arrangement for a non-castrated man not of Imperial blood.

  Datan watched on from afar as Heli presided over the shaman’s rituals. Surrounded by elders halfway into the grave, Heli seemed all the younger in contrast.

  It had been somewhat of a gamble to let the boy handle everything alone, and in-person on top of that, but Duke Zhao had insisted. Datan had to admit that it worked. The fact that he wasn’t there seemed to do wonders for Heli’s reputation–even the Chieftain’s obvious youth and immaturity were treated with a great deal more understanding. Perhaps it was just the result of seeing the boy face-to-face. It was easy to call for Heli to be ousted when you didn’t have to look him in the eye to do it.

  Still, Datan hovered just out of sight from the crowd, watching on with hawkish eyes for any sign of danger. Perhaps Datan’s excessive protectiveness over the years had been the wrong call, but it had hardly been without a reason.

  Heli’s father had died under mysterious circumstances. The final verdict was a sudden illness, but no one truly believed it. Datan had suspected Tuhezhen. Datan had even suspected Heli’s great-uncle, along with the slew of cousins from branch houses who could hope to profit. Perhaps Datan had overdone it by keeping Heli under heavy guard day and night since the moment the boy entered his care, but his instincts said otherwise. If Datan had not done all this at the cost of Heli’s reputation, the boy wouldn’t even be alive to have this crisis.

  But on the other hand, Heli had been lambasted with hostility from his opponents and smothered by Datan–how the hell could the boy possibly grow into a proper leader like that?

  Well it’d certainly be easier if those fucking snakes would drop dead, Datan thought venomously, glaring at where Shelun stood next to Tiezhen and Anagui, watching Heli with unconcealed malice.

  It would be nice if he could just stab them, but Datan had more sense than that. Even arranging their deaths was no longer an option, given how badly he’d botched Tuhezhen’s assassination.

  Datan turned his attention back to watching over the scene, keeping an eye out for anyone suspicious. His gaze snagged onto a man in the crowd. More so that Shelun, one of the most respected men in the tribe, it was this man that people were gathering around, almost as if drawn in by some inexplicable force.

  Datan recognized him.

  Geleng.

  A strange paradox of a man, an unassuming over-thinker and worrywart in times of peace, a leader in times of crisis. Geleng had been at the head of the delegation to the Chieftain’s household the day prior, when Datan had watched on from the roof with bated breath and archers at the ready, just in case someone tried to stab Heli. The man had stood out then, even though he hadn’t spoken much at all. Yet consciously or unconsciously, the other men had taken cues from him.

  Perhaps it was simply the fact that Geleng was neither as angry nor as afraid as the others, making him seem like the most reasonable one.

  Strange that it’s him, Datan noted dully. Sending Geleng north with Tuhezhen was still one of Datan’s greatest regrets. It was what had set off this entire crisis in the first place.

  He finally moved on from Geleng to scan the rest of the crowd. A young man caught his eye. An obvious outsider, it seemed, but Datan didn’t recognize him from the list of Investigators that Duke Zhao had sent. Even stranger, the young man seemed welcome amongst the Pugu. Someone even nudged him closer to the fire when he rubbed his hands together, shivering in the cold.

  Who on earth is that? Datan wondered, not realizing the innocent-looking youngster he was looking at was in fact a serial killer. He shrugged it off, focusing back on the shaman as the ritual came to an end with the final libations.

  The crowd slowly began to disperse, murmuring amongst themselves. Already there were mutters that the mysterious infection among the livestock was a sign of the gods’ displeasure. As for what the displeasure was about, that much was pretty obvious. No disaster had fallen upon them when Tuhezhen had died. It was only on the cusp of Heli’s ousting that disease had stricken the herds, the very livelihoods of the Pugu.

  “All things considered, the Chieftain’s not handling this too badly,” someone remarked to Dulan, who uncharacteristically did not offer a refute.

  Geleng cast a quick glance at his friend, making no comment.

  “It’s good that he showed up himself instead of sending Datan,” Dulan offered in reluctant agreement.

  He caught Geleng’s watchful gaze and scowled slightly.

  “What? I’m allowed to see the good parts too,” Dulan said. “It’s not like I have to criticize everything Heli regardless of right or wrong.”

  Geleng wisely did not remark on Dulan’s change of attitude towards the young Chieftain. It would only increase the man’s defensiveness, he reasoned to himself. And after all, wasn’t stability for the better? Geleng had long been worried about what would happen if Heli really was ousted. Who would replace him? Tuhezhen was dead. The remaining successor was a child who still waddled when he walked.

  It would have been Shelun, Tiezhen, and Anagui who really controlled the tribe, and Geleng didn’t trust any of them. Now, the tides had rapidly reversed. The sudden crisis had been a revelation to most of the anti-Heli dissidents that when push came to shove, Heli was the one who acted for the good of the tribe, while Shelun put his own interests first.

  This conveniently obscured the fact that acting for the good of the tribe was in the interest of the unpopular young Chieftain. Geleng quietly lowered his gaze to the snow ground, now trampled with muddy footprints.

  Resentment against Heli was fizzling out. It was a good thing. It was a bad thing.

  Was it really alright to just let the Chieftain get away with murdering his own kin? With murdering Tuhezhen, a man who had been accomplished if not a bit too ambitious? But Tuhezhen hadn’t attempted rebellion yet. He hadn’t even conspired against Heli. Was just suspicion and arrogance grounds enough for execution now?

  Heli was still a child–a pitiful one, now that Geleng actually got to see the boy’s fear and unease–but he was still a Chieftain. It was his fears, his decisions that shaped the course of their tribe.

  Was Shelun a better alternative? No, Geleng didn’t think so. Which left Geleng back where he started.

  He couldn’t make sense of his own disappointment, save for its bitter taste on his tongue.

  “Well, the gods must not look kindly upon deposing Heli if they’ve chosen to punish us for trying,” someone snapped, in response to an unfriendly jibe that Geleng hadn’t quite heard. Geleng glanced in the direction of the voice, trying to see if he could put a name to the face. To his surprise, it wasn’t someone with ties to Datan.

  So people were just genuinely changing their minds then. It shouldn’t have surprised him as it did–Geleng had seen it coming from the moment the horses were sick. Heli may be a kin killer and an inexperienced child, but he wouldn’t let go of this opportunity to save himself.

  And the Pugu weren’t ingrates. No one would move against Heli for at least a while after he’d helped them. That was more than enough time for Heli to improve his reputation in the meantime.

  Yet hearing the words spoken out loud, and without even a reactive quip from Dulan, that was what sparked alarm in him.

  Indeed, the gods are interceding in quite a timely fashion, Geleng thought grimly to himself. Far too timely, in fact.

  For some reason, he thought of Zhu Shiwu and the merchant caravan. Deep inside him, doubt began to gnaw at his innards.

  Just in time, Geleng’s mind echoed. Just in time.

  Was it merely coincidence, or was the infection really because they had provoked the gods? Was it the gods who had acted, or was it human interference? A wild storm lit up behind his eyes, and Geleng bit back the questions just on the tip of his tongue.

  Last time he’d spoken his doubts out loud, it had given rise to the dissident movement. He couldn’t afford to speak so carelessly again.

  In silence, he walked with Dulan into the night, each step heavy in the crunching snow.

  Kayla filled out her paperwork on autopilot, mentally filing away her concerns one by one. The latest report from the North had been promising. The age-old trick of using crisis to garner reliance on an unpopular administration was playing out beautifully.

  It seemed that a lucky coincidence had worked further in Heli’s favor–a sudden outbreak of infection among the horses in the Anbei capital had raised the price of horse doctors, highlighting Heli’s selflessness in contrast to Shelun’s calculating nature.

  Quite an unlucky event for the horse owners who’d been affected, but a boon for Heli. It seemed the poor kid wasn’t so unlucky after all.

  Kayla turned to her next set of concerns–the Royal Consort. Ashina’s sister, Chuluo’s daughter, Yunqi’s future spouse. How much was she worth to Chuluo? How much was Ashina worth? For how long would Chuluo honor the agreement he had invested two daughters into?

  He still had the Western Turks to contend with before he could turn his attention to the Wu. Was that enough time for them to prepare? And that was if Ashina and Halime remained alive for long enough–Kayla pushed that thought from her mind, along with the nauseous fear that accompanied it. Ashina would be fine. Kayla resolutely did not think about the child.

  Silently resigned at the ever growing piles of paperwork on her desk and woes on her mind, Kayla slogged through the documents until they started falling away. She stared in disbelief at the abyss that had encompassed her desk–the table, the scrolls, all of it was gone. The entire study had become enveloped in shadows that swallowed every flickering candlelight.

  Glancing around wildly, Kayla started as she caught sight of a human figure where the window would have been.

  She flinched back, stifling a gasp.

  The Grand Duke loomed over her in the dark, hatred ablaze in his eyes. The oppressive pressure of his rage made her stiffen and freeze, eyeing his clenched fists warily.

  The crawling sensation like a million bugs beneath her skin was back, that of a nervous system frantically trying to anticipate where the blows would land. Her shoulder was aching again–it wasn’t really pain, but that the flesh itself seemed to be convulsing against the thin layer of skin above.

  Heartbeat throbbing against the inside of her throat, Kayla took a step back, then two, and it dawned upon her that she was dreaming.

  Of course. The Grand Duke was dead. Ashina had wiped his presence from his halls, his gardens–and even if the Grand Duke wasn’t dead, he wouldn’t be standing there silently. He would have hit her already.

  The immediate rush of relief Kayla felt was almost as sickening as the fear that had seized her.

  Kayla couldn’t help but find it a little funny now that she looked back at it–how the hell had a man in his sixties been in such good health? Was it because he got enough exercise abusing Wenyuan?

  “What the hell, why am I even dreaming about you?” Kayla asked out loud.

  The Grand Duke remained silent, accusing glare pinning her in place. This further confirmed that it was a dream–when the hell was the Grand Duke ever silently pissed? He shouted and cursed and hurled insults. This was a sorry imitation of the real thing.

  Kayla turned and stepped into the vast stretch of darkness, resolutely turning her back on the ghost that glared after her.

  The world warped around her, changing to a multicolored landscape where the ground kept flipping and twisting into the sky, and Kayla found herself holding a large frog for some reason. She stared at it in shock.

  The frog kicked its legs petulantly and she let go of it, following it to a stall where a short and stocky Hispanic lady was loudly shouting “Chilaquiles! Chilaquiles!”

  Kayla swallowed her drool as she approached the vendor. It had been almost a year since she’d last had any.

  “Seven fifty,” the lady said imposingly.

  Kayla reached into her pocket and only found a bunch of bronze coins.

  “Damn, I don’t have cash, will this do?” Kayla asked.

  The lady shook her head. “US dollar only!”

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “Oh come on,” Kayla protested.

  “Fine, you can have this then,” the lady replied. She took the coins briskly and plopped something in Kayla’s hand. It was a raw potato with a perfectly fried egg on it.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?” Kayla asked.

  “Dude, can you get moving already?” Someone asked from behind her. Kayla turned to find that there was a block-long line behind her. Abashed, she muttered an apology and left with the potato. The world was warping again, the egg growing exponentially in size so quickly that Kayla almost thought it had exploded. Hastily turning her face away from the expanding yolk, she winced, expecting impact. Instead, the yolk flew into the sky and became a sun, the egg whites having evaporated into a snow-covered palace. She was still holding the potato, which had grown teeth and was painlessly gnawing on Kayla’s pinky.

  She was incredibly done with the dream and its ridiculous shenanigans, but beyond the thin veil of sleep, reality pressed on her that if she woke up now, she wouldn’t get any more rest that night.

  Reluctantly, she trudged through the snow. It was the Inner Palace, Kayla recognized that now, and dread began to mount as she realized where her feet were going.

  The Emperor’s quarters.

  Who would she find there? Yunqi? Emperor Xuanzong? Kuang?

  Kayla forced her feet to stop. Then the potato bit her hard, and with a yelp, Kayla lost control over her feet again.

  Dragged by her own legs, Kayla ended up walking into the familiar building.

  The slight chill in the air melted away, and the potato disappeared. Kayla immediately regretted its absence as she was forced to go in alone.

  Through the outer hall, the sitting room, the library, she finally reached the bedchamber. The doors opened, and Kayla was staring him in the face.

  “Uncle,” Kayla said instinctively.

  There he was, looking as he had before the loss of his sons. Still handsome and collected, looking a little younger than his fifty something years of age, his form radiating the commanding air of a ruler.

  Kayla blinked, rubbed her eyes, and looked again.

  It was him. Zhou Ying, Emperor Xuanzong, Wenyuan’s uncle, sitting on the couch.

  “Wenyuan,” Zhou Ying called with the casual familiarity of before. “Come look at this little one. What a grip he’s got!”

  Kayla slowly, disbelievingly, ventured closer. Each step felt heavy with dread, despite the smiling countenance of the man before her. He was holding a baby, she noted with something akin to horror. The baby was round-cheeked and bright-eyed, babbling as it clutched Zhou Ying’s index finger in a chubby little fist.

  “What a lovely son, Wenyuan. You really must put some effort into choosing his name,” Zhou Ying said.

  My son? Was it a son then? She didn’t want the child to be a boy. Far more likely to die. She took it in with a muddled sort of acceptance as though she were submerged in water.

  “Uncle,” she said again, not sure what to follow that with.

  Zhou Ying met her eyes, and despite all her fears, he didn’t abruptly shape into a monster or some strange deformity. He didn’t even shift into his withered form of grief or into the shrunken corpse he had become. Rather, he just smiled.

  “Look at the poor child,” Zhou Ying said. She obeyed, horror rising acridly into her throat as she saw the drying blood coated across the chubby fingers–blood that hadn’t been there just a moment ago. But she could see its congealing layers now, watched as a fresher drop trickled slowly down the babe’s outstretched arm.

  “I may have had my faults as a ruler, but who dyed his hands with blood? Me or you?” Zhou Ying asked. He was still smiling.

  Her hand reached out against her will, and the infant’s grasp closed around her finger. The sticky dampness of blood closed in around her, the sensation far too familiar.

  Kayla awoke with a sharp gasp, lurching off the bed and startling Ashina awake.

  “What’s wrong?!” Ashina yelped.

  “Fuck,” Kayla cursed beneath her breath. She turned towards the taken-aback Princess.

  “Is it even possible to be haunted?”

  Ashina eyed Wenyuan, uneasily taking in his trembling frame and wild eyes.

  “W-what?”

  “We imagined that the ancients were superstitious because they didn’t understand the world the way we did, but what if that was just our arrogance?” Kayla asked.

  Ashina stared at Kayla wide-eyed, frightened by her husband’s sudden neurosis.

  “Who’s to say what happens beyond the grave?” Kayla asked. “The Imperial Princess used her own tomb as some kind of magnifying beacon–what’s to say the Emperor can’t do something like that?”

  Now that she was complaining out loud, the fear seemed to grow more ridiculous by the moment.

  “Magnifying beacon–what are you even talking about?”

  Kayla turned to Ashina, who looked pale-faced and more than a little nauseous. Kayla let out a sigh, her shoulders slumping as the tension drained out of them.

  “I’m sorry,” Kayla said, shuffling over to embrace the princess. “It’s nothing, just a dream. I’m so sorry, I must have scared you.”

  Which was the last thing that the princess needed this far into a highly stressful pregnancy, Kayla grimly noted.

  Ashina wriggled uncomfortably, listening to her husband’s rapid heartbeat thudding in his chest cavity. She couldn’t tell if Wenyuan needed comfort or was trying to offer it. He was patting her hair, which suggested the latter.

  “What kind of dream?” Ashina asked, far less affected than Kayla had feared her to be.

  Kayla struggled for an answer for a long time before sighing into Ashina’s hair.

  “A potato bit me.”

  “A what?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Well, it’s still early. Put it out of your mind and get some rest,” Ashina said. She took a quick glance at the window. There were still a few hours until sunrise.

  Kayla forced a smile and complied.

  An urgent knock came at the door just as they were lying down again.

  “I apologize, my lord! There’s a summons from the Emperor,” Tao Qian’s voice sounded out. He was speaking in a hushed tone, trying to be considerate of Ashina. “You’re wanted at the Inner Palace.”

  “Shit,” Kayla muttered under her breath. She scrambled back out of bed, kicking her way out of the blankets before turning to wrap Ashina’s exposed feet back into the covers. The Princess made to get up as well, but Kayla firmly tucked her back in.

  “Don’t get up. I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Kayla said, struggling into the robes at the side of her bed.

  What the hell had happened for Yunqi to call her so late at night? What emergency scenario had unfolded now?

  Fuck, did something go wrong with the Tiele?

  She hastily checked her communication device. No, I would know if that were the case.

  It could be war–if Chuluo had broken the peace agreement, General Yan might choose to directly contact Yunqi. Hu Qing wouldn't be able to contact Kayla quite as quickly.

  For fuck’s sake, wouldn’t Chuluo at least consider Ashina?!

  Kayla reached over to peck a concerned Ashina on the forehead.

  “Get some rest,” Kayla urged, as if she hadn’t been the one who startled Ashina. Still adjusting her belt, Kayla slipped out of the room to join Tao Qian.

  “Did they say what the matter was?” Kayla demanded as they strode down the hall

  “No, my lord. The carriage is ready,” Tao Qian said.

  She nodded grimly, steeling herself for whatever was waiting.

  Yunqi lay awake next to his consort, the daughter of a Governor Huang who worked in Shaanxi. The young woman had fallen asleep a long while ago, her fingers loosely curled into his sleeve. With some affection, but not as much as he would have liked to have for her, Yunqi pulled the blanket up to cover her shoulder when she shifted in her sleep.

  Watching her peaceful face, Yunqi let his mind wander, waiting for sleep to come.

  He had been Emperor for the better part of a year by now, and it still felt a little wrong. Yunqi sometimes felt a strange sense of disquiet when he interacted with his officials and consorts, and it was only when he looked back over the past few months did he realize that it was because no one had called him by name ever since Kuang’s death.

  He was “Your Majesty”, he was “my liege”, but never Yunqi. Even the Empress Dowager called him by his title. She was not his birth mother, and dared to take no liberties.

  It was out of respect, of course, but Yunqi nonetheless felt strangely aggrieved. The last vestige of who he had been in his thirty years as an overlooked prince had vanished along with his older brother. There was no one in seniority or rank left who could address him by name.

  Yunqi couldn’t get used to it. After all these years, he had returned to his childhood home, and there was nothing left there that he recognized.

  Despite everything, the Inner Palace was where he had grown up. He had lived in fear, but he had been loved–by a neurotic mother, a doting older brother, and that had smoothed away the worst of it.

  The Emperor’s quarters were a good distance away from the rooms where Yunqi had grown up, but the essence of familiarity in the grain of the wood, in the aroma of incense, in the shadows cast through the windows, all of it was still how he remembered it. Perhaps it was merely a strange trick of memory, but Yunqi found that the lines blurred in his sleep, when he couldn’t lie to himself.

  It happened most in the mornings, when his dreams were slipping away from him.

  Caught between the space between dream and consciousness, Yunqi had a vague awareness of the dim brightness just beyond his curtains, the soft fabric of his bedding, the weightiness of his limbs, the space on the edge of his bed. Rendered pliant by the hazy gauze of sleepiness, time and memories meant nothing in that strange dimension, and years would float away from him weightlessly. Often, he felt the familiar presence of his older brother on the edge of his bed, and half-expected Kuang to pat him awake again. Yunqi never dared to open his eyes, knowing deep down that the spell would break when he crossed the threshold into morning.

  What would Kuang look like if Yunqi dared to see him? Would he have the rounded cheeks of childhood that matched Yunqi’s early memories? Or would he have the broad shoulders that Cao Shuyi had fallen in love with? Perhaps he would look as Yunqi had seen him last, gaunt with pain and choking on his own blood, but that didn’t seem likely.

  Dreams and reality were both cruel, but not the small pocket of peace in-between. Still, Yunqi never opened his eyes to see for himself. Instead he usually woke with a faint aching in his chest, a vague sense of loss that quickly faded away.

  Yunqi didn’t mind those fleeting specters. Rather, some part of him welcomed them. But Kuang wasn’t the only one who had also lived in the palace. Other ghosts haunted the halls, their regrets and resentment clouding the air. He preferred not to think of those.

  His eyelids grew heavy, and Yunqi drifted into sleep.

  It could have been a few minutes, it could have been a few hours.

  Yunqi startled awake, sick with a fear that tasted acid in the back of his throat. He jolted upright, pushing away pillows in a terrified daze as he scrambled free of the constricting blankets. His heart thudded painfully against his ribcage, pounding so hard he thought it would burst. He could no longer remember the cause of his fear, only felt its effects as he trembled in silence, gasping for air.

  A voice rang out next to him, eliciting a shout of horror.

  “Your Majesty–”

  “Get away from me!” Yunqi shouted, swinging out an arm to ward off what seemed an impossibly long and pale hand reaching out towards him in the dark. He made solid contact with flesh, eliciting a pained cry.

  Half restored to his senses and all the more horrified by the fact that someone had dared to witness this fit of madness, Yunqi whirled upon the poor young woman in rage.

  “Begone! Begone at once!” Yunqi roared.

  Trembling and sobbing, entirely unsure of what she had done to offend her all-powerful husband, the humiliated Consort Huang fled the bedchamber with her robes clutched to her chest.

  The terror in Yunqi’s chest didn’t fade but intensified, and he briefly thought that he would throw up. A pressure inside his skull doubled him over, shaking and gasping for breath.

  “Don’t–don’t touch me!” Yunqi snarled at the terrified eunuch who approached. “Leave–leave me alone!”

  “Your Majesty!” Another eunuch protested.

  “I said get out!” Yunqi shouted.

  “Obey the Emperor’s orders!” A familiar voice snapped from a distance. Sir Yang briskly evacuated everyone from the bedchamber, summoned an Imperial Healer to wait on standby, and placed everyone on a magical oath of silence with mechanical efficiency. The whole series of actions only took him a few minutes.

  Sir Yang briefly considered summoning the Empress–or better, Qiu Jinwei, but decided against both.

  “Consort Huang can’t be made to swear, can she?” A pale-faced eunuch asked, shaken by the sudden storm they had weathered after months of calm and temperate rule under the new Emperor.

  “That’s up to her husband,” Sir Yang said. “Her maids must be made to take the oath of whatever they’ve seen or heard, and she is to be under house arrest with no visits or communication with anyone outside her own quarters until the Emperor is able to decide.”

  “But what on earth happened?” The eunuch asked, suddenly tearful, for Yunqi was well-loved by his staff.

  “It might just be a nightmare,” Sir Yang said. He suspected it was more a case of guilt. A dangerous whisper inside of him reminded Sir Yang of a young Emperor Xuanzong, flinching away from his wife in the aftermath of nightmares that had drenched the young ruler in cold sweat. “Possibly a side-effect of all the pressures he’s endured–this type of thing won’t heal so easily. We’ll have to take good care of him.”

  The eunuch nodded back, a look of determination on his face.

  Inside his bedchamber, Yunqi shuddered with cold despite that the room was warm. His teeth clacked against each other as he curled in on himself. Unleashed from its usual restraints of rationality, his mind conjured the picture of Emperor Xuanzong, overlapping a contorted image of his current state with the madness that had befallen his father, the very one that had provoked Yunqi to patricide. The shuddering creature with wild eyes he had seen at that time–that he had now become–haunted the room with its nauseating presence.

  Slowly, Yunqi came back to himself over the course of what seemed like a tortuous eternity but was closer to half an hour. Sir Yang seemed to know the exact mark from outside the room, and came back inside with a healer in tow.

  Ashamed and embarrassed, Yunqi meekly submitted to an examination by the Imperial Healer, who prescribed Yunqi more rest and less stress. The man might as well have not spoken at all.

  Belatedly, Yunqi sent someone to apologize to Consort Huang on his behalf and also to swear her to secrecy with a magical oath. A gift of precious coral earrings and a necklace of imported pearls from Persia were to be sent over in the morning. When he could bring himself to face her without panic again, Yunqi would apologize properly in-person. He doubted she would want to spend the night again.

  This is ridiculous, Yunqi thought in dread. Even Father never went so far as to throw out a woman in the middle of the night like this.

  Or hit a consort, for that matter, and Yunqi was pretty sure that he had.

  A clean slate. An undamaged Emperor. That was what he had committed patricide for. And now what? He was even less stable than his father–it had been for nothing!

  Clutching his pounding head in both hands, Yunqi tried to calm his spiraling thoughts as Sir Yang hovered over him worriedly.

  It was just once, Yunqi told himself. It didn’t mean anything. Just stress, as the healer had said. He was a decent ruler, even if he wasn’t one of the best. He was trying, even if there were no results to show for it.

  He wasn’t destroying the country. He wasn’t destroying the country. He wasn’t destroying the country.

  The panic that had subsided surged up again, and Yunqi found that he was once more trembling with cold.

  It wasn’t the fragility of his own mortality that haunted him now–he wished it were, for that was a familiar companion. It was a fear of something worse. Of losing control over himself.

  “Your Majesty,” Sir Yang’s worried voice sounded out. He was hastily lighting the candles now, sensing something that Yunqi couldn’t process.

  “Should I call back the healer?” Sir Yang asked. “Do you want something to drink? Perhaps some calming draught or–”

  “Summon Zhao Wenyuan,” Yunqi ordered. “I need to speak with him.”

  Cultural Notes

  Chilaquiles: A Mexican breakfast dish made with crisp (usually leftover) tortillas simmered in salsa. Often served with meat, refried beans, or eggs.

  Ghosts and haunting in Ancient China: Ghosts were seen as spiritual entities in Ancient China and held great importance in folk and religious beliefs. A common belief was that a place where accidents (drownings, falling to one's death) repeatedly occurred is because ghosts there are trying to find a "surrogate" so that they themselves could move on and reincarnate, hence the continuous cycle of tragedies.

  There were skeptics, of course. One scholar argued that ghosts are not real, because if they were, murder victims would sue their murderers posthumously and no such cases were recorded. On the other hand, we have novels of scholars who became lovers with female ghosts or even married them, but these portrayals do no invoke traditional taboos of necrophilia, suggesting that ghosts are seen as separate entities from their corpses, with sufficient agency to enter romantic and sexual relationships. Unfortunately, there was also the non-fictional practice of ghost marriages where one or both parties are deceased. A marriage ceremony is held nonetheless to ensure that the deceased spirit does not feel lonely in the afterlife. Many cases are where both parties are dead (often having died at similar ages and not too far apart in time), and the bereaved families are trying to deal with their grief by having the comfort of knowing that their children have companionship in the afterlife.

  There were also cases of "living" ghost-marriages where a living woman marries her dead fiancee. Though some women chose to do so, as it would allow them a means of living with their in-laws as a "daughter-in-law" even if the marriage was never consummated, there were also many cases of coercion where a teenage girl is forced to "marry" a dead man and essentially live as a widow all her life without ever having an actual romance or marriage. She would also be expected to take on domestic labor and caregiving duties for her in-laws, or in some cases to adopt from her in-law's relatives and thereby "carry on the family line" symbolically. Parents also married off deceased daughters to living men, though their "sons-in-law" would not be expected to remain widowed but could instead remarry without any further difficulties. This was often done to ensure that their daughters would have someone to provide offerings and incense to them in the afterlife, as the patrilineal system of Ancient China meant that her own family's descendants had no obligation to do so, but her husband's descendants would.

  The Imperial Princess and the fengshui of tombs: In-story, the Imperial Princess essentially committed suicide when she knew she was dying to fuel a magic spell that would serve to amplify Wenyuan's nullification abilities within the range of the capital. As a result, Kayla/Wenyuan's ability was significantly weaker outside the capital. This idea is based in the traditional beliefs of the fengshui of tombs. Also known as Chinese geomancy, fengshui is a way of harmonizing individuals with their surroundings, and is used to choose the orientation of buildings, tombs, as well as interior design. In particular, where to place a tomb was thought to affect the luck of the family. A tomb placed in a spot with good fengshui would benefit both the deceased spirit and also bring good luck to their family members and descendants. A tomb placed in a spot with bad fengshui could result in great disaster for the kin of the deceased. The Korean horror movie Exhuma does a good job of portraying the traditional beliefs surrounding tomb fengshui in East Asia.

  Potatoes in China: At this point in history, there were no potatoes in China, hence Ashina's confusion. Eventually, potatoes would be introduced in the late Ming dynasty where they would literally be named "dirt bean". Today, China accounts for about 22% of global potato production. In many regions, it would be unimaginable to live without potatoes.

  Shaanxi: A province in Northwestern China. Not to be confused with Shanxi, another province to the east.

  Calling someone by name in Ancient China: Calling someone by name was considered disrespectful if a) you were younger than them or the same age or b) you were of lower status than them. Friends usually called each other by courtesy names, though someone older than you could easily call you by name without invoking offense. Political rivals have made their immense lack of respect for an opponent known by calling the opponent's father by name. Kuang and Emperor Xuanzong would have been able to call Yunqi by name. By extension, Cao Shuyi who is the same age as Yunqi but status-wise his older-sister-in-law, could also call him by name. Now that Yunqi is Emperor, only the Empress and the Empress Dowager have enough peerage to call him by name, and the Empress only under rather permissive circumstances. Notably, the Empress Dowager is not Yunqi's mother but rather the most senior surviving consort of the previous generation, a dynamic that has always been much more difficult to navigate throughout Chinese history, as the "Imperial in-laws" from the Empress Dowager's family would be different from the "Imperial in-laws" of Yunqi's maternal clan. Yunqi has already tried to minimize these tensions by marrying someone from the Empress Dowager's clan and thus reducing the number of Imperial in-law families to contend with.

  Persian pearls: In Ancient times, before cultured pearls were really a thing, naturally occurring pearls were especially prized, with pearls from the Persian Gulf being famous throughout Eurasia.

  安神汤/Calming draught: Refers to a number of herbal concoctions with calming/soothing properties. They often involve lotus seeds, which are rich in vitamins and minerals.