Chapter Text
As Jiang Xuening darkened her brows and slipped the jeweled earrings onto her pierced ears, she reflected on the fact that something reaching its conclusion was a comfort in itself, even if the conclusion was poor.
She had control over the decree she’d written confessing to killing the emperor, as well as control over how she looked now in her final moments. She’d even had a modicum of control over when Xie Wei was coming to visit her—all because she had accepted that there was no longer a way out for her. Things had been falling apart for a long time. Years, perhaps. They’d only just recently become unlivable, so it was best to stop living in them before more of her choices were taken away, and her dignity along with them.
Xuening faced Xie Wei ready to die in full imperial regalia and unburdened herself of the things she wanted to say before the end. Before she used her death to do that one last good deed, tilting the balance of her existence towards something redeemable—or so she hoped—she needed to get these things out. Taking the initiative to die on her own terms made this moment possible as well.
She explained her position clearly to Xie Wei. He must know that whatever debt existed between her and Yan Lin was no longer relevant after the man had drunk his fill of her body in revenge despite her struggles. Regardless of whether or not Yan Lin was his ally, she should no longer be punished for her slights against him. That would no longer weigh on the balance when she made her inevitable request (at least she hoped).
There was only one person, she told Xie Wei, who she’d victimized in truth. Who she still owed.
”He once upheld justice through strict laws. But I threatened him, forced him and made him go astray. I ruined his reputation. He’s a good official. I hope Xie-daren could consider the kindness you received when I fed you my blood on your way to the capital and trade my life for his. Please spare him.”
“You would trade your life merely for Zhang Zhe?”
His question was filled with incredulity, or maybe ridicule. Likely both.
“I beg daren to agree.”
She didn’t mind lowering herself to beg if it gained a life for the man who had lost his mother and his good standing as an official due to her ignorance at having jumped into a snake pit all those years ago, hoping to be the empress and not realizing what awaited her.
The ridicule on the man’s cold face intensified, taking on a sharper edge.
“Niangniang’s request comes too late. He wrote his own death sentence yesterday, denouncing himself as a guilty minister. He’s already been executed.”
At that moment, all she could summon was ironic laughter. It was so funny, wasn’t it? The one act she hoped to redeem herself with was impossible, and the man she hoped to save had already committed suicide in the most bureaucratic way possible as she was about to cut her own throat to save his life. The two of them were never in the same realm of being—a bird and fish who understood nothing of the others’ desires. From the beginning, there was never anyone with whom she was destined to find a sincere connection. There was never any redemption possible for her. The whole affair was so ironic that it could be the plot of an opera. If she wrote it, she could sell it to a famous troupe in the capital for a chest of silver.
Her laughter echoed in the cold emptiness of Kunning Palace for much longer than even she thought it would. The impulse was no longer under her control. It came from her sour stomach, her restlessly beating heart, her head that buzzed with a pain so drenched in irony that it made her bare her teeth.
Still, it did eventually come to an end.
“Do you know what someone like me is called, Xie Wei? Do you know which words are most appropriate?”
There was an edge of laughter still bleeding into her voice as she asked the question. Her manner seemed to unsettle Xie Wei if the furrow between his brows – rare emotion for the man – was any sign.
“Speak clearly. I don’t take your meaning.”
He’d dispensed with honorifics entirely. Now she was just Jiang Xuening. Good. Ah, the honorific had been dropped. An empress couldn’t be a member of a troupe of players who performed for money. It was appropriate that he address her as what she was—a fool who’d danced and sung to a plot that had long since become a farce.
“Surely there’s no word Xie-daren doesn’t know. You were my teacher once—so erudite. I shouldn’t be the one to teach you today.”
“I’m losing my patience with your dramatics.”
She was losing patience with them too, but the spectacle was reaching its conclusion. Everything would happen in its proper time. She held her sleeve out to gesture as she spoke words appropriate to her character—a tragic character. A ludicrous character.
“I pursued the position of empress without strong backing when a powerful enemy desired it. I was driven to a dead end by villains I should have recognized long before I decided to be Shen Jie’s woman, ruining an upright man’s life in the process. Aren’t there a few good words to use? Loser? Worthless person? Waste?”
“You can pity yourself on your own time. If you’ve dispensed with talk of buying other lives with your own, surrender and accept what’s inevitable.” Xie Wei responded, deep and measured.
For someone asking for another’s life, he was certainly nonchalant. She wondered how he’d spoken to Xue Shu before the Yan troops beheaded her. The hot coal still burning inside her with hatred for the Xues – for the way they’d driven her to desperation in their greed – hoped he’d been much more terrifying to the so-called huang guifei before she died. They couldn’t even settle for the rank of guifei that had been the highest in the reign of Shen Lang, Shen Lang’s father, and Shen Lang’s father’s father before him. They had to invent something new because she was occupying the phoenix’s nest and stealing their precious Xue girl’s glory.
Xuening walked slowly to stand behind his shoulder, contemplating what she planned to do tonight before she was told it was pointless. There was a choreography to her steps—a stateliness. The plan didn’t have to change just because she finally realized that there was nothing she could purchase with this wasted life of hers.
“If it’s not worth anything…best to just get rid of it,” she said quietly, before swiping the knife across her throat.
She’d been so stupid, she thought as she died. She shouldn’t have relied on so many others instead of cultivating herself properly from the beginning. She shouldn’t have been so shortsighted in her actions, thinking the chip on her shoulder and the favor of men due to her beauty would shelter her from the wind and rain as she pursued her ambitions. She shouldn’t have made an enemy of a powerful, corrupt family who would later be in the sights of even more powerful rebels without having her own power to fall back on—not borrowing someone else’s.
The Xue family had wanted to depose and kill her from the moment she was made empress and drove her to desperate, immoral acts to defend the position. Yan Lin wanted her humiliated. Xie Wei wanted her gone, like the eyesore she was. She took perverse pride at being his student. Maybe she should have told more people that she was his student while she was being derided as a demon empress. Wouldn’t that be the fault of deficient teaching?
The Jiang family wanted to forget they had a daughter like her, no doubt, now that her father’s property had been confiscated and his official position taken away. Only You Fangyin had been a true friend to her, and what had it gained the woman? She had to flee like a fugitive.
Xuening’s eyes only saw blackness but her thoughts still raced as her life flashed back to the past. It all started with that rainy afternoon when Wan-niang told her about the empress, the most noble woman in the world. That was when young Jiang Xuening first imagined what the palace would be like, where people would respect her rather than sneer at her. Where she’d be someone, not the illegitimate daughter in the countryside who was a nonentity. Where the roofs of the sparkling palaces would be limned in gold and would never leak.
She’d been doomed from that very moment. Wan-niang had filled her head with a fairytale and blinded her to what else was possible. She should never have coveted the position of empress when there were so many other possibilities that didn’t require a woman to live behind the walls of the palace forever.
Her mind was losing the ability to think clearly, but one thought persisted as the thread of everything began to fray into nothing.
She should have been smarter…
—
Voices. Light. Warmth from another person. Soft fabric under her face—not cold tile.
Waking up in a brightly lit room made no sense. The hand that rested on Xuening — a man’s hand — made no sense either. Which man dared to touch the empress (well, except the one)? She wondered who would be so bold with her still-scrambled mind racing. The slap and the imperious exclamation came before she consciously intended to do both.
But the men who were there with her were little more than boys, and in the bronze mirror she saw herself. She was someone who was playing at being a boy…poorly. Had that fraying thread rewoven itself into fantasies of the past? Was this an illusion produced by her dying mind?
How could an illusion be so solid? How could the body of Shen Jie feel so alive when her hand met him? She knew she needed to leave immediately to get a grasp on the situation. If this was real, what did it mean? Not bothering to do anything more than making weak excuses to her deceased husband, whose imperial face she’d just slapped, she ran from the room.
Outside there was noise. Noise, life, and bustle. People selling goods. Children playing. Animals braying. The smells of food, of animal droppings, of incense, of smoke, of perfume. This was daily life indeed—the living world, and not the underworld. It wasn’t the almost-underworld of the palace either, where the sounds and smells of common life didn’t dare to intrude.
Xuening was back, somehow, and she no longer lived within the palace walls (or didn’t…yet? The idea of having come back through time gave her a headache).
She made her way back to the Jiang Residence in a daze, arriving at her old room with a surreal feeling. The courtyard of her youth still sat here, a living monument to a time that she thought had long since been lost. Inside everything was as she remembered from those days.
Then there was a disturbance.
Here was her mother—another person she never expected to see again. The woman had never warmed to her as a true mother should have after their ill-fated introduction. It was she whose jealousy had resulted in Wan-niang being sent to the countryside and eventually being buried somewhere in the mountains, not even being given a proper gravesite despite bearing a child for the Jiang family. Meng-shi was full of invective and displeasure as Xuening always remembered, chastising her for staying out all night and running around dressed as a man.
Although she had permission from her father to dress as such (permission that had been granted just because her father was too indulgent and guilty to properly parent her, she realized in the strange retrospect of the past become present again), she decided at this moment to take the punishment.
The nanny at her mother’s side beat her around the shoulders with the bamboo ruler while her maids cried and cowered, begging for mercy on their behalf. She let the pain wash over her. This was a reminder, she told herself, of what idiots deserved. She’d felt far worse pain than this. When the nanny’s hand raised yet another time, Xuening changed her posture at the last moment to let the bamboo stick meet her face. The strike, though not much louder than any of the others, drew gasps and exclamations from the maids, her mother, and even her sister. One did not hit the face of a young lady.
It would bruise shockingly, she knew. Facial skin was delicate and the bamboo was hard. The stinging pain of her face being hit so roughly was nothing compared to the pain of a cut throat and it would earn her much more than it cost her, so inside she felt rather smug about the whole affair. Outside, she’d begun crying stoic, theatrical tears while she ignored the ineffectual waving hands of her mother around her already-swelling face. The nanny had already knelt to receive punishment for overstepping and being careless.
Tired of the overwrought scene that unfolded in front of her, Xuening walked away into her bedroom, saying she was going to rest in halting tones like she was fighting sobs (she wasn’t). She ignored the offending nanny’s yells of pain and apology as her mother slapped her for being careless. She also turned a deaf ear to her maids’ simpering by her bedside. They were offering no real solutions despite fluttering to do something—anything. Lian’er and Tang’er were loyal to her, but they were spineless.
It was easier to remember the state of affairs in her courtyard more clearly after everyone was gone. The most potent reminder came when she got up and went to look at the contents of her jewelry box—the nonexistent contents. Even though Yan Lin and her father had gifted her jewels and baubles beyond count, the boxes were nearly empty. They were bare because of Nanny Wang, who took advantage of her familiarity to steal her things and flatter her. Back then she’d been attached to the old woman and fell for her flattery, not realizing she was nurturing a snake close to her breast. She did quite a bit of that in the past life, blinded as she was for the need for respect.
Xuening still wanted respect, of course, but she wanted to earn it with the force of her presence and enforce it with her own ability. Being fawned over so she could be taken advantage of was just another kind of trap. She’d fallen into that trap so deeply that other servants in her yard took the Wang woman’s lead and had unclean hands as well. Lian’er and Tang’er wouldn’t dare to steal, but they would hardly dare to breathe the wrong way in front of her with how domineering she used to be, much less take her things. She needed new people who had more capabilities, no matter how much these two girls didn’t want to be sold.
She sat in the room while her maids cowered and contemplated what her next move should be. Should she go to her father and apologize for her inappropriate behavior, thus alerting him to the vicious and unfair punishment from her mother’s nanny. She could leverage benefits from an injury like this in the coming weeks. Should she wait to see if her mother told her father, which should result in him visiting her? Then she could play up her fragility and alert him to her empty coffers, forcing him to handle the whole affair.
There wasn’t any time to sort through the pros and cons because the infamous Wang-mama was soon heard outside accepting the medicine brought by Xuehui for her injuries (always so painfully correct, was sister Xuehui) as if she was going to keep it for herself. It was time to deal with the servants first. She could bundle that effort into her time with her father.
While Lian’er waited with her in a yard full of defiant-looking, disrespectful servants, Tang’er went to fetch her father, saying she needed help punishing servants who had stolen from her. She deliberately remained plainly dressed and didn’t do her makeup so the shocking red welt on her cheek would be visible when her father arrived.
He arrived more quickly than she expected. Instead of doing something clever and faking an inventory to scare them (which she considered, remembering a similar scenario with one of Shen Jie’s bed warming maids from when she was first married in as the crown prince consort) she decided on something else that would serve her purposes better in the near term.
There was no way her father didn’t know about the behavior of the maids in her courtyard. He just didn’t intervene unless asked, partially because of his own “hands-off” philosophy and partially because she’d insisted on favoring Nanny Wang before. Her father let her have her way, even if her way was slowly destroying her. Now she let her eyes fill with tears of grievance again and took in the shock on his face at her injury. She greeted him with scrupulous propriety and then looked down, letting tears spill onto her cheeks.
“What has happened here? How were you hurt?”
“Mother’s nanny was flogging me with the bamboo ruler for staying out last night, but her hand slipped and she hit my face. I’m sorry father has to see such an unsightly thing. It’s my fault for making mistakes and running around outside,” she said with a sniff.
Her father looked indignant when he responded, “I’ve given you permission to go out. How can a mere servant punish you?”
“Mother is just looking out for my own good. I realize my reputation has suffered because of my association with Yan Lin.”
“It is good you’re trying to be sensible, but there is such a thing as being too sensible!”
“Please don’t be upset, father—think of your health!”
Being a virtuous daughter here would be helpful. She could see her father making an unsuccessful effort to calm down, then he spoke again.
“And now I hear that your maids have unclean hands?!”
There it was. The anger that she didn’t need directed at her mother at this moment was best directed towards her servants so she could have them all sold—and obtain a few new ones for her own purposes.
“I’ve made note of every piece of jewelry and hairpin I’ve received from father. I thought the servants were just borrowing my treasures temporarily, or taking them away to clean and polish them…but they’ve never come back. I want to discipline them, but how can I? I thought these were people who were sincere to me…”
She sniffed and wiped away a tear with her plain sleeve while her father’s face was red with anger. Wang-mama tried to speak up, but the glare he shot at her made her mouth snap shut. Without another word to her, he turned to his steward and said,
“All of these useless servants should be sold. If they can’t produce every piece of my daughter’s property that they’ve taken, they’ll be given ten hits for each piece my daughter says is missing.”
“But master, what if she—”
“Beat her!”
The woman in the back who spoke, someone she remembered was always a mouthy and lazy servant, was soon held down by her father’s men while she was beaten with a board. The others watched in fear. Killing the chicken to scare the monkeys was an appropriate tactic as well.
“Father, may I choose some new maids?” She kept her voice high and teary, hoping he would be moved by her pitiful appearance and say yes.
“Father can do those things for you,” he said gently, reaching a hand to pat her shoulder and pulling back quickly once she winced—he forgot she had been hit there.
“I want to make sure I can find two girls who will be good companions for me. I want to stay at home more and please mother, but Lian’er and Tang’er aren’t lively enough to keep me company. I’m always so bored here. ”
At that declaration, the two girls began to cower and beg not to be sold. All they ever did was beg. Between the flatterers and the leeches, Xuening had no support at home. She wanted to roll her eyes, but instead she spoke kindly through sniffs.
“You have served me loyally and have made no mistakes. I’m sure father can find another place for you.”
He waved his hand at the two girls as if to say “Don’t worry about it,” and responded,
“That’s fine then. Do you want me to bring people here for you to choose from?”
“I trust father's choices for the outside and laundry maids. I heard there is a new agency in the capital specifically catering to noble young ladies seeking literate girls to serve. I’d like to go take a look.”
There was such a place, but she wouldn’t be going there. She’d be going to the black market, where Zhou Yinzhi had once purchased martial arts-adept subordinates for her use as empress. Xie Wei’s men had cut them down like wheat, but she was hoping that she wouldn’t catch his notice in this life…yet. How to manage getting to the black market on her own was a tangle she’d have to solve in time.
She and her father had both tuned out the cries of the unscrupulous maid being beaten, but now that she’d fainted the lack of noise was obvious. It made the cowering and stuttered pleas of the other servants stand out more. Some were pulling off things they wore in their hair or on their wrists, bold enough to wear stolen goods in front of the one they’d stolen from.
“Go back inside and have a rest. I’ll send for a doctor. When your face is better, go out and find some good girls.”
“I’m sorry such a messy thing happened and bothered father,” she said sadly, looking down again.
He tried to wave off the comment and pushed her through the door gently with hands on her back. An hour later, she had two full boxes of jewelry and hairpins as well as a box of silver that she hadn’t been missing—a gift from her father, most likely. He always thought physical objects were the best way to make up for intangible slights. In this case she agreed. All of what she had now was more than enough to buy two female martial artists who could do more for her than the sniveling girls who knelt and cried nearby.
She asked Lian’er to grind ink and Tang’er to fetch paper so she could write. There was something that must be done while the pain of death and the beating were both fresh. If she could understand her mistakes and make clear objectives, perhaps she wouldn’t be quite so stupid in this life. She used to make a list of daily goals with You Fangyin – thinking about the other woman made her heart ache – and work together to accomplish what was on the sheet. In the final dark days before things went irretrievably wrong, those objectives turned into things like bathe, eat, and do makeup, but the pair of them kept up the practice anyway.
Now she had much better objectives to pursue. The words flowed onto the page, accompanied by the litany of mistakes running through her mind from a doomed and wasted life.
Objective 1: revenge against the Xues. Xue Yuan was cunning and devious, a master politician, but he despised women and indulged his disappointing son. She could work in his blind spot somehow, although she wasn’t sure what method she’d use. They tried for years to kill her, humiliated her at every turn, turned her people against her, flaunted their supposed superiority. She wanted to take everything they had, to drive them to their deaths and roll in their riches in front of their memorial tablets like a pixiu in its hoard. She wanted to consume their power and wealth and never spit it out.
Objective 2: self cultivation. She had only bothered to read books, learn the feminine arts, and obtain a semblance of a power base after she entered the palace as the crown prince consort. Before then she was careless, relying on her beauty and ability to ensnare Shen Jie to get ahead. That was foolishness. She had some skills now – dancing, painting, calligraphy, incense-making, makeup – and she’d read far more books, but there was still more she could do. She could further cultivate her health and beauty. She could learn more skills. She needed to determine what would be most advantageous.
Objective 3: parting ways with Yan Lin. She had an excuse now in the man’s lack of care for her reputation (one she now planned on nurturing). She’d already let it suffer running around the capital with him, but she knew he thought it was no big problem because they’d marry each other anyway. No thoughtful suitor would let his intended wife sleep on a bed with another man, in disguise or not. She had no intentions of marrying him. His proprietary attitude towards her, harmless and tender as it had been at this time in their lives, had fed into the monster he became later.
Objective 4: revelation of her excellence to the wider world. Now with her many skills and carefully honed demeanor, she shouldn’t be inferior to Xuehui. While she didn’t have her sister’s talent with the qin or literary frame of mind, she had other respectable talents and a more beautiful face. She could give the excuse that her mother had instructed her not to outshine the elder sister when she began making her way into society. Obliquely, of course, in a way that would make her seem sympathetic. How pitiful she’d be, the beautiful daughter forced to stay in the shadows so her elder sister could be designated an accomplished woman.
Objective 5: association with Princess Leyang. Shen Zhiyi had been Xue Shu’s only friend, Xuening recalled. She wanted to steal her away and watch the duke’s daughter seethe powerlessly. Then she could leverage her influence and favor for her own goals. Now she knew what she should avoid so as not to offend her and could work to gain her esteem in other ways. At least the woman had been enchanted with her face as a man—and her disguise was not what anyone would call convincing. Once she was in the palace, she could make other plans. She had no intentions of joining the imperial family again, but there were still things she needed to do.
Objective 6: avoiding being killed by Xie Wei. At least they had something in common this time in their seething hatred of the Xue family and desire for their downfall, although she still wasn't sure why it was so personal for Xie Wei. To accomplish her goals, she couldn’t annoy the man who would eventually turn the imperial city upside down. She had no intention of standing in his way. Perhaps she’d need to make her own overtures to ensure she wasn’t viewed as a stumbling block. If she was convincing enough, could there be synergy between them? It bore some thought.
After taking in everything she wrote, she burned the papers. This time she wanted to live as well and as long as possible, spitting in the faces of the people who’d wronged her and getting her revenge slowly. There was no one to trust with this except herself. Everyone brought close to her would be a liability, so she would walk this path alone. Once she’d gobbled up enough power and money to live her life the way she wanted, she’d leave the capital entirely.
As she fell asleep, the opportunities she’d missed and the things she hoped to gain for herself this time danced through her mind.
”I should have traveled far and wide to see the vast land and waters and be free like the birds.”
Birds wheeled overhead in her dreams, taunting her with their effortless movements.