by Henry Lien
“No, I am not.”
I turn to leave.
“Peasprout, I’m telling you the truth.”
I turn back to her and say, “Then who are you? Are you even really the great-great-granddaughter of the Empress Dowager?”
“No, I am not.”
I don’t want them to, but the tears finally come. In all the change and uncertainty and fear of the past year, the thing that has perhaps wounded me most was how everyone made me doubt myself.
My instincts were true. I was right all along. I didn’t imagine an enemy. I wasn’t an untrusting person. I wasn’t becoming Suki.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“I am not the spy of the Empress Dowager,” she says.
She lowers her chin but keeps her eyes on mine.
“I am not the great-great-granddaughter of the Empress Dowager.”
She sits down on her drumchair.
“I am the Empress Dowager.”
FINAL
CHAPTER
“Sorcery!” I cry, scrambling back. “So the rumors were true! You’re one hundred and six years old. You can’t die—you can’t even age!”
“Sorcery is as real as dragons are,” Yinmei sighs.
“Tell me the truth. How old are you?”
“Fifteen. The same as you.”
“Then how can you be the Empress Dowager? The Emperor died eighty-eight years ago.”
Yinmei replies, “After the Emperor died, his first wife ruled as Empress Dowager. She perpetually delayed the appointing of a male heir. She worked to change the laws governing girls and women, to outlaw foot-binding, to allow for female inheritance, to gain approval from the Great Council of Holy Men to appoint a female heir. The Empress Dowager failed.”
“I thought you said you’re the Empress Dowager.” Is this some imperial custom for the Empress Dowager to refer to her royal person as if talking about someone else?
“I am,” she replies. “Listen, Chen Peasprout. When the Empress Dowager herself finally died, a secret council of court women hid her death. They installed one of their own to imposture as the Empress Dowager and continue to rule in her place. For all these years, a succession of women has impostured as the Empress Dowager, one after another, while trying to change the laws governing girls’ and women’s rights, forming a secret female dynasty within the dynasty. I am simply the latest female to continue this invisible chain.”
The dynasty in the dynasty.
I look at this delicate fifteen-year-old girl sitting here before me. She is not just a girl. She is simply the girl at the end of a line that has stretched before her for eighty-eight years.
I say, “So the prior Empress Dowager offered you the bitter tea to invite you to join her secret female dynasty, during the Four-Day Feast. And you refused her and she was so impressed that she appointed you anyway. So you truly are her great-great-granddaughter.”
“No. There was a great-great-granddaughter. But I am somebody else.”
“What happened to her?”
Yinmei pauses, and I can feel her suppress a toss of emotion in her Chi. At last, she says, “She refused the bitter tea.”
“So the Empress Dowager killed her.”
“Our work on behalf of the girls and women of Shin … has been costly.”
“So who are you? Are you even related to the original Empress Dowager?”
“Yes but of more remote lineage. And raised in secret in the inner chambers of the palace, like all the potential candidates to join the dynasty in the dynasty. Unlike the great-great-granddaughter, I did take the bitter tea.”
“And it wasn’t poisoned.”
“No.”
“Why did the Empress Dowager secretly feed you ivory yang salts even after you obeyed her?”
“She wanted to make sure that I would never lose courage and try to run away. Her great-great-granddaughter’s refusal to obey affected her deeply.”
“So she made sure you’d never walk again. That’s almost as bad as binding your feet.”
“As I said, our work has been costly.”
My Chi shudders with revulsion at her acceptance of this. “You are ruthless. All of you. You wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice Pearl.”
I turn to skate out. I have to tell the senseis that she shared the secret of the salt with Shin.
“Peasprout, wait!” I hear a rustle and turn to see her rising from her drumchair. She takes a step onto the pearl.
“What are you doing?”
“Don’t go. Or I will follow you.”
“You can’t just make threats like that.”
I start to turn from her but hear her shoe set down as she takes another step.
I shout, “What are you doing?”
“I am besieging the cloister of Xie to rescue the kingdom of Wo.”
“I’m not going to play that g—”
Before I can finish, she has taken two more steps.
“Have you lost your sense?” I cry. “Why are you doing this?”
“I’m rescuing eighty million women and girls.”
“Don’t move.” If she takes one more step today, her heart and lungs will grow as much as they would in a full year. I push her drumchair behind her.
“Sit!” I say.
“Only if you stay and listen to me.”
“You are so extreme. All right. Talk.”
She takes a shaky breath, sits in her drumchair, and continues, “We have done all of this in order to maintain this imposture for eighty-eight years.”
“How did you hide the truth from the Great Council of Holy Men?”
“It is an offense punishable by death for anyone to gaze upon the face of the Empress Dowager after she takes the veil of a widow. The Great Council of Holy Men declared that the next person to see the face of the widow of an Emperor must be the Emperor himself in heaven. They say it will bring misfortune on the realm if anyone else sees her face. I believe it is simply that powerful men do not like the idea of anyone looking at their wives after they die.”
“So you used the Great Council of Holy Men’s own prejudices against them.”
“Yes. However, we cannot continue the imposture. The rumors of my using sorcery to extend my life have caused the Great Council of Holy Men to issue an edict that they will no longer await for me to appoint a male heir, and they are going to identify the Emperor’s reincarnated self as the heir. If I want to change the law so that it permits female succession, I have to bring Shin an unprecedented treasure. That is why I need to discover the secret of the pearl, to build Shin a Pearl City of its own.”
My head is reeling with this information. I don’t know how to tell her that because of my testimony to the senseis, Pearl is going to send an expedition of exorcists to incite the Great Council of Holy Men to declare her a sorceress and burn her.
Yinmei says, “And then you entered my story.” My Chi freezes down my backbone. Can she read minds?
“How did I enter your story?”
“Last year, I received a letter orb from my Peony-Level Brightstar, whom I sent to Pearl as a cultural emissary in a goodwill exchange for the New Deitsu skaters that I wanted as hostages. She urged me to step inside this pavilion that this third skater brought from Pearl. She told me that sleeping inside it would produce a Bai Lou Meng, an oracle that would reveal any secret I wished. I had no idea that my own Brightstar would betray me.”
So Hisashi’s plan did work after all. My letter orb in fact did exactly what it was intended to do.
“When I stepped inside it, Hisashi sealed the door. He threatened to let the pavilion shrink until I was crushed into a trinket unless I granted him and the remaining New Deitsu skater safe passage back to Pearl. When I realized that I had been tricked by my own Brightstar, I wanted to learn more about this Chen Peasprout. If the Pearlian authorities and New Deitsu refused to share the secret of the pearl, perhaps this girl who tricked an Empress Dowager would have the cleverness to discover it for me.”
I fe
el as if a hand has reached out toward me from behind a curtain deep in the imperial palace.
“You see, Peasprout? You are why I came to Pearl.”
The import of her words staggers me.
Two girls from Shin. Playing with the destinies of tens of millions.
And despite all my honorable intentions, circumstances conspired like in a cautionary fable, and my attempts to protect Pearl from its greatest enemy brought that enemy here.
I say, “So Hisashi has known all this time that you weren’t the Empress Dowager’s great-great-granddaughter.”
“I told him that I was forced to join this secret female dynasty. That once the role of Empress Dowager was offered to me, I could not refuse it or I would be killed. I told him that if I were discovered by the Great Council of Holy Men, I would be killed for defrauding the realm. All of this was true. I begged him to help me escape to Pearl and plead for sanctuary here.”
“But you didn’t tell him that the real reason you came here was to find the secret of the pearl.”
“Of course not.”
“Did you tell him that you ordered Zan Kenji’s feet to be bound when we wouldn’t give you the secret of the pearl?”
“That was the idea of the other women in the dynasty in the dynasty who advised me.”
“But you approved the order.”
“A leader makes decisions that no one wants to make. I know that you understand that, Peasprout.”
I gaze at this girl who willingly let herself be injured and willingly let this innocent, talented skater be injured. Who probably would sacrifice me, too, if necessary.
Rage erupts out of me and I shout at her, “Did you also send the Shinian soldiers to try to abduct me and shoot me full of arrows? Was that whole incident just a stunt to make me trust you?” I don’t know which part of that I’m more upset by: that she tried to have me abducted or that her friendship was a lie.
“No. I arranged to have the Shinian ships come and wait offshore. I did not order that attack. Something is happening back in Shin. The other women who advised me in the dynasty in the dynasty approved of my mission to come here. But now, they are making movements without me. Which is why it is urgent that I complete my mission.”
So Chingu’s oracle was correct. Yinmei came here on “official business.”
Pearl’s greatest enemy came here to steal our most precious secret.
But she failed.
And now Pearl holds its greatest enemy in its hands.
I say to her, “Your ship might be racing back to Shin with the secret of the salt. The other women of the dynasty in the dynasty might mount an invasion and threaten to end the city of Pearl.” I lean my face to hers.
“But we’ve got their Empress Dowager. And we’ve got the secret of all their Empresses Dowager. They can make our city melt into the sea. But we can make them burn.”
I turn and skate from her.
“Peasprout, wait!”
I ignore her and begin to slide open the shoji door to exit.
I hear the pad of a shoe behind me.
She’s taken a fifth step in one day! I listen for the cries of pain but hear nothing. I can’t let her win this way. I refuse to turn around. I continue to slide open the shoji door.
Pad, pad, pad.
Heavenly August Personage of Jade, she’s going to make her heart and lungs burst in her chest! She must be wracked with pain, yet still she makes no noise. I want to turn to her but I can’t submit to her ruthlessness, even when that ruthlessness is directed at herself.
Pad, pad, pad, pad, pad, pad—
“Stop it, you fool!” I say, whipping around to face her.
Her fists clutch her chest, her eyes are squeezed shut, her trembling lips press against each other, her face is wrenched in a silent grimace of pain. Her whole body spasms with each step that tears new rips in her heart and lungs.
I race to her. She crumples in my arms and collapses onto the pearl beneath us. I bring her drumchair to her, and haul her up onto it.
“I’m going to get Dr. Dio!”
“No!” she commands with more force than I thought she could summon in her state. “Close the door.”
I slide the shoji door closed.
“You fool, you fool,” I hiss at her as I crouch down to place my hand on her forehead. Throbs of pain pulse in her Chi under my hand. Tears of hurt, rage, and frustration fill my eyes against my will.
I watch her face contort in pain as she gulps for air. Every time I think she’s beginning to settle down, her body shudders again with new spasms of pain.
At last, she seems to drift into a fevered sleep. I feel her Chi begin to quiet at last. How much damage has she done to herself? How many rips has she made in her heart, to prevent me from telling her secret?
Who is this fearsome, fearless, frightening girl? Is this what leadership looks like?
I cup my face with my hands, close my eyes, and hide in the darkness there. If this is leadership, I don’t want it. I never asked for this.
When I lower my hands from my face and lift my eyes, she’s awake and looking at me.
Yinmei says, “And this is where you take over the lead role in my story.”
“What do you mean?”
“Chen Peasprout. I, Wu Yinmei, Empress Dowager of the Imperium of Shin, offer to adopt you as my heir if you will keep my secret, help me escape back to Shin, and help bring to Shin the secret of the pearl. With your help, we can build Shin its own pearl city, satisfying the Great Council of Holy Men’s quest. We will change the laws. We will change the destinies of the next eighty million girls in Shin.”
“I love Pearl. I’m not going to help end it.”
“I love Pearl, too. More than you know. But the place we love is going to end, either way. Let it be in peaceful cooperation rather than with loss and destruction.”
“No.”
“You have a big heart, Peasprout. But consider other things. Your parents. You were abandoned due to the harsh justice of a law that I enacted.”
“What do you know about that?”
“If you are Empress Dowager, you will be able to locate them and grant them an imperial pardon. You can at long last apologize to them for telling them to go away. You can thank them for not binding your feet and for giving you all of this.”
She gestures with her hand in a full circle, taking in the whole of the academy and the city of Pearl beyond it.
“Or,” she continues, “you can drown with everyone else in futile defiance. But we must decide now. Before the other powers in the dynasty in the dynasty make decisions for us. We do not let others make our decisions for us, Chen Peasprout. Not you. Not I.”
And so here it is. Chingu’s last oracle.
What will I discover this Wu Yinmei’s plans to be with regard to me?
When Chingu sang out her oracle, she said “accomplice,” then “casualty.” Then she flipped back and forth between the two.
Which destiny will I choose?
Yinmei rises from her drumchair. She stands before me, lifts her head, and sings,
“‘Will you take the bitter tea
“‘Of the dynasty in the dynasty?
“‘For your sake, commit to me
“‘And the dynasty in the dynasty.
“‘Will you join us? Will you Empress Peasprout be?’”
THE PEARLIAN BOOKSONG
(to the tune of “The Pearlian Battlesong”)
Thank you to Tiff Liao,
Carol Ly, Tom Nau,
Hayley Jozwiak, Robert Allen, Laura Wilson,
Rich Green, Afu Chan.
Thank you to my band!
Thank you, Jean Feiwel,
Idina Menzel,
Roxane Edouard, Lauren Festa, Mark Podesta,
Kayla Overbey.
Thanks for backing me!
Erica Ferguson,
Samantha Edelson,
Patrick Collins, Mark von Bargen, Brisa Robinson.
Tom Mis, Nancy Wu.
/>
Thank you, all of you!
Elisabeth Alba,
Pier Nirandara,
Christian Trimmer, Jennifers Gonzales and Edwards,
Mary Beth Roche, Brittany Pearlman, Jessica Brigman,
Tamara Kawar, and Queen of Awe Tina Dubois,
Skate by skate we stand.
Thank you to my band!
Thank you to, thank you to my band!
Thank you to, thank you to my band!
Thank you to, thank you to my band!
Thank you to my band!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Henry Lien is a 2012 graduate of Clarion West, and his short fiction has appeared in publications like Asimov’s, earning multiple Nebula Award nominations. Born in Taiwan, Henry currently lives in Hollywood, California. He is the author of Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword.
Visit him online at henrylien.com, or sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Lucky
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Luckyteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Lucky
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
