Character Index
Ashina: Personal name Ibilga, princess of the Eastern Turkic Khaganate.
Yilie: Tabuyir’s nephew, a Khitan teen.
Qazar: Princess Mingda’s cousin, an Uyghur teen.
Yan’er: A former teen prostitute who saved Hu Qing’s life, now one of the staff members in Kayla’s household.
Qiu Yun: Aka Yun’er, a teen serving maid who works for Kayla.
Tao Qian: Kayla’s retainer and bodyguard.
Zhou Xianchun: Formerly the Seventh Prince, now an Archduke (despite the title this is actually higher in position and seniority than a prince).
Zhou Yunqi: Formerly the Fifth Prince, now the Emperor.
Liu Boyue: Xianchun’s loyal advisor and strategist.
Cao Shuyi: Third Princess Consort.
Zhou Chenqian: Cao Shuyi’s son.
Zhou Kuang: The deceased Third Prince, posthumously titled an Archduke.
Shu Yunsong: The deceased uncle of Zhou Yunqi, one of the conspirators.
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Kayla leaned back in her seat, unwilling to face her paperwork even a moment longer. Her head was spinning, and the characters were practically having a disco on the scroll for how much they made sense.
The rafters of the ceiling stretched high above her, and Kayla found herself once again wondering just how much it had cost to build such a large residence. In the capital, an inch of land was an inch of gold, how corrupt did someone have to be to buy so much land?
Kayla wondered how people felt upon seeing the Zhao household. Did they feel jealous? Resentful? Admire it? Or did they simply pass by the way people passed by buildings in New York with scarce a glance?
Her ownership of the residence was solid as stone, yet it felt like a glass bauble that could shatter at the toppling of a shelf.
For someone who grew up in a drab one-room apartment, Kayla wasn’t appreciating her real-estate holdings enough.
The fact that I even have the spare effort for useless thoughts like this means I’m not busy enough, she drily thought to herself.
Perhaps that was the case. Ashina had left for the Imperial Villa, a few weeks of summer vacation that Kayla had insisted upon as the princess had grown more and more agitated from being cooped up in the capital. As someone who grew up in the stretching steppes of the Khaganate, it was hardly strange that Ashina couldn’t stand being in the capital for too long, especially not in summer.
The Imperial Villa that Wenyuan had inherited from the Imperial Princess was better, away from prying eyes and crowded streets. Ashina could actually ride a horse there, something that the princess had been desperately wanting to do.
Though Kayla was hardly keen on being solely responsible for Qazar and Yilie in the meanwhile, it didn’t make sense for Ashina to have to take care of teens only a few years younger than her while on vacation.
As it was, Qazar and Yilie’s tutors had talked the boys into giving Kayla their daily greetings. Though she had excused them from doing so on account of how early her days began and how late they ended, the boys managed to drag themselves up each morning to give their greetings with startling enthusiasm.
Kayla was fine with the arrangement, but it made her feel like a middle-aged father who was estranged from his kids. It had also prompted her into doing a spot check of the boys’ rooms.
The result was almost exactly what she’d expected. Teenage boys were teenage boys anywhere. She hadn’t even said anything, only slowly turned to them with an incredulous look, and the two had jumped into action cleaning up the slovenly mess.
Something about the incident had reminded her of long-gone days in her old world. Kayla had never even dreamed of living in a place like this before. She’d shared a one-bedroom with her mother until college, a spartan environment with no privacy and meticulous standards for cleanliness.
In the early years of her life, the poverty of her single-parent household hadn’t even occurred to Kayla. She’d just assumed that everyone lived that way, doing their best to tiptoe around their mothers’ moods and squeeze out increments of affection from their overworked parents.
Everyone in her building lived similar lives. People didn’t greet each other, and never interacted save for when they were arguing. Living in shitty apartments and working in shitty jobs, their faces were always dreary and worn out.
There were some exceptions, who were met with great resentment from the adults and excitement from the children. The Mexican family downstairs had laughed and smiled a lot, and both the husband and wife would give Kayla candies when they handed out sweets to their own children. Kayla’s mother seemed to feel a sharp, self-righteous disdain towards their constant laughter, complaining about how loud and thoughtless they were towards their neighbors. She wasn’t the only one. For people who had nothing but misery, that misery became an emblem of pride. Before long, the family moved away, and the building fell back into its dull routine.
The cocoon of dissatisfaction in Kayla’s household seemed almost like a purifying fire to Kayla’s mother. The suffering was a testament to suffering, which was an end and means in and of itself, rendering its victims noble in martyrdom.
Having never known anything else, Kayla never thought anything of it until she was seven, and a friend asked her over to play. That friend had always been happy in class, dressed in cute clothing and always with a different headband in her hair.
The first time she had visited her friend, Kayla had been astonished. Her friend’s home was nothing like she’d ever seen before in real life. The high ceilings, the airy rooms, the decorated walls and beautiful furniture, all of it felt like it was a scene from a movie. Sunlight dappled the space, brightening the smiles in the family photographs that dotted the household. A sense of wonder and an acute pain overwhelmed Kayla. Something stronger and sharper than she’d ever experienced had taken root inside, and she would never be fully free from it again.
It was hunger.
When Kayla returned to her own house, she spent countless nights lying on her side, facing the cracked paint on the wall and fantasizing about the beautiful house she’d seen. Her friend had it, so evidently it wasn’t that out of reach. Maybe she and her mom would move into a house one day. Sometimes the hunger for that fantasy life would sharpen until it was painful, prickling tears into the seven-year-old’s eyes.
If she could live in such a beautiful space, maybe the ugly parts of her would also melt away. Her life would be better, she would be better. If Kayla lived there, she wouldn’t make her mother angry anymore, her mother would laugh and smile and sing in the kitchen just like her friend’s mother. Her mother wouldn’t spend her nights crying bitter tears of resentment in the kitchen, agonizing over a dead husband that Kayla had never seen before.
One day, Kayla asked her mother when they would move into a house. Her mother had stared at her, stunned, and then burst into angry tears.
“Do you even know how hard I work?! I’m breaking my back just to keep us here! How could you be so ungrateful?!” She had screamed, throwing down a pan with such force that the metallic clanging had rang on in Kayla’s ears long after.
Not fully understanding what she had done wrong, Kayla had also begun to cry in earnest panic, which only seemed to sharpen her mother’s anger. They went through the morning chores as usual, Kayla shaking and crying the whole time while her mother ignored her in icy silence.
So Kayla had never brought it up again, but the hunger remained.
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If I could have that, it would make me better.
When she grew up, she would have a nice house of her own, and she would convince her mother to like it. Then Kayla grew up a bit and came to terms with reality and housing prices–when she grew up, she would have a nice apartment of her own, and her mother wouldn’t be satisfied with it no matter what, but Kayla would make it beautiful for her own sake. She would put up paintings and photos and buy pretty lamps, and maybe get a sofa and a TV.
Ten years later, Kayla could only look back on her teenage daydreams with ridicule. A nice apartment? She was lucky to have a closet-sized studio over an hour away from her shitty job all to herself, or sometimes a basement unit where something was always leaking, or a sublet of a sublet where her roommates swung between angry shouting matches and loud makeup sex on a daily basis–sometimes on the couch that had to be passed by on the way out.
Kayla had to move every few months–no time or space or energy or money for nice things. Even when she lay in a bare room, staring at a cockroach crawling out from the drain–Kayla wasn’t even going to begin thinking about the implications of that–she realized that there wasn’t any real spark in her for pursuing the beautiful. There were people who had less who made more of their lives, of their spaces, but Kayla didn’t have that ability to do the same. It wasn’t just a shitty apartment or two or five, but that she would just always be that hungry little girl, greedy for what she neither had nor deserved but never trying to seize the life she wanted.
Then all this had happened, and Kayla had, through more bloodshed than she could’ve ever expected back in Brooklyn, become the owner of the Zhao household. It was a beautiful place, Kayla acknowledged, but having it hadn’t made her better like she had once hoped as a child.
Having a nice place or nice things aren’t enough. You’re the one who has to change. Kayla’s college therapist had said as much. And yes, she had changed. Probably for the worse though.
There was the excuse that the place was tainted by Wenyuan’s memories of violence, by the Grand Duke, by all the lives that had been lost here. But at its core…Kayla pushed the useless thoughts aside. She glanced out the window at the garden.
Qazar and Yilie were nowhere in sight, but she could hear them laughing. There was a girl’s laughter as well, probably Yun’er from the sound of it. By the high-pitched shriek that went up from all three of them, Yan’er was probably chasing them down with something–a projectile or a makeshift weapon of some kind.
Something unwound in Kayla’s chest even as she shook her head in exasperation.
I’m not the only one who isn’t at home here. At least they’re making good memories out of it. She paused. Hopefully.
The screams got closer and a bit more blood-curdling.
“Yan’er, stop it! Don’t throw it at me–agh!” Yilie screamed in a high-pitched voice.
Okay, what the fuck are they even doing out there?
Kayla stepped outside the study, gesturing to Tao Qian.
“Go make sure they’re not going to accidentally kill each other,” she said, pointing in the direction of the shrieks.
Tao Qian raised his eyebrows slightly.
Accidentally? He seemed to say.
Yeah, Kayla knew how bloodthirsty teenagers could be, but innocent until proven guilty.
“As you wish, my lord.”
Tao Qian took off at a brisk pace, and soon passed by Kayla’s window with Yilie and Qazar clinging to him while Yun’er and Yan’er cackled in the distance.
Ok, that cackling sounds a bit too villainous, Kayla thought to herself, chagrined. What kind of kids am I raising?
At least they were having fun. Maybe a bit too much fun.
Oh well. You’re only a teenager for so many years, it’s probably fine.
Her previous contemplations forgotten, Kayla turned back to her work.
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Xianchun walked through his emptied residence. Everything had been packed up for the move, and servants bustled through the courtyards, meticulously checking for anything that might’ve been left behind.
Soon, the residence he had lived in since his coming-of-age would be demolished. A new temple would be built there, dedicated to peace and prosperity, in honor of all the Imperial Family members who had died within the year.
He hadn’t seen the place so empty in a long time. In fact, he had never seen this place so empty. It had been furnished when he had moved in. Now, it was hollowed out, almost foreign to him. He felt alienated from the space, as if it were already a temple that he had never been to before.
The place felt strangely forlorn–and nostalgic. He recalled his mother’s earliest residence in the palace, being emptied out when she was promoted to a better place with him in tow. How old had he been back then? Four? Five? Xianchun couldn’t recall.
Back then, it was the same. The tall, painted pillars seemed to lengthen as its surroundings emptied out, and the sunlight spilling through became the only resident. Dust motes danced in the air, and as Xianchun slowly walked through the patches of sunlight and shadow, he couldn’t help but wonder at how fast the last few years had gone by.
And all for nothing.
He had lost, completely. Even his house was about to be destroyed.
Yunqi had gifted him a new residence, grander than the current one, and a stipend to keep it with. It was just like Fifth Brother to soften even the harshest reprisal with a spot of mercy. As its recipient, Xianchun wasn’t quite sure how to feel.
He reached out to touch a spot on the wall where a picture used to be.
So they placed it there because there was a crack, Xianchun thought drily to himself. No wonder the picture placement had never made sense to him. And here I had thought it was some kind of refined aesthetic I didn’t understand.
“Your Highness,” Liu Boyue called from behind him.
Xianchun turned, meeting Liu Boyue’s concerned gaze.
“Let’s go,” Xianchun said.
A new residence awaited them.
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Yunqi frowned as he read the scroll before him.
It was a petition from Cao Shuyi, his bereaved sister-in-law.
She wants to change residences?
Why would she? That was the Third Prince’s residence, and she was the Third Princess Consort. It was her home, the home of her son, Kuang’s son.
The agitation that consumed him faded slowly, and Yunqi was left staring at the scroll, his heart hollow.
Of course Cao Shuyi wanted to move. The memory of Kuang haunted every room in that residence. In life, he had shone brilliantly, and the refractions of that luster still lingered in his home. How difficult had it been for Cao Shuyi to live there for all this time?
Yunqi set down the scroll with a sigh, closing his eyes against the grief that threatened to sweep over him.
What right have I to refuse? I haven’t been back even once.
The house where Kuang had lived. The house where Kuang had died.
Did Yunqi have the strength to ever set foot in that place again?
He missed it, just as he missed Kuang. How often had he escaped his troubles by striding into Kuang’s study as if it were his own?
It had been the only place where he truly belonged when the capital had shunned him. But it was no different than the palace now. If he stepped into the Third Prince’s study again, the only thing he would see was Kuang’s absence from it. Just as his father’s image still haunted every crevice of these very halls, Kuang’s presence had yet to fade from his home.
Yunqi didn’t know if it ever would. He didn’t know if he would want it to.
If that’s what my sister-in-law wants, then I’ll follow her wishes.
He drafted an official edict, granting Cao Shuyi a choice between a residence in the fief he had posthumously granted to Kuang as an Archduke, or a different residence in the capital. The fief had been chosen to be close to Cao Shuyi’s hometown, out of consideration for the widow. Yunqi didn’t doubt that she would choose to leave for the fief.
With her, she would take Chenqian.
The floating world is such, partings are numerous but reunions are few, for which I would rather never have met, Yunqi thought to himself. Yet unlike the poet who spoke those lines, Yunqi could never regret having met everyone who had once cherished him. Not even Shu Yunsong, not even his father.
Yunqi stamped the Imperial Seal on the edict. Instead of summoning the eunuch waiting patiently a few steps away, he lingered over the scroll a while longer.
Finally, he lifted his eyes to seek out the eunuch.
The young eunuch stepped forward, accepting the scroll with both hands, bowing before he scurried off to deliver it to the correct department. Yunqi watched him go, bearing with him Cao Shuyi and Chenqian’s future.
Good, Yunqi thought to himself. Leave the capital, and stay away. From now on, as long as I know that you’re living well somewhere, that’s enough for me to keep going.
The doorway had long since emptied, and Yunqi shook himself out of his thoughts. He turned back to his work, the short-lived pensiveness fading in favor of renewed irritation as he opened yet another petition.
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Cultural Notes:
寸土寸金/An inch of dirt an inch of gold: A Chinese saying that refers to how expensive land is in a specific place.
请安/Daily greetings: A Confucian rite of paying daily respects to your head-of-house, usually the parental figures. It wouldn’t be much of a thing in smaller households, say a one-room farmstead, but in larger families, especially when the sons have married and set up their own residences/quarters, this is a ritual through which one shows piety and respect to one’s elders.
浮生如此，别多会少，不如莫遇/The floating world is such, partings are numerous but reunions are few, for which I would rather never have met: Lines from a poem by the Qing Dynasty poet 纳兰性德, famous for his love poems. He’s most famous for the line “问世间情为何物，直教人生死相许/I ask the world just what love is, that which can make people devote their lives to one another”.