Chapter Text
The sun breaks over a new Eastern palace. Dawn greets the rise of Qi Yu, the boy emperor guided by his mother Empress Dowager Yu Qianqian, though he’s fast asleep as the seven year old boy spent all day running the grand stairs in footraces with his closest friend Ning. His deep breaths and dreamless sleep are the envy of his mother, watching from the doorway, as she blinks and whispers to herself, “how is this not the dream? How did we make it?” She bites her lip holding back the tears and the fear that had been her life, while watching her son finally sleep peacefully, safe, in luxury beyond luxury in the emperor’s house behind the dragon throne. These next days and weeks would be treacherous as the court settled into a new rhythm. While the old power players had been wiped away, there were always new snakes waiting in the grass.
<<~~*~~>>
Changyu smiles, her head backlit in the dawn light breaks over the pavilion as her sparring partner temporarily blinded loses his advantage. She stays within her own shadow, delivering two rapid blows to his chest, making him cough and pause. She swirls to his left, diving under his elbow and goes for the finishing slash to his neck. But a hand blocks her staff, noting his predatory speed and resilience, she quickly spins and tries to counter, but too late, he pulls the staff in close and thus pulls her into an embrace. His voice muffles in her ear, “so fast so early. You must have slept well”.
She gasped and escapes his grip with a counter blow to his wrist, he chuckles and lets her go.
“Your speed is improving. But still your movement is predictable.”
“What? We are fighting? I thought we were dancing, with all this hand holding and hugs”- she pahs to the side. Never one to hide her frustration if she thought she could do better, she has taken to morning sparring sessions with an enthusiasm and discipline of a falcon.
“alright, then again.” The Marquis of Wu’an never shied from a fight and if it also came with the closeness of his person, the one person who could disarmed him with only a warm smile, he would rise before dawn for the rest of his days.
The Prince regent and General Huiahua continued their paces, trading fast paced blows with the staff, then hand to hand until they were both a sweaty, hungry mess, desperate for breakfast. Neither liked to admit they were done for the day, so it fell to Xie Wu or Xie Qie, sparring in the next square, to call out that breakfast was getting cold. While pausing to rest his healing shoulder, Xie Qie could tell the General was getting hungry, as her brute force began to dominate and gone were the precision rapid sequence steps they had drilled yesterday. She slammed the staff down crudely in the center of Zheng’s defensive stance and he would have flicked her entire body weight off balance, if his staff hadn’t decided that it was finally time to crack in two.
Zheng’s mouth dropped open, shock or annoyance and then he glanced up at Changyu, victory gleaming from her eyes as he held the two pieces in supposed yield to her offensive stance.
“I win! Yield Marquis!”
“Breaking the staff doesn’t count as winning”
“Disarming the enemy counts” “You have given me two weapons when I only had one”
Xie Qie whistles, “Marquis, Marchioness, morning tea grows cold!”
The two lay down their arms and walk off the sparring square still bickering over tactics and the tally of points, blows landed intentionally or not and if it counted. The familiar contest was becoming a regular morning affair for the palace and the Xie elite guards serving the new leadership and ministers. Xie Wu softly shares to Qie, “in one month, I will miss these days”. Qie looks at Wu sharply, “Why? Where are you going”. Wu laughs and nods his head at the Marquis dipping his head to kiss his wife as they stride off. Like clockwork, she pushes him away with a gentle slap to the face, then quickly steals a kiss of her own. Qie looks puzzled and asks Wu, “are we going somewhere? The Marquis hasn’t said. I thought we were here for at least 6mo for the court transition.”
“The peach will grow only rounder.” Wu replied
“What peach? Why would a peach interfere with morning sparring?”
“Oh Qie, you need to live a bit more life”, Wu shakes his head at his oldest comrade, pauses wondering if he should explain, “The Marquis grows gentler with her every day, and now they spend their nights together like the married couple they have always been. It won’t be long before she should not be fighting like this.”
“The General can always fight, she is tougher than most men. Never forget how many Shi Hu hammer blows she took and still was able to strike back,” Qie growing denser by the moment.
“Babies, Qie. There will be a baby one of these days, and the Marquis will not strike his pregnant wife.”
Sometimes saying it plainly was the best way for Xie Qie, for all his military prowess, to finally take the point. He gaped at the slender figure of the Marchioness disappearing down the stairs.
<<~~*~~>>
Their days were scheduled from breakfast to late in the night with minister meetings and private study of the Dayin government and military. Changyu learned best at Zheng’s side, as her previous tutors and hired teachers were relieved of any private lessons, though sometimes making a guest appearance. Her countryside upbringing and plain commonsense was a stark contrast to the meddling ways of palace politics. Zheng included her in military agendas and briefings, helping her grow into her role as a General, while also guiding her interests in relief and rebuilding, as well as supply chains. Learning logistics and the spread thin resources of the Dayin prefectorates benefited from her plain thinking, as she was frugal and fair. He often wrote missives for her. Yesterday, when laying a copy on her desk, he could see the copies of the last week by her halting hand. Character after character re-written, complicated ones circled and broken down into the simpler terms. The ink smeared in some places as she had crammed more lines in. His eyes beamed with pride at her diligence to become independent in merit and literacy.
Years of war had sharpened the military clans of Xie, Wei, and Qi with precision, but the country was tired and reserves were low. Bridges and roads falling into disrepair as any laborers for the work had been allocated to battlefield and war camp machinations. Farmers had lost sons to the front-lines and grew old and unable to plow as many fields. They needed years to replace what had been lost from fighting the Northern Jue in Jizhou and Chongzhou borders, as well as to re-build from the in-fighting created 17 years ago between the Sui and Wei clans.
Changyu had not seen the border towns but she knew the devestation within Dayin. Her small town of Lin’an was massacred and she had lost much of her community to death and displacement. Who remained and who had the strength to carry on to build back the Lin’an of her childhood was a mere few. She also knew how many women remained in these smaller villages, pulling the weight of lost sons and fathers without the legal recognition, and could easily be displaced from honorable work, left begging when property was stripped and consolidated in the patriarchal lines or given as compensation to returning soldiers. As he looked over her copied missives, he found a piece of parchment titled, “Girl Heir” and as he read his wife’s simple characters, he saw what had occupied her mind the last few weeks. His memory tugged at their own hasty marriage, so she could keep her family property. As usual, Changyu wished to pass along her own fortune to others and see the women of Dayin thrive in their own right. Yet, he knew, these words, logical and fair were too simple and forthright for the court to be swayed in such a progressive path.
Zheng, sensitive to his wife’s own predicament, had requested a specific meeting planned for tomorrow. One to be handled with care, given the ministers’ tolerance for only so much change, and their tolerance for the two powerful women and neither could be called soft spoken.
He signed over his morning tea. At least Empress Dowager Yu Qianqian, business minded and softly political, could be coy and know how to pick the moment for the right line to the perfect accommodating ear. He stole a glance at Changyu, busily eating congee like they were back in Belgu Mtn, not sitting on a palace dais surrounded by servants with wide eyes for etiquette. He smirked at the impropriety of the General, in her sparring robes, sweaty, mouth full, still arguing that because the staff broken that he had been disarmed. Goodness, she hadn’t even knelt at the table, but was sitting cross legged. This was the breakfast he wanted, no formality, just food and more thoughtful discussions on the menu. He loved her absence of pretense and how the country would be better with more common sense guiding principle.
“Very well, you are right, I did not take the advantage of my two staffs once broken. You did surprise me with the force of that blow. May I ask, what did I do to deserve such ferocity?”
“Adoptive father Tao said heavy the hammer, faster the nail in its home”, she mumbled, cheeks bulging, then blushing at Zheng’s eye contact.
“Eager for tomorrow’s meetings then?” Qianqian shuffled in gracefully, bedecked in the jeweled silks fitting for the empress dowager. “We could use some heavy hammers, knock some sense into these old stubborn men.” She knelt and filled her friends’ cups with warm tea, then her own, brushing away sweetly the servant who tried to pour for them. Smoothing her robes and sipping her tea with her mouth covered, the perfect picture of propriety, her eyes danced with the coming fight.
“Qianqian, I couldn’t remember the third reason you wrote for me about women being scholars.” Changyu bemoaned, “I just think women should be able to do what men do if they want and if they do a good job. And if we are lacking men, then why not let the women keep the village going, butchering, making noodles, innkeepers, constables, magistrates, going to school, teaching at school.”
“Don’t waste you breath on me, my friend! We both have lived that life of solo women making our way.”
“Perhaps you both are the rare heroines,” remarked Zheng, emphasizing his last two words with a tone of awe, like most of the men of court did when referring to these capable two, while also dismissing the rest of their gender.
“You think we are rare? More likely too stubborn to agree to what others tell us we should do,” quipped Qian, cheers’ing Changyu with a knowing glance. “There are others, perhaps with just as much ability, but with less of the ox and more of the mouse.”
“Should mice be at the head of the household?” he challenged, gently coating his words with the essence the most traditional minister.
“even mice can have good ideas! Storing grain, grabbing quality fur and silk for their nests!!” Changyu exclaimed, “better to have mice working together, oxen working together, than a bunch of tigers refusing to share.”
“Did you read that?” Zheng asked Changyu.
“No, but maybe I should write it down so you can read it to me, and we will see I’m right.” She winked at Zheng, who often quoted books to her, citing written knowledge as a superior form over some of the country logic. With her childhood illiteracy slowly fading, she still struggled to catch up to his fund of knowledge but never shied away from learning more, challenging his view or interpretation, or asking to explain parables. She often complained that literacy would be easier if people wrote as plainly as they spoke, though she had noticed the ministers often disguised their meaning and intentions in flowery language-- "osmanthus words" she would mutter inappropriately at times, referencing the beautifully sweet-scented tree who's blossoms made candy that reminded them both of tragedy.
Zheng's eyes widened in feigned shock and offense. These past evenings they sat together reviewing military strategies, government policies, logistics, and reading Ning’s finished books. Changyu always wanted more for her sister, and was so proud of her sister’s voracious appetite for literature. At 5, Ning approach Bao’er’s -- or Child Emperor Qi Yu-- level of study at 7, despite the huge gap in their early years. Changyu and Qian surrounded the two with the best kindest tutors, inspiring the two to study simply because they enjoyed the act of learning. Ning, understanding her sister’s approach to life and the common sense that grounded her, often would step into Zheng and Changyu’s discussions to help her sister’s point or to rebut Zheng’s. Ning could adopt Zheng’s practical dogmatic style easily as well, and was beginning to learn how often he played the opposite side. Zheng had recently told Ning that she understood that in arguments, pulling the lowest brick was not the same as pulling the best brick to break the wall. Nodding, Ning was becoming a formidable master of argument and he cringed thinking about her coming teenage years. He loved to read and had found such an escape in his own childhood, it was a delight to see it click for at least one of the Fan sisters.
Qianqian’s voice pulled him back to the discussion at hand, “We must make them see that women, like men, are capable and willing to be more than wives and mothers. Even the Noble ladies of which they are most familiar”
“When are you meeting? And with who?” Zheng asked. He thought he already knew the answer.
“Tomorrow, for afternoon session, with the Minister of Grain, Minister of Household, and the Minister of Livestock”.
“Not the Minister of Etiquette or of Law? Of the Scholarship?” Those weasels! He thought back to three days ago when he had approached Jia Xuan, Wu Shunjun, and Tao Ligui in the courtyard of Exalted Virtue and how acquiescing they had seemed.
“The Minister of Etiquette recommended these three would be most effective to aid the plight of widows and orphans.”
Thinking to himself, Zheng tightened his lips and knew the woman he loved would have a very trying afternoon tomorrow. Those three old ministers were dogmatic to a fault, seeing women barely as more than livestock themselves in how they treated their wives and daughters. Qianqian caught his eye and smiled a knowing grin.
“We have a meeting, it is a start. All ears can catch a whisper.” Zheng nodded to her. She, unlike Changyu, understood the nuance of the set up by Jia Xuan, the Minister of Etiquette, probably with the backing of Wu Shunjun, Minister of Law. These men while more malleable in their thinking, likely would thwart these well intentioned General and Empress Dowager to exert their own influence and power. Zheng sighed, he wanted the world to bow to Changyu and Changning, his family, as he did. He balked a little as the thought grew into a bigger idea, he struggled to imagine bowing to any other woman other than the ones he as closest and respected, but he knew that within the Xie clan, capability and competence was prized over status and gender, so if this could take root anywhere, it may best be started in the Yanzhou army.
Changyu looked earnestly optimistic. “Women owning farms, heads of household, trading under their own names!”
She then looked as though she had a snuck a piece of candy, so delighted with a vision in her head that her words stuttered to share it, “Mother Zhao a magistrate! Oh she would be the most fair!”