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“They are all to be sent to Ganye temple.”
That was to be expected, on par for the course following an emperor’s death. Emperor Taizong hadn’t cared for most of his concubines anyways, not after Empress Zhangsun’s death. And Wu Yuanzhou hadn’t borne him any children. That didn’t keep either of their hearts from dropping into their stomachs, though, when they saw the shanggong coming out, all of the beautiful young women from the rear palace behind her. Their bright hanfu swapped for cement-coloured nuns’ robes, their hairpins stowed in between fabric, now without a purpose since their heads were shaved.
Li Zhi’s grown out fingernails strummed the mahogany table between him and Li Tai. His hands itched for his weiqi board, so he had something to look at other than the wood or Li Tai and something to think about other than his father’s death and his scheming brother opposite him and the tiny fragment of himself that had left along with Cairen Wu Yuanzhou. But he could not distract himself with board games. In seven days, he was to ascend to the throne. For now, though, all he had to do was grieve. Today was only the fourth day out of three years of mourning.
Li Tai rested his elbows upon his knees, hands clasped between them. The floor in front of him seemed to spin. He heard tap-tap-tap of his younger brother’s nails without quite focusing on it, understood it begrudgingly. He too was restless for something to do with his hands. The raw linen on his skin felt like the target he’d shoot at late in the evening sometimes. It gave him the strangest feeling, that he was about to be pierced by an arrow through one layer of hemp, then his body, then out the other, the line clean and straight. Across from him was the archer.
It was infuriating to Li Tai, how everything had slipped through his hands like sand. If only he could turn the hourglass upside down and take it all back. His throne, once Li Shimin’s, now Li Zhi’s. His Wu Yuanzhou, once the Emperor’s Cairen, now Ganye’s. It had only been for a second that it was all in reach. Li Tai’s eyes darted up to Li Zhi, took in those soft, delicate features. How the gentle Prince of Jin ended up with what he had worked so hard for…
The thought of it was enough for his hands to clench around each other until they shook slightly. Li Zhi was named the heir, the imperial astrologers had declared it to be ‘auspicious’, and to rebel now was to guarantee imminent death or exile. He couldn’t decide which was worse, dying at the hands of those who trapped him or living without his dignity for the rest of his life, shunned, possibly destitute. His own paralysis sickened him. Here he was, a man who fought the Earth and the heavens for a chance to rule them both, now trapped and walking blind along a path that was unfathomable to him but prophecy nonetheless.
However, he was not one to succumb to his emotions so quickly. His hands did not shake in front of the table; still, their grip was a tad too tight for comfort.
“Do you know what they named Cairen Wu at Ganye?”
Li Tai looked up, eyes wide.
“Don’t act shocked, Li Tai.” Li Zhi had stopped strumming, his hands now neatly folded in his lap. “We’re brothers, aren’t we? Let’s be honest with each other.”
“…I’m not sure.” Li Tai looked out to the pavilion. “What they named her, I mean.”
Li Zhi sighed silently. His older brother’s meddling had led to Chengqiang losing the throne entirely. He had thought that the Prince of Wei’s informants would’ve found it out already. But perhaps three days was too quick of a turnaround.
“Nevermind. It probably doesn’t matter anyways.” Li Zhi looked to the pavilion as well. The light, bright white from how cloudy the day was, shone on both their faces but couldn’t warm them.
“I’ll find out soon,” Li Tai looked back to Li Zhi. “We both want to know anyways.”
Li Zhi looked back to Li Tai. “And you would tell me?”
“If you couldn’t do it on your own.” Li Tai’s mouth curled into a smirk, cocky and familiar. “And as the future Emperor, I wouldn’t want to offend you so early on in your reign.”
“Ha. Ha.” Li Zhi pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes as he sighed. “Tai, this is no time for jokes. I know you cared for Wu Yuanzhou more than you want to let on.”
“So? Are you going to use her against me then?” He hadn’t come off as unaffected as he had wanted, Li Zhi could tell.
“No,” he said, his voice softening. He opened his eyes, looking at the Prince of Wei. He could tell Li Zhi wasn’t putting up a façade. He had always been soft, weak. Unable to stop wearing his heart on his sleeve—the way he had wept when Empress Zhangsun had died, and the way he couldn’t eat while the now late Emperor Taizong fell ill could not be hidden. “I’ll be honest with you. I understand how you feel for her.”
The two stared at one another for a long moment, the silence stretching thin between them until it was a string about to snap.
“What?”
“Don’t play dumb.” Li Zhi rested his head on his palm, elbow propped up on the back of the loveseat. “Being caught off guard… who have you become?”
Li Tai swore a smirk flashed across his lips, the half not pressed against his palm, as Li Zhi looked at him with narrowed eyes.
“Taunting’s not like you, Zhi.” He leant back on his own seat, crossing his arms.
An airy laugh, more like a breath, escaped him. “Someone has to pick up the slack.”
Li Tai let himself smile, just a little. Perhaps even he had his moments. He supposed he still saw Li Zhi as the child he once was; as an adolescent, he hadn’t really considered Zhi a threat, with his emotional tendencies, his head in the clouds, always painting or playing or whatnot.
It made sense, that Wu Yuanzhou could’ve fallen for him, the gentle, beautiful Li Zhi. For all his skill, Li Tai did not have the heart that Li Zhi had, one that bled and beat for others. It was what ultimately made his father favour his ninth son over his fourth. The Prince of Wei, privately, for once in a life of elaborate schemes and bitter rivalries, conceded defeat. But he was moving himself to another arena, would find some other way to fight, and would walk blind but would walk free.
Let Li Zhi have the throne. All the love in his heart would not protect him from what came next. Despite his doubts about astrology, Li Tai had too strong of an instinct that to survive the coming decades he would have to find the woman ruler Wu—he hadn’t believed for a second that it was that poor general they had executed—and there was one woman in mind, that he, for some reason, believed had what it took to rise.
Li Zhi, too, thought about Wu Yuanzhou, but he was far more honest with himself about why she stayed in his head. All he hoped for was a way to bring her back to the rear palace and to keep her safe in his arms. Let Li Tai flee to Wei. He had lost, and all his cunning would pale in the face of an emperor’s power.
“What will you do, once you find out?”
“I’ll take all your poems and send them in my name.”
Zhi flushed, his smile faltering. “Wh-what poems?”
“The ones you haven’t told me about but that you’ve definitely written about her.”
He scoffed, regaining a bit of his composure. “She wouldn’t believe that they were yours.”
“You’re right, I’ve never been much of a romantic. But I guess you pick up the slack on that one.”
“Honestly, Tai,” Li Zhi said, shaking his head with a smile, “you’re hopeless with women. You can’t scheme your way into someone’s heart.”
“Courting is a kind of scheme,” Li Tai said, shrugging. Li Zhi groaned.
“Whatever,” he muttered. He paused for a moment, glancing at his lap, then at Li Tai. “You will tell me, won’t you?”
“You trust my word?”
“Not really. That’s why I’m asking.”
Li Tai frowned, pursing his lips. “Well, she’s a nun anyways. I don’t see what you’d want to do with her anyways, but I’ll tell you,” he lied. He knew that Li Zhi, ever the idealist, would send letter after letter to her, and that he’d probably do the same while biding his time to break her out.
“You don’t need to lie about everything,” Li Zhi said, rolling his eyes. “Guess I’ll have my own people working on it too.”
“That’s good. You’re taking initiative. Becoming of the next emperor.”
“Stop talking to me like I’m a child,” Li Zhi said, blunt, glaring at Li Tai.
He laughed. “Sorry. You just make it too easy.”
Li Zhi huffed, but kept silent otherwise. What would Li Tai do now? he wondered. He had to be hiding some sort of plan or ambition. Another plot to get rid of a Crown Prince? A plot to do with Wu Yuanzhou? He couldn’t tell—Li Zhi never was much of a schemer—and it frustrated him. Either way, he had to keep an eye on him and keep him in line. Somehow.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Li Tai muttered. “I’ll be out of your hair, don’t worry.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m going to Wei.” His throat bobbed after, swallowing down something that already left his mouth as if he could take it back.
Li Zhi stared at him, dumbfounded. “…What?”
“Whatever place I had in this palace,” he started, looking away from Li Zhi to the hem of his robes, “is gone. My destiny here, whatever it was, has ran its course. There are greener grasses for me elsewhere.”
“You never slow down, do you, Qingche?”
Qingche? Nobody had called him that since he was a child. “A sparrow like you couldn’t understand the flight of a swan like me.”
“Who are you calling a sparrow? I’m going to be the Emperor in a week.” The mockery hadn’t offended him; Zhi had laughed.
“A sparrow made of jade is still a sparrow,” he said, shrugging.
“And a swan stuck in mud still can’t fly.”
Li Tai scoffed, but a warmth settled into his heavy heart. He couldn’t remember the last time he had bantered with Li Zhi, talked without threats; maybe he had never done such a thing at all.
For the rest of the seven days before Li Zhi’s ascension, all would be at peace. An uneasy peace, but a peace neither of them had had for a while.