As much as Jia hated politics, half a decade as the head of two—now three—states meant that she’d gotten used to it. Qin politics, however, were a class of their own, and she was endlessly grateful to have talented subordinates to handle the truly difficult conversations.
Mind you, even which subordinate handled which negotiation could send an important message. For example, the Great Austere Mountain sect controlled more territory on the edge of the empire’s ‘frontier’ than any other, most of which bordered Yamato. Thus, the fact that Shogun Ashikaga Sae had been chosen to represent the Jiaguo Empire to them was a meaningful choice. What the meaning of that choice was, would be a matter of interpretation.
The Austere Mountain was more martial than most sects, but even so, Jia thought she might need to personally visit Qian Shi later. Sae wasn’t her first choice for diplomat, but a lesser lord would have been insulting. She’d been explicitly ordered to try mending relations, but uh...well, Jia would check in to see how things went.
She was more confident in Seong Min’s meeting with the Silver Orchard. Sun Quan’s history with Goryeo wasn’t quite as inflammatory, despite their shared border, but there was a personal grudge centered around the history of Kucheon. Min was used to hostility, though, and Sun Quan wasn’t unreasonable. If anything, Jia’s own grudge against Sun Quan for his actions at Kucheon was a reason for her to stay away until the summit assembled.
Speaking of grudges, the most truly difficult conversation was one that Jia was endlessly grateful to Yue for taking on. Bai Renshu was, by most metrics, a meaningless side character in the war between Qin and Jiaguo. The Labyrinthine Forest of Unbreakable Threads was a mid-sized sect struggling to control a single province. Most of Bai’s influence had been tied up in Yan De’s sponsorship, and without it, they were left carrying all the ill will they’d cultivated in the south by cozying up to the Awakening Dragon.
The problem was that there was probably nobody living who wanted Yoshika dead as much as Grandmaster Bai Renshu. It was purely personal. Eui killed Bai Lin—his daughter—and Yoshika was directly responsible for the precarious position his sect now found itself in. If Yoshika had any enemies in the world, Bai Renshu was first among them.
If Sae was a closed fist to earn the respect of the martially-minded Qian Shi, and Min was an open palm offering peace to the conservative Sun Quan, then Yue was a poisoned cup of wine.
“The meeting went well enough. Bai Renshu was downright obsequious to the ‘future grandmistress’ of the Awakening Dragon.”
Yue was fussing over Jia’s makeup as she spoke. Of all Yoshika’s aspects, Jia hated dressing up the most, but she was making an exception for this.
“Future? Not current?”
“Indeed. You’ve picked up on the same thing I did. Bai Renshu is not a clever man. If he were, he’d know that the Labyrinthine Forest will never be a great sect, and he never would have made himself an enemy of the south. In trying to play both sides, he’s revealed too much of his hand.”
Jia waited for Yue to finish applying some kind of gloss to her lips with a soft brush before responding.
“I’m surprised he’s willing to entertain cooperating with us at all.”
“Tsk—don’t—you need to let it dry first!”
She glared at Jia as she hastily reapplied the smudged lip gloss, sighing.
“Bai Renshu is a weakling and a coward. He hates you, but so what? He hated my father too, and I’d wager he hates the rest of the grandmasters just as much. Men like him crave nothing more than the downfall of their betters. Carrion eaters living under the delusion that if they can hoard enough scraps from the carcasses of the ones they follow, they might one day be the ones to lead.”
Yue tipped Jia’s chin up and switched to another brush, this one dipped in an expensive blue dye that she delicately painted around Jia’s eyes. Jia opened her mouth to ask if this was really necessary, but stopped when Yue gave her an impatient look.
“Red or black is more traditional, but blue has always been your color, and your eyes are your best feature. I know you don’t care, but this matters. Not just to me. You need to show her that you’re not just a woman who is powerful. You are a powerful woman. There is a difference.”
Jia wasn’t sure there was, but she was willing to take Yue’s word for it and go along with whatever she asked. It was her mother, after all.
“Now where was I? Ah yes—by hedging his bets, Bai Renshu reveals too much. He commits to nothing except a continued alliance with the Awakening Dragon, whether or not that means an alliance with me. Which means that he has reason to believe it won’t. I expected as much, but it confirms that Yan Ren and Yan Hao intend to challenge me.”
“That’s why they’re bringing your mother, right?”
Yue shot her a disapproving frown and double checked her lips, but didn’t need to fix anything.
“Yes. Ren and Hao are nominally sworn brothers of my father, as his greatest disciples—effectively my uncles. That affords them few rights when it comes to clan matters. Certainly they have no claim to my inheritance, but they do get a say. They are, in effect, the executors of my father’s will, and the laws of our clan.”
“Do you think they’ll try to seize power?”
“Of course they’ll try, but their duty as executors actually limits them more than it empowers them. They can’t just do whatever they want—there are laws, and they must make a good faith effort to abide by them, in spirit as much as by the letter.”
Stolen story; please report.
Jia made a conscious effort to keep her face still while Yue moved on to her other eye, but communicated the idea of a frown through her aura.
“Then I don’t see what you have to worry about. You’ve been obsessing over those laws for years at this point.”
“Trust me, so have they. My best guess is that they are going to try to undermine me by placing the sect under the control of my mother—to be passed on to her next son, or mine, should either of us have one. If not—then to one of them. Probably Hao—Ren has no interest in ruling.”
“How does that work?”
Yue pursed her lips, moving on to Jia’s hair. It was still fairly short, but that didn’t stop Yue from artfully braiding a few strands on one side of her face and adorning her with various unique accessories.
“Have I ever told you how annoying it is that you have white hair? Almost everyone in Qin has black hair, and I had to get most of this jewelry custom made for you.”
“Aww, you don’t think my hair is pretty?”
She blushed for a moment and averted her eyes as Jia pouted at her.
“It’s beautiful, of course—just a pain to accessorize. Anyway, they have any number of ways to try to invalidate me as an heir, which we will have to address in the moment, but most of it will hinge on the cooperation of my mother. She has the authority that they lack, in the absence of my father.”
“Your mother supports you, though, doesn’t she? You said you were close.”
Yue sighed.
“She does, and we are—or were. It’s been a long time, and I’m not sure where we stand anymore. Even if nothing has changed, though—it’s complicated. My mother is very particular, and firm in her beliefs. She is, above all else, dutiful as a mother—and as a wife.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. I do not know if she loved Yan De, but she was and likely remains loyal. Historically, if her duties as a wife clashed with her duties as a mother...well, I love her, but I still ran away, didn’t I?”
That spoke volumes by itself, and if Jia had once wondered why Yue struggled so much despite the support of her mother, now she understood. It wasn’t just that Yan De was a domineering tyrant—even Yue’s only ally at home couched her support carefully within that tyrant’s world.
“She still supported you though, right? Taught you your cultivation, encouraged you to strive for xiantian, and even gave you the True Awakening of the Dragon’s Heart, your clan’s greatest secret.”
“Apparently not, since I had never even heard of Awakening of the Dragon’s Soul, but perhaps that was unique to my father. In any case, that was all well within her duties as a mother, as she saw it. Yan De wasn’t always available to make his will known, but if he’d so much as insinuated to the contrary, then that would have been the end of it.”
“Is she weak-willed?”
A sharp bark of laughter escaped Yue’s lips before she covered her mouth and blushed.
“I’m sorry. I can see why you might think so from this conversation, but no. She’s just...odd. Rigid, perhaps, would be the word to define her. It pains me greatly to say this, but Zhihao and I both took after our father. When you meet Long Chunhua, there will be very little for you to recognize—but I suppose you’ll see for yourself shortly.”
Indeed, Yue’s preparations were finally complete, and Jia was released to regard her own appearance in a standing mirror. Yue had procured for her a set of gorgeously patterned dress robes in blue and white with golden brocade patterns woven throughout. The makeup was overdone, in Jia’s opinion. Yue had pinkened and glossed her lips, and applied a subtle coating of powder to lighten the skin around her face and give her a faint permanent blush. Her eyelashes were darkened, then exaggerated with blue paint that faded to white at the edges—like frost, or perhaps lightning. Her forehead, hair, and ears were all decorated richly with gold, white jade, and sapphire jewelry which—as Yue said—had been custom made for her. Especially the decorations for her ears. Even her tail had a little golden bell dangling from the end, which Yue had advised her to avoid ringing as a demonstration of grace.
It was way too much. Not even Eunae had ever worn so much or dressed so ostentatiously in her entire life. As always, Jia felt like she was looking at a stranger in the mirror, but she trusted Yue enough to resist the urge to start taking it all off.
“What do you think?”
“I hate it. I look like something a rich person would put on display to show off. I know you worked hard on this, Yue, but it’s not me.”
“I know, and believe me, I wouldn’t have gone through the effort if it wasn’t important.”
As proof of that, Yue was dressed up just as much. She wore it more naturally, but it was still a few steps beyond her usual accouterments. Yue wanted to make an impression on her mother, and she had stressed without actually saying as much that Yoshika’s typical approach to first impressions would not be acceptable.
That was fine, and Jia was happy to impress Yue’s mother for her, it was just...
“I feel like I’m wearing a costume to hide myself. Are you that worried that your mother isn’t going to like the real me?”
Yue blinked at her, then chuckled and shook her head.
“Oh dear, I’m so sorry. I’ve been so frazzled that I gave you the wrong idea. Jia—Yoshika, I would never try to hide any facet of who you are. I’m proud to call you my friend, and—and I look forward to calling you my wife, even if I’m still terribly nervous about it all. No, this isn’t about hiding, it’s about contrast.”
Jia cocked her head, and the adornments jingled pleasantly against each other.
“What do you mean?”
“As a first impression, I want to show my mother that you can embody poise, grace, beauty, and all the things a good woman of Qin should. I want her to see you, that perfect woman, face the grandmasters of Qin on their own battlefield, in the heart of their power, then mercilessly dismantle them at their own game. I want to show her that it can be done, because of everything she taught me as a child—that was one lesson I had to meet you to learn for myself.”
“Oh!”
She blushed, and the bell on her tail chimed as it flicked back and forth awkwardly.
“Okay then. You really think I can do that?”
Yue stepped forward and held Jia’s face, careful not to disturb the makeup as she gently touched their foreheads together.
“I know you can. Because I’ve seen you do it time and again, and it made me fall in love despite convincing myself I couldn’t. But not everyone has my eyes. They don’t see what I see, and so I must show them. You must show them. Until they can see as I do why you are my empress. My goddess.”
Jia was blushing so hard she could feel it in her ears as she looked up to meet Yue’s twinkling emerald gaze.
“I-I’ll try my best.”
In response, Yue kissed her gently on top of her head and smirked.
“I know, dear. I’m counting on it. Now, let’s go meet your future mother-in-law.”
!
Selkie Myth for their incredible shoutouts.
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