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I scowled, hearing more insult than praise in his words. “You’d be wise to share their caution.”
“I know you too well,” he said with a smirk. “You don’t have the stomach for beheadings, at least not yet. Better to start with a few imprisonments and beatings.”
My nose wrinkled. “Are you volunteering?”
He shot me a look of exaggerated grief. “I would never dare to anger Your Ladyship.”
Aunt Shou sighed. “Stop quarreling like children.”
I swallowed my retort, nodding sagely instead. “Chengyin, listen to your mother. It’s time to set aside these juvenile tendencies.”
“She meant both of us,” he told me with a glare.
“Are you prepared for your visit to the realm above?” Aunt Shou asked me.
My mood turned grave. “Yifei has readied my outfit. But I don’t want to pledge my fealty to the immortals; I want us to be free of them.”
“Your grandfather wanted that too,” Aunt Shou said. “He’d hoped—as did each ruler before him—that pleasing Queen Caihong would suffice to earn Tianxia’s freedom.”
“That she would return the Shield of Rivers and Mountains?” I asked.
Aunt Shou frowned as though surprised I knew of it, then nodded. “It was said when the shield was returned to us, the walls could finally be brought down. But they won’t release us; they like having us on their string.”
I ground my teeth at the thought. My kingdom was not an ornament, nor did we have infinite time. To an immortal, a hundred years was a blink in the span of their existence, while it was more than an entire mortal lifetime.
“If they won’t return the shield, I’ll take it back,” I said with feeling.
Chengyin folded his arms across his chest. “Even if you find it, what will you do when the God of War attacks again, demanding its return?”
“How does one kill a god?” Even as I asked it flippantly, part of me wished I hadn’t. The immortal had saved me from the Winged Devils. And while I wouldn’t let this obligation hinder my plans, I wasn’t sure I wanted him to die.
Chengyin choked back a laugh. “The gods might object to you killing them. They will fight back, and they do have some advantages. Magic, for one, and the fact our weapons can’t injure them. The few immortal ones in our treasury are nothing compared to what their warriors wield. The God of War’s sword alone was said to have cleaved the Wuxin Army in half with a single blow—”
“Gross exaggeration, else the war would have lasted half a day,” Aunt Shou scoffed.
I leaned forward, clasping my hands on the desk. “Nevertheless, we must arm ourselves better.”
“Sure.” Chengyin gestured to the window. “I’ll leap on a cloud and fly to the Immortal Realm. Ransack their armory, then come back down.”
It was what I most liked and disliked about him; that he had no reverence for my position, treating me as he did when we were children squabbling over the same toys.
“Just because something is hard is no reason to give up,” Aunt Shou chided him. “If you don’t believe in what you do, who will?”
“If we can reclaim the shield, it gives us the chance to cancel the treaty, to bring down the walls. We can even petition the Celestial Emperor for his aid. Aren’t they the most powerful kingdom in the skies, and their emperor benevolent and wise?”
I’d read that long ago, when the immortals descended to our realm, they were bound by strict rules set by the Celestial Emperor to protect us. In Tianxia, the immortals had no such restraint.
Aunt Shou nodded. “The Celestial Emperor might also be keen to unite our world beneath him rather than sharing it with the Golden Desert.”
Chengyin sighed loudly. “Mother, are you encouraging this madness? While Queen Caihong can be harsh, our kingdom has prospered in some ways too—”
“It’s not madness,” I said firmly. “Over the years, Queen Caihong has grown more temperamental, erratic, and demanding. When she is angered, we suffer treacherous storms, winds, and floods. We also have to deal with their enemies, the incursion of monsters like those Winged Devils.”
“Life isn’t perfect outside these walls either,” Chengyin reminded me.
“I don’t believe it is,” I replied. “While no place is shielded from misfortune, at least it’s not intentionally caused, imposed as a punishment. We shouldn’t have to live within these walls when our world lies beyond them. Why must we set the immortals’ wants above our own, especially when they care nothing for us? Don’t you want us to live for ourselves?”
“What of Kunlun?” Chengyin asked.
