Page 111 of The Poet Empress
“Your Highness,” I replied. “May you live a thousand years.”
Silian gave the piece of my poem to him. He took the paper, brows furrowing just slightly as he skimmed over the verse. I saw something like disbelief in his expression—as if he had not actually thought I would be able to do it, write a heart-spirit poem as a girl and a villager—but then it was gone.
“Yes,” he said, nodding to himself. “This will work.”
He gave it back to me, and I felt a weight vanish from my shoulders. I had already known it would—I’d felt the heat under my pen after all, seen the radiance of the characters—but part of me had not let myself believe it until I’d heard it confirmed by a real literomancer.
“Cast it during the coronation as you have planned,” he said, efficiently, “and I will see that you are well rewarded once I become emperor. I bid you farewell.” He turned to leave.
Silian looked as surprised at his sudden departure as I felt. “Do youhave to go so soon, my love? It is summer solstice, a holiday. Surely you have some time to spare, today of all days. And besides, we have an honored guest.” She gestured at me.
“I have my filial duties to attend to. Silian—Lady Yin—please accept my apologies.”
We watched him go, bewildered. His golden-white robes swept the carpet as he crossed the room, aglow in the waning light of the sunset.
“Maro,” I said, before I could stop myself.
He paused at the door.
“He did it for you.”
That quiet, extraordinary child, who had suffered so much for so long—he had never once thought to save himself. Even as they forced the childmaking duties upon him, even as they punished him with vicious beatings and threw him into the flames of war, he had only been thinking of protecting his brother—his family—his burning star.
The boy who had once saved him from his tree.
“Until the day you poisoned the fish,” I said softly, “he was never against you. Until the day you tried to kill him, he had never stopped trying to save you. Seven years, an impossible spell, a poem wrung out of love—Maro, he did it for you.”
“Then he has learned nothing,” Maro replied without emotion. He opened the door and left us.
That night, the world began to rumble.
I felt it first under my feet. Then I heard it: in the rattle of porcelain bowls on the shelves, the rustle of cypresses outside my pavilion. Far in the sky, a fiery rend had been ripped out of the night, and from the tear fell hundreds of red burning stars.
“What…” I began to gasp out, as panicked shouts erupted from the courtyards, the gardens, the nearby pagodas. Then I saw it. The Crown of the Azalea House, roaring as it shot up into the sky, its dragon body thrashing and frenzied and untamed.
It could only mean one thing: the emperor was dead.
61WHITE
They ruled the emperor’s death an illness. There was no evidence of foul play or poison, the imperial doctors declared; it was only natural and a long time coming.
But still, there was something strange about the timing of it. Strange and frightfully convenient.
The emperor was sick,Hesin had said,but even so, it could take years or decades for him to finally die and pass down the Crown.
It could have happened any other time—years before or years after. So why, I could not help but wonder, had it happened the day I took my poem to the West Palace?
Maro,I thought,have you shown me who you really are?
The funeral and coronation were scheduled very quickly after that—the funeral just two days after the emperor’s death, the coronation right after. Time was of the essence. There was still an angry red tear in the sky and an imbalance between Heaven and the Ancestors. Until the dragon was tamed and a new emperor was enthroned, the nation would remain vulnerable.
The scent of ash and burned things hung in the air.
There were even more people present at the funeral than had been during my wedding, all dressed in ghost-white. I could see the full scale of the event from where I sat on the top terrace, overlooking the square before the Hall of Heavenly Supremacy. Even the bonfires below me were white, enchanted to burn much hotter than usual.
Servants and eunuchs busied themselves burning items for the emperor to enjoy in his afterlife: coins and silver treasures, silk gowns and porcelain plates, scrolls of classics and poetry, water-painted murals, ivory game sets, bamboo flutes, wooden zithers. They burned spells too, contributed by his sons and the nation’s literomancers, their glowing characters vanishing as they were swallowed by the white flames.
They even burned an army of soldiers and horses, carved from sandalwood, so he could be well protected in the spirit world.
