Page 114 of The Poet Empress
“Wei.”
It was him. Dressed in a flowing white mourning gown, a dragon pin of frost jade threading through his hair. Terren seemed almost nervous as he said, “May I speak with you outside? Alone?”
We went to the terrace outside the hall, overlooking the square. The summer was everywhere in the Azalea House, verdant through the walkways between the pavilions. Even as the ash and smoke lingered in the air, and the fiery tear split the sky, the winds did not stop bringing in new leaves.
“What is it, my prince?”
He leaned against the balustrade. “If I die tomorrow, I should not like such a grand affair for my funeral.” His voice was unusually quiet and strained.
It had not occurred to me that he could bescaredabout his coronation until that moment. Nervous, perhaps, but never scared. I was shocked he even thought about his own mortality—he wore the legendary Aricine Ward, after all.
Perhaps it was his father’s death that prompted this. Or perhaps it was just how imminently his fight loomed. Tomorrow, he was going to have to face the dragon, and he was going to have to face it alone.
“Terren, you are the crown prince. Holding a large funeral for you is tradition.”
“You saw what those thousands of people did in front of my father. Allthe fanfare, all the ceremony—the charade, the theater—I can’t stand it. I loathe to think of people pretending they mourn me when they do not, or praising me when they detest me, or remembering me as kind when I was wicked. I cannot bear the thought of anyone offering to go echo-step with me when they do not mean it.” His voice wavered with real emotion, real fear. “Wei—if I die tomorrow, I beg of you, don’t let them make a spectacle of me in my death. I wish to die quietly, just as I am.”
“I will do my best to convey your wishes.”
He deserved that much from me at least, if I took his life.
He nodded, seemingly assuaged. “There… there is another thing. I have hidden a stash of my Blessings. Dao spells, twenty thousand of them, for the House to use in the event of my death.”
That surprised me, but not overly much. During one of our first nights, in his bedchamber, I had watched him write three Blessings in almost no time at all. I had not thought it unusual at the time, but now I realized that such velocity must not have been typical. His exceptional talent for literomancy must have allowed him to contribute to the House’s stores and still have plenty left over.
I thought of Muzha having hidden away his?/Yan Blessings, to use after he won the Azalea Civil War. It was not so much of a stretch to imagine Terren had done the same.
“I have never told anyone where. Not even Hesin. Not even Lady Autumn, back when she was still alive. But in case I die tomorrow, someone must know.”
“And you would like it to be me.” Someone of the Inner Court, who shouldn’t even be able to read them.
“I do not know who else I would tell.” His voice was pained. “I may kill people, but I am not so evil I would murder a dynasty. The country has many enemies, and it has become over-reliant on my seal for its military power. I fear for its survival without the Dao sigil. The Blessings will help at least a little—and if I should die tomorrow, turn them over to my brother as you see fit.”
He leaned in and told me where he kept them.
On the balustrade, above a nest of lilies, his fingers laced over mine.
“And if you don’t die tomorrow?” I looked up at him. “If you should survive and become emperor?”
“… I don’t know. I have never thought that far.”
His mother, his tutors, his advisors—they had only ever taught him to think of the fight, not of what to do after winning it. “Surely you have at least decided on your era name?”
He shook his head. “I do not think I will choose one. It has always seemed presumptuous to me, to take on an era name—as if one has the right to decide what one’s own reign will be like.” He looked out at the torn-apart sky, over the rooftops of the House’s beautiful pavilions to the haze of valleys beyond. “Let the nation decide what to say about me, what to call me. Let the people decide their own truth.”
That night, I went to my servants’ graves.
The emperor’s funeral had heightened the connection to our Ancestors, so it was a good time to remember others who had passed. And anyway, I wanted to visit them. I needed them.
Deep in the cypress grove, by the servants’ quarters, stood their twenty-two graves in a bed of moss and wildflowers.
I burned incense and presented gifts for each of them in turn—a bamboo flute for Teela, hydrangeas for the gardener Aron, a crane-colored dress for Wren. I put down baskets of dates and mandarin oranges for everyone. I set down a pot of tea for Aunt Ping, because I could still hear her scolding me—Hot water is good for the bones, heh? You young people don’t know how to take care of yourself…
When I was done paying my respects, I stood before all of them and confessed, into the humid darkness, “Tomorrow morning is the coronation. I am no longer sure whether to kill Terren or let him live.”
It should have been an obvious choice. To kill my torturer, to avenge my friends and the rest of the nation, to prevent a violent ruler from ascending the throne and the warlike Dao power from being amplified—to not let knives rain from the sky again, anywhere,ever—that decision should have been so easy. Most people would not even have to think about it.
But I was not most people, I was petty and vindictive. And I did not want to hand over the position of empress to a person who had betrayed and almost killed me. If I assassinated Terren, it would make Maroemperor and Silian empress, and the thought of the two of them running the nation I could not bear.
