Page 28 of The Poet Empress
“Then what happened?”
His smile was sad, wistful. “I shall tell you—if you would bear with my digressions. I will start not with the last prince I served but the first. To understand the whole truth, Lady Yin, we must start from the beginning.”
18SANCTUARY
The decline of the Azalea Dynasty began with our prince’s grandfather. The Joy Emperor, they called him. His era name was Yonghuan:everlasting merriment.
I knew him as Jinzha.
I met him shortly after I came to the palace, after having been castrated at the age of six. He was a year younger than me, a bright but spoiled child. As a second-rank prince—the son of the emperor’s deceased brother—Jinzha had no interest in either his studies or the affairs of the court. Instead, he spent all his days playing with me and the other young eunuchs.
One of his favorite places was a lake hidden halfway up the mountain. Lush and warm, with a huge waterfall plunging into it from one side, it was the perfect place for a prince to visit without being bothered. He called it his Secret Sanctuary. When we became older, it became simply Sanctuary.
“Hesin, come swim with me,” he would call to me, from where he treaded water deep in the lake. “It is a most magnificent summer day. Don’t tell me you plan to stay on those rocks all afternoon.”
If I refused, he would tease me relentlessly.
“Oh,Hesin.” He would laugh as he splashed cool water on me. “Does your deficiency make you less buoyant? Is that why you are so afraid of the water?”
Jinzha’s sigil was Qin. That was immediately obvious if you ever came near the palace during that era, because there was music everywhere.
Zithers constantly chorused from every pavilion and hall. Nobody was there to pluck them; their strings danced on their own. Bamboo flutes hanging from the eaves blew by themselves, playing joyful odes and mournful ballads in turn. Even the magpies in the pines sang like they were larks. The only time the music stopped was when Jinzha slept.
Once we came of age, I began to serve as his advisor. I handled all the court affairs he loathed—similar to what I do for Terren now. I managed all of Jinzha’s correspondences; I spoke to his guests; I made secret alliances and promised covert favors on his behalf. Since he was only a second-rank prince at the time, his disinterest in politics did not concern me. There was already another seal-bearing prince, the emperor’s heir Han, who was benevolent and could call down lightning.
Then Han and the emperor died, both on the same day.
They were fair deaths, no foul play involved. Deaths on the battlefield. The Shouyuan Emperor had been leading a military campaign for the past decade, and he and his son had conquered most of the Highlands by then. But before they could defeat the last of the Civid kings, an avalanche came crashing down the mountain and wiped out their entire camp.
“I am going to run away,” Jinzha told me, the night we received the news.
We were sitting on the rocks at the edge of the Sanctuary, bare feet dipped in the cool, clear water. Jinzha had tucked in his arms a mandolin, as round as the full moon above, and he was plucking at it absently.
“Your Highness,” I replied, “you know you cannot. You are the world’s last seal-bearer. If you do not take the Crown and rule the nation, who will? If you do not spread your seeds and produce sons, who will keep the magic of our dynasty alive?”
His plucking became more agitated. “Must there be someone commanding the Crown? Must there be more sons with Heaven’s magic?”
“Yes,” I said, baffled. “That is how our nation works, and has since the time of the First Emperor.”
He kicked the water angrily, and the ripples chopped up the moon’s reflection. “I do not care. I am going to run away, and I command you to come with me.”
“I cannot, Your Highness. If you must leave, then someone has to remain in the palace and clean up the mess you make of our nation.”
He was nearly in tears. “You really won’t let me go? After all you claim to care about me, you would force me to fight that ugly dragon? To takeconcubines?”
“I am not forcing you to do anything, Your Highness. You are the heir. You can do whatever you please.”
He threw his mandolin across the pool. It smashed apart on the rock, wood splintering into sharp pieces. A pair of mandarin ducks, screeching, took off into the sky.
He did not run away.
A few weeks later, we gathered in Heavenly Square to watch the coronation. Ten thousand onlookers crowded all of its three terraces to cheer as Jinzha—and his archers, cavalry, and swordsmen—took down the dragon.
After that, he filled his Inner Court. Beautiful women were carted in from far provinces, which he took two or three at a time. He took them in the courtyard under the shedding magnolia trees, and he took them in the Sanctuary behind the waterfall, and he took them on the sloped rooftops of his moonlit pavilions. Eventually, he would produce seven seal-bearing sons. It would be the most of any Tenshan emperor in history.
Jinzha had followed my advice in the end. He had taken the Crown and spread his seeds.
But that was the last time he listened to me. Shortly after his ascension, he demoted me to a low-ranked palace manager and filled his Outer Court instead with sycophants. “Your beauty is as profound as your music,” the men would say in melodic voices, and Jinzha would laugh and laugh.
