Page 33 of The Poet Empress
He didn’t respond.
He didn’t even seem awake.
For a long time, I could only stare at him, uncomprehending. It must be some sick joke from Heaven, that my life should be in the hands of a man too drunk to even look at me. That I should have to beg someone who hadtorturedme to avoid execution.
And the worst part was, when the doctors came tomorrow, it would be only me who died. Terren might lose his throne, but that was all he would lose. I was a girl, and replaceable, and once they found me undutiful, they could simply throw me away and find another. And I hated and hated that they could.
I left him there and ran, a choked sound escaping my throat. Maybe this was what the Ancestors had decided for me. Maybe I had been born only to suffer and then die, and that was why all this was happening to me.
Larkspur had been born to suffer and die. Even Ma, holding her tiny body in her arms, listening to her feeble puffs of breaths, held no hope in her gaunt eyes. Even Ma knew that there was nothing she could do when the Ancestors had already made their decision.
I didn’t know how far I ran, under the darkness of night. How many turns I made, how many bridges I crossed, how many beautiful and indifferent pavilions I passed. When I looked up again, I found myself in a bamboo grove at the edge of the palace, towering silver in the moonlight.
I slumped against one of the trees, tired to my bones.
My neck ached terribly.
When I had been young enough to believe I could become anything, I had imagined myself a traveler. One with a rickety wagon and a thin but dependable horse, with no other purpose than to bring sundries and stories from afar. Wherever I stopped, I would pass them around, both the sundries and the stories.
There are monsters in the bamboo forests,I would say to all the village children, as we all gathered around a warm fire.Fanged demons with a face like an eyeless monkey’s and a body like a carp’s. I have seen them myself: swimming through the air, tail moving back and forth as they weave through the dark trees.Maybe some of them would be scared enough that they’d sleep holding their ma’s hand. Maybe some of them would take it as a challenge and venture into the forest themselves, that very night, looking for the truth.
A wind shuffled the leaves overhead.
I looked up, at the canopy and the stars beyond, and that was when the idea came to me. A foolish one, but I was desperate enough that I would have done anything.
When Lady Chara had demonstrated all those techniques to us, she had used bamboo.
I didn’t know what the doctors would be looking for tomorrow when they examined me. Maybe the childmaking act made a girl magic inside—and they would check to see whether I glowed. Maybe they would stab a silver needle into my belly and see if it sprouted vines and blossomed flowers. Maybe they would press their ear to my chest, listening for the hum of the act between my frantic heartbeats.
Whatever it was, I was not going to get it from Terren.
It did not take long before I found a stick about the size of the one Lady Chara had used. I used a rock to saw it to the right length, then I lay on the cold soil and pushed it beneath my gown.
It wouldn’t go in at first. I repositioned the stick and pushed some more. When it still would not budge I pushed even harder, biting my lip against the pain. I had no idea whether I was doing the right thing. They had spent a month teaching us how to please a man, but nobody had ever mentioned how it was supposed to feel for a woman.
Ma had told me that the childmaking activity was only natural. That every girl in Tensha was born knowing how to do it.
Tears leaked from my eyes with every push. She had been lying. I knew that for certain now. If she had been telling the truth, it would not hurt as unbearably as it did.
I was not sure how much would satisfy the doctors—how much of it would make me glow, or make the needle blossom, or make my heart hum—so I kept shoving the bamboo inside me for as long as I could bear it. I did not stop until my insides burned like fire, until my hands were sticky with foul blood.
I couldn’t walk afterwards. I couldn’t even stand. For a long time I just lay there, curled in the dew as the night passed me by, crying softly enough that nobody could hear me.
21BEACON IN THE STORM
“What caused the famine, exactly?” I had asked Hesin, during the second of our dawn meetings. As always, cold fog blanketed the Palisade Garden; ghost flowers bloomed soft and pale around us. In the distance, I could hear the cries of cuckoos, though what they grieved for I could not say.
“Nobody knows, other than the fact that it is magic. It cannot be solved by ordinary means.” Hesin shook his head, rueful. “But that didn’t stop Jinzha’s successor from trying anyway.”
The Yongkai Emperor looked so much like his father. Rigid cheekbones, clever eyes, long dark hair that fluttered loose past his shoulders. The only thing he did not have was Jinzha’s irreverent smile.
Muzha never smiled.
My oath did not require me to love him, and I did not. He had killed his kin to claim the Crown, and had forced me away from the release of echo-step and into his service. But even so, I served him to the best of my ability. He was the only seal-bearer left, just like Jinzha had been, and the future of Tensha was once again balancing on a needle’s tip.
For the first few years after the civil war, it was a mad scramble to stabilize the nation. I organized what remained of our allies, promising them double and triple what we had in years past; I did another accounting of our palace’s resources, scrounging every leftover Blessing from previous princes I could manage.
“We need more magic,” I told Muzha urgently. “Debts from yourfather’s reign are piled high, our armies are weakened from war, and the provinces are divided. You need to make sons.”
