Page 49 of The Poet Empress
The corners of his tutor’s eyes crinkled with smile. “Grown-ups don’t play, Maro.”
“Wewill. And we won’t stop until we’ve played ten thousand games. And written ten thousand poems!” Maro lost his balance, flailed his arms, and fell flat on the moss. “Oof.”
Siming picked that precise embarrassing moment to run over to them. “Your Highness! Master Gu said I just did a perfect Arc of Rising Sun.” He hopped from one foot to the other in excitement. “Want to spar? I’ll show you.”
Maro peeled himself off the ground, rubbed his sore elbows, and looked for permission at Master Len. He didn’t like sparring with Siming—Siming didn’t fight fair and cheated at every opportunity—but he was glad for the distraction anyway. It meant he didn’t have to hear awful words about his brother anymore.
Master Ganji’s warnings were far more direct.
“Hewillgo after you,” he said one afternoon, in Maro’s study, during a break in memorizing classics. “It is inevitable. He is the second son, which means that you are all that stands between him and the position of emperor.”
“So? He’ll never win against me in a fight.” Maro tried to open his scroll again, to read one of Tsao Te Shu’s poems, but his tutor snatched it away.
“Maro, you aren’t taking my warning seriously.”
“I am. Can I have my book back?”
“He and his advisors will first try to gain your father’s favor, so that hewill switch his named heir. If that doesn’t work, they will depose you by force. And if that still doesn’t work, they will kill you.”
“Please. I want my book back.” Maro reached for it, but Master Ganji held it high over his head.
“Or perhaps they will skip the first two steps. Perhaps they will go directly for your throat.”
Maro was frightened almost into tears. His hands went protectively to his neck as he stared out the window, trying to bite back a sniffle. Mother said a prince should never cry.
“You know what they write about the Azalea House already.Brother betrays brother, blood forgets blood.The August Emperor, who began the dynasty, killed two of his brothers on his path to the Crown. Your second uncle Nisin killed your first uncle Anzha—even after they’d spent years working together to overthrow the Joy Emperor. And don’t forget your very own baba. You know what he has done for the good of the nation.”
Of course Maro did. It was a story he’d heard many times. Father killing his own kin to save Tensha, sacrificing blood for country. There was nobody in the world Maro admired more than his father, and he had never grown tired of that story.
But it was not theonlystory he’d heard.
“In the villages,” he said sulkily, “and other places far away, families live in the same house. Sometimes even in one room, all together. I read all about them in books. Babas and mamas eat at the same table and hug each other lots, and brothers take care of each other even when they’re all grown. And sometimes there are sisters too.” He had always wanted a sister, but Mother said that even if the Ancestors gave him one, they wouldn’t be able to keep her. Mother said girls were like water, for helping their brothers grow into flowers.
“That isthere,Maro. Nothere.” Master Ganji’s voice had become iron, nonnegotiable. “You are not some lowly peasant. You are heir to the dynasty! For you, the wordblooddoes not mean family but country. Your veins are Tensha’s flowing rivers, your beating heart its capital, your flesh its mountains and fertile valleys. Do you understand?”
Maro watched the bee-eaters darting about the trumpet flowers outside. Every so often, one would catch an insect in its beak, killing it. “I don’t wanna be heir to the dynasty. I wanna be a peasant.”
Master Ganji hit him. With the hard rod of the scroll, right on his seal-bearing cheek. It stung terribly.
“One day you will grow up, Maro, and you will finally understand how good you have it. Men have fought long wars for the kind of power you hold. You will learn to value it. You will learn just how easily it can be taken from you. And you will be grateful.”
Marowasgrateful. He might throw tantrums sometimes, or act childishly on occasion, but most of the time, he was the prince everyone expected him to be—filial, hardworking, and dutiful.
On days he was not in the peach garden with Terren, he stayed in his mother’s Dawn Pavilion, practicing his swordplay until he was too tired to stand. He studied classics long into the night, until the candles in his lanterns burned to stubs, and the replacements burned out too. Even when he was too sick to read, even when he was confined to his bed with his eyes shut, he still memorized poems by running them over in his mind.
One day, as he was bedridden with a cold, he heard his mother coming in. “I have brought some herbal medicine,” she said, setting a tray at his bedside. “It will help with the cough.”
She was crying. She was trying hard to hide it, but Maro noticed anyway and sat up, alarmed. “Mother, what is the matter?”
“Terren has written his first Blessing,” she said, sobbing into her sleeve. “A powerful one.” She recounted to him the events of the day, about the carp and the healing spell, the admiration on the faces of everyone present. “What if the emperor names him heir instead? All that grueling training, all that arduous studying—and he still ended up better than you. I am frightened, Maro, that we have both sacrificed so much for nothing.”
Her words stung worse than Master Ganji’s rod. Seeing her cry—because ofhim—was the worst feeling in the world. Maro left his bed in shame and fell to his knees before her. “I’m sorry. I’m an unworthy son. Forgive me.”
His apology seemed to cheer his mother, at least a little. She gently cupped his cheek, the one with a seal, and said, “You must not let your brother get any further ahead. You must write a Blessing too. I will tellyour masters to relieve you of your lessons for now, and you will spend all your time composing instead.”
He dipped his head. “Yes, Mother.” She gave him a kiss on the top of his head and left him.
Worthless,he scrawled into his journal that day, his calligraphy messy and anguished.Worthless worthless worthless. Why can’t I be smarter? Better?
