Page 52 of The Poet Empress
Maro looked down at his brother, an awful lump forming in his throat. “Did you set me up?”
Terren tried clumsily to climb onto his back, but Maro shook him off like the autumn wind a leaf.
“Did you set me up.”
His eyes grew huge and brimmed with tears. “No.”
So little, but so much cleverer than he let on. So timid, but that sigil shone so bright. Maro considered him for a long time, feeling like crying himself.
“I believe you,” he said at last, very quietly. “But I have to stop playing with you anyway.”
32FOUR PLEDGES
It snowed the day of my wedding: sparse and scintillating, each flake a fleeting glimmer in the sun. If it had been another man I was marrying, I might have found it beautiful.
If it had been someone else, I might have jumped for joy when Wren and Teela came in with my wedding gown, heavy with azaleas and moon-season roses, or when Fern came bearing a shimmering headpiece that was crowded with leaves of polished gold. When Aini came in with a phoenix shawl, so elaborate it must have taken a thousand days to embroider, I might have felt aflutter as I ran my fingers across its silk. And maybe Aunt Ping would not have said, “Don’t frown so much, heh? Unless you want wrinkles like me,” and would instead have told me to straighten my posture.
If it had been anyone but Terren, I would have laughed with delight when I saw just how extravagant my wedding was. As they paraded my palanquin through the gates to Heavenly Square, I would have counted the lucky lanterns hanging from the balustrades, the banners across the pillars, the tasseled fortune lions with fearsome teeth dancing amidst the audience. And the pots of smoking incense—emblazoned with flying dragons, filling the open square with the aroma of longevity and fortune—I would have counted them too.
But not the guests. There were too many of them. Thousands, at the very least, all bearing banners as they stood amidst red azalea petals, white snow.
My scribe, however, was laughing enough for the both of us. “I have never had such a good view of an imperial wedding!” Ciyi exclaimed, from wherehe marched beside my palanquin. “When Prince Maro wed Lady Song, I was only standing back there!” He pointed at a far corner of the square.
The square was surrounded by three terraces. Envoys led me out of my palanquin and escorted me up the marble steps towards the portico of the Hall of Heavenly Supremacy. On the bottom level sat the distinguished guests. Clan leaders, relatives of the House, and renowned literomancers in black sat on the second. On the highest, overlooking everything, sat the imperial family—the five princes and their entourages, Lady Song and the empress, the other East Palace concubines. Both Jin Veris and Kang Rho nodded to me as I passed, but none of the others would look at me. I took my place next to the prince.
Had it been a different man I was marrying, I might have felt shy.
I might have been as giddy as a young girl as I tried to glimpse my new husband from behind my fan. A husband who would—well, notloveme; I was not that greedy. A husband who would take me into his home and treat me kindly.
He would smile at me in the mornings. “I am off to work in the Administrative District now,” he’d say—because he would be at least a minor official, Ma wanted at least that for me—and then he would give me a polite and perfunctory kiss on the cheek. “Please have dinner ready for me when I come home,” he would say, and then he would not cut me or torture me.
At least once a week, he would take me to the wet market, not far from our home in the heart of Guishan. We would buy a head of cabbage, an inexpensive cut of pork, some flour. “This week, I’ll make dumplings,” I would say, and his eyes would crinkle with delight. Once a month, he would send money back to Ma and Ba, and Bao would be able to eat as many prunes and sweet things as he wanted. When he got a bonus, it would go towards my brother’s tuition. “I support him going to a good school wholeheartedly,” he’d say, because he would believe in the value of education. “Perhaps one day, he will attain an even higher post than I have.”
I would have been so happy during that wedding.
Even if it was a small one, even if it had only the villagers of Lu’an in attendance instead of several thousand bannered men, I bet I would have laughed and danced with everyone there.
“You may now perform your pledges,” the Minister of Rites intoned from behind us.
Terren and I knelt on the top terrace, three steps apart. He was not looking at me. His eyes stayed on the rug, which was embroidered gold with dragons, matching his ceremonial robe.
It was the first time I had seen him in anything other than gray. His dragon gown was striking in its redness, its silk gleaming as bright in the sun as the sigil on his cheek. His hair did not fall wild but was instead kept neat, in a top knot, by a gold pin in the shape of yet another dragon.
I had no idea how Hesin had convinced him to look so presentable.
Or to hold back on his wine. He was only a little drunk today—even I could barely tell. If not for the barest whiff of rice wine in the air, and the slightest bit of unsteadiness in his posture, I would not have known at all.
We performed our ceremonial kowtows. Four of them, to four beats of a gong, our foreheads pressing all the way onto the cold snowdust on the rug. They symbolized the same four pledges every new bride and groom in Tensha, even villagers, made on their wedding day.
For each other and our children, care.
For our parents and the Ancestors, piety.
For our community and our nation, duty.
For the emperor and Heaven, obedience.
“Rise,” the minister said.
