Page 59 of The Poet Empress
Those letters made Maro feel awful, but there was nothing he could do. Even if Father and Master Ganji allowed him to go home—and they would never—there would not be time. He had to keep working, because Tensha was waiting. For him,blooddid not mean family but country.
And bringing his mother with him wasn’t an option either. He could only imagine the shameful whispers that would come out of doing so.Eleven years old already, heir to the nation, and he still needs his mama by his side.
Maro continued his work. He built roads from the capital to Ru’en.He built new bridges in Lie City to replace the ones destroyed in a fire. He created a diversion in the Aricine River, at Snake Bend, to prevent the annual flooding of several nearby towns.
Then an edict arrived, summoning him to the Eriet Mountains.
“His Majesty calls the first son to the Tuyun Fortress,” read the messenger. “He calls him to build the Salt Road.”
The air is so thin in the mountains. Every breath feels like a gasp. The winds here bite no matter how thick my cloak!
I hate how cold, cold, cold it is.
A few hundred men had come with him—soldiers and strategists, doctors and cooks, advisors and longtime tutors. There was even an astronomer to interpret omens from Heaven.
Nestled between the two looming peaks of Long Peace and Fallen Sun, the Tuyun Fortress seemed almost small amidst the endless snow and dark rock. Inside its stone walls, it was not much warmer. Even when Maro was snuggled deep in his fur blankets, he found his nose was still freezing and runny.
I miss the palace. I miss Mother. I miss my friends. Is it unprincelike to admit so?
He dreamed of Mother at night. Of Song Siming and Little Rain, laughing as they wrestled him amidst golden trumpet flowers. He had not been home, or spoken with anyone his age, since the day he’d received his sigil.
Every night, after a long day of forging the Salt Road, he would spend the night in his room, freezing and alone. He was often too tired to read or study, but he would make the time to huddle by a lantern and write in his journal. Sometimes, he composed poems.
In the mountains, no sound but the wind;
No leaf-stirrings or songs of the cuckoo.
How long until I can talk again with a friend?
Even some rain-patters at my window would do!
About one month into the campaign, a delegation from the capital arrived.
Master Ganji came into Maro’s bedchamber, where he was wolfing down a supper of lukewarm noodles and cured ham. “It is not good news,” the tutor said, stone-faced. “Your brother is here with his mother and advisors. I can only assume the Maple Pavilion has come to sabotage our work.”
Maro barely even heard the rest of the speech. He’d dropped his chopsticks at the wordbrother. A moment later, he was laughing as he ran outside, across the snowy interior of the fortress. “Terren! Terren!”
The second son was standing at the gates, his cloak shining red in the sunset. He was accompanied by his own traveling party of about a hundred men, but Maro didn’t care about anyone else. He made straight for Terren and pulled him into a crushing hug. “I missed you. I missed you more than anything.”
Well, it was notexactlytrue. During those lonely nights, it had not been Terren he dreamed of, but his friends he used to play with, Song Siming and Little Rain. But, Maro thought, maybe it was the playing that he missed. With anybody, it didn’t matter. Those gentle days under the sway of magnolia trees, sparring between the trumpet flowers, chasing cats and bee-eaters—maybe it was those he missed most of all.
In any case, Maro had never been so happy to see anyone as he did his brother.
“Does that mean you’ll play with me?” Terren blurted out.
He had grown in the time they’d been apart. His sigil was brighter, like bayberries newly ripening. He was still small for his age, but he no longer looked so tiny he could break at any moment. He had accumulated a few new scars too, around his collar and his ears, and Maro wondered how many trees he had fallen from over the years.
Maro drew back. “Maybe. We’ll see. I don’t know how much time I’ll have, with the Salt Road needing to be built.” When his brother began to look crestfallen, he took both his hands and said, “How about this? I’ll ask Commander Remi if you can stay with me, if you’d like. My room is too big and too cold for one person.”
Just like in the stories. Families eating at the same table, sleeping under the same roof.
Terren kept his eyes on the snow beneath his boots. In an almost whisper, he said, “I would like that.”
He hadn’t brought much with him from the capital. When the servants helped add a new cot to their room—along with a swathing abundance of warm furs—they brought in only one chest, mahogany and carved with tortoises. As soon as they were gone, Terren left the corner he had been hiding in and crawled over to it, his eyes shiny with excitement. “Maro, I brought something for you.”
“Yeah?” Maro seated himself on the rug across from him.
“Mung bean cakes!” From the chest, Terren drew a smaller box full of the colorful flower-shaped desserts. They weren’t flower-shaped anymore—mung bean cake was brittle, and the journey rough and long—but he arranged the pieces as neat as possible before presenting the box to Maro. “Since you’ve been far from home for so long, I thought you would want some treats from the palace.”
