Page 125 of The Poet Empress
It was the officials of the Outer Court, with their soft faces and shaven chins and bee-eater robes, who had no idea what the world was really like.
Had they seen how the country lay bleeding in the famine, had they seen the rice paddies dried and the wheat fields blanched, had they seen the babies curled dead next to their mothers or buried a sister on a hill with their own hands, they would have known the truth. And it was not conquest, not glory, notblades.
Truth was simpler. It was warm bowls of rice on the dinner table, enough for everyone, not only young sons who were still growing. It was families sleeping in the same room. Villagers working together, staving away demons or something worse that plagued them. It was suffering. It was enduring. It was living.
Isan,I thought,you have no idea. No idea how hard it is, living.
It is not something you can learn from inside the palace walls.
And if it meant we had no swords to defend our borders, so be it. If it meant the Cividí would come raiding the west, so be it. If it meant the Lian charging in from the north, and retaking Tieza, and all the other territories, then let them. Maybe they would be better rulers. Maybe they would not allow us to starve. And if it meant provinces rebelling and the dynasty crumbling like dust, if it meant emperors and thrones sinking into the ashes of history, if it meant Tensha, with all its culture and commerce and glory, becoming only a distant memory, then let them, there was nothing so awful about oblivion.
It could be the greatest nation in the world, the most magnificent empire there ever existed. But if it could not keep its own children safe and fed, was it really something worth fighting to save?
Isan’s expression was pained. I could tell he was still thinking hard about how to rescue his new era. Possibly he was imagining selling his magic on the Salt Road. Shipping crates of apricots and pears across icy oceans. Possibly he was making the calculus of which provinces to cede first, to ensure the capital and the heartlands could still be defended.
It is just like the first years of Muzha’s reign,he might have thought to himself. Maybe he was even thinking of making sons to help him.
I let him agonize over it a bit longer before putting him out of his misery. “Do not worry, Isan. Your brother has left you Dao Blessings to defend your new nation. Twenty thousand of them.”
His chin jerked up as his body sagged with relief. “Twenty thousand…?”
I waited. A moment later, he seemed to finally register my implication. His eyes became alert, his tone that of cautious negotiation. “What are your conditions?”
“There are four.”
“Speak them. But do not make them unreasonable.”
“One: you use your amplified power strictly for famine aid, at least in the beginning. Not to export and replenish our treasury, nor to appease the Great Clans. Your debt to them can come later. Your people come first. We will start with Nama District and South-Ulan, the places that have been hit the hardest, and we’ll move northeast from there. If you perform to my satisfaction, I will release your brother’s Blessings to you—as I see fit, over time.”
“That is reasonable, and truth be told, I was planning to do similar. But you do not have to speak so harshly with me, Wei. We are negotiating. You need notcoerce.”
“Two: I am absolved of all my crimes. Reading, literomancy, stabbing a prince in the heart. Anything else I have missed naming. I walk free, back to my village, and every household in Lu’an gets an annual stipend from the palace for perpetuity. My brother, Yin Bao, gets free admission to the imperial academy.”
“Agreed.”
“Three: Terren gets a quiet burial. Nobody attends except for you, and Kiran, if you believe his regard for his brother is genuine.” I thought about it some more and said, “And Yong Hesin, if the eunuch should wish it.”
It surprised him, but he said, “Agreed.”
“Hesin walks free too,” I added. It had not been one of my original conditions, but now that I was thinking of him, it felt only right to include it.
“He already does,” Isan said, and it was my turn to be surprised. “One of the first things I did after my coronation was ask him to be my advisor.”
“And he said yes?”
“Not at first. To be sure, he said he was tired. He wished to go echo-step with Terren. But I managed to convince him to stay. I told him that the nation is in crisis and needed someone with his experience to put it to order.”
“An unkindness,” I said quietly, feeling a twinge of pity for the eunuch.
“A ruler cannot always afford kindness. What is the fourth condition, Wei?”
I lifted my chin and met Isan’s eyes. My last request was going to be the most difficult of them all. “It concerns Terren’s remaining concubines. Tradition would dictate that they go home with gifts. But…”
Wang Suwen and her brother who needed employment. Liru Syra and her clan that hungered for glory. Zou Minma, from Guishan, who dreamed of becoming mother to a prince.
A dream she had clung to so feverishly, I was sure, because it was the only one she had known how to dream.
“But should they wish it, they shall be permitted to stay in the palace’s Inner Court. Should they wish it, they may learn how to read. And if they should further wish it, they may even practice literomancy.”
