Page 20 of The Poet Empress
“No,” I repeated, firmer now. My heart beat faster as I stood to face him. “If I have power as you say, then you cannot make me do anything. Least of allkillsomeone.” It took all I had to keep my voice from wavering. A real Empress-in-Waiting would not let her chief eunuch overrule her own desires.
“Lady Yin—”
“Veris may have stooped low enough to poison me, but I will not be like her. I will not be like anyone in the Azalea House. I refuse to be made cruel.”
I would not be like Empress Sun, who had sabotaged her competition to get to where she was. I would not be like the seal-bearing princes, who had fought their brothers for the Crown ever since they were children. Nothing the House could offer me could ever tempt me to be so heartless.
“You are still thinking like a villager, not an empress,” Ciyi snarled. “If you refuse to be cruel, someone will be cruel to you first. If you refuse to make others suffer, then you will be made to suffer first.” He was so angry he left before our lesson was finished.
12NIGHTS
Not long after the first night, Terren summoned me again. Before entering, I paused at the top of the tower to take several deep breaths, willing my pulse to steady and my hands to stop quivering.
There was no food on the table this time, only stacks and stacks of paper. A hundred lanterns sat flickering on the rug around the prince, and the room smelled of burning candles and fresh ink.
He was writing spells. I knew because every time he finished inking a line, the characters glowed, like the Blessings from the firecrackers did on New Year’s. They were as beautiful as the Azalea House was terrible. I imagined myself writing one just like it, for Bao and Rui Dan and all the other children.
It was going to be a harvest song, I’d already decided. A harvest song that could be heard all the way in Lu’an, one that would bring gifts to everyone.
Hope stirred through my fear, watching the prince work. Ciyi might have been teaching me how to read, but even he could not teach meliteromancy. If I wanted to learn how to write my own Blessings, could I learn from a skilled literomancer himself?
Though I wanted nothing more than to squeeze my eyes shut and disappear, I forced myself to speak. “Your Highness.” I tried flattery, which had worked on Minma before. “You must be quite skilled, to write Blessings so quickly. I see there are already three completed verses at your side.”
His reply was calm, almost reasonable. “As Azalea House sons, one of our primary responsibilities is to contribute spells to the House’s stores. Unlike other literomancers, our seals can help us. Poems relating to ourown affinities are the fastest and easiest, and it is no feat to compose three of them in a night.” He finished another spell and unrolled a fresh scroll before him. “You should know that the more you speak insincerely, the worse I will torture you. I receive enough flattery during the day that I grow impatient with it at night.”
His tone was not a threat, but his words were. My breathing became as fast as in my nightmares, and something deep in my stomach started churning.
If this night was anything like the last, or like the selection ceremony, then it was only a matter of time before the prince’s calm vanished and those storm clouds of cruelty came. I had to hurry if I wanted to get information out of him. “How do you know when you’ve come up with a spell?”
“Poetry is truth and emotion. Even a small child can recognize both those things instinctively. If you’ve ever heard an affecting poem, you would have felt that stirring in your heart. Magic, waiting to free itself.” He paused to write a fresh character on his scroll with a water-brush. “But some truths are easier to come by than others. Dao Blessings to me are like second nature. Ever since I was young, my blades have always been whispering to me, telling me what they know, guiding me towards their truths. Wei, would you like to see a spell?”
My heart sped up. Even trapped in a room with a man I was terrified of, what remained of the child inside me still remembered how to yearn for magic. “… Yes, Your Highness.”
He nodded. His sigil flashed, and the next moment a sword had drifted from the ceiling to hover in front of me.
It was an old sword, darkened with rust. Terren took one of the poems he had written from his stack and retraced it onto his rug—which was embroidered with a dozen fearsome, cloud-dancing dragons—with the tip of a second sword. I could not tell what the characters said, and he did not read them for my benefit.
The Ancestors accepted the words. The entire poem flashed once, then became a flurry of sparks that shot up to embrace the rusted sword. The sparks became white lilies, which folded delicately over its blade, and when they unfurled again the next moment, all the rust had vanished. The sword had become as shiny as if freshly forged, reflecting the hundred lanterns in the room like a mirror.
“Fascinating, isn’t it?” His smile had become dark and terrible. “This one can go to Ji Province, perhaps. The ministers there keep pestering me for new weapons.” The paper in his hand did not disappear, I noticed, unlike the Blessings we had cast in Lu’an. He let it fall back onto the table.
“How many times can a Blessing be reused?” I hurried to ask, still not knowing when his cruelty would begin. I had previously thought each Blessing could be cast only once. But if the paper had not vanished, perhaps it could be given to the earth once again.
“Mmm. It depends. It could be once or hundreds of times, depending on the quality of the spell, its complexity, its length. But all literomancy has its limits. Each poem can only be used so many times before it loses its magic, before the Ancestors no longer find meaning in it, before its words become wiped from everyone’s memory.” The hovering blade turned in the air until its hilt was facing me. “This spell has at least five or six casts, but since it is one I just wrote, I do not yet know if it is good. Shall we test it out?”
He kept looking at me, as if he meant me to take the sword.
I reached for it hesitantly. It was lighter than I might have guessed, its grip brazier-hot.
“Make a cut,” Terren told me.
I searched the room for something to cut. My gaze swept over the scrolls and lanterns splayed out around the room, the roses seeping out from beneath the moon-brushed windowsill, the young cathaya trees sprouting near the pillars and wall corners. It did not seem prudent to destroy any of the prince’s belongings.
In the end, I cut the sash of my own gown. A band of green silk fluttered onto the rug.
Terren’s eyes never left me. “Wei,” he said, voice suddenly steel, “this is a sword, made for combat. We ought to test it on its intended target, not some arbitrary object.”
Intended target.My whole body turned to ice as I realized what he wanted. The storm clouds, the violence, they had come just as I’d predicted.
