Page 29 of The Poet Empress
So it was that the Azalea Dynasty began to wither, like magnolia blossoms past their season. Jinzha’s father might have reopened the Caeyang Corridor, andhisfather might have begun the golden ageof literomancy, but the young emperor lived up to neither of those legacies. The only thing he lived up to was his own era name.Yonghuan.He threw extravagant parties, of music and nonstop feasts; he siphoned money from taxes to shower those who flattered him with lavish gifts. From the northern borders, he pulled young men from defending the wall to have them dance for him instead.
He had changed. He was no longer Jinzha, the generous-hearted and spirited boy I knew, but the Yonghuan Emperor. He was corrupt and insatiable, imperious and proud. He was, above all else, merry.
It should come as no surprise to you then, Lady Yin, that his sons decided he needed to die.
If the dynasty had not been so strong to begin with—the strongest any had been in Tenshan history—then it surely would not have survived the Joy Emperor’s reign. But an old and sturdy redwood takes many ax-cleaves to fell, and despite the constant raids in the Caeyang Corridor, despite our weakening border in the north and the invasions on our southern coasts, Tensha remained standing. All this is to say that, when the civil war finally began, there was still some semblance of a nation to fight for.
I had tried to warn him.
I had tried to tell the Yonghuan Emperor that his eldest son was conspiring with his second to overthrow him. That his sixth was courting one of the princesses of South Meir, an enemy nation. I tried to tell him to be especially careful of his fifth son Muzha, whose conniving intelligence frightened even me. “I have never seen someone so hungry for power, Your Majesty. He is a serpent waiting for a chance to ambush.”
He clapped me on the back and laughed uproariously.
“Ah, Hesin. Hesin Hesin Hesin. You’ve been this way since we were boys—always worrying over every little thing. But why worry when you can be merry?” He turned to one of the women draped over his shoulder. “Bixiu, sweetheart, fetch my mandolin for me, will you?” To the one on his other arm, he said, “Find some strong wine for my anxious friend, Nina-dear. The stronger the better.” To thethird, with her head in his lap—“Are there any sweet gao from last night’s feast left? Please, Aellan, do find us some.”
When they were gone, I found myself alone with him for the first time in almost thirty years. “Jinzha.” I spoke with all the anger and urgency I could summon.“Your life is in danger.”
He only leaned back on his throne. That faraway smile never faded. “Let me tell you a secret, old friend. A secret that I have told nobody else.”
“Please,” I begged him, “listen to me. Your sons—”
“The secret is this: the dynasty will not fall so long as I am emperor. So long as I hold the Crown, nobody will kill me.”
“You cannot know that!”
“But I do. I made a deal.”
“Jinzha—”
“I spoke to Heaven.”
“Please—”
“I borrowed from the future.”
“What?”
But he never explained, because his concubines had returned. They brought his moon mandolin—a new and bejeweled one, since his old one had broken; wine that smelled as strong as poison; and pastries that looked too colorful to be edible. He asked me if I would stay and hear a new ballad he’d composed, but I was too angry so I turned and left.
That night, the coup happened.
The first son lit the palace on fire, and moments later, the second son betrayed and killed the first amidst the chaos. I fled with Jinzha and his men down the mountain, the hot smoke choking us, all the way to the old capital. We hid there as the Azalea Civil War raged on, as battle after battle erupted between the remaining seal-bearing sons. We waited out the Siege of Long Peace, the Moonlight Maneuver, the Deception at Orchid Gate. We bided our time, disguising ourselves as monks to hide from searching armies, as Guan blood was shed and the heads of fighting men fell like rain.
Muzha, as I’d predicted, came out on top. After he killed all his remaining brothers—with the support of the Sun Clan’s massivearmy—he sent a battalion to the old capital. He checked every man on every street until he found the one with the Qin seal, and then he marched his father—now gaunt and thin after his long exile—back to the palace.
“I will not kill you,” he told him, “for patricide is not the Aolian way.” He laid before the bound emperor a vial of nightshade, a white cord, and a blade so sharp it gleamed. “So you will do it yourself. Choose.”
The Yonghuan Emperor looked from the items to his remaining son to me, who was tied up at his side. “Actually,” he said quietly, “I would like to go for a swim.”
When I went with Muzha to fish his body out of the water, I found the Sanctuary tranquil and moon-flooded, just like the night we’d received news of the Shouyuan Emperor’s death. Mandarin ducks, bobbing in the calm water, made gentle circles around Jinzha’s pale corpse.
After we pulled him out, I knelt for a long time by his side. I gripped his cold hand, thinking about how stale and lifeless the palace was without all that music, how strangled it had become under all that heavy silence. A cowardly part of me wanted to go echo-step with him, to follow him into the afterlife, but Muzha would not let me.
“You have sworn an oath, Hesin,” he said. “You will live and serve me. Round up all our allies and remaining patriots, and help me tame the Crown.”
I did. He did. The dragon was subdued without complications, and Muzha became the Yongkai Emperor. Then the famine began.
19RUMORS
