Page 35 of The Poet Empress
I never left his side, and neither did the rain, which kept falling out the window in cold bouts.
“Hesin,” he whispered.
I stirred awake; I had fallen asleep against the table next to him. The storm winds coming in from outside had blown the lanterns out, and we were completely engulfed in darkness.
“Tell me the truth,” he continued. I could not see his face. “If I had died, would I have gone down in history as a fool?”
“Your Majesty,” I said, through the lump in my throat.
“The one who killed his father to save his nation, but ended up destroying it. Tell me: is that what they will say about me?” The desperation in his voice was the most emotion I’d ever heard from him.
I was silent. I did not want to tell him what I truly believed, which was that nobody would say anything at all. When the Azalea Dynasty fell, new rulers would write new histories, and the old ones would be forgotten or revised.
“I don’t want to die,” Muzha said. His voice was small and broken, like a child’s. “Not if that is the way I will be remembered.”
By a flash of lightning, I found a lantern near us and managed to light it. Warm light spilled into the damp darkness, and by it I could see how gaunt his face was, how old and tired, though he was still young for an emperor.
I said softly, “It is not too late. Cease using your magic immediately. I will keep hiring the best doctors to look after you. I will put out a search for concubines, and they will give you sons.”
“I cannot stop using my magic, Hesin. The nation needs it.”
“No, we do not.” I found his hand and held it, the way I will always regret never having done for his father in life. “We’ll cede the southern territories to the Islanders. We’ll make treaties with the mountain kings and give back Duilin and Lok-Cividí. We’ll turn over the Corridor to the desert states, and we’ll set up tribute houses at the northern border to broker peace. And if the provinces in the east keep crying for independence, we’ll give that to them too. We will let our enemies walk over us for a while, and we will be weak but still alive, and everything will be all right.” I gripped his hand tight and repeated, “Muzha, everything will be all right.”
He did not say anything more, and I guessed he had fallen asleep again.
That brush with death was what made him finally listen to me. He did not use his magic anymore after that; instead, we paid what we had to pay and ceded what we had to cede. Soon, his health recovered enough to lie with the concubines I’d brought in, and Heaven was kind and gave him sons. Maro and Terren, two years apart—to Lady Sky and Lady Autumn. Four years after that, Isan, to the empress at the time, Qin Rong. When each of them was brought to his bedside, he held the child once before giving them back to their mothers.
“Take care of it,” he said, almost the same words each time. “Make sure it does not gain treasonous thoughts against me when it’s older. And make sure it does not die before we get to use its magic.” Then he sank back into his pillow, lids closing heavily.
The rain came often, those days. I spent my time by his bedside, feeding him bitter medicine as we watched the sky batter the valley beyond his window. We hoped for the only thing left for us to hope: that those who came after us would fix the mess we had created. We hoped that the next generation would be a little less foolish, a little less wicked, and that it might be enough to save a nation.
22WET MARKET
My whole body was still aching by the time they marched me to the main hall for my trial. There was already an examination table set up by the dais. Two Azalea guards shoved a cloth in my mouth before pushing me onto the cold wood.
The room was already crowded with spectators, almost as many as there had been on Selection Day. I could read their banners now, peeking out from between the pillars. There was a literomancer named Bi Xuan and a city official from Dusu. There were merchants of the Nian Clan, in glimmering silver, and sailors of the Qi Clan swathed in blue ribbons. The prince’s half brothers were all present, scattered throughout the room with their allies.?/Lu.?/Guo.?/Feng.
The emperor was absent. Empress Sun stood on the dais with her son Ruyi in her arms, but the throne of blades and flowers sat empty.
Terren was standing alone by a shadowed wall. His expression was unreadable.
“On behalf of my husband the emperor,” declared the empress, “I call upon Imperial Doctor Wu.” A man in flowing black robes stepped forward from the crowd. He was not the same doctor who had taught us about pressure points earlier. “He will determine whether Lady Yin—chosen wife of Prince Guan Terren, the Winter Dragon—has committed treason of the highest degree: falsifying the childmaking act.”
Hundreds of eyes fell on me then. Some of the men wore malevolent smiles, as if hoping I would be found guilty. Perhaps if I were not so afraid and in pain, I might have realized it was because they wanted Terren deposed, but lying splayed there for everyone to stare at, with myheart pounding in my ears, I could only interpret those smiles as them wishing me dead.
The guards strapped me to the table, and it took all the self-control I had not to thrash and fight back. I squeezed my eyes shut. I tried not to be aware of the rough way they tore off my clothes. Of the feel of their hands on my body, the coldness of their instruments prying me open.
In Guishan I had seen a pig once. A whole pig. It had lain on the table at the wet market, crammed between the sugar cane vendor and stacked cages of live chickens, on display for whoever chanced to pass by. Flies as big as mulberries buzzed in the air, vying for places to land on its pink flesh.
Every so often, a customer would stop at the table and haggle with the butcher behind it. After some arguing back and forth, the butcher would saw off a piece of it, wrap it in brown paper, and exchange it for a bundle of old coins.
“She is bleeding,” the doctor said. “There are many recent tears and ruptures, and damage to her internals. When was the last time she visited the prince?”
I was six or seven then, and had never seen an animal so big. I had no idea there could even be so many pieces inside it, twisting and bulging and reeking. I tried to touch the pig—to wake it and ask it what it was doing, sleeping in the market with so many people around—but before I could, the man behind the table yelled at me and slapped my hand away.
“Just last night, Doctor Wu.” Hesin’s voice, far away. “I was the one who let her in. I swear it by the Ancestors.”
“It must have been a rough night,” the doctor said matter-of-factly. “And there is a cut on her throat.”
