Page 45 of The Poet Empress
If she sensed my mounting anger, she gave no indication. “How considerate of you, my dear. There is no famine in the capital, being next to the House and all its magic, but I suppose I cannot fault a village mind for not knowing better.” Her gaze brushed over my carriage. “It is only ashame that people will not know who to thank for such thoughtfulness. After all, you carry no emblem.”
“I am not doing this for thanks, Your Majesty.”
“Oh? Then, what for?”
We turned a corner, onto an even larger street. The crowd erupted with bickering laughter as they fought for wines and jostled each other for crates of mooncakes. There were not so many who were reaching for the Cypress Pavilion’s rice, but I did spot Wren going to a small boy under a willow tree, dirty and hollow-cheeked. When she placed a sagging bag in his thin arms, he clutched it like it was precious jade.
There is no famine in the capital,the empress had said, but how could that be true? There were people who suffered everywhere. It was only that here, they were easier to look past.
“What for?” she pressed, when I had not replied. “Why fight so desperately to keep your position of empress? Why let yourself be planted night after night, like wet soil, for the small chance at an imperial son?”
I could no longer keep my fury in check. “Perhaps you might know that reason already, Your Majesty,” I snapped. “After all, you are empress yourself.”
Her smile only sharpened. “You’re right,” she said, completely calm. “I do know.” She nodded behind us, at the second-rank concubine Wang Suwen waving at the crowd. Her servants were handing out chess sets of glazed ivory.
“The Wang Clan—pitiful. A shadow of its glorious Liang Dynasty days, when fifteen of its sons sat the throne, fat and sumptuous. If Suwen became empress, it would restore at least a little of her clan’s lost honor. No doubt that is why her father signed her up for the selection.”
She gestured towards Veris, whose servants were doling out jars of plum wine. “The Jin are equally sad. They might be wealthy, but wealth is all they have. Though they control many districts outside the heartlands, they have never had much success inside the palace. They are desperate for prestige, like starved wolves. If the Jin girl ever became mother to a seal-bearing son, imagine how much they could raise the price of their wine.”
She then pointed a nail at Lady Chara, whose carriage bloomed with azaleas. From it, her servants were doling out jars of salt and spice.
“Chara may not have a clan, but she is a royal of Hai, a kingdomsurrounded by enemies. I hear one of her brothers recently died in a battle. Heartbreaking.” She did not sound heartbroken. “If Chara had given the House a prince with magic, she would have leverage to ask Tensha for military aid. But she did not, so she cannot.”
She turned back to me, her smile like a honed edge. “Now you understand, my dear. Power might be useful to the few of us, but it is only wasted on the likes of you. It seems you have cut off the tongue of a young girl—one with her whole life ahead of her—for no reason at all.”
But it wasn’t for no reason,I thought, panic rising. The empress did not know that if I ever tried to escape or get out of the betrothal, Terren would kill me. And I had to punish my enemies to deter them. Ciyi had told me so.
I had only been trying to survive.
Even as I told myself this, I could not stop myself from hearing Jia’s tongueless burbling, feeling that dark blood again on my hands.
“Or perhaps,” the empress continued sweetly, “you did it simply because you wanted to. Because it felt good. How warm was that blood? How soft was that tongue? You must have liked it very much.”
We turned a corner again. The sky had darkened now, the full moon enormous in the sky. Two men in the crowd were fighting each other over a porcelain tea set Liru Syra was giving out, pushing aside a girl with the head of a pig.
Not just her, I realized with horror. Everyone else, too. Pink and speechless and naked, flies skittering across their pale flesh.
I blinked and they were people again, limned by the moonlight. Stooped grandmothers, laughing children, husbands with a gentle arm around their wives.
I was going to be sick.
Empress Sun leaned closer, and her horse brushed right up against mine. When she spoke, I could feel her warm breath on my neck. “It seems, dear, that you are harder to kill than I thought. But I have no doubt that you will end up dead, one way or another. Girls like you, they never survive long in the palace.”
28A THOUSAND LOTUSES
The parade ended when the gifts were gone. The concubines spent the rest of the evening wandering the markets by the slow river, laughing as they ate street food or admired the moon overhead. It was round, yellow, and so bright I could not see any stars.
“Lady Yin, you do not look so well.” Wren arrived with a plate of mooncakes. She offered one to me, but I did not take it.
“It was her.” I stared at the maple leaves drifting on the water. “The empress. She was the one who told Sun Jia to spread the rumors.”It seems, dear, that you are harder to kill than I thought.“It makes sense. Jia never wanted to hurt Terren. She wanted only to have me dead so she could become empress in my place. But Sun Ai? She has motive enough to also want to ruin the prince.”
Wren seated herself on the boardwalk beside me. Bulbul birds, white-crested, played above us from atop garlands of colorful lanterns. “Perhaps she is eyeing the throne for her own son. With the second son deposed, there would be one fewer prince between Ruyi and the Crown.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps it was also to avenge her friend, Lady Autumn.” It was only a guess, but in Hesin’s story, they had been close. Strolling in the gardens, sharing tea in the Maple Pavilion, sitting together in the peach garden on sunny days. “Perhaps after all these years, she has still not forgiven him for killing her.”
There could have been other reasons, too. Maybe she wanted to weaken the Guan Clan so that the Sun might sit the throne once again. Maybe she was working to remove Terren for the same simple reason I was—because he was wicked, violent, and unfit to rule.
It could have been anything, but the fact remained the same: she had no qualms about killing me for it then, and she had even more reason to want me dead now. I knew she would not kill me outright—not while retaliation from Terren was a possibility. But still, I could not shake the memory of my neck’s skin tingling, when she had whispered to me her threats.
