Page 50 of The Poet Empress
News of the second son’s Blessing spread through the palace like pollen in spring. Soon, even the lowliest maid was gossiping about it while washing sheets in the river. The same people who had called Terrena waste of Heaven’s magicwere suddenly praising him nonstop.
“I knew it all along,” said one gardener to another as they trimmed the trumpet flowers right outside Maro’s window. “The second prince is the one Tensha has been waiting for, a child extraordinary enough to change the fate of dynasties. His older brother, on the other hand? He is competent but nothing special…”
Maro hid under a blanket and blocked his ears until they went away.
Soon, an imperial edict arrived from the South Palace. “The emperor’s birthday is in three months’ time,” the messenger read off a scroll. “He invites his eldest son to demonstrate his literomancy in front of the leaders of the Great Clans and other distinguished guests.”
Maro knew exactly what the edict meant.
Father was disappointed in him. Father wanted him to write his own Blessing, as soon as possible, to avoid the embarrassment of his first son and heir being outshone by his second. Father had set him a deadline.
Worthless,he wrote again, in huge characters that took up an entire page.
He didn’t leave the Dawn Pavilion after that. In Hesin’s account, it had seemed as if Lady Sky was the one who’d kept him there—not to be disturbed except for one meal a day,the eunuch had said—but that had painted her as unfairly cruel. In truth, the resolve had come from Maro himself. He forbade himself from doing anything except study, and he did so from dawn to high moon. When his own mother knocked on his door any fewer than three times, he did not answer. When servants entered for any other reason than to refill his inkpots and paper supply, he would yell at them to go away.
Every day, in his journals, he tracked his progress.I think I’m close,one entry would say.I can feel the warmth of magic under my pen.The one after it might declare, dejected,No, everything is still awful. I’m not close at all.As the emperor’s birthday drew nearer—as the three months turned to weeks, then days—his entries became more and more frantic. I could tell exactly which days he cried, because the ink would be blurred and the paper wrinkled.
Two days before the deadline, Maro heard movement outside his window.
When he opened it and saw who it was, he felt sick in the stomach. “You can’t be here! What if someone sees?”
Terren had to stand on tiptoes to reach the windowsill. He rested his chin on the ledge, between all the golden trumpet flowers, and his eyes were wide and pleading. “Ma-ro. Play with me.”
“I can’t.”
“Please?”
“Leave me alone.”
“Please?”
“Find other friends.”
“Please!” He produced a crinkled-up paper from his pocket and held it out over the windowsill. Its characters shone lively as fireflies, and Maro’s breath caught right in his throat.A Blessing.
Terren knew. Of course he knew. He was far too clever to not have figured out why his brother had stopped going to the garden.
Maro took the spell with a shaking hand, eyes tracing over that beautiful, familiar calligraphy. There was so much magic in those words. Words that, in two days, wouldsave him.
Words that would impress not just the emperor, but all his distinguished guests too. Words that would finally make his mother and his tutors proud of him. Words that would make all the people of Tensha respect him at last, instead of seeing him as a source of shame.
His brother’s words, but it wouldn’t matter, because nobody would ever know the truth.
“Thanks.” He smiled and gave them back to him.
Terren’s eyes widened with surprise. “You don’t like it?”
“Of course I like it!” Maro laughed as he pressed his own cheek tothe windowsill, watching the bee-eaters and the golden flowers, the hazy peaks in the distance. “But I’ll be emperor one day, remember? I’ll have to lead the nation. And when I do, I’m going to do it with integrity. With pride.”Your veins are Tensha’s flowing rivers, your beating heart its capital, your flesh its mountains and fertile valleys.“I can’t begin my reign by cheating, you know. I can’t make my people believe I wrote a Blessing that I didn’t. I would rather fail with honesty than succeed without honor. Better the whole world be ashamed of me than for me to be ashamed of myself.”
“Ma-ro.”
“Hmm?”
“Catch it!”
When Maro blinked in confusion, Terren only kept tugging at his sleeve excitedly. “That feeling,” he squeaked. “Catch it! Catch it in a poem!”
I will lead the nation with integrity, with pride.
