Page 94 of The Poet Empress
I had so many stories.
Did you know,I imagined myself telling him,that there are eight palaces, six hundred pavilions, and two hundred and forty gardens in the Azalea House? Have you ever heard of cats with holly leaves for fur, or larks with pine needles for feathers? And the dragon, it is real too. I have seen it in the sky myself.And his eyes would have gone so wide.
But a much larger part of me knew the truth: I could not go home.
As we arrived at the end of the palace road, where it split off into a fork, I told my carriage driver—a sharp-nosed eunuch with hardened cheeks—to halt. To Mi Yung, I said, “Take half the provisions south to Lu’an, and bring a few servants and guards with you. If anyone asks after me, tell them I am well.” I could not help but remember Ma holding my hand and weeping that night, terrified that Prince Terren would hurt me. “Tell them that I have never slept anywhere so comfortable, nor eaten so much. Tell them I am very happy.”
She blinked with surprise. “Will you not go yourself, Lady Yin?”
“I will meet you back in the palace in one month’s time,” I said, in a tone that left no room for negotiation.
Even though I had fulfilled my original purpose, of bringing gifts back and helping Bao go to school, I had a greater one now. I was no longer a villager but a future empress. The Rice Wife. Even if those roles would no longer be mine after I killed Terren, I still felt the weight of their duty. I would perform them until the very end.
There were others looking to me now—Han Village, Liushu, Halfhill at Snake Bend. The letters sent to me had been from all over the country, places that were not on maps or mentioned in books. They were all counting on me to ensure the next emperor who sat the throne was a kind one—not one who rained down knives and suffering with his amplified Dao magic.
I had to finish my poem. I had to kill Terren. Even if it broke me to pieces, knowing that the road I was traveling was the one that led me farthest from my family.
Wait for me, Ma,I thought, into the darkening sky.Ba, things will be good again. I promise.
After Mi Yung was gone, I took the other half of the servants, supplies, and horses, and rode straight for Tieza.
We traveled anonymously. We stripped the carriages of their flowers and Guan banners, of anything that identified us as from the House, and draped blankets over our horses to cover up their leafed manes. I put on a less extravagant silk dress, Ciyi donned the purchased uniform of a city magistrate, and my servants exchanged their shining red livery for the more mundane armor of hired guards. To anyone we passed by, I would have looked like the mistress to a wealthy official from the capital, traveling with him on an imperial errand.
“Why the north?” Ciyi grumbled from inside the carriage we shared, fidgeting with the flaps of his scholar’s headdress. He was evidently not used to wearing one.
Tieza. The district where Terren had fought, the place named on his mother’s grave. Something had happened to him there, I wascertain. Something so awful, so unprecedented, that it had turned him from the timid and loving boy he had been into the monstrous thing he was now.
“To delight our prince,” I replied without emotion. “He had fought in Angkin City many years ago, as a youth, and he told me once he left something there. I want to bring it to him as a surprise.”
He crossed his arms, his frown deepening. “Prince Terren’s edict spells out, very clearly, that our destination is Lu’an. What if he kills me for letting you change course, just like he killed all your other servants?”
He was terrified, understandably. The morning after Terren had massacred my servants, I had found the scribe huddled behind a potted mandarin tree in my parlor, shivering like a cornered mouse.
“Ciyi, I told you already. As long as you remain loyal to me, he won’t hurt you.” I repeated the words I had said to him then. “Our prince holds me very dear now—everyone in the palace can see it. He will not harm anyone under me unless I let him, and I have told him specifically to spare you.”
He seemed to untense a little at the assurance, though he still looked extremely upset. “Why,” he muttered under his breath, though not so quietly I couldn’t hear him, “did I ever agree to teach you to read?” He crossed his arms and stared sulkily out the window, as if a great injustice had been done to him.
I had told many lies that day to get him to crawl out from behind that tree, lies so wicked that a year ago, I would have shivered at them. I had told him I was the one who bade Terren kill all the servants.
They know how to read,I had said,as you know. And I’ve grown paranoid that they might use their literacy against me.My mouth had been ash as I spoke those lies, but I was already getting used to the taste.Now that Hesin turned out a traitor, who knows how many more are hiding in the palace? In this political climate, it is much better to be safe.
I’d seen it in Ciyi’s eyes—the disbelief, the fear, the disgust. Even someone as dishonest and power hungry as he was had judged me ruthless beyond redemption. But it didn’t matter. I had to convince Ciyi that I had Terren under my control. If I didn’t, he might decide to betray my literacy to the West Palace—and pray that the invaluable information would lead to his pardon. Teaching a woman to read might be an unforgivable crime, but there was a tipping point where it actually becamesaferto plead mercy from Maro—however unlikely that mercy came—than to risk being slaughtered serving under Terren. I had to make sure we never reached that point.
Besides, having Ciyi be afraid of me was assuring. A thing I’d grown to like. I had discovered that there were few things dependable in the Azalea House, and fear was one of them.
As for Terren, I was not that worried. I had an idea about how to explain why I had gone off to Tieza. It was a dangerous one, one that would have never worked before—but our relationship had changed over the past few months. It might work now.
We rode night and day. Our horses held the magic of the House, and they ran fast and tirelessly—but even so, there was no time to lose if I wanted to make it to Tieza and back before month’s end. If everything went smoothly on the road, I would still only have two days in Angkin City, the base of Terren’s military campaign and his mother’s childhood home. Two days to scavenge for the parts of himself he had left there.
The nation, I was surprised to find, was still beautiful.
Jinzha’s rule might have wounded Tensha, but as I looked out the window, I saw that it was still the breathtaking country the poets of the early Azalea Dynasty wrote about with such tenderness. Just like in the ballads, the hills stood lush and mist-shrouded, the rivers flowed jade green. Wild geese flocked high in the sky.
It was easy to see why all those men had fallen in love with it.
But the farther away from the capital we got, the more obvious the famine became. The land might still be green, the flowers of early summer still abloom, but almost everything edible was dead. The mulberry trees stood wilted, the soybeans dried. The fields of wheat stretched on ghost-pale. Sometimes I spotted people standing in them, and they were all so thin their clothes fluttered loose around their bodies.
The first village we passed by, I tore my eyes away from my curtain, unable to look. I didn’t want to be broken by the sight of sick grandfathers, or mothers with sunken eyes, or little children toddling about with visible ribs. I didn’t want to see the holes in their roofs, swallowing the light of the languid sun.
