Page 95 of The Poet Empress
But then I started forcing myself to look, because not looking felt even more wrong. When I sat in my comfortable carriage, full and swathed in soft silks, not looking felt like forgetting. When I returned to the palace, where the banquet tables were stacked high and the pear trees drooped heavy with fruit, I wanted to remember places like these.
We gave out what we could. I told Ciyi to calculate what provisions we could spare—food supply, clothing, shoes without holes—so that we could pass them out to the villages. When the recipients asked who to thank, I named the Rice Wife. I told them the story of a girl who grew up on a farm, one who had somehow survived to marry the crown prince. “She is the one who sponsored my husband’s mission,” I would tell them, and Ciyi would nod and play along.
It was not out of egotism that I told them this. I had been thinking of all those cold New Year’s mornings, when nobody had come to give any Blessings. I was remembering the night on the hill, when the spark went to Bao’s heart, and everyone—even for just one night—had believed greatness was possible. I was picturing all the letters I had received after my wedding retreat, asking things of the House nobody would have dared ask before.
It was important, I now viscerally understood, for one to believe. That far away, in the capital, behind impenetrable palace walls, where there lived magic and unimaginable power, there was at least one person who cared about them, who thought of them. When I named the Rice Wife, I had only told those villagers what I wished someone had once told me.
It was near Tieza that I wrote my first Blessing.
We had taken a winding back road through Torun County. Beside an old river, under old larches, I had spotted a field of graves. Dried buttercups, valerian, and wild asters lay at their bases. In the traditions of Lu’an, it was customary to pay respect to the dead we passed, to appease their ghosts, so I sent Ciyi and my servants away and visited them.
Only a few graves had names on them. Presumably, only a few families could afford a scribe to translate names into written characters, and when they did it was mostly for patriarchs or eldest sons. Even fewer held descriptions, to tell their lives’ truths. I bowed to each of them in turn.Under one of the unnamed graves, someone had laid a little doll. It had hair made of yarn and a dress woven from old cotton, and an inked smile under round, black eyes.
Something about it made me stop. I stared at it for a long time, until the sun had begun to set a poppy red. And then all the grief, sorrow, and bitter anger accumulated over the years came pouring out at once.
When I carved a poem into the soil, it was for that nameless girl at first. But soon it became also a song for my sister Larkspur, and my two eldest brothers, and the children who came in the middle. A song for Ba and Ma, and for my village, languishing in the famine.
For Pima, unhappy and ashamed in the capital. For the other eunuchs, brought to the palace young and frightened. For Hu, the maid with the cut-off tongue. For all the servants in the Cypress Pavilion, who had once told each other stories by the fire but were now just as silent.
For everyone else in Tensha who were not in books, or memorials, or poems.
Let the suffering be over. There has been so much of it, enough of it. Let there be no more.
As I traced those characters on the ground, the Ancestors saw in them truth and emotion, and they vanished with a flurry of sparks.
My eyes stung as I stood again. Nothing had happened, but I had known it wouldn’t. The Blessing I had written had not been for now but the future; the Ancestors had told me so. In two years, perhaps three, the wheat fields would turn golden again in the perimeter all around Torun. The mulberry trees here would once again bear fruit.
By then, I would be gone. Nobody would suspect the spell had come from me. But perhaps some little girl would stumble upon the doll, where the magic had begun, and see that its eyes had become full of light. And perhaps, even without anyone telling her, she would believe that anything was possible.
A Harvest Song,I thought into the setting sun, having decided on a title for the poem I was already beginning to forget. It was the spell I’d wanted to write from the start, when I had first decided to learn how to read. Now, more than a year later and far from home, I had done it.
53THE WINTER DRAGON
The famine had not affected everywhere equally. Though in many parts of the country, it showed itself like blisters and festering wounds, in others, one could hardly tell it was there. The palace was one of them; the capital, another.
And—twelve days north of either—Angkin City.
It was so much busier here than I had ever imagined. The most populous city in the Northwest, Angkin was nestled between wind-flattened hills and a younger section of the Aricine River, still turbid with mountain silt. Across it yawned a stretch of unending meadow. The city sat on the route connecting the rest of the country with the Caeyang Corridor—and, as of recent years, the illustrious Salt Road—and the sounds of commerce and trade boomed like firecrackers.
“Come buy, come buy!” cried a girl laying out silver tureens on a rug; a bearded merchant beside her waved me over to look at his assortment of jewelry and sparkling hairpins. “I’ll beat his price,” a bull-faced vendor claimed from across the street, but her attention was promptly pulled away by a wealthy foreigner draped in velvet.
Buskers vied for space in street corners, trading flutesong, poetry readings, or character divinations for coppers. Street-food vendors lined the entire bank of the river, offering pan-fried dumplings, spicy pulled noodles, and sizzling lamb skewers on grills. Standing here, amidst the crowd of thousands, I could not help but remember my childhood dream—the one of rickety wagons, and thin but dependable horses, and sundries.
“Look for the Violet Heron Tower,” I instructed my servants, while I stayed behind to scout.
There were dragons everywhere in this city. Ice-gray and ferocious, they were carved into statues, painted on banners, and engraved over arched gateways. Some held a sword between their teeth; others bore a red-painted?/Dao on their foreheads. A few held bouquets of white lilies in their claws.
The Winter Dragon,I thought.
Since Terren was the one who liberated the city from their occupiers, it was unsurprising that they would celebrate him here.
Through Maro’s testimony, I had learned that Terren had spent many years training here, honing his magic while forging weapons for Cao Myn’s army. I knew that he’d used Angkin as a base for the country’s assault north, to retake Tieza-North from the Lian.
From Empress Sun, I had learned that his mother had ties here. His beautiful, vindictive, and cruel mother, who had wanted to win more than anything because she’d looked back and seen how much she’d suffered.
Lady Autumn,I thought silently, into the cool northern summer,what happened in Tieza?
Why did your son stop breathing, that night in his tower, the instant I mentioned your name?
