Chapter 17 Loyalty
LOYALTY
How to write a love poem for someone I hated so deeply, with every drop of blood in my veins? How to do it so convincingly that even the Ancestors believed it?
Those were the questions I had to grapple with if I wanted to kill Terren, questions that had no easy answer. But I had to find them, for both my own survival and the nation’s, and I had to find them fast.
Emperor Muzha, I knew, lay gravely ill on his bed. As soon as he joined the Ancestors, Terren’s coronation would be scheduled. The Taming of the Dragon was the one time his ward would come down, the one time he would be vulnerable. The one chance I had to kill him.
Before the emperor died, I had to finish my spell.
Since Pima was dead to everyone except me and Wren, I had to appoint another scribe to replace him. I went with the obvious choice of Ciyi, which had the added effect of pleasing him so much that he stopped asking about the strange way I’d dealt with the “body.”
“A very prudent move,” the eunuch told me, with no small amount of smugness. “It was about time you and I worked together more closely.”
The message Pima had been delivering was an invitation. The empress wanted me to attend the Mid-Autumn Parade, a festival where all the women of the palace would enter the capital and dole out gifts to the common people.
The first task I gave to my new scribe was to deliver my acceptance.
I did not want to; spending time with the empress was like swallowing poison.
But it would not have been proper for me to not attend, given my position in court.
And besides, Mid-Autumn was one of the few opportunities for me to leave the palace.
I knew I would regret it if I didn’t take the chance.
The second was to send a message to Terren’s eunuch.
Ciyi raised a brow. “Yong Hesin?”
“Yes. Him.” The old eunuch, as far as I could tell, was the only one Terren trusted.
From what I’d heard, he’d served the Azalea House for three generations—first the Yonghuan Emperor, then the Yongkai Emperor, now Terren.
I might not know how to write a love poem for the prince, but speaking with his closest advisor—and, as far as I could tell, only—seemed a promising start.
We met on a quiet, fog-heavy dawn in the Palisade Garden.
Instead of trees, the garden was filled with thousands of giant swords, half-buried in the grass like gravestones.
Everything was entirely still, except for the ghosts.
Ghost rhododendrons blooming into the cold, their glows reflecting against the steel; ghost cuckoos fluttering about their hilts, weaving nests of ethereal petals.
I had seen ghosts before, back in the rice terraces at night, but never so many as here.
Possibly it was another sign of the magic inherent in the Azalea House.
“You wanted to see me?” Hesin said. His voice was old and tired.
I had thought long about what to say. The obvious option was to deceive him like I had everyone else. It is my duty to learn all I can about my betrothed, I could have said, so that I may better love him.
But Hesin would not have fallen for it. He was a manipulator himself, and clever; I had seen how he had handled the men in court.
And besides, if he knew the prince half as well as I’d hoped, he would also know his true nature.
He would never believe that Terren and I shared a benevolent relationship.
I said instead, “He tortures me at night.”
For a while he did not reply, instead stared at the sword spokes in the fog. Then he sighed. “I know.”
The words stung like thrown stones. The night of the selection, he had given me such a knowing look before trapping me with Terren. He had known how I had suffered, all this time, and he had not done a thing.
“I’m sorry,” he added, surprising me. The mask of deception he wore at court was gone, replaced by only deep and weary helplessness, and suddenly he looked even older than Grandpa Har. “There is nothing I could have done to help you, and I wish there was. Wei, truly, I am sorry.”
Wei, not Lady Yin. In Tensha, calling someone by their given name instead of their title was done out of disrespect or familiarity—or sincerity. There was no question which one he meant to convey. Hesin wanted me to know his apology was earnest.
But still, there was something I couldn’t understand. “Why are you so loyal to Prince Terren if you know what he is truly like?”
He shook his head. “I am not.” He stepped forward and rolled up his sleeve, revealing a single scarred character on his palm.
“忠/Zhong—the Ancestors’ word for loyalty.
It is not so common anymore, but when I was a boy, it was tradition for eunuchs to swear to Tensha instead of individual princes or concubines.
So, to answer your question, I am loyal only to the nation.
It just so happens that Prince Terren is his father’s chosen—the one to receive Heaven’s Mandate—the rightful heir of Tensha.
Even if I despise him as much as anyone, I am oathbound to help him become emperor. ”
My eyes traced the scar, black like it had been charred by a fire. “Does our prince know this?”
“That I am not loyal to him, or that I despise him?” A quiet, humorless laugh. “Well, it does not matter. The answer is the same: he knows. That is why he trusts me.”
I understood at once. Terren knew how much everyone loathed him. He would not have believed for an instant if someone claimed to be loyal to him. But someone who followed him only in service of the Crown? That was something even Terren was capable of believing.
It is a lot like how I trust Ciyi, I thought bitterly. I was under no delusion that the eunuch worked for me because he liked me. But he was hungry for power, and ruthless in his ambition, and those things I could trust like the sun rising.
“You did not come here to talk about me,” Hesin pointed out.
I shook my head. “I came because I wanted to understand why the prince is the way he is. To hear any stories you have, if you would share them.” Poetry was truth and emotion.
If I wanted to kill Terren before he became emperor, I had to find both.
“My Ba told me once that all children are born kind, it is only later that they learn to be otherwise.”
“Kind.” Hesin’s eyes welled with tears. “Yes, he was, wasn’t he?
Such a gentle and sensitive child, and extraordinary in his talent for poetry.
One who loved his brother dearly. The relationship he and Maro shared was so close, so tender, that even their father could scarce believe it.
It is nothing like now, when they hate each other so bitterly. ”
I recalled suddenly what Minma had told me, on our carriage ride here. The two have been fighting for the Crown since they were old enough to know what it stood for. But that was not true after all. Maybe even the city girls didn’t know everything.
“Then what happened?”
His smile was sad, wistful. “I shall tell you—if you would bear with my digressions. I will start not with the last prince I served but the first. To understand the whole truth, Lady Yin, we must start from the beginning.”