Chapter 24 Everlasting Spring
EVERLASTING SPRING
Like his father and grandfather, Terren was not born wicked. He was born tiny, frail, and not breathing.
The birth had nearly killed both mother and child, but as Lady Autumn lay bleeding out on the bed, the doctors paid no attention to her.
Instead, they all crowded around the seal-bearing infant, desperately trying to get him to gasp out his first breath, to save the magic trapped within his fragile body.
After she recovered, Lady Autumn would not look at her son. She left him in the arms of his wet nurse and spent all her time with her friend Sun Ai instead, strolling in her gardens, catching up with all the gossip she had missed.
“Hesin,” she asked me once, “why are women always expected to love those who would hurt us? To take care of those who would use us, however they please, without the slightest regard for whether we lived or died?”
He was a strange child, quiet and easily frightened. Even a snap of a twig or the clinking of glass could startle him into tears. When he did speak, it was only a few stunted words at a time. Hungry. Scared. I’m sorry.
He had three toys that he took with him everywhere—Tiger, Niu Niu, and Little Sparrow—and if we tried to take any of them from him, he would run to the nearest corner, cover his face with his hands, and hide there until we gave it back.
While everyone adored his older brother Maro, whose personality was bright and fierce, few took a liking to the second prince.
The concubines of Muzha’s court mocked him in public. The servants of the House did the same in private. Heaven’s pure magic, they whispered when they thought nobody could hear, wasted on a child like that. I am ashamed to admit that for a long time, I held the same opinion.
The only one who seemed to like him—genuinely like him—was his brother.
“My brother is the cleverest,” Maro declared proudly, to anyone who would listen. “He’s going to be the best literomancer Tensha has ever seen. Just you wait!”
They did not see each other very often—ever since the days of the Wenning Emperor, princes have always been raised separately—but the whole court did gather during festivals like New Year’s or Sweeping of the Dead.
On those occasions, Maro and Terren were inseparable.
Like a lost duckling, Terren toddled after his big brother all over the halls and gardens.
“I think we should let them play together,” I told the emperor, the year Terren turned four. “As often as possible.”
It was not a suggestion I made lightly. Throughout Tenshan history, imperial brothers killed each other for the Crown as often as nations waged wars.
You cannot keep two angry bulls in the same pen, the poet Jiang Le writes.
Farther from the capital, they say, You cannot keep two roosters in the same cage.
“Hesin, you always try me,” Muzha said, amused. “Your ideas grow more and more unusual every year.” He sat hunched over his dining table, drinking his bird’s nest soup. Every time he spilled a drop, the young maid standing behind him would hurriedly dab it away with a cloth.
“Maro is the only one who I have ever seen make Terren laugh, Your Majesty.”
“Does it matter? Laughter does not grow a prince into a ruler. Jinzha laughed more than anyone we knew.”
“Your Majesty, if your sons grow up happy, their magic will be stronger as well. Are we not counting on them to help us with their powers? How will we regain all the territory we’ve lost without them?”
It was that argument that made him relent.
With a sigh, he said, “The Palace of Everlasting Spring is empty at the moment. There is a peach garden there where the boys can run around, and several pavilions where your eunuchs and scribes can work. Move your office there. You can help watch after the children while you review my memorials.”
I did. The Palace of Everlasting Spring was even more beautiful than I remembered. Thousands of enormous peach trees blossomed in its garden year-round, the air forever sweet with the scent of beginnings.
The boys loved the garden as much as I did.
With all the space to run, Maro and Terren played together tirelessly.
They flew kites, caught geckos, chased swallows, invented games, and generally found creative ways to get themselves into trouble.
My colleagues and I watched them from our pavilion’s window while we organized memorials or copied scrolls, smiling whenever their laughter broke up the monotony of our work.
Soon, the peach garden began to fill with visitors.
Drawn by the young princes’ energy, the servants, scribes, cooks, gardeners, and doctors all began to gather in the Palace of Everlasting Spring during their breaks. Even the emperor’s concubines came by to watch them play.
On bright, sunlit afternoons, Empress Qin would regale an enraptured audience of several concubines about an opera skit she’d seen.
Companion Tang would work on her embroidery with Mingyue, Lady Chara, and Lady Sky, as Lady Autumn napped next to Noble Consort Sun plucking absently at her zither.
After Isan was born, he was raised in the garden too, accompanied by his wet nurse and tutors.
Those days were some of the most peaceful I can remember. Days when both the Inner Court and the Outer Court did not fight, and the future of the dynasty seemed prosperous.
I miss those days so desperately, Lady Yin.
One morning, Terren let himself into my office.
Without a word, he placed a stuffed animal, white fur matted with mud and leaves, on my desk next to the ink and open scrolls.
Tiger. Then he set down the shell of an enormous, petrified snail.
Niu Niu. Then a whistle made of cherrywood, carved to resemble a young bird. Little Sparrow.
Maro burst through the door behind him. “He wants you to keep his friends safe,” he explained. “We’re going to play hide-and-seek by the carp pond, and he doesn’t want to accidentally drop them.”
I watched as they left giddily out the door. It was the first time Terren had ever let go of his toys willingly, and I felt a deep and indelible stirring in my heart.
After that, the little prince asked me to look after his toys more and more often. One day, he didn’t even come back for them. Tiger, Niu Niu, and Little Sparrow stayed on my desk, forgotten.
“You can’t just stand there,” Maro declared with a huff. “You have to fight back!” He picked up the oakwood sword his brother had dropped and pushed it into his arms. “Come on. Again.”
Terren had to use both hands to lift the blade. His tiny fingers barely closed around its hilt.
“Ready? I’m going to come at you again. This time, raise your sword. Strike.”
I was sitting under a peach tree not far from where they were playing, pretending to read a scroll while watching them with one eye. Maro charged forward again—and this time, he bowled Terren over, sending both of them rolling in the grass.
“No, no, no!” Maro shook his head. “You’re playing the game wrong. Haven’t your tutors taught you anything? It’s easy. Just swing it like this.” He leapt to his feet and demonstrated.
Terren propped himself up and rubbed at his temples.
Lady Sky looked up from her embroidery. “Go easy on your brother. He’s a lot smaller than you. You could hurt him.”
“Don’t worry, Mother.” Maro grinned, pulled Terren up with both hands, and brushed off the blossoms still sticking to his gown. “Look, he’s fine. He’s not even crying.”
It was true, but the young prince did seem a little tired from Maro running at him all morning. I was relieved when his mother said, “I don’t think he knows how to fight yet. Maybe you should play a different game.”
Maro pinched his lips into a pout. “Fine. A different game.” He swept his gaze across the garden—at the pavilions, the visitors sitting under the gazebos, the pond full of shining carp—and brightened when it fell on the biggest tree in the garden.
“Hesin’s not looking,” he whispered to Terren, presumably believing I was out of hearing range.
“That means we can climb the Century Peach.”
Terren’s eyes widened with excitement, which pleased Maro so much he laughed and grabbed his hand. “Come on!”
He led him all the way to the edge of the garden, by a pagoda with eight golden-roofed layers. Next to it stood the biggest and oldest peach tree in Tensha, huge branches spidering wide and into the sky. Its magic, according to an ancient legend, was what made it spring in the garden year-round.
It was not difficult to climb, and provided easy access to the top roof of the pagoda, with the view of a thousand li.
I had made it there myself, with Jinzha and the other palace boys, when I had been young enough to be reckless.
I did not forbid them, though I knew that the emperor would have wanted me to.
Instead, I pretended not to notice as Maro hoisted Terren onto his back. With his little brother clinging tightly to him, he climbed onto the lowest branch, then the second, then the third, until they were out of sight, somewhere safe above the canopy of blossoms.
Their close relationship filled me with unspeakable joy.
The Yongkai Emperor might have killed his brothers to seize the throne—like so many other princes in eras past—but for the first time, it seemed the cycle would be broken.
Perhaps the two Azalea princes, I thought, were the ones Muzha and I had been waiting for.
The ones who would clean up the mess we had made of our dynasty.
A little less foolish, a little less wicked.
But I had no idea just how quickly things would fall apart.
It all started the day Terren wrote his first spell, at an age before most boys could even read.