Chapter 35 Beyond the Farthest Crest
BEYOND THE FARTHEST CREST
I think he’s doing well, Maro wrote in his journals. I hear from Master Ganji that his own studies are progressing quickly.
Maro never knew how much his absence, after the incident at the emperor’s birthday banquet, had affected his brother. He never knew how many years Terren kept waiting for him in the garden, how often he hid from everyone, how he had begun clinging to his old toys again.
I hope that one day, I can be as good as he is at literomancy.
I miss him lots.
His own studies were going well, too. He had written several more Blessings after the first one, which he had contributed to the House for paying off its debts.
He had memorized several more classics under the tutelage of Master Ganji.
He had grown closer to his training partners, Little Rain and Song Siming, and had even won a martial tournament with them in Cloud’s Landing.
When he turned ten, he gained his 路/Lu seal.
The whole palace feasted and celebrated for three days, but Maro barely had time to attend.
The first afternoon, the emperor immediately summoned him to his strategy room.
“There’s not a moment to lose,” he said, making a gesture encompassing the entire living map of Tensha, all its mountains and fertile valleys.
“The nation has been waiting too long already.” Then he sent him away.
For more than a year, Maro traveled on a harrowing schedule, working even harder than during his studies when he was younger.
Day and night, he channeled the magic of Heaven through his sigil, spinning it into roads, canals, and passageways.
He worked through rains and harsh winds; he worked through exhaustion, fevers, and headaches. He was relentless.
But saving Tensha was not the only reason he did his duty with such urgency.
I must recover my reputation, he wrote, over and over again. I must, if I want the respect of my people.
The rumors from when Maro was younger, that he had cheated at writing his first Blessing, had mostly died down—but there were still some who believed them. There were still some who would question his honor, his competency, his patriotism. Maro would prove them wrong once and for all.
His mother wrote to him while he was on the road. Lady Sky’s scribes penned many letters on her behalf, bearing pleasing news from the capital, wishing him good fortune or reminding him to eat well. Sometimes, they were accompanied by a handmade scarf, a jar of plum juice, or little candies.
The letters her servants sent told a different story.
The emperor was growing sicker by the day, they said, and in his absence, unrest had befallen the Inner Court.
The concubines’ fight for power had only grown more desperate, petty bickering escalating to active sabotage.
All of the concubines were becoming frightened.
Come back, Your Highness, I beg of you, read a letter from Lady Sky’s head attendant.
Your mother would never tell you, but she asks after you nearly every day.
One of her eunuchs sent him a letter, too.
Please, Your Highness, you must take her with you on your missions.
She is no longer safe in the Inner Court, which has become full of scorpions.
Those letters made Maro feel awful, but there was nothing he could do. Even if Father and Master Ganji allowed him to go home—and they would never—there would not be time. He had to keep working, because Tensha was waiting. For him, blood did not mean family but country.
And bringing his mother with him wasn’t an option either. He could only imagine the shameful whispers that would come out of doing so. Eleven years old already, heir to the nation, and he still needs his mama by his side.
Maro continued his work. He built roads from the capital to Ru’en. He built new bridges in Lie City to replace the ones destroyed in a fire. He created a diversion in the Aricine River, at Snake Bend, to prevent the annual flooding of several nearby towns.
Then an edict arrived, summoning him to the Eriet Mountains.
“His Majesty calls the first son to the Tuyun Fortress,” read the messenger. “He calls him to build the Salt Road.”
The air is so thin in the mountains. Every breath feels like a gasp. The winds here bite no matter how thick my cloak!
I hate how cold, cold, cold it is.
A few hundred men had come with him—soldiers and strategists, doctors and cooks, advisors and longtime tutors. There was even an astronomer to interpret omens from Heaven.
Nestled between the two looming peaks of Long Peace and Fallen Sun, the Tuyun Fortress seemed almost small amidst the endless snow and dark rock. Inside its stone walls, it was not much warmer. Even when Maro was snuggled deep in his fur blankets, he found his nose was still freezing and runny.
I miss the palace. I miss Mother. I miss my friends. Is it unprincelike to admit so?
He dreamed of Mother at night. Of Song Siming and Little Rain, laughing as they wrestled him amidst golden trumpet flowers. He had not been home, or spoken with anyone his age, since the day he’d received his sigil.
Every night, after a long day of forging the Salt Road, he would spend the night in his room, freezing and alone. He was often too tired to read or study, but he would make the time to huddle by a lantern and write in his journal. Sometimes, he composed poems.
In the mountains, no sound but the wind;
No leaf-stirrings or songs of the cuckoo.
How long until I can talk again with a friend?
Even some rain-patters at my window would do!
About one month into the campaign, a delegation from the capital arrived.
Master Ganji came into Maro’s bedchamber, where he was wolfing down a supper of lukewarm noodles and cured ham. “It is not good news,” the tutor said, stone-faced. “Your brother is here with his mother and advisors. I can only assume the Maple Pavilion has come to sabotage our work.”
Maro barely even heard the rest of the speech. He’d dropped his chopsticks at the word brother. A moment later, he was laughing as he ran outside, across the snowy interior of the fortress. “Terren! Terren!”
The second son was standing at the gates, his cloak shining red in the sunset.
He was accompanied by his own traveling party of about a hundred men, but Maro didn’t care about anyone else.
He made straight for Terren and pulled him into a crushing hug.
“I missed you. I missed you more than anything.”
Well, it was not exactly true. During those lonely nights, it had not been Terren he dreamed of, but his friends he used to play with, Song Siming and Little Rain.
But, Maro thought, maybe it was the playing that he missed.
With anybody, it didn’t matter. Those gentle days under the sway of magnolia trees, sparring between the trumpet flowers, chasing cats and bee-eaters—maybe it was those he missed most of all.
In any case, Maro had never been so happy to see anyone as he did his brother.
“Does that mean you’ll play with me?” Terren blurted out.
He had grown in the time they’d been apart.
His sigil was brighter, like bayberries newly ripening.
He was still small for his age, but he no longer looked so tiny he could break at any moment.
He had accumulated a few new scars too, around his collar and his ears, and Maro wondered how many trees he had fallen from over the years.
Maro drew back. “Maybe. We’ll see. I don’t know how much time I’ll have, with the Salt Road needing to be built.
” When his brother began to look crestfallen, he took both his hands and said, “How about this? I’ll ask Commander Remi if you can stay with me, if you’d like.
My room is too big and too cold for one person. ”
Just like in the stories. Families eating at the same table, sleeping under the same roof.
Terren kept his eyes on the snow beneath his boots. In an almost whisper, he said, “I would like that.”
He hadn’t brought much with him from the capital.
When the servants helped add a new cot to their room—along with a swathing abundance of warm furs—they brought in only one chest, mahogany and carved with tortoises.
As soon as they were gone, Terren left the corner he had been hiding in and crawled over to it, his eyes shiny with excitement. “Maro, I brought something for you.”
“Yeah?” Maro seated himself on the rug across from him.
“Mung bean cakes!” From the chest, Terren drew a smaller box full of the colorful flower-shaped desserts.
They weren’t flower-shaped anymore—mung bean cake was brittle, and the journey rough and long—but he arranged the pieces as neat as possible before presenting the box to Maro.
“Since you’ve been far from home for so long, I thought you would want some treats from the palace. ”
Maro took them. They smelled a little stale. “Thanks! That’s nice of you.”
“Remember?” Terren said, when Maro didn’t eat any. “When we were really little, I was never tall enough to reach the banquet tables. You would help steal them for me.”
“Oh, yeah, I think so.” It did sound like something he would have done, when he had been younger and more of a troublemaker.
“You don’t like them?”
He gave the cakes back to Terren. “No, I do. But Doctor Shu says I can’t have sugary foods.
I’ve been getting headaches, see. He says that I need to eat healthy to support all the important work I’ve been doing for the nation.
” He gave his brother a playful jab on the shoulder.
“And besides, you like them more. You should have them.”
“Okay.” He sounded disappointed. But he brightened again when he dug further into his chest. “I brought our swords, too. In case you want to spar. You always liked sparring.” He fished out two oakwood swords, still crusted with mud and dried grass, and set them onto the fur rug as carefully as if they were made of porcelain.
“Oh, neat!” Maro picked one up and turned it around in his hand.
It was tiny and far lighter than he was used to.
“I haven’t used a wooden sword in a long time.
My friends and I have been fighting with steel for years now.
” He threw it in the air and caught it by its blade.
“Master Len said my swordplay was really good, so he graduated me at the same time as Siming, even though he’s a year older. ”
“Oh.”
“Why didn’t you bring your steel sword? You should have one by now, even if you’ve been progressing at a normal pace.”
Terren blushed. He said nothing, just kept unpacking. He took out some nightclothes, some books, a second winter cloak. Then he drew out a stuffed tiger, a stone snail, and a wooden whistle in the shape of a bird.
“Hey, I remember those.” Maro leaned in with interest as he watched him set the three of them on his bedside table. “They were your favorite toys when you were a little baby.”
Terren had been in the middle of arranging them but froze.
“I had no idea you still played with them!”
He scooped them back into his arms, turning an even deeper shade of red. “I can keep them under my blankets. That way you don’t have to see them.”
Maro blinked. “Wait. I didn’t mean it like that.”
He began shoving them under his blankets anyway.
“Terren, your friends are welcome here.”
He made all three of them disappear under heavy layers of fur, and then he began piling pillows on top to bury them further.
“Hey.” Maro ran over to him and caught his arm. “Didn’t I say your friends are welcome here? Leave them out.”
He kept staring at the bed, breathing fast.
“Please. I want to see Tiger’s toothy smile too.
And I want to hear Little Sparrow sing at night.
And Niu Niu, with his beautiful crystal spirals—are you going to keep those to yourself, too?
” Maro tore the blankets and pillows off the toys, took them gently into his arms, and arranged them back on the bedside table, the way Terren had it before.
“Tomorrow, I’ll tell Commander Remi I want a break in the morning.
” He had never asked for a break before, but somehow, it felt important to do so now.
“I’ll show you around the fortress. And your friends should come too.
” When Terren still said nothing, he made his voice conspiratorial, teasing. “Unless they’re afraid of the cold?”
He finally looked up. “They are not. Well, maybe Little Sparrow is, just a bit. But she’ll be fine as long as I keep her safe under my cloak.”
Maro grinned. They readied themselves for bed after that, and then he tucked him into bed, climbed into his own, and blew out the last lantern. “Good night, Terren.”
“Good night, Maro.”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“Psst. Terren. You still awake?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve come up with the first half of a poem. Want to help me complete it?”
“Yeah!”
In the mountains, where there is only wind,
A little sparrow flies far from her nest.
A thousand li traveled, braving the cold,
For one look beyond the farthest crest.