Chapter 42 A Negotiation With Doves
A NEGOTIATION WITH DOVES
A temple shrouds itself in dense fog;
Nothing can burn here. Nothing is remembered.
If the sun also wearies like we do,
May it rest here, where all light is tempered.
—GUAN MARO, AZALEA DYNASTY, YEAR 628 (COLLECTED POSTHUMOUSLY)
After their separation in the Eriet Mountains, it would be another three years before Maro wrote again of his brother.
It described a summer morning made mild by fog, which he had spent practicing with his cloudstaff deep in the Aolian temple.
A staff was not a sword; each technique, ethereal and air-light, was designed not for combat but meditation. Balance. Concentration. Detachment.
“Your Highness,” someone said, startling him.
It was a familiar voice, one he hadn’t heard in many years. Maro dropped to the ground, lowered his staff, and turned to face the visitor. “Siming? It’s good to see you!”
They went to share tea in one of the temple’s many meditation rooms. Small incense pots of Ao and Li stared at them from the windowsill, and the room was redolent with pine smoke and sacred herbs.
Song Siming shifted uncomfortably. “I know that as part of your recovery, you are not to concern yourself with worldly affairs. But still, it would be nice if you showed your face.”
Maro laughed fondly. “I am not even supposed to speak with you, let alone take off my mask.”
“You’re not subject to their rules. You are the crown prince, Your Highness, not a disciple!”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t observe their ways.”
Siming lowered his eyes, presumably to avoid looking at Maro’s draping Aolian robes, his white mask, the staff made of mystic metals tied at his back. “Then will it be hard convincing you to leave the temple?”
At once, Maro stiffened with alarm. Doctor Shu had ordered that he not be disturbed until he was fully recovered. If Siming had gone against orders, had ridden all the way here, there must have been a good reason. “It may not be,” he said cautiously, “depending on what news you bring.”
Siming cupped his hands around his ginger tea and spoke with urgency.
Terren had spent the past three years in Tieza.
He’d spent the beginning of it training in his magic, but by the end he had recaptured the contested northern region for the empire.
Now he was advancing slowly eastward, a slew of military achievements following wherever he went. They called him the Winter Dragon.
“Now more than ever,” Siming said, “everybody is speculating that His Majesty will switch his named heir. Not only that, they are pressuring him to. Some of the leaders of the Great Clans have been sending not-so-subtle messages in praise of the second son’s achievements.”
“I see.” Maro stared at his hands. None of this came as a surprise to him, really.
“Your Highness, you know as well as I do how long his faction has been planning to overthrow you! I fear they will succeed imminently.”
“Then let them.”
“What?” Siming slammed his cup down so hard the tea splashed on the rug. “You’re just going to give up the fight?”
Maro looked out the window. The temple was calm, the fog threading through the pines serene, his own heart steadier than it had been for years.
His headaches still came from time to time, but it was nothing so ferocious as before.
“My brother has always been smarter than me. Kinder. And his magic is what the nation needs. Siming, I’ve been thinking about it at length while I’ve been up here, and I thought, maybe I was never meant to fight him.
Maybe it had only ever been someone else’s fight, and I had been tricked into thinking it was mine. ”
The wind, born only to run.
“Kinder?” Siming echoed, incredulous. “Guan Maro, if you do not return and wrest political control back immediately, Tensha will fall into the hands of a cruel and vicious tyrant!”
Maro turned back to his friend, uncomprehending. “Tyrant?”
Siming’s hand began to tremble. “You really haven’t heard, then.”
He told him everything, and it was all the same as in Hesin’s account.
Inside the palace, dead animals everywhere.
Moonflower-rabbits with their heads lopped off, entire rooms full of dead pigeons.
Servants punished left and right for minor wrongdoings, with flayings, or cut-off tongues, or knives through their hearts.
Outside the palace, in the battlefield, heads and severed limbs piling up like leaves in autumn. Blood flowing in the streets like rivers.
“No,” Maro whispered. He felt like he was falling once again—into a chasm deeper than any he could have imagined. He tore off his mask and rode straight for the palace.
His council met that same afternoon. His tutors, friends, and old allies were all gathered in the newly inhabited West Palace.
The parlor was still largely empty, but some servants had brought in pots of trumpet flowers from the now-vacant Dawn Pavilion, and they made it seem at least a little like home.
“You must not see him,” Master Ganji said. “He’s too dangerous.”
“He’s my brother,” Maro said, bewildered. Part of him still didn’t believe it. The boy who was scared all the time, who hid when there were loud noises, who had trouble even picking up a sword—how could he have turned into what Siming described?
High Eunuch Umei sighed. “We have sent four messengers to the East Palace already, Your Highness, in an attempt to negotiate. All we asked was that he fight more peaceably, to not harm innocents in his bid for power. In an act of remarkable irony, he killed all four.”
Maro bit his lip. “But he would not harm me. Trust me on this.” Nobody here knew Terren as deeply as he did. They did not know that Terren, not Doctor Shu, had been the one to evict Maro from his missions. And he claimed he had done it only to protect him.
Everyone in the room exchanged doubtful glances.
“If that is what you believe, you have not grown as much as I have hoped.” Master Ganji’s frown had only become more uncompromising over the years.
“Maro, have I not warned you long ago that you are all that stands between him and the Crown? Brother betrays brother; blood forgets blood. All you need to do to find an example is look to your father, who—”
“With all due respect, Master Ganji, Terren is not our father.” Maro was tired of the constant comparisons to those who had come before. “And neither am I.”
It was a long walk to the East Palace, which was frightfully cold and decorated like a night-story. More swords than in all of the palace’s armories put together bit into the air like icicles. Maro shivered as he entered, alone.
In its main hall, down many austere pillars, Terren sat high on a throne of lilies and blades. At his left stood Master Long, one of his longtime tutors; at his right was the eunuch An Sui. A dozen guards and armed personnel surrounded him.
“Brother,” Maro said hesitantly. “It’s me.”
Terren did not look at him or speak. He kept his eyes only on the three dozen live doves in front of him, their pink feet tied to the branches of a fig tree growing out of the dais.
“You desire power. You desire my throne. That is … that is understandable.” Maybe you should want it too, Maro had said in anger, all those years ago.
Part of this, he knew, was his own fault.
“But Terren, I beg of you, fight me. Only me. Don’t drag the innocent into this.
The animals, the civilians, the servants—leave them all alone. ”
Your veins are Tensha’s flowing rivers, your beating heart its capital, your flesh its mountains and fertile valleys. Three years in the temple, while this was what had befallen the nation. How had Maro failed it once again?
Silence. Terren still did not look at him.
“Talk to me!” Maro cried in desperation. “Don’t play at being stupid! I know you can understand every word I’m saying—”
The 刀/Dao sigil flashed. A knife floated down from the ceiling, stabbed straight through a dove’s back, and came out the other end. Bird and knife sailed through the air to thump at Maro’s feet.
For a moment, Maro couldn’t even speak. Then his astonishment turned into hot fury.
“Are you mad? How can you disgrace the ground our Ancestors live in like this? Behave so shamefully? You are a prince of Tensha, not a monster! I will not believe it, no matter how much you try to convince me otherwise!”
Thump. Another skewered bird landed near him, white feathers drenched with red blood.
“What happened to you in Tieza?” Maro whispered, his voice breaking.
“Did you finally taste power, after obtaining your Dao seal, and you liked using it so much you couldn’t stop?
Did you finally feel strong, after years of feeling weak?
Did you finally realize you could make others afraid, after years of being afraid yourself? ”
Three more dead doves landed at his feet.
Panic and desperation pulsed against Maro’s skull, making it hard to think straight. “Then why?” he choked out. “Is it … is it because I hit you?”
This time, a storm of knives. Flying down from the ceiling, running themselves through the rest of the birds. A moment later, Maro was pummeled with bloody feathers, wet entrails, lifeless beaks. He felt like he was going to be sick.
“Our prince is no longer in the mood for conversation,” said An Sui, “and suggests you take your leave.”
“My brother can speak for himself,” Maro snapped.
“Our prince suggests you take your leave,” the eunuch said, a little louder.
“I’m not leaving. Terren, talk to me.”
They had no authority to remove him, since he was the first son and heir.
But, Maro realized with cold horror, they did have the authority to remove his brother.
The eunuchs leaned in and whispered something to one another.
A few moments later, guards stepped up to the dais and escorted Terren away, leaving Maro standing in the empty hall, ten thousand blades pointing straight down at his head.
It was much harder to get an audience with Terren after that. Whenever Maro went to the East Palace, he was always turned away with some excuse or another.
Our prince is away in the capital.
Our prince is in an important meeting.
Our prince is sick and resting.
The letters he sent were received but never replied to. Maro had no idea if it was Terren or his advisors denying him—or both.