Chapter 47 Burning Paper
BURNING PAPER
Near the end of spring, my heart-spirit poem began to glow. It was nighttime, and I was working on it in secret at my desk, when I caught a faint flicker.
At first, I thought it was the moonlight pouring in from the window. But the light from my inked characters did not stay still. It kept shifting, like a flame or something alive.
At once, I felt my heart soar. I felt like I was back on the hill in Lu’an, right after Grandpa Har had traced the Blessing, witnessing magic for the first time.
It was an excitement too large not to be shared, and I called out to Wren.
On nights I worked on my poem, if she wasn’t in my bedchambers helping me with my lines, she was usually not far away.
“Come look! We’re getting close. The poem is glowing. ”
“Is it now?”
The voice coming from the darkness was not Wren’s.
I spun around. There, standing not two paces from me, his face all sharp angles in the moonlight, was Yong Hesin.
He was pointing a knife at my neck.
I was sure my heart stopped beating then. Instinctively, uselessly, I grabbed the paper and hid it behind my back, as if removing my spell from view would make him forget what he had already seen.
His expression was tired, but his eyes were sharp. “For months, I have been telling him to be more careful of you, but he would not take my concerns seriously without proof. Now, it seems, I have proof.” He extended a hand, the one not holding a blade. “Give it to me.”
My throat had become very dry. I did not, could not, move.
“Give the poem to me. If you cooperate with me, I will talk him out of exterminating the rest of your relations. They might even receive some grave-money for your service.”
Do something, I told myself. Don’t give up. Buy time.
Everyone in the Cypress Pavilion, everyone in Lu’an, they were all counting on me to kill Terren. As long as there was still blood pulsing in my veins, I had to keep fighting, keep trying.
“Hesin, listen to me.” I didn’t need to feign the desperation in my voice. “You can still change your mind. You don’t have to keep serving Terren.”
My long bedrobes pooled on the ground. Hidden by the silk and the night’s darkness, my foot moved.
“I serve the nation, Wei. I have already explained this to you.”
“But how does helping him become emperor help Tensha? He’s cruel, Hesin. Vile. Just because he is his father’s chosen—just because he holds Heaven’s Mandate—does not mean he is fit to rule.”
Hesin’s eyes burned into me. “That is the way this nation works. That is the way it has always worked. Now, give me the poem. Killing you here would violate the dignity of the House, but I will do it if I must.”
“What if the Yongkai Emperor made a mistake?” I whispered. “Many believe he had only changed his heir because he was sick and not in his right mind. Hesin, have you really not once doubted? What if it was never meant to be Terren?”
His eyes never left me. “I watched Muzha write the edict with his own pen. And even if I hadn’t, I know him. I have served him for over two decades. How could I not know what he would want for the nation? War is coming, Wei, even if many in the palace do not know it.”
“Another war of conquest,” I said, still trying to buy time. I put as much venom into my voice as I could, though my disgust did not have to be feigned. “A needless one. Lives will be lost for no reason other than pride and greed.”
“You think this time it will be our choice?” A humorless laugh.
“Who told you this? Your scribe? Gossiping maids, who have never once stepped outside the Inner Court? The House does not like people to know, but this war is inevitable. It is coming for us whether we are prepared for it or not. And there are far more of us than you’d ever know, who wish to be prepared. ”
For a moment, I was so astonished I didn’t know what to say. It was the first time Hesin admitted his support for Terren extended beyond the Mandate of Heaven. What he had told me before, about not being loyal to the prince, had only been half the truth.
“Since you will soon be dead, I may as well tell you everything.” Hesin’s voice was now more weary than angry.
“The nation is not doing very well, Wei. Despite the appearances the House tries to make. The interest on our debts grows larger every year, and rebellions are blazing across the provinces. Unrest roils through the Great Clans while the palace busies itself infighting. Our enemies see our weakness, make no mistake. They have not attacked for one reason, and one reason only.”
The Dao seal. They must have seen how the second son rained blades over the north and feared his strength. If Hesin was right, and Terren was the only thing keeping the nation from invasion, then it was a compelling reason not to kill him.
And if things weren’t so dire, I might have given it more consideration. Perhaps a small part of me might have even doubted the path I had chosen, the vow I had made to Wren the night Pima nearly bled to death.
But it was too late now, by far. I had gone too long down my path, risked too much, experienced too intimately the depth of Terren’s evil. There was absolutely no turning back.
And besides, I was no longer convinced Hesin was right.
There was so much he had gotten wrong already.
Why the branch had broken off the Century Peach.
What happened in the Eriet Mountains. The poisoned fish, Taifong’s death, the truth of why Terren turned against his brother.
Hesin might have had decades of experience in politics, he might have served three generations of Azalea sons, but in the end, he was still only one man.
“That doesn’t change the fact that Terren is wicked,” I insisted.
The hidden Blessing I was tracing on the rug, with the tip of my shoe, was almost complete.
“The Dao seal does not sit the throne—the man bearing it does. A seal does not hold the title of emperor—a man does. You say you are loyal to Tensha, yet how can you let someone so evil write its laws?”
“Without the sigil,” Hesin snarled, “there may not be a Tensha. Now, I will say it one last time. Give me the—”
His knife flew out from his hand and slammed into the wall behind me. A heartbeat later, I had pulled it from the wall and pressed it to Hesin’s throat.
Orange sparks sizzled from the ground beneath my bedrobes, where I had drawn the spell, and more danced around the blade’s hilt.
“Ah,” he said, looking down at it calmly. “One of the prince’s disarmament Blessings. I should have seen it coming.”
I tightened my grip.
“But you forget I don’t fear death, Wei.
I have already decided, long ago, to go echo-step with the first prince I served.
And this”—he made a gesture encompassing himself—“is what remains.” He placed a hand over my trembling one holding the knife.
“And besides, you know that I am not a fool. I would not have gone into your pavilion without contingencies. Terren already knows I am here, and if you kill me, he will know exactly who is responsible. A pity that I will not be around to talk him out of exterminating your family then.”
With his hand over mine, he began prying the blade away from his neck.
I kneed him in the stomach. There was enough force in it to loosen his grip and send him sprawling to the ground.
He was right about the killing, of course, but there were other ways of subduing him.
I pinned him down with the weight of my body, and when he started to cry for help, I shoved a shoe in his mouth to muffle the sound.
He might be cleverer than me, more experienced than me, but he was not stronger than me.
He was old. I was young and raised on a farm, to do hard work. Even having been famine-starved my whole life, it was not difficult for me to overpower him.
The door swung open. Wren had arrived. With one look she seemed to glean the situation and helped me pin the struggling eunuch down. She shoved a silk handkerchief in his mouth to keep him silent.
“Keep holding him,” I told her. “But don’t hurt him.”
I knew he had not been bluffing. If he was harmed at all in my pavilion, Terren would suspect me. It was not the only reason I didn’t want Hesin harmed—he was still innocent, even if he was an enemy—but it was the reason I cared about more.
“What do we do?” Wren whispered. Her eyes went to my poem, still glowing faintly where I’d dropped it on the desk.
“We let him go. He’s tried talking to Terren already.
The prince won’t believe him if there’s no evidence.
” With Wren holding the eunuch down, I went to my desk, set down Hesin’s knife, and lit a lantern.
I took out each piece of my poem and, one by one, put them to the flame.
I had spent long enough working on it that I knew it all by heart anyway.
The scent of burning paper filled the room.
After tonight, there would be precious little time.
Days, if I was lucky. As soon as Hesin was freed, he would begin the investigation.
He would turn over everything in the Azalea House, interrogate everyone, until he found proof to convict me.
I did not think any of my servants or Ciyi would tell him anything—to avoid their own executions, if nothing else, since they were all complicit—but one of them might let slip something by accident.
Or Hesin would chance upon a piece of writing I had forgotten to burn, or uncover one of my doctored edicts. He was bound to find something.
I had to disarm him—permanently—before he could scrounge up evidence against me. I had to get Terren to distrust Hesin before Hesin could get him to distrust me.
I finished burning the papers. We let him go. Then I went straight to the West Palace.