Chapter 49 Condemnation
CONDEMNATION
Worthless.
Maro knelt vigil for Master Len all night, the thousand candles around him burning in sorrow, in anguish, in condemnation. The old swordmaster was the closest thing he’d had to a father. A real baba, the kind they spoke of in the stories about afar.
He cried all night. Ugly tears, built up over the years between the Eriet Mountains and now, tears that he had never let himself spill because he was a prince and supposed to be brave. By dawn, when Master Ganji arrived, Maro’s chest hurt so much he could scarcely breathe.
“This is your fault.” There was no forgiveness in the tutor’s iron voice. “If only you did your duty, you would not have to mourn him.”
“I won’t fail you next time.” Maro’s words came out a choked whisper. “Forgive me, Master Ganji, Master Len. I won’t let you down again.”
“There won’t be a next time. The East Palace will not give us another opportunity to strike. Maro, it’s over for us. If the dynasty ends in flames, it will have ended with you.”
He was still in mourning when Hesin came to see him that evening.
He had little energy left to speak to the eunuch, with all his shame and crushing grief, but at the end of the day, Hesin had played a role in raising him.
Maro, who still felt filial piety towards the eunuch, received him in the West Palace.
It was a mistake.
The eunuch’s friend Taifong had just died—brutally—and he was redirecting all that fury at Maro.
We had spoken in private, I recalled Hesin saying, but Terren must have found out about our conversation somehow.
The next day, I found Taifong’s body in front of my office, cut into twenty pieces and arranged neatly so that they caught the sunlight.
“Do something,” Hesin said scathingly. “Your brother has killed my colleague of twenty years. Your father might not care, but I know that you are the kind of prince who would protect the innocent.”
Do something. Maro wanted to laugh. All those campaigns to gain his father’s favor, all those covert political maneuvers, an attempt to poison Terren only yesterday. The years of failure, the heartbreak, the grief. Hesin, you have no idea.
He turned to face the moonlit lake outside, so that the eunuch wouldn’t see the anguish on his face, the redness still rimming his eyes.
He had to remind himself that it was all intended, that the succession war was meant to be covert.
Hesin, who served their father, would not—should not, if Maro and his allies had maneuvered correctly—have known the truth.
“He is not my brother any longer.” Words that didn’t sound like his own. “Do not call him that.”
Lingering attachments were what had killed Master Len. Maro would never forgive himself for it. There would be no more lingering attachments going forward. Best to see Terren as only a monster or a force, to be hunted, put down, extinguished.
They exchanged a few more words. Hesin said more things in anger. Maro said some more words to placate him, words he hardly remembered. Then, after the eunuch was gone, he sent for Siming.
“You killed Taifong,” Maro said, tiredly. It was barely even a question. He had trained with Song Siming since they were boys, and he knew him well; it was the exact kind of depraved thing he would do to get ahead.
Siming was unrepentant. “Our failure in the peach garden called for desperate measures, Your Highness. Hesin is our emperor’s most important advisor, and it is critical that we have him on our side.
I had hoped that killing one of his colleagues—and framing Terren for it—would turn Hesin against him. And it worked, didn’t it?”
Maro buried his head in his hands. “Another innocent person dead. Siming, are we really that much better than the East Palace?”
Siming laughed darkly. “Look at us. Look at the state of the succession war. Look at what happened in the Palace of Everlasting Spring just yesterday. We are long, long past the point of playing fair.”
If I am a star, Maro wrote that night, then let me burn.
Let me burn and burn until the whole empire is devoured, along with all its corruption, its villainy, its rot. Let me burn and burn until this night is not remembered, nor this year, nor this dynasty, until even history is buried in ash. And then maybe green things would grow again.
The journal entries ended there.