Chapter 60 Summer Cicadas
SUMMER CICADAS
A week later, Silian invited me to visit the West Palace, using the summer solstice celebration as an excuse for us to meet.
At the wisteria arch leading to the Thousand Lotus Lake, a soft floral aroma and two polite but wary maids greeted me. “Welcome, Lady Yin.”
Their wariness made sense: I might have been here twice before, but those visits were covert. This was the first time I had been here as an actual guest, and during daytime.
The West Palace looked different in daylight.
The lake seemed even more endless, the near end of it bobbing with gentle lotuses, the far end vanishing only in a distant haze of peaks.
Gazebos, walkways, and bridges crowded the shores, reflecting in the clear water.
They were already filled with guests. Men and women, all dressed in shimmery silks and vines, holding silver wine vessels and conversing over the strum of zithers.
A distant sort of sadness settled heavy in my chest. I had never once seen Terren’s palace this full. I had never seen it anything other than empty.
Silian wove her way through a bridge full of fan-dancers to greet me. “Lady Yin,” she said genially. “You look magnificent today, like a real empress.”
“Where can we talk? There are too many people here.”
“Not yet.” She smiled and took my arm. “Let us first enjoy the solstice.”
It was hard to think of anything but the paper hidden in my sleeve, and Terren’s imminent assassination, but I followed her into one of the gazebos to join the dozens of courtiers already there.
Within the circle of the crowd, two child eunuchs unjarred a fist-sized cicada each onto a table. There was a green one and a red one, their bodies covered with moss and little leaves, their wings clipped so that they could not fly away.
“I’ve consulted the stars,” said one of the observers, “and my money’s on the green one.”
“Pffah,” rebuked another beside him, red-faced with drink. “Your amateur astronomy is nothing compared to tradition. Even the youngest children know that red is the luckier color.”
The two cicadas scuttled about the arena, which had been carved with Tensha’s mountains, valleys, and rivers, ramming their heads against each other until one of them stopped moving.
The crowd went wild—with excitement or frustration, depending on which way the betting had gone.
Coins clinked as they changed hands. Even Prince Maro, who was mid-conversation with a courtier on a bridge not far away, glanced over to see what the commotion was about.
I did not think I was meant to feel sorry for the cicadas, but I did. The little eunuchs scooped the wingless cicadas back into their jars.
“My turn!” One of the younger men, white-haired and grinning wide, cracked his knuckles and stepped forward. He had his own jar with him, with an iridescent cicada rattling inside.
The crowd cheered his name. “Nobleman Song! Nobleman Song!”
“The son of the Song patriarch,” announced someone with enthusiasm. “Who will be worthy enough to challenge the likes of him?”
That turned out to be a literomancer from Dusu District, with a cicada as black as his robes, and the crowd went even wilder. “A renowned literomancer against the heir apparent of a Great Clan,” someone exclaimed. “A match even Heaven would pause to watch!”
Amidst the excitement of the crowd, I turned to Silian. “Which one is your husband’s tutor? Can you introduce me to him?”
She raised a brow. “Tutor?”
“Master Ganji.” I was curious to know what he was like in person, after having heard so much about him from the journals.
“Oh, him. He passed away two years ago, of illness.”
I was not sure why the fact made me feel so empty. “He won’t get to see Maro’s coronation, then.”
She gave me a strange look. “No, I suppose he won’t.”
As the afternoon went on, there was more entertainment, more feasting, more performances. Silian made me try cold noodles drenched in sesame oil, cucumber salad spiced with vinegar, and sweet watermelon and hibiscus wine.
At last, when the shadows began to draw long, and the men had become distracted with drink, Silian waved me towards the bridge leading to Maro’s study, removed from the rest of the festivities.
It looked different than it had at night. By the light from the setting sun, I could see how far the view of the lake stretched, full to the horizon with lotuses. The bookshelves by the window looked larger, as did all the blooming chrysanthemums. The dragon kite on the wall looked smaller.
“Now that you’ve had enough fun that everyone is convinced you are a real guest,” Silian said, closing the door behind us, “it is time to talk business. Do you have it?”
“I do.” I pulled out the piece of paper from my sleeve, and the light from its characters spilled across the entire room.
She took it, eyes widening with awe. “I have never seen a Blessing so bright before, and that is including the ones I have seen my husband and his colleagues write. He will be joining us in a moment, by the way.”
That surprised me. “He knows?”
“He has to. He must prepare himself to undertake the coronation himself once Terren dies. But I only told him a few days ago, after I received news of your success; any earlier and, as I said, he would not have believed us. When he sees your writing”—she ran a fond hand over the glowing ink—“he’ll know it for what it is.
He’ll have no choice but to believe us then. Is this the whole poem?”
“It’s only a section,” I said truthfully.
Even after working with her for the past half year, even after all the gentle evenings we’d spent sharing tea, I could not let myself trust her entirely.
To bring the whole Blessing—and give the West Palace complete possession of it—would have been foolish.
If I had, nothing would have stopped them from seizing it and leaving me with no leverage.
Besides, it was my love ballad, my killing spell. Terren’s life was mine to take. I may not have been qualified to judge whether he should die, but those who had not written his poem were surely less.
The door swung open.
I spun around and it was him, the first son. Prince Maro, with his sweeping white-and-gold robes, his curtaining black hair, his Aolian cloudstaff tied to his back by a ribbon kept looped around his neck.
I knew him.
That was the strange thing—I knew him, even though I had never once spoken to him.
In the process of composing a poem for his brother, I had also, by necessity, found Maro.
I had known him when he was a child and willful; I had known him when he was a youth and dutiful.
I had known him even later, as he maneuvered politically against the East Palace, in a desperate bid to save his brother and the nation both.
I knew his strengths; I knew his flaws. I understood how much of the stories I’d heard about him—of his honor, his virtue, his piety—were true, and how much were only exaggeration. I admired him for some of his deeds. I begrudged him for others.
Perhaps that was what it meant to be heard through words. He might not know the first thing about me, but I knew him well enough to judge him.
I had spent an entire harrowing year trying to make him emperor. It was only fair that I got to.
“Lady Yin.” Maro gave me a polite bow. “My wife has told me about your literary achievements.”
“Your Highness,” I replied. “May you live a thousand years.”
Silian gave the piece of my poem to him.
He took the paper, brows furrowing just slightly as he skimmed over the verse.
I saw something like disbelief in his expression—as if he had not actually thought I would be able to do it, write a heart-spirit poem as a girl and a villager—but then it was gone.
“Yes,” he said, nodding to himself. “This will work.”
He gave it back to me, and I felt a weight vanish from my shoulders. I had already known it would—I’d felt the heat under my pen after all, seen the radiance of the characters—but part of me had not let myself believe it until I’d heard it confirmed by a real literomancer.
“Cast it during the coronation as you have planned,” he said, efficiently, “and I will see that you are well rewarded once I become emperor. I bid you farewell.” He turned to leave.
Silian looked as surprised at his sudden departure as I felt. “Do you have to go so soon, my love? It is summer solstice, a holiday. Surely you have some time to spare, today of all days. And besides, we have an honored guest.” She gestured at me.
“I have my filial duties to attend to. Silian—Lady Yin—please accept my apologies.”
We watched him go, bewildered. His golden-white robes swept the carpet as he crossed the room, aglow in the waning light of the sunset.
“Maro,” I said, before I could stop myself.
He paused at the door.
“He did it for you.”
That quiet, extraordinary child, who had suffered so much for so long—he had never once thought to save himself.
Even as they forced the childmaking duties upon him, even as they punished him with vicious beatings and threw him into the flames of war, he had only been thinking of protecting his brother—his family—his burning star.
The boy who had once saved him from his tree.
“Until the day you poisoned the fish,” I said softly, “he was never against you. Until the day you tried to kill him, he had never stopped trying to save you. Seven years, an impossible spell, a poem wrung out of love—Maro, he did it for you.”
“Then he has learned nothing,” Maro replied without emotion. He opened the door and left us.
That night, the world began to rumble.
I felt it first under my feet. Then I heard it: in the rattle of porcelain bowls on the shelves, the rustle of cypresses outside my pavilion. Far in the sky, a fiery rend had been ripped out of the night, and from the tear fell hundreds of red burning stars.
“What…” I began to gasp out, as panicked shouts erupted from the courtyards, the gardens, the nearby pagodas. Then I saw it. The Crown of the Azalea House, roaring as it shot up into the sky, its dragon body thrashing and frenzied and untamed.
It could only mean one thing: the emperor was dead.