Chapter 62 A Quiet Death
A QUIET DEATH
After the rituals came a period of mourning.
The important guests were directed inside the Hall of Heavenly Supremacy, much like the day of my wedding.
Fan-dancers drifted in ghost silks through the pillars, which were decorated with grief poetry on sheer banners.
Little boats of rice cakes, white gao, and corpse-colored tea were set out for the guests, who spoke quiet words in praise of the deceased emperor.
“He has rescued the country from the Yonghuan Emperor’s corrupt reign. The dynasty would not have survived without his sacrifice.”
“He has built the Salt Road during his reign and liberated Tieza-North. These deeds will surely go down in history, as poems.”
“He has fathered five healthy sons—all but guaranteeing the continued prosperity of our dynasty.”
Amidst the chatter, the empress found me standing alone, by a far wall, and fluttered her way over to me.
“How happy you must be,” she said pleasantly, “that you have succeeded in taking my place. My husband is dead. Your husband will soon be emperor. Congratulations, Wei—you have won.” She was wearing the proper mourning colors instead of her usual gold, but her smile was still painted in sharp vermilion.
I gave her a dignified bow. “I was not aware that there was any winning involved, Your Majesty.” The empress did not know that soon, I would not be a part of the palace at all.
I had given thought to what I would ask of Maro, once I had cast the heart-spirit poem and helped him become emperor. I was going to ask to go home.
“There will always be winning and losing,” she said lightly, “so long as not all people are born equal.”
“You know, I talked Terren out of killing you.”
Her surprise was immensely satisfying. I had said what I did out of a childish desire to alarm her, to flaunt my power, and it had worked.
It was true. After our night in the Palisade Garden, after I had told him the story about chasing away monsters, he had visited me several more times—without enmity now, without barriers between us.
Sometimes it was to share a meal, sometimes to walk under the plum trees, sometimes to teach me how to play chess.
And we’d exchanged more earnest words, held several more earnest conversations.
One of them had been about who to punish. Someone, Terren had insisted, had to pay for the allegations of my literacy, since they’d almost caused my death and his deposition.
“There was an investigation of where the accusations came from this time, the rumors that led to my literacy exam. We have not found anything, but it does not take much deducing to see that they have come from you. Terren was so angry he’d been ready to storm into the South Palace and slit your throat.
” He really would have. He was certainly fearless enough now that he would have done anything, killed anyone.
“But you stopped him?”
“It took a long time, and it was not easy, but I managed to calm him down and talk him out of it.”
She barked out a laugh. “If you are so sure that I was the one who started the rumors, and caused you such agony during your exam, then why bother to save me?”
“Because death is irreversible. Because while I believe it was you, I am not certain enough to feel worthy of passing the judgment. Because you are still the empress, and the matriarch of the Sun Clan, and your death will mean unrest for the nation.” I glanced at the giggling toddler far behind us, playing chase with one of the empress’s eunuchs.
“Because Prince Ruyi is still young and needs a mother.”
“I see,” she said, and gave an odd sort of smile. “Well, it was a good thing you did. Because it wasn’t me.”
I could not believe she was denying it, even now. “If not you, then who? Who has the right motivation to threaten both me and Terren? Whose allegations, besides yours, would even be believed?”
She looked at me with pity. “Wei, I had gained such a high opinion of your cleverness, after that stunt you pulled at your wedding. But now you quite disappoint me. If you only looked around you with your eyes open, even once, you would find the answer to your questions.” She went off to join her clan again, leaving me in the shadows at the edge of the grand hall, bewildered.
I looked around me. My eyes fell upon Terren’s other concubines—Jin Veris and Kang Rho sharing wine; the Qi Clan sisters, whispering about something under a potted cherry tree; Wang Suwen, trying to gain a political edge by speaking the emperor’s praises to the chancellor.
None of them had anything to gain with a move that harmed Terren.
It could not be any of the men in the room either, who were sharing solemn tea to commemorate their former emperor’s life. Since their business remained with the Outer Court, since they had little contact with me, any suspicion they had of my literacy would not be taken seriously.
So then, it had to be—
Song Silian was standing by one of the pillars, her arms hooked around Maro’s as he spoke with a literomancer. I watched her for a while, almost curiously, like she was a creature in one of Grandpa Har’s night-stories. I wished I could summon anger, but truthfully, I was not even that surprised.
During the preceding months, in which I had grown closer to Terren, everyone had noticed. Those months must have frightened her so. What if Wei really has fallen in love with her husband? she must have wondered. What if she has decided that killing him is too hard?
What if she wants to be empress after all?
After our wedding, everyone in Tensha knew that she was my teacher and we were close. If she came forth with allegations of my literacy, they would not hesitate before ordering an exam.
And had she succeeded with her plan—had I not identified the “test of treason” as a literacy test, or had I given in to the pain—it would have been a far more efficient way of achieving her goal.
She might have taken her chances with me and my poem, but she had never stopped searching for other ways to win. There are no altruists in the palace.
I should have been angry or shamed. A younger version of me might have heated at the thought of being betrayed by someone I’d once considered so beautiful, someone who had used the concubine’s weapon on me and made me stupid.
Instead, I only felt lost. I had been so certain.
So certain I needed to kill Terren, despite the necessity of the Dao seal, and make his brother emperor in his place.
That hope had been the one thing that kept me stubbornly surviving, my one path of light within the House’s darkness and corruption.
But now Maro had murdered his father for power, and his wife had almost killed me for the same.
And now, for the first time, doubt was creeping into me, and it was icy and dangerous and terrifying.
And I thought, maybe Terren was right. Maybe it was easier to tear everything down, because then there would have to be no decision at all.
At the very least, there would be nobody left to judge me wrong.
“Wei.”
It was him. Dressed in a flowing white mourning gown, a dragon pin of frost jade threading through his hair. Terren seemed almost nervous as he said, “May I speak with you outside? Alone?”
We went to the terrace outside the hall, overlooking the square. The summer was everywhere in the Azalea House, verdant through the walkways between the pavilions. Even as the ash and smoke lingered in the air, and the fiery tear split the sky, the winds did not stop bringing in new leaves.
“What is it, my prince?”
He leaned against the balustrade. “If I die tomorrow, I should not like such a grand affair for my funeral.” His voice was unusually quiet and strained.
It had not occurred to me that he could be scared about his coronation until that moment. Nervous, perhaps, but never scared. I was shocked he even thought about his own mortality—he wore the legendary Aricine Ward, after all.
Perhaps it was his father’s death that prompted this. Or perhaps it was just how imminently his fight loomed. Tomorrow, he was going to have to face the dragon, and he was going to have to face it alone.
“Terren, you are the crown prince. Holding a large funeral for you is tradition.”
“You saw what those thousands of people did in front of my father. All the fanfare, all the ceremony—the charade, the theater—I can’t stand it.
I loathe to think of people pretending they mourn me when they do not, or praising me when they detest me, or remembering me as kind when I was wicked.
I cannot bear the thought of anyone offering to go echo-step with me when they do not mean it.
” His voice wavered with real emotion, real fear.
“Wei—if I die tomorrow, I beg of you, don’t let them make a spectacle of me in my death. I wish to die quietly, just as I am.”
“I will do my best to convey your wishes.”
He deserved that much from me at least, if I took his life.
He nodded, seemingly assuaged. “There … there is another thing. I have hidden a stash of my Blessings. Dao spells, twenty thousand of them, for the House to use in the event of my death.”
That surprised me, but not overly much. During one of our first nights, in his bedchamber, I had watched him write three Blessings in almost no time at all.
I had not thought it unusual at the time, but now I realized that such velocity must not have been typical.
His exceptional talent for literomancy must have allowed him to contribute to the House’s stores and still have plenty left over.
I thought of Muzha having hidden away his 鹽/Yan Blessings, to use after he won the Azalea Civil War. It was not so much of a stretch to imagine Terren had done the same.
“I have never told anyone where. Not even Hesin. Not even Lady Autumn, back when she was still alive. But in case I die tomorrow, someone must know.”
“And you would like it to be me.” Someone of the Inner Court, who shouldn’t even be able to read them.