Chapter 62 A Quiet Death #2
“I do not know who else I would tell.” His voice was pained.
“I may kill people, but I am not so evil I would murder a dynasty. The country has many enemies, and it has become over-reliant on my seal for its military power. I fear for its survival without the Dao sigil. The Blessings will help at least a little—and if I should die tomorrow, turn them over to my brother as you see fit.”
He leaned in and told me where he kept them.
On the balustrade, above a nest of lilies, his fingers laced over mine.
“And if you don’t die tomorrow?” I looked up at him. “If you should survive and become emperor?”
“… I don’t know. I have never thought that far.”
His mother, his tutors, his advisors—they had only ever taught him to think of the fight, not of what to do after winning it. “Surely you have at least decided on your era name?”
He shook his head. “I do not think I will choose one. It has always seemed presumptuous to me, to take on an era name—as if one has the right to decide what one’s own reign will be like.
” He looked out at the torn-apart sky, over the rooftops of the House’s beautiful pavilions to the haze of valleys beyond.
“Let the nation decide what to say about me, what to call me. Let the people decide their own truth.”
That night, I went to my servants’ graves.
The emperor’s funeral had heightened the connection to our Ancestors, so it was a good time to remember others who had passed. And anyway, I wanted to visit them. I needed them.
Deep in the cypress grove, by the servants’ quarters, stood their twenty-two graves in a bed of moss and wildflowers.
I burned incense and presented gifts for each of them in turn—a bamboo flute for Teela, hydrangeas for the gardener Aron, a crane-colored dress for Wren.
I put down baskets of dates and mandarin oranges for everyone.
I set down a pot of tea for Aunt Ping, because I could still hear her scolding me—Hot water is good for the bones, heh?
You young people don’t know how to take care of yourself …
When I was done paying my respects, I stood before all of them and confessed, into the humid darkness, “Tomorrow morning is the coronation. I am no longer sure whether to kill Terren or let him live.”
It should have been an obvious choice. To kill my torturer, to avenge my friends and the rest of the nation, to prevent a violent ruler from ascending the throne and the warlike Dao power from being amplified—to not let knives rain from the sky again, anywhere, ever—that decision should have been so easy.
Most people would not even have to think about it.
But I was not most people, I was petty and vindictive.
And I did not want to hand over the position of empress to a person who had betrayed and almost killed me.
If I assassinated Terren, it would make Maro emperor and Silian empress, and the thought of the two of them running the nation I could not bear.
“I hate her,” I spat into the night. “I hate her husband a little too, if I am honest, though I do not really know why.”
Oh, wait, I did. I hated him for the same reason I hated all of them, ever since I was a little girl.
Walking half a day to Guishan every New Year’s in hopes of receiving Blessings, being disappointed over and over again.
I hated him every time there was no meat on the table for celebrations, and every time I had to bury a sibling from the famine, and every time Ma fell sick because she had given her share of rice to her family.
I hated him before I’d even known him, and knowing him only disappointed me more.
“And besides,” I said, quiet now, “I want to be empress.”
It was true. I did.
I had not wanted it in the beginning, had perhaps loathed even the thought of it.
But I had tasted power now—albeit because it was shoved into my mouth—and I had found that its taste was sweet.
Those bathing men in Tieza, scrambling to put on robes to kneel for me, they had pleased me greatly.
Aunt Ahma’s stammer as she addressed me, it had pleased me greatly.
The alarm in Empress Sun’s eyes, when I told her I had stopped Terren from killing her, that had pleased me most of all.
Was it a weakness to desire it?
Perhaps, but I was no worse than the rest of them.
I took a deep breath, my gaze sweeping across the quiet graves, bathed in smoke from the incense I had placed at their bases.
“All the same, it is hard to imagine myself letting Terren live. Forgiving him would not be fair to you. To any of you—everyone he has ever hurt, everyone he has killed. It is true, he has suffered, but if everyone who suffered became monsters, the world would be overrun with them.”
I remembered how my heart had stopped beating, that bloody, rain-misted dawn.
I remembered how barely I was able to hold back from throwing my hands around his throat, just so I could feel the pulse of his neck-blood.
I still wanted to, but that was not practical; one could not always get what one wanted. Killing him from afar would have to do.
“So tell me,” I asked of those who had come before me, because without their wisdom, I was going to get it wrong. “Tell me what I must do. The fate of a dynasty is in my hands, but they do not know I am just a girl.”
The cypress grove stayed silent, except for the gentle rustle of leaves. A nightingale crooned from somewhere amidst the canopy.
Then, movement behind me.
I spun around to find Du Hu, the elderly maid with no tongue, standing at the edge of the grove. I had no idea how long she had been here for. She must have had the same idea, to visit the graves on the day of the emperor’s funeral.
She held Wren’s scarf in her hand, the one that she had been mending for a long time.
No, not mending, embroidering: she had woven a beautiful display of orchid-wrens onto its silk.
She draped it around my neck—I had not realized I was cold until she did—and with a cypress branch, traced a few characters in the earth.
An answer to my question. Wisdom that she had accumulated over her long life, that she had been waiting for a chance to share.
Remember who you are doing this for, and you will not be lost.
If I had a granddaughter, that is what I would tell her.