Chapter 66 Building Bridges
BUILDING brIDGES
Maro crossed the distance between them until they were seven paces apart. As he faced his younger brother, the tail of his elegant white-and-gold gown billowing behind him, the first son looked almost serene.
Terren, in contrast, was battle weary, blood drenched. His gown blew tattered in the wind, his hair wild and scattered with salt. But the Blessing, I was relieved to see, had healed him completely. Even the gash on his back had closed.
“I did not know you could cross the barrier,” he said.
Maro’s voice was just as calm. “I did not know you could come back from the dead.”
A wind brought down a shower of blossoms from the canopy above, red pomegranate and pink cherry and white pear.
To my surprise, they said nothing more. It was the first time they were alone with each other in so many years.
With no advisors in their way, no tutors, no mothers, no allies.
Alone, with a literomantic barrier between them and the world, they were as tucked away as they had been on the golden roofs of that pagoda, where no grown-ups could ever hear their secrets.
But where I had expected honest words—if ones that were tense and hate-filled—there was only silence.
Maybe they knew each other so well that words were not needed.
Maybe they had grown so far apart, there was nothing left to say.
Up on the terrace, the audience of ten thousand clamored in shock and bewilderment. With the part of me in the tent, I could hear their cries:
“How is the Winter Dragon still alive?”
“Which literomancer has healed him?”
“What kind of spell was that? To have sprouted all those trees…”
Everyone—the guards, the servants, the clansmen, the concubines—was rushing back to my side of the terrace now, to get closer to the brothers and the dragon.
Since they could not see from inside the arena like I could, they all jostled for a prime viewing spot around the balustrade, trying to catch a glimpse of the princes through the gaps in the canopy.
Silian was the only one who knew it was me. When she returned with the West Palace men under the tent, she gave me a look so vicious that I could not help but feel vindicated. There was nothing she could do now. The spell was already cast.
There was nothing anyone could do. The fate of Tensha rested entirely on the two brothers.
From within the arena, Maro moved. I saw, through the eyes of the little fish, as he loosened the ribbon tied around his neck, drew the metal staff from his back, and let it expand to its full length.
When he charged, it was so quick that I didn’t see his cloudstaff thrusting forward.
Not until it hit metal—Terren had crossed his eight swords into a star-shaped shield.
Prang. Maro used the momentum from the clash to leap back.
He pivoted on the grass and struck from a different direction, again lightning quick.
Terren shifted his star of swords to parry.
Prang. Maro kept up the assault. He ran at him, over and over again, relentlessly—dashing at his side, bouncing off the tree trunks to attack from behind, sprinting across the leaf-heavy branches to strike from above. Pring. Prang. Pring.
The wind pummeled the trees, shaking down a rain of blossoms and leaves.
Above the arena, the sky glared red.
At first, I was worried for Terren. I had never seen Maro fight before, but from the first strike he made, I had known immediately that he was competent.
More than competent. He made it seem easy, the way he darted under the canopy like wind, cloudstaff barely a glimmer under Heaven’s red light. Balance. Concentration. Detachment.
But it soon became apparent that it was not even close.
Not when his opponent was the Winter Dragon, who had commanded armies and ended wars.
The more time went on, the more obvious the differences in their ability became.
Each of Terren’s parries were effortless.
Perfunctory. He had not moved from where he stood—or struck back—even once.
Maro noticed, too.
He stopped his flurry of assaults and landed on the grass, lowering his staff. “Are you afraid? Are you so much of a coward that you would simply stand there, refusing to fight me?”
Terren lowered his floating shield of swords, but said nothing.
“Or perhaps you are so arrogant you think you can win without striking.”
Now there was something new in Terren’s black eyes. Pity.
Maro seemed to catch it as well. He nodded to himself, as if making a decision. Then he turned and walked away.
Maybe he was going to do the sensible thing.
Leave the arena the same way he had come in, get to safety on the other side of the barrier, preserve himself.
Even if he missed the one opportunity to kill his brother—the one time the Aricine Ward would ever come down—it didn’t matter.
He could still go back to the West Palace, to his wife and his allies, and live a long life as a prince if not an emperor.
He had enough supporters that he could absolve himself of his treason, enough influence to still maintain significant control in court.
And even if his brother ruled with iron swords and bloodied the nation with war, it was still better for Maro to live.
Surely he could see that. If he lived, he could at least be Terren’s opposition, could at least check his cruel whims with political plays of his own.
And even if Terren did manage to break the nation, Maro’s own economic power could at least help bandage its wounds.
Maro, do you see? I thought, holding my breath. Or are you still caged by love of your own?
Ever since he was young, he had known one truth above all: that his veins were Tensha’s flowing rivers, his beating heart its capital, his flesh its mountains and fertile valleys.
What would you give to prevent the country from being ruled by tyranny? By blades?
I would … I would give everything.
Twenty paces away, Maro stopped. Then, without warning, he spun around and slammed his cloudstaff onto the ground.
The earth cracked. Not just cracked, split—within the span of a heartbeat a canyon had formed, as deep and wide as the height of two men, starting from Maro’s staff and spanning all the way to the edge of the arena.
Terren didn’t even have time to react. His eyes widened a sliver right as the ground beneath his feet fell away, and the next moment, the chasm had swallowed him whole.
Maro wasted no time. Brilliant red magic poured from his body into the staff, from the staff into the earth, forcing the canyon to close like the jaws of a dragon. Chrysanthemum flowers bloomed in yellow bouquets on its walls, beautiful even through the salt and broken earth.
But the canyon could not close completely.
As the little fish hovered above Terren, I could see, through its eyes, as he wielded the flat of his swords to push back the walls. Four and four. His own sigil was agleam, his breathing quickened, his open palms to either side trembling with the effort of holding back solid stone.
Maro was shaking too. He grimaced as he pushed harder, forehead shiny with sweat. A thin trail of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth. They struggled for a long time at a stalemate, earth against steel, 路/Lu against 刀/Dao—and then Maro changed his strategy.
First his sigil dimmed and flared again, and then the water came. Erupting out of nowhere, it surged down the canyon like a ravenous beast.
Terren’s eyes flicked to the oncoming torrent, and then his own seal flared just as bright.
He raised an open palm. A twisting spiral of swords burst out of the stone floor, forged from nothing, hundreds of blades interlocking as they lifted him out of the canyon.
As the newly formed river rushed beneath him, he stood safely above the water on a crest of steel and lilies.
Maro’s expression darkened.
With a poisoned scowl, he sent a bridge hurtling towards Terren—bricks swathed in yellow flowers arcing out across the river—but Terren lowered the crest of his sword-spire to evade it.
Maro threw two more bridges over the canyon, three—no, four—but Terren rode his swords like an iron serpent and dodged them all.
“Fight me,” Maro snarled between attacks. “Fight me, damn you!”
Terren glanced down at him and said nothing, only kept evading. There might have been a hint of disappointment in his eyes, or perhaps it was still only pity.
The crowd had become positively feral. I doubted any of them had seen anything so spectacular—two princes battling each other with their sigil magic, in a way that shook earth and Heaven—and their cries of alarm, excitement, and outrage seemed a confirmation.
But even so, I was not sure how long the spectacle would last. Terren’s power was no less than remarkable, I knew, but I was less certain whether Maro could keep up his assault.
The West Palace seemed to share my doubts.
“Someone stop him,” Silian begged from where she was sitting with her husband’s men. “He’s going to die if he keeps going like this.” She shook Song Siming’s shoulders in desperation, but Siming shook his head in resignation. Mei Yu only sat frozen in horror, along with the rest of Maro’s advisors.
Maro changed his strategy again. With a flare of his sigil, he summoned a river to catch Terren in its torrent; as the water rushed towards the canyon, Terren leapt off his swords and onto solid ground in time to dam it—with a fresh wall of interlocked blades, like a great wing erupting from the ground.
The river broke around it. Became a roaring waterfall as it crashed into the canyon.
Maro attacked from a new direction, sending a fresh river hurtling towards Terren; but Terren raised his arm across his body and the wing folded, like an immense gray owl’s, to block it once again.
The water slammed into the blades so fiercely its spray reached all the way to the treetops.
River after river, dam after dam. Before long, water was flooding the arena. Lashing against the wind, washing away leaves and rubble, dissolving salt.
And the dragon woke.
Perhaps because its belly was now drenched in salt water, ankle-deep; perhaps because of the way the earth rang with each burst of blades. In any case, one glass eye had slid open.
“No!” Silian screamed. “Get out of there!”
But it was useless. Maro couldn’t hear her.
And even if he could, I was not sure he would listen.
His 路/Lu sigil was burning, burning like a sun, as he slammed his staff down again, this time summoning a road.
Cobblestones paved themselves, like a carpet unrolling, a gray wave making straight for his brother.
Terren erupted a second wing of swords from the ground, crossing it with the first to block.
Smash. Crack. A spray of rubble smothered the white blooms of new lilies.
It went on and on. Roads and rivers, bridges and canyons, Maro somehow improvising his seal magic into one he could do battle with, Terren defending with equal ferocity.
Maro built bridge after bridge in an attempt to reach his brother; Terren blocked every last one of them with knives.
In no time, the arena had turned into a frothing, furious landscape of spitting stone and hurling water; and the trees fell crashing, and the sky shook, and the earth broke.
The light in Maro’s seal was sputtering out.
After he sent yet another flood of water towards Terren, he doubled over to catch his breath, wiping at the blood pouring from his mouth. Then he slammed his staff back onto the ground, his sigil glowing again, but almost instantly it extinguished.
Maro swayed, clutching his chest.
Terren lowered his shield of swords and leveled his dark gaze at his brother.
Another feeble flicker of the 路/Lu sigil. Another attempt to summon magic. But it still wasn’t working. Maro leaned heavily on his staff, coughing uncontrollably, blood flecking his soaked white-gold robes. And then a shadow fell over him.
Terren’s eyes flicked up to meet the dragon looming over Maro. Maro noticed at the same time. He took a few stumbling steps away, but he was far too weak to be swift—and the Crown swooped down and snapped its mighty jaws. When it rose again, both the first prince and a chunk of the arena were gone.
The crowd fell into a horrified silence.
It dragged on for first one heartbeat, then another, then another.
Then, all at once, bits of chewed rock and viscera fell from the sky like someone’s nightmarish idea of rain, and Silian—along with everyone in the West Palace, the tent, and the terraces below—screamed and screamed.
A piece of entrail—or brain, or heart; it was hard to tell—landed on Terren’s cheek. He peeled it off, looked at it with disgust, and flicked it to the ground.
“Good night, Maro.”