Chapter 70 Home
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It was evening when I left the palace through the side entrance. The stars hung gentle overhead as the nightbirds whistled a familiar song. The branches waved with blossoms. Even the crisp mountain air came to tussle at my hair, its own kind of farewell.
A horse with a summer mane stood waiting for me.
Next to it a red carriage was parked, containing what little belongings I had chosen to take.
An assortment of pretty gowns, some headpieces I had grown fond of, some powder, blush, and eyebrow ink.
I had finally learned how to paint my face properly, and was excited to teach the Rui sisters.
The remaining space was filled with bags of haw candies, mung bean cakes, sweet gao, and other treats for the village children.
With the reins tight in my hands, I cast one last glance at the Azalea House. At its striking vermilion walls, its beautiful pillars inscribed with poetry, its ornately curved eaves. A soft stirring whispered in my heart; it really was a place worthy of the stories.
After today, would I remember it well? Would I remember the silk in its chambers, the cold lattice of its windows, the wet of its courtyard grass under my feet—or would the red palace become only a distant dream?
The gates clanged open, startling me.
A eunuch, old and white-haired, appeared at the entrance. One sleeve leaned on a cane; the other hung loose like a ghost’s.
“Hesin,” I said. I could not guess at what business he wanted with me.
“His third son emperor, Wei. Not his second nor his first. Muzha could never have predicted this outcome.”
There was no resentment in Hesin’s voice. No anger for my framing him, no loathing for my causing him to lose his hand. I supposed he had practice with not resenting. He had served Jinzha, whom he had disapproved of, then Muzha, whom he had deemed wicked, then Terren, whom he had despised.
I wondered if Hesin had paid a large enough price for his misdeeds.
I wondered if Jinzha had, joined by all seven of his sons and now two of his grandsons.
Had whatever he borrowed from the future been repaid?
Was he swimming under the moonlight again, wherever he was, laughing as joyfully as he had in life?
And Muzha …
“Who did he really want on the throne?” The question came out unbidden. It did not matter anymore, but searching for answers had become something of a habit. “Why did he change his heir so suddenly, just last year?”
The emperor naming Terren, in one of his last coherent moments, was what had prompted the selection in the first place. My becoming Empress-in-Waiting, the prince’s wife, his killer—everything had followed only after.
To take on our enemies in the north, Ciyi had once led me to believe. But now I was certain it was not that simple. Truth in the palace, I had learned, was rare and doled out only sparingly.
Hesin’s expression turned grave. “He always meant to make Terren heir. Always. Ever since the night we heard about the second son’s sigil: a military one, one that can conquer nations.
Hesin, he told me in private, now I will finally be worthy.
He had always been so ashamed while he was alive, of how the borders of Tensha had shrunk during his reign instead of grown.
With the amplified Dao sigil fighting for my legacy, he told me, I will finally become immortal in the ballads. ”
“But he did not name him heir then.”
“No.” Sorrow creased the lines on his face. “He wanted to wait until the last possible moment. He did not want his sons to know it was decided.”
I remembered Maro leaning his cheek on the windowsill, dreaming of leading the nation with integrity, with pride. How hard he had worked for Tensha. How he had bled for it. And Terren, too—the war, the suffering, all those broken years in Tieza. None of it had mattered.
Are you so sure the emperor will keep you as heir? Hesin had snapped at Maro once, the night Taifong had been killed. The eunuch had known, all those years, what lay in wait for them at the end of their road—even as the princes themselves remained oblivious.
A cruelty, perhaps. But I was no longer in a position to judge.
“He wanted them to fight,” I said quietly.
Hesin nodded. “Would the West Palace have worked so desperately to build those roads, if they never believed they had a chance? Would the East Palace have fought so hard for Tieza, if everything was already decided? Muzha was not a good man, Wei, but he was clever. Put a mountain before a man, he once told me, and if he is worth anything, he is certain to climb it.”
A silence followed. I could hear the warbling of two wrens, playing in the leaves above.
“Do you have remaining business with me?” I asked Hesin, because he had not yet said what he’d come to say.
“Emperor Isan has asked me to be his advisor.”
“Yes. He told me.”
“My first piece of advice to him was to take you for empress.”
I was so shocked I let go of the reins. “After I killed his brother?”
“It was not hard to convince him, Wei. The nation is in turmoil after the coronation. Power and capital flow loose. The clans who were backing the two eldest princes are rioting. The civilians are afraid. What we need most during this time is stability—and the emperor knows this too.” When I kept staring at him, he said, “You are already the Rice Wife. What you did at the coronation only helped add to your legend. To kill the wicked heir and bring fruit to the nation—many people are already praising your name on the streets of Xilang. And besides”—he met my eyes now, speaking earnestly—“who better to put on the throne than one who has already given it up?”
It was true. On coronation’s eve, I might have chosen Terren, to make myself empress and to become powerful.
But the moment a better path came along, I had given it all up without hesitation.
Power might have tasted sweet, but it was also easy to let go of, once we remembered who we were doing it all for.
“But I will not force you,” Hesin said. The compassion was back on his lined face, the compassion I had first seen that foggy morning in the Palisade Garden, when I had told him my truths, when I had listened to his.
“I told His Majesty Isan that it must be your choice, and your choice only. I will not bind you to a man against your will a second time. For your sake, and”—he gave half a smile, the first sign of humor I had seen on the old eunuch—“for the peace of the nation.”
Bind against my will. If I accepted, then I would wed yet another stranger, one who likely resented me.
I would be trapped in the Inner Court once again, with all its politics and intrigue and never-ending schemes for power.
There might be poison. There might be rumors.
There might be the childmaking duties. I would have to relearn the aphrodisiacs, the pressure points, the patterns of the moon.
The choice was an obvious one. Marriage, after all, was only a means.
I gave one last glance at the path that led to Lu’an, and went with the eunuch back to the palace, back home.
It took me a few days until I made my place in the Orchard Palace comfortable.
The Rice Pavilion’s parlor had already been filled with fruit trees when I moved in—apples and pears growing out of peony rugs, pomelos hanging from the ceiling rafters, blossoming plum branches arching over the doorways.
But over the past few days, my servants and I had busied ourselves making it our own.
We hung blades everywhere. Rusted and shiny, new and used, ones with wooden handles and ones with leather grips.
We hung them from the ceiling, dangling from the branches, and fastened to the walls, until the room smelled not only of ripe fruit but new steel.
Even the throne Terren had made for me had been moved to my new pavilion. Forged initially from a cold twist of swords, it soon caught the magic of the Orchard Palace, and became draped with mandarin blossoms, berries, and wild peaches.
When it was finished, I invited all the women in the palace for a feast. All except for Song Silian, who had fled the palace and returned to her clan. I hoped I never saw her again.
“Your Majesty!” Second-Rank Concubine Wang Suwen came rushing in excitedly. Her jeweled hairpiece clattered as she gave me a deep bow. “May you live a thousand years.”
“May you live a thousand years!” declared Noble Consort Kang, who had arrived with her own maid in a dress littered with daisies.
My servants had already set up my parlor with full tables—skewered meats, egg soups, sliced melon, and hundreds more small dishes—but the visitors came bearing even more gifts.
Jiang Rovah had brought in lucky buns, filled with sesame and sticky lotus paste; Jin Veris had brought her clan’s signature golden plum wine.
“Each jar can sell for up to a thousand coppers,” she bragged, to absolutely anyone who would listen.
Sun Ai—now the Dowager Empress—had brought in lotus wraps in bamboo baskets, each tied neatly with a piece of yellow string.
“These are my favorite!” Li Ciyi exclaimed to me, as he unabashedly swiped two more of the wraps into his sleeve to save for later. “Now that I am chief eunuch to an empress, I must dine like one too.”
Not everyone had decided to stay. Some of the concubines, like the Qi Clan sisters or Chua Yan, had decided to take the gifts and go home. Qin Chen, whose grandfather the Magistrate of Dusu had finally been freed after ten long years, had gone back to reunite with her family.
In the end, there had been seventeen from Terren’s Inner Court who chose to remain.
We feasted, and an opera girl came in to sing a famous piece for us—“Pity the fish, confined to its pond…”—and then came time for the first lesson.
Tables were set up with blank scrolls and brush pens, and soon the aroma of lit candles and ink filled the room.
Scholars in headdresses came in to teach, and Ciyi finished chewing his lotus wrap and went to join them.
“Reading need not be daunting,” he said, his eyes turning into crescent moons. “The characters are not random…”
It was not only the concubines receiving the lessons.
Any servants they wished to bring with them were also permitted to learn.
Mi Yung, my head attendant, sat next to a twelve-year-old maid who served under Third-Rank Concubine Liru Syra; one of the old eunuchs from Ni Mara’s pavilion shared a pot of ink with my senior maid, Du Hu.
Tel Pima—my former scribe I had rehired into the palace—was tutoring two buoyant little eunuchs under a pomelo tree. One of them was tugging at his braid.
Even the toddler prince Ruyi was present, though not as a student. He was crawling under the tables, in pursuit of an ivy-cat, while everyone else studied. “Cat,” he squealed between fits of giggles. “Cat cat cat cat cat.”
Then the gate creaked open. Another woman bearing the last name Sun had arrived.
Sun Jia did not look at me as she entered.
Her scowl was gone, her head hunched. There were lines on her face that had not been there before.
But when she approached Wang Suwen’s table, Suwen did make room for her and offer her an inked brush.
Her hand closed around Jia’s as she guided her into writing her first word.
I watched them from my cold throne, of fruit and blades, while reviewing one of Isan’s memorials. The emperor had not given me the authority to stamp them myself—we were not at that point yet; we might never be—but I was allowed to annotate them and give my opinions.
The one in my hands was from spies near the northern border, reporting enemy movement. War was encroaching. The Lian, the Cividí, the island nations, the rebel provinces—they had sensed a weakness after Terren’s death, and were now going for the nation’s throat.
Maybe we would win against them. Maybe we would lose. Maybe the whole empire would be burned to the ground, and new green things would grow in its ashes.
I added my notes, then signed it with my name. Yin Wei.
Wei—but not the character for tail, or end, or last. The same sound in the Tenshan language could have many meanings. Now that I could read, I could choose the one I liked best, so when I signed my name, it was with the Ancestors’ word for greatness.