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by
Nghi Vo
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February 13 - February 13, 2024
Hate, however, was reserved for equals, and as far as In-yo was concerned, she had no equals in all the empire.
The court women wondered how In-yo could tell, so stocky and round, but they walked more carefully around her. Those who bear children hold the keys to life and death, and their ill wishes are to be feared.
I blushed and ducked my head, murmuring something about duty and being honored to serve, but deep down, I thought she would never be alone again, not if I could help it. Being close to her was like being warmed by a bonfire, and I had been cold for a long time.
It was the bulk of their training, learning how to wait for a story rather than chasing after it, and soon enough, it came to them.
Some of those girls, I think, might have come to love the empress in their own time. I do not remember love from them, however, so much as ambition. They’d ridden high once and then fallen, or perhaps they’d only seen the high places and it made them hungrier.
“Angry mothers raise daughters fierce enough to fight wolves.”
In-yo was surprised when I crept into her arms that night, but she wrapped herself around me like a blanket. “Is there going to be a place for all of us in your world?” I whispered to her, still mindful of the wakeful ears around us. She kissed the top of my head comfortingly, and I told her my secret. She listened calmly, and she wiped my eyes when I cried. It came to me that she held me tighter after that, more protectively, and I might have thought that even then her mind was skipping forward to what came next, if only she hadn’t spoken to me the next day.
“So, what do you want for your child? Or do you want a child at all?”
“I have taken everything from you. It is the nature of royalty, I am afraid, what we are bred for and what we are taught. I will not take more unless you tell me it’s all right. Do you understand?”
“In-yo is gone now. So are Phuong, my parents, and Sukai. My allegiance lies with the dead, and no matter what the clerics say, the dead care for very little.”
“Angry mothers raise daughters fierce enough to fight wolves. I am not worried for her in the least.”
“Let him kill himself,” I said finally. “As long as he is dead, that is all that matters to me.”
That’s something I think peasants understand better than nobles. For them, the way down matters, whether you are skewered by a dozen guardsmen or thrown in a silk sack to drown or allowed to remove your robe and walk down to the shores of the lake before you gut yourself. Peasants understand that dead is dead.
In-yo dealt as fairly as she could, was ruthless when she had to be, and the day after the eclipse of 359, which historians call the end of the Su Dynasty, she was crowned the Empress of Salt and Fortune, ruler of Anh and sister of the north.
Writers spend a lot of time alone. If we’re lucky, we like being alone, and if we’re even luckier, we have people who love us through it all. As I write this, I can’t even tell you how lucky I feel.
