(She’s improved. You’ll be happy to know that, I think. The last time I had her write to you was when we were thirteen, and you commented on the marked improvement. She pretended not to take it to heart, but she made a copy of that letter before giving me the original.)
Through the letters our friendship grew. You wrote to me of your endless lessons, of your mother’s insistence that you take up the zither despite your hatred of it. You’d tell me about the courtiers you met over the course of your day. Soon the letters grew several pages long.
When I was seven, my mother announced we’d be returning to Oshiro for the summer. I told you all about it.
“We will be sure to meet you at the gates,” you wrote. “I will have a surprise for you. Do not be late.”
I cannot tell you how much that simple statement vexed me. A surprise. A surprise for me, from the Emperor’s niece. Kenshiro said it must be a pretty set of robes—something you’d like, that I would hate. Otgar said it would be something foolish like a mountain of rice.
I remember when I came riding back to Oshiro. I didn’t see you at the gates, as you promised. Rage filled my young heart; doubt wrung it dry. What if we were late? I’d pestered my mother into moving faster than she’d planned, and I was riding ahead of the caravan by a few hours. What if that wasn’t enough?
I took my first steps up the stairs into my father’s palace. Servants greeted me with bows and hushed whispers of “Oshiro-sur, welcome home.” My bare feet touched the floors.
And that was when I saw it. The first pink peony, laid out with utmost care at the threshold. I picked it up. It smelled just like your letters. I smiled so hard, it hurt my face, and looked around. Yes, there was another, and another!
I ran along the trail of flowers as fast as I could. Soon I was standing before our gardens, where I came to an abrupt stop.
For there you were, standing in the doorway in your shining golden robes, your hair dark as night, your ornaments like stars. There you were, smiling like dawn itself. Behind you were hundreds of flowers, more than I’d ever seen in my entire life, in colors I could not name. There was the angry red of our first meeting, next to the deep scarlet of our last; there was day’s first yellow, swaying in the wind next to a gloaming violet.
But it is you I remember most, Shizuka. Your face. Your happiness upon seeing me. And all the flowers somehow staring right at you, as if you were teaching them how to be so bright and cheerful.
“There you are,” you said. “How do you like your flowers?”
To this day, I do not know how you got them all to Oshiro. Whoever heard of transporting an entire Imperial Garden? Who would believe me, if I told them? The future Empress of Hokkaro and all her Children, doing such a thing to impress a Qorin girl? Oh, the servants believe it, and I’m sure they’re talking about it to this day.
It is just like you, I think, to casually do the impossible.
THE EMPRESS
TWO
Flowers. Yes, Empress Yui—no, no, that was not the name she chose for herself, and it was not the name Shefali called her. Yui, a single character meant to shame her.
Solitude.
Her greatest friend, as her uncle saw things.
But he was wrong. Besides Shefali and Baozhai, Shizuka’s greatest friends have always been the flowers.
All her life, they have been at her side. One glance outside will show her the Imperial Gardens, where she spent so much of her youth. If she leans back, she can see them, swaying in the breeze outside like the dancers her father so treasured.
It was her father who took her to the gardens. He’d always had a fondness for them. When she imagines his face, she sees a dogwood tree in the background and a sprig of the blooms tucked behind his ear. He is smiling in the midday sun, humming a tune he is too shy to share with anyone else.
“My little tigress,” he’d say, helping her up onto the branches of a cherry blossom tree. He’d touch her on the nose, then pick the brightest flowers for her. Soon they wore matching adornments. “The Daughter is the finest poet in the land,” he said, “and see how her flowers always turn to greet you! She must have excellent taste, for you have always been my favorite poem.”
How many times has she clung to that phrase?
Is it still true?
She shakes her head. O-Itsuki is long gone, she tells herself. Only his poetry remains, dropping from the lips of amorous scholars, lending bravery to the timid.
Only his poetry, and his brother.
Thinking of her uncle makes the Empress wince. Yoshimoto is nothing like his late brother. He does not even have the common decency to share a resemblance. Where Itsuki was tall and thin, Yoshimoto had always been short and stout. Where Itsuki’s cheeks were smooth, Yoshimoto wore a thick beard to hide his youth. Itsuki was a wild maple tree, Yoshimoto was …
Shizuka has never been fond of potted plants. She receives them more than any other gift—but no, she has never liked them.
She leans toward the window, lost in thought, lost in memory. Her eyes dance over poppies and jasmine, irises and hibiscus, champa and magnolia. And, yes—if she looks—she can see the golden daffodil.
Her mother hated that daffodil. So did her uncle.
It stands alone, at least two horselengths from the nearest bush, from the nearest tree. The grass around it is, for the most part, untouched. No one dares venture near it. Shizuka didn’t even know of the daffodil’s existence until one of her walks in the garden.
She was five at the time, she thinks, or perhaps six—before she uprooted the gardens for Shefali’s sake, but after they’d first met. Her cousin Daishi Akiko came to visit from Fuyutsuki Province for the summer. Daishi was so far removed from the bloodline that her children would no longer count as Imperial, but she was the closest thing to a friend Shizuka had.
Well, besides Shefali, but then she has always been an exception.
Daishi was only two years older than she, but full of an eight-year-old’s audacity. And while their parents were off at court, Daishi convinced her to raid the gardens.
“Raid.” That was the word she used. They were going to the corpse blossom, she said, and they were going to steal one of its massive petals. Then they’d sneak into the throne room at night to hide it beneath the Dragon Throne. Imagine Yoshimoto’s face! Imagine O-Hanae’s!
But the moment they stepped in the garden, with the sun hanging overhead—Shizuka knew something was different.
As the two girls strolled past a rosebush, Daishi suddenly stopped and covered her mouth. “Did you see that?” she asked.
Shizuka, six, pouted and crossed her arms. “Those are roses,” she said, “not corpse flowers.”
“Walk by them again,” said Daishi.
Grumbling, Shizuka did so, and that was when the shock on Daishi’s face turned to awe. She pointed with her rough little hands. “They’re turning toward you!”
Shizuka rolled her eyes. “Of course they are,” she said. “I’m the heir.”