The Power and the Glory

Book 1 Chapter II: Beware of the Ghosts

To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing. -- Anne Carson

"I don't believe it!"

Five hundred years ago the royal household would have been alarmed to hear angry shouting issue from the Prince Royal's[1] palace. Unlike most of his family Prince Mirio had neither the inclination nor temperament for involving himself in court squabbles. In the past, shouting in his palace would have meant something was badly wrong somewhere. Now, however, the passing courtiers merely sighed and shook their heads. Inwardly they lamented that years of living in Seroyawa had still not taught Her Highness the Foreign Princess any discretion.

Mirio's palace was comparatively isolated. As the son of a concubine he had little chance of becoming emperor. As the son of a foreign concubine he had no chance at all. His mother was from Gengxin, and no self-respecting Seroyawan would allow someone with mixed blood to take the throne. An outsider would have assumed he was miserable and lonely. A reasonable assumption, but a completely wrong one.

It was hard for anyone to be lonely when their siblings decided their house was the perfect place to meet and talk without interruption.

Take today for example. Abihira paced back and forth across the room. Kiriyuki was too busy eating the sweets she'd brought to pay any attention to the others present. Mirio himself sat cross-legged on the floor, calmly drinking tea and pretending not to see the crumbs Kiriyuki dropped all around her. The two younger princes were out in the garden, holding a mock sword fight with twigs for swords and saucers for shields.

"Sit down and drink your tea," Mirio said as Abihira passed the table for the fifteenth time. "It will go cold."

Abihira sat down and muttered something in common Seroyawan[2]. "Is tea your answer to everything?"

Kiriyuki snorted, a display of unladylike behaviour that would have scandalised her parents. "Just drink the tea. He's like a mother hen. He'll never be happy until you do."

As she spoke she reached for another sweet. A small avalanche of sugar and crumbs fell from her clothes onto the floor. Mirio looked silently at the mess. His lips pursed ever so slightly and his brow furrowed almost imperceptibly. Nearly two thousand years of growing up with him had left Kiriyuki able to read the smallest changes in his expression.

"Sorry," she said without much sincerity. "I'll sweep them up later."

"Thank you," Mirio said serenely, pouring Abihira a fresh cup of tea.

It was a strange -- and for their father, a rather unwelcome -- fact that Mirio, the son the emperor didn't exactly dislike but would prefer to forget about, the child of a diplomatic union with a foreign woman the emperor had no interest in, understood the unspoken rules of accepted conduct much better than his four half-siblings. Kiriyuki and her full brothers and sister were the children of the empress, the woman the emperor admired, respected, and even loved in his own way. Yet they frequently excited disapproving looks with their lack of tact, behaviour that wasn't quite impolite but certainly wasn't polite enough either, and being far too free with their real opinions.

Discretion and politeness were the most important things in the royal court. You could commit any sins you liked, be as corrupt as possible, and engage in backstabbing all day long, as long as you were discreet and polite while doing it. Abihira, as a foreigner, and Kiriyuki, as the Crown Princess, had some freedom to flout the court's customs without facing severe disapproval. Mirio had no such security. From earliest childhood he had learnt that he had to follow the rules to the letter. Only people who had known him all his life were able to tell what he truly thought about anything.