THE

"What is it?" Ana asked.

"It was a crate," Danat said. "Father left orders that it be put on his

pyre. They're letters. All of them are to my mother."

"From when they were courting?" Ana asked, sitting on the floor, her

legs crossed.

"After she died," Danat said. Ana plucked a page from the pile. The

paper was brittle, the ink pale. Otah Machi's words were perfectly legible.

Kiyan-kya-

You have been dead for a year tonight. I miss you. I want to

have something more poetic to say, something that will do

you some honor or change how it./cels to be without you.

Something. I had a thousand things I thought I would write,

but those were when it was only me. Now, here, with you, all

I can say is thatl miss you.

The children are starting to come back from the loss. I

don't know i f they ever will. I have no experience with

this. I had no mother or father. As a child, I had no

family. I don't have any experience losing a family.

The closest thing I have to solace is knowing that, if I had

gone first, you would have suffered all this darkness

yourself. That I have to bear it is the price of sparing

you. It doesn't make the burden lighter, it doesn't make the

pain less, it doesn't take away any of the longing I have to

see you again or hear your voice. But it does give the pain

meaning. I suppose that's all I can ask: that the pain have

meaning.

I love you. I miss you. I will write again soon.

Ana folded the letter. Thousands of pages of letters to the Empress who

had died. The last Empress before her.

"I don't know what to do," Danat said.

"I love you. You know I love you more than anything except the children?"

"Of course."

"If you burn these, I will leave you. Honestly, love. You've lost enough

of him. You have to keep these."

Danat took a deep shuddering breath and closed his eyes. His hands

pressed flat on his thighs. Another tear slipped down his cheek, and Ana

leaned forward to smooth it away with her sleeve.

"I want to," Danat said. "I want to keep them. I want to keep him. But

it was what he asked."

"He's dead, love," Ana said. "He's dead and gone. Truly. He doesn't care

anymore.

When Danat had finished crying, his body heavy against her own, the sun

had set. The apartments were a collection of shadows. Somewhere in the

course of things, they had made their way to Otah Machi's beda soft

mattress that smelled of roses and had, so far as Ana could tell, never

been slept in. She stroked Danat's hair and listened to the chorus of

crickets in the gardens. Her husband's breath became deeper, more

regular. Ana waited until he was deeply asleep, then slipped out from

under him, lit a candle, and by its soft light gathered the letters and

began to put them in order.

And as it is for spring flowers, so it is for us.

THE WORLD ITSELF SEEMED TO HAVE CONSPIRED TO MAKE THE DAY SOMBER. Gray

clouds hung low over the city, a cold constant mist of rain darkening

the mourning cloths, the stones, the newly unfurled leaves of the trees.

The pyre stood in the center of the grand court, stinking of coal oil

and pine resin. The torches that lined the pyre spat and hissed in the rain.

The assembly was huge. There weren't enough whisperers to take any words

he said to the back edges of the crowd. If there was a back. As far as

he could see from his place at the raised black dais, there were only

faces, an infinity of faces, going back to the edge of the horizon.

Their murmuring voices were a constant roll of distant thunder.

The Emperor was dead, and whether they mourned or celebrated, no one

would remain unmoved.

At his side, Ana held his hand. Calin, in a pale mourning robe and a

bright red sash, looked dumbstruck. His eyes moved restlessly over

everything. Danat wondered what the boy found so overwhelming: the sheer

animal mass of the crowd, the realization that Danat himself was no

longer emperor regent but actually emperor, as Calin himself would be

one day, or the fact that Otah was gone. All three, most likely.

Danat rose and stepped to the front of the dais. The crowd grew louder

and then eerily silent. Danat drew a sheaf of papers from his sleeve.

His farewell to his father.

"We say that the flowers return every spring," Danat said, "but that is

a lie. It is true that the world is renewed. It is also true that that

renewal comes at a price, for even if the flower grows from an ancient

vine, the flowers of spring are themselves new to the world, untried and

untested.

"The flower that wilted last year is gone. Petals once fallen are fallen

forever. Flowers do not return in the spring, rather they are replaced.

It is in this difference between returned and replaced that the price of

renewal is paid.

"And as it is for spring flowers, so it is for us."

Danat paused, the voices of the whisperers carrying his words out as far

as they would travel. As he waited, he caught sight of Idaan and Cehmai

standing before the pyre. The old poet looked somber. Idaan's long face

carried an expression that might have been amusement or anger or the

distance of being lost in her own thoughts. She was unreadable, as she

always was. He saw, not for the first time, how much she and Otah

resembled each other.

The rain tapped on the page before him as if to recall his attention.

The ink was begi

"My father founded an empire, something no man living can equal. My

father also took a wife, raised children, struggled with all that it

meant to have us, and there are any number of men and women in the

cities or in Galt, Eymond, Bakta, Eddensea, or the world as a whole who

have taken that road as well.

"My father was born, lived his days, and died. In that he is like all of

us. All of us, every one, without exception. And so it is for that,

perhaps, that he most deserves to be honored."

The ink bled, Danat's words fading and blurring. He looked up at the low

sky and thought of his father's letters. Page after page after page of

saying what could never be said. He didn't know any longer what he'd

hoped to achieve with his own speech. He folded the pages and put them

back in his sleeve.

"I loved my father," Danat said. "I miss him."

He proceeded slowly down the wide stairs to the base of the pyre. A

servant whose face he didn't know presented Danat with a lit torch. He