Read Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 3, July 2013 for Free Online Page B

“Fourth Princess.”
    “Please rise.”
    He could not hold me as he had in the shadows of Madame Wu’s where we had gone to eat lotus cakes. It was not that a man was forbid another woman. Gossip thrived on the stories of a man who neglected his wife in favor of the concubine he truly adored. But I was still Fourth Princess and a held daughter. Jing-lung would not make the mistake that had sent him to the frontier a second time.
    “I am well,” he told me.
    “Will you be in the capital long?”
    “Through the new year, then I will return to the west.”
    “How dangerous is it out there?”
    “Better than it was, Fourth Princess. The barbarians have been beaten back and they lick their wounds. We will probably not hear from them for a while, but the border must be secured to discourage them from returning.”
    It was the appropriate response, from a soldier reporting to the royal family, but it was not what I wanted to know. I wanted to know how dangerous it was for him , to know what his chances were for returning another time. I turned away, not wanting my feelings to show. We were in the courtyard, and there were too many people who could see.
    “Fourth Princess,” said Jing-lung, “I will be careful. When you are Emperor I will be there to lead your army.”
    I sighed. “Don’t say such things. You are not yet a general, and Imperial Father has not given up.”
    “You are right, Fourth Princess, but the flow of a river cannot be stopped. I am certain the Emperor is aware.”
    By the time I was twenty-eight, most of the palace maids I’d known as a child had been freed from service to marry and begin families of their own. I had a new set of maids, but they still marveled at the held daughter, and gossiped about how long I would wait.
    Jing-lung told me not to worry, and I was happy that he still had words for me. He was often away from the palace, but he never forgot me. I liked to spend time with him in the imperial garden, in a pavilion surrounded by the empress’s favorite lilies, where we would watch the mandarin ducks as the pairs swam together in the perfect image of married harmony.
    My new maids did not know of my history with Jing-lung, so they obeyed when I shooed them a respectful distance away, but because we could never be sure who would hear, Jing-lung and I only talked about the situation at the border; details about army strength, patrols, supply lines.
    I did not know if he had children, what he thought of his wife, or how much time he spent at home. I wanted us to be the ducks in the pond, bonded for life, but that possibility had already passed us by.
    I was twenty-nine when Imperial Father finally announced that I would take the role of Crown Prince. My youngest sibling could also have been made prince, but by now the Emperor had invested so much in me that he was loath to have to teach a second heir. I suspected with his growing age that if he had sired a boy yesterday he still would not have changed me for the babe. He was done with children now and warmed himself with the thought of grandchildren.
    His first three daughters and the fifth had children, and he would read about them in letters from their husbands and visit them if time and distance allowed, but I had yet to marry. Imperial Father decided he would fix that.
    At the Green Dragon Festival we welcomed the spring, and in the lantern light of the evening banquet he called me before him and invited Yan-cheung of the Horse Clan to join us. The empress praised how good we looked together and the Emperor nodded in agreement. It was no whimsical decision, I knew, but a way to politely present us in public together for the first time.
    Yan-cheung was tall and thin with oversized hands, but he had a scholarly look to his face that spoke of wisdom. He was not as old as I, but that was to be expected. Most families did not hold their sons from marrying.
    He was an eldest son as well. His family was eager indeed to relinquish their