Chenzhou's mother's name was Wuzheng Maimai. According to the tablet, she'd been born five years before Tira-Lian burned. There were a couple more Wuzhengs on other, older tablets, but Chenzhou didn't recognize any of them.
"They likely died during the fire or not long after," Chenzhou admitted. "My grandparents were all dead by the time my parents met. And neither had siblings."
Not that anyone had told him about anyway.
"If she had surviving relatives, they would have sought her out after her marriage to your father." Eirian pointed out. It was unlikely they'd be able to ignore the wealth she'd married into.
"We put such emphasis on continuing familial lines, it's odd to see the end of one," Chenzhou murmured. There were no more Wuzhengs as far as the world knew. His mother's family name had died the day she'd married his father, but he couldn't stop staring at it carved into a burnt clay tablet. It was only recorded in one place in the Camelia, his parents' wedding registry. After that, she'd always been Lady Ye, in rare cases Lady Ye Maimai.
Had it bothered her that Wuzheng ended with her? Or had she not even cared at that point, after so many years being alone?
If she hadn't married someone of Lord Ye's status, it was possible the child could have carried her name. She might have even lived long enough to have more than one.
They decamped to the gate while the other search teams continued their work until the sun went down, which wouldn't be long now.
Anna and Marian were carefully copying down the information on the tablets, after li had expressed concern about this many surviving the trip back to the Camelia. They hadn't brought a wagon or anything semi-stable to transport them in, so they'd be bouncing around in saddlebags for the entire trip. The fire had baked them, preserving what was written on them, but a week on horseback was guaranteed to shatter a few unless they travelled slowly.
Since Anna and Marian could write better than most of the soldiers, they'd volunteered to be useful after a day of waiting around.
Anna had been ecstatic when Chenzhou had rushed over to show her his mother's name, giving him one of her scarves to wrap it in.
Li kept glancing at the sun, worried, while Eirian studied the carvings on the surviving parts of the gate. "We need to start heading back to the water hole soon."
Eirian turned to him, surprised. "Why do we need to leave? We can just spend the night out here."
"What about the ghosts?" Finn shivered. "Is it safe?"
"You survived last night." Eirian pointed out. "I'm not saying we stay in the manor, but we haven't seen any ghosts outside the walls."
Finn didn't look convinced, and neither did Li.
All three of them turned to Chenzhou for a decision, only to realize he wasn't paying any attention to them.
"Sir." Li caught his attention with a cough.
"Hmm?" Chenzhou looked up, taken aback to find all three of them staring at him. "What?"
"Spend the night. Yay or nay." Eirian demanded.
"Oh," he blinked. "What do you want to do?"
"Sleep here."
"That's fine then." He turned back to the tablet as Li sighed, resigned.
"Outside the walls, then." The Guard Captain said firmly.
Eirian nodded quickly, happy as long as they stayed.
"Let's get a camp set up." Li waved Finn, Emmy, and Patrick over to help as Eirian turned back to the village.
"I'm going to check on the searchers." She announced as she ducked back through the gate.
As the rest of the party began setting up a fire and sleeping arrangements, Li sent a soldier to update those still guarding the water hole and horses, and Anna turned to Marian. "Chenzhou certainly seems to trust her judgement."
"Hmm?" Marian paused in her writing and looked up.
"The Princess." Anna clarified, ducking her head.
Marian's gaze turned calculating as she studied the younger woman. "Well, she has some experience with these things. She spent a good deal of her time in the capital working with the City Guard and the Imperial Army for the King. Chenzhou would be wise to learn what he can from her."
"Chenzhou has led the Camelia successfully for years; shouldn't she be learning from him?"
Marian snorted. "She doesn't strike me as the type to enjoy balancing accounts. Although she has shown interest in handling the court."
Anna laughed softly, "Chenzhou would love to hand that off." But he could only hand it off to someone who ranked above the court, and the only people in the Camelia who did were Lord and Lady Ye. Chenzhou rarely had the energy to spare to deal with the Court the way the Lord of the estate should.
"Do you think she's going to stay?" Anna kept her voice low. "Now that Chenzhou isn't dying?"
Marian frowned. While she sympathized with the young woman's situation, she was treading a dangerous line. If the wrong person overheard her and made an issue of it, Chenzhou would have to answer for it, which could damage his standing or worse, force him to take action. "I think it's up to the two of them, but Chenzhou doesn't seem to be in any rush to see her leave. He had intended to leave her the Camelia; he likely still intends to."
Anna's face fell. "Right. Of course. They'll need to have children then." She turned back to her writing. "Chenzhou has always wanted children, though he was determined not to have them when he knew he wouldn't be around."
Personally, Eirian didn't strike Marian as the maternal type, and she'd never said anything about children, but it would be expected. Chenzhou was the last of the Ye's, and there had been worry for years about the line's ability to endure.
But even Eirian's lineage had those concerns. Her father had only just fathered a second child, possibly even a first if there was any credence to the rumors of the capital. And the King had only one official surviving child of the five he'd fathered. There were no lesser branches of the Soliel line, no distant cousins to take up the name if something happened to Prince Eric, Princess Eirian, or her new brother.
In this world of magic and power, it wasn't hard to imagine grand bloodlines like the Blood of the Sun and the Red Flower dying out just as the penniless Wuzheng's had.
~ tbc