Descendant of the Crane

by Joan He

  Her voice wouldn’t be so strained when she asked the Silver Iris, “Who killed my father?”

  The Silver Iris blinked once. “Killed?”

  “Yes, killed!” Hesina choked up. “The king didn’t die a natural death. The decrees lie.”

  But she would show the kingdom the truth. With the Silver Iris’s Sight, she would find the assassin, press them into the tianlao dungeons, and maybe then, when she had a life for a life, this nightmare would—

  “I See golden gas rising from a pile of shards,” the Silver Iris started. Hesina leaned in. “But I can’t See who killed the king.”

  Hesina’s heart dove like a kite without wind.

  “What I can See is the person who will help you find the truth.”

  “A representative?” Hesina couldn’t mask her disappointment.

  “Yes.” The Silver Iris smoothed an embroidered sash over her knee. “You could call him that.”

  Hesina wound the cord connecting the vial to her broad-belt around her thumb. If she chose to follow a path of formal justice for her father’s killer, the Investigation Bureau would look into Hesina’s claim that he’d been murdered. Once they’d officially forwarded the case to the court, the Minister of Rites would assign a representative to both the plaintiff—in this case, her—and the defendant.

  “Well?” prompted the Silver Iris. “Would you like to hear?”

  Princesses were not so different from beggars. Hesina had learned to take what she could get. “Yes.”

  The Silver Iris’s doe-like eyes roved over her. Hesina squirmed, well aware there was nothing impressive about her appearance. She lacked the hunger for knowledge that flamed in Caiyan’s eyes, the mirth of Lilian’s lips. A visiting painter had once said that Hesina had her mother’s face, but they both knew she’d never wear it as well as the queen. Hesina thought she heard similar sympathy in the Silver Iris’s voice when she finally said, “A convict.”

  “A…convict.” The cord had cut the circulation to Hesina’s thumb. She unwound it, pins and needles replacing the numbness. Her father’s justice…handed to a convict.

  She almost laughed.

  “I’m sorry.” Hesina’s composure would have made her tutors proud. “There must be a mistake.”

  The Silver Iris drew back. “No mistake. A convict will represent you in court.”

  “That’s impossible.” Only up-and-coming scholars, selected from a pool of hopeful civil service examinees, acted as representatives in trials. The court was a stage on which to prove their intellect; the reward for winning the case was a free pass through the preliminary rounds of the examinations. The Eleven had made it so to give every literati a chance to rise, regardless of family background. But what did a criminal have to gain from such a system?

  Hesina’s disbelief condensed. “Please look again.”

  “You think I’m lying.”

  “What? No.” Hesina didn’t believe the Silver Iris would lie, not really, for the same reason people trusted sooths in the past. Though books and libraries on the specifics of their powers had been destroyed in the purge, select legends had lived on to become common knowledge. One was that sooths couldn’t lie about their visions without shortening their life spans. How else, argued scholars, could the relic emperors have controlled them?

  “Why not?” The Silver Iris rose and turned her back to them. A cascade of colors tumbled out from the hidden layers of her lilac skirt. “Do you think I’m scared of shaving a few years off my life?”

  She loosened her sash, and the ruqun puddled onto the lacquered floor.

  First came the hand-shaped bruises, flowering over her bare back. Then came the burn marks. Hundreds of thin, puckered lines, as if someone had bled her with a knife and watched her smoke for the fun of it.

  “Some would rather see us alive than cut to a thousand pieces or charred at the stake,” she said as Hesina’s throat closed. “You assume I tell the truth because I fear death, but the dead are lucky. They cannot squirm or shudder.” She made for her wardrobe. “Nor can they be forced to say the things you want to hear.”

  The brazier at Hesina’s feet was still spitting flame, but her toes had gone cold. She shouldn’t have come here. The Silver Iris had bled for her and Seen for her, but Hesina had given her no choice, just like the patrons before her. She staggered out of her seat.

  “I…I’m sorry. I never…I never meant…We’ll leave—”

  “A convict.” The Silver Iris slid on a different ruqun—this one sheer and crimson—and tied it shut with a braided cord. “The one with the rod. That is all I can see. My blood is diluted. Few of us are as powerful as our ancestors. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

  Meaningfully, she met Hesina’s gaze in the bronze mirror atop her vanity.

  Hesina’s mouth opened and closed. No words came out.

  A rap sounded at the door, then Lilian’s voice. “Someone’s coming up the steps.”

  “You should go now.” The Silver Iris opened a drawer, withdrawing a tiny pot. She unscrewed the top and dabbed a fresh coat of silver over her lids. “I have patrons to tend to.”

  “Y-yes,” stammered Hesina. “We’ll go. I…I’m sorry.”

  She backed up. Caiyan joined her side. He held the door open for her, but suddenly Hesina couldn’t move. A question rooted her, climbing up her esophagus like a weed and choking her mind:

  “Why tell me anything?”

  “What makes you so certain I haven’t been lying to you all this time?” asked the Silver Iris, gaze chilly.

  Because Caiyan said you wouldn’t. Because rumor said lying would cost you.

  “Because you showed me more than I deserve,” said Hesina truthfully. “And…” She bit her lip and looked away. Naive, the Imperial Doctress had called her. Reckless. “And because I want to trust you.”

  Because I feel sorry for you.

  The Silver Iris sighed. “Come here.”

  Hesina went over cautiously, and the Silver Iris held out her index finger.

  The prick from the hairpin was gone. As small as the wound was, there was no way it could have healed so quickly, and Hesina goggled at the smooth, unmarred skin, flinching when the Silver Iris’s breath brushed her ear.

  “Your histories only tell you how our powers hurt us,” whispered the courtesan. “But there are benefits to speaking true visions too.”

  She drew back, leaving the shell of Hesina’s ear hot and cold all at once. “Why are you telling me this?”

  When the Silver Iris studied her this time, the ice in her gaze had thawed to pity, as if she were the human and Hesina were the sooth. “For the same reason you believe me: I am sorry for you.”

  They left the red-light district at two gong strikes past midnight. Left and right through the eastern market, merchants packed up their stalls, loading jiutan of sweet-wine congee and fried bean curd back onto wagons. Hesina drifted through the traffic, a ghost, as Caiyan pacified angry mule drivers and palanquin bearers.

  “Hey, watch it!”

  “Are you trying to lose a leg?”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” said Caiyan. “Excuse us. Pardon us.”

  “Tell your missy to grow a pair of eyes!”

  “Wait up, Na-Na,” called Lilian.

  Hesina didn’t stop. She needed to think, and she couldn’t think standing still.

  A convict with a rod was to be her representative.

  The Silver Iris had told the truth.

  But now what?

  Her feet brought her to the abandoned tavern from which they’d come. Her hands filled a pitcher at the counter pump. She dribbled water down the throat of the concrete guardian lion at the entrance, and the statue rotated aside at the base.

  One by one, they descended the tight drop. The dark waxed over them as Lilian rotated the statue back in place, and Hesina suddenly knew her next steps.

  “I need to become queen.” She made her declaration to the humble dirt walls of the underground passageway.
Her voice echoed, hollow as the feeling in her chest.

  “Of course you’ll become queen,” said Lilian, referring to the rites of succession that passed the throne from deceased ruler to eldest child.

  “When your mother returns from the Ouyang mountains, you can ask for her blessing,” said Caiyan, referring to the tradition of parental validation that all heirs, imperial or not, observed before staking their claims.

  The twins went back and forth as they walked down the tunnel. Rites. Traditions. Rites. Traditions. Neither seemed to realize that Hesina had said she needed the throne, not that she wanted it.

  She envied Lilian, who was allowed to spend her days overseeing the imperial textiles. She envied Caiyan, who positively breathed politics. She even envied her blood brother Sanjing, who led the Yan militias. The throne never stood in the way of their hopes and dreams.

  But for the first time in her life, Hesina had a use for power.

  “I want an official investigation.” Her father would have wanted the truth delivered by the codes of the Tenets. That meant going through the Investigation Bureau, not a sooth. “I want a trial.” The ground rose beneath their feet as they approached the end of the passageway. “I want the people to see the truth unfold in court.”

  “So you really think there’s a convict with a rod?” asked Lilian as they emerged from a miniature mountain range situated in the center of the four-palace complex.

  There was only one way to find out.

  “Go on without me.” Hesina turned north, toward the dungeons.

  Caiyan caught her elbow. “It’s best to visit at a less suspicious hour.”

  Lilian took her other elbow. “For once, I agree with the stone-head. Commit one act of treason at a time.”

  Better yet, commit no treason at all.

  Hesina shook them both off. “I didn’t say I was going to make him my representative right now.”

  If only it were that simple. To prevent the rich and powerful from hiring the best scholars and winning every case as they had during the relic dynasty, the Tenets ordered that plaintiff and defendant each be assigned a representative at random. As a result, Hesina couldn’t choose her own representative. It was treason. Convincing the only person in charge of the selection—Xia Zhong, Minister of Rites, Interpreter of the Tenets—happened to be treason too.

  But that, Hesina decided, was another problem for another night.

  “What are you going to do in the dungeons, then?” Lilian was asking when Hesina emerged from her thoughts. “Examine his rod?”

  Caiyan cleared his throat.

  Hesina patted Lilian on the arm. “I’d save you the honors.” “I’m holding you to that.”

  “It’s late, milady,” said Caiyan, changing the subject. “The prisoners won’t be going anywhere. Wait for tomorrow, when your mind is clearer.”

  Don’t wait, growled the fear in Hesina’s belly. She’d been too late to save her father, too late to stop news of his “natural death” from circulating the kingdom.

  But Caiyan had a point. The night was balmy with the last of the summer heat, and Hesina’s senses had begun to fog. Their trip into the red-light district felt like it’d taken place an eon ago, and she couldn’t hold back her yawn when they reached the Western Palace, home to the imperial artisans.

  Under a medallion-round moon, Lilian bade them good night. The woodwork of her latticed doors was stained fuchsia and gold, bright like the textiles strewn, hung, and piled within. It was like looking into another world, a too-short glimpse of a life Hesina could not have. The doors slid shut, and Hesina and Caiyan continued on, traveling under the covered galleries that converged like arteries at the Eastern Palace, the largest of the four and the heart of court. The sunk-in ceilings dropped lower as they passed the ceremonial halls of the outer palace, the corridors narrowing as they approached the inner.

  Caiyan stopped Hesina short of the imperial chambers. “Lilian and I will stand by you no matter what you choose to do.”

  The words were bittersweet, reminding Hesina of something her father might say.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “For everything.”

  Caiyan hadn’t doubted the gas in her vial. She’d run to his rooms in hysterics and he’d sat her down and outlined her options. Steady, reliable Caiyan, a friend, a brother, who received her gratitude with a short bow. “Get some sleep, milady.”

  “You too.” But then Caiyan headed in the direction of the libraries, which made Hesina doubt he would.

  Alone, she made for her chambers. The path to the imperial quarters was intentionally convoluted, designed to confuse intruders. Tonight, Hesina felt no better than one as the knit of lacquer corridors enmeshed her within the screened facades. Some of the images stitched upon the translucent silk were of water buffalo tilling rice paddies, but most were of the Eleven’s revolution. Gold thread fleshed out the flames engulfing the soothsayers and shimmered in the pool of blood spreading from the relic emperor’s severed head.

  Hesina’s breath went ragged. Don’t fear the pictures, Little Bird, her father would have said. They’re simply art. But now she was as bad as the emperors of the past. She had used a sooth. Worse, her true heart sympathized, and she was too cowardly to speak it.

  Hesina tried to look ahead. A mistake. The list of tasks awaiting her was daunting. Find the convict with the rod. Persuade Xia Zhong to choose him as her representative. Secure her mother’s blessing and commence her reign by telling the people their king had been murdered.

  She would be an unforgettable queen—if she didn’t die by a thousand cuts first.

  As Hesina neared her chamber, her blood slowed to a crawl. Light was seeping out from under the doors. She’d blown out all her candles—she was sure of it—which could mean only one thing:

  Someone was inside.

  Pulse fluttering, she laid a hand atop the carved wood. Her options were few. Walk away, and her visitor would think she’d been gone all night. Enter, and she’d have no choice but to explain her whereabouts.

  On second thought, perhaps she hadn’t blown out her candles. Hesina very much hoped that was the case as she pushed in.

  “Sanjing?” Her mouth fell open while the doors swung shut. “What are you doing here?”

  Candlelight rippled off the scales of her blood brother’s laminar armor as he rose from her daybed. He was still in full military dress, hair pinned in a sloppy topknot, curved liuyedao sheathed at his leather broad-belt.

  He stalked past her embroidered screens and around her sitting table. “You first, dear sister. What have you been doing elsewhere?”

  He closed in. Too late, Hesina realized the state of her appearance—brown cloak, wild eyes, the fumes of sin city clinging to her hair.

  She backed away, but her brother was quicker. He grabbed a handful of her cloak, frowning when his fingers met linen instead of silk. He brought the fabric to his nose, and her heart hammered. She tried to slow it. Sanjing was kin. He wouldn’t betray her to death by a thousand cuts.

  “You went to the city. And you reek of incense.”

  Hesina’s fear frayed into annoyance. She was the older sibling, and she drew herself up to her full and very average height. “Glad to know you care about my whereabouts. What next? Will you supervise who I speak to?”

  “Why would I? You already have a devoted chaperone.” Sanjing released the cloak, and Hesina retreated to her desk. “Or should I say, manservant.”

  She straightened her paperwork. Decrees, proposals, memorials—all matters that fell to her while she acted as unofficial queen before the coronation, and in the absence of her mother’s blessing. But no matter how Hesina concentrated, she couldn’t stop trembling. Elevens. Why did Sanjing have to be here, now of all times? “His name is Caiyan.”

  “Really? I still prefer the sound of manservant. Has a nice ring to it.”

  Her hands stilled on a copy of the Tenets. It was solid, thick with hundreds of essays on the Eleven’s beliefs. It withs
tood the pressure of her fingers as she dug them into the spine.

  She could be cruel. Dredge up the past they’d both agreed to bury, say the words guaranteed to drive him away. But in the end, she simply set down the tome with a heavy thump. “Why are you here, Jing?”

  “Again: why weren’t you?”

  “I went to find justice.”

  “For?”

  Her limbs were cold, her head heavy. She was too tired for this. Maybe that’s why she told the truth. “Father.”

  She drew the vial from the folds of her cloak. The golden gas shimmered in the candlelight.

  “What is that?” asked Sanjing, squinting.

  “Poison.”

  He hissed in a breath. “Why am I learning this now?”

  “You really thought he died from natural causes?”

  “I didn’t think the Imperial Doctress had a reason to lie.” Sanjing scrubbed a hand over his face. “Six’s bones. What are we going to do?”

  Hesina’s hopes lifted at the we, but it wasn’t enough. The better question was what could they do. It was their word and a vial against a kingdom already convinced its king had passed peacefully. Again, she needed the throne. She needed power. Once she had both: “Open an investigation.”

  “With the Bureau?”

  “Where else but the Bureau?”

  Sanjing narrowed his eyes. “What about the war?”

  “What about the war?” Then Hesina caught herself. “Don’t call it that.”

  “What would you rather call it? A pissing match?” She cast him a warning glance, and he responded, “We’re alone, Sina.” Sanjing planted his hands on the desk, boxing in the space between them. “What we call it doesn’t change the nature of the ‘bandit raids’ along the Yan-Kendi’a border. They’re planned attacks from Kendi’a, and the commoners will realize that sooner or later.”

  “They mustn’t.” The Tenets forbade war, and understandably so. The relic emperors had conscripted hundreds of thousands of serfs to wage extravagant campaigns against the other kingdoms of Ning, Ci, and Kendi’a, and the commoners of this era hadn’t forgotten the bloodshed. They praised Sanjing whenever he won skirmishes—skirmishes being key. Every century or so, some Yan king or queen would disregard the Eleven’s pacifist teachings and decree war, sending hamlets and provinces across the realm into revolt.