Descendant of the Crane

by Joan He

  Apparently not. She wasn’t Hesina anymore. She was the queen, a firm but doting mother to the people, a mother she had been without. Perhaps that was why Hesina didn’t resist the village girl who took her hand and pulled her into the newly threshed fields. She let the elders sitting on bales of sorghum rope her into making lanterns, and after several attempts, she fashioned a passable one for Sanjing. When it came time to write her wish on it, she wished for his well-being.

  Then she made more. Her pile grew. The elders offered her a fishnet to carry the lanterns to the village square where people were setting them aloft, but Hesina thought of the lake and the moon and made the journey back to the encampment.

  She passed the cypress grove and went down to the inky waters. Tomorrow, she would come here again and negotiate with the Crown Prince. There could be only two outcomes: war or peace. Success or failure.

  But it had to be done, and she had to be the one to do it, underprepared or not.

  With unsteady hands, Hesina set to work, stuffing oil-soaked cotton gauze into each lantern’s bamboo cradle, transferring her watch lantern’s flame to the cotton with a reed, setting them free in the order they’d been made: Sanjing. Lilian. Caiyan. Ming’er. Akira.

  But Akira’s never took off. A gust of wind killed the flame mid-ascent. The lantern floated down, drifting several reed lengths out into the black water.

  According to the Tenets, the Eleven had tipped in five thousand barrels of ink, lured both relic and Kendi’an troops into the lake, and escaped while the two armies decimated each other, foe and friend indistinguishably dyed.

  And that, explained Hesina’s tutors, is why the waters are black.

  She could take their word for it without a midnight swim. But the lantern taunted, its pale paper sphere bobbing like a second moon in the expanse of black.

  Elevens save me. Sighing, Hesina knotted up her skirts and shucked off her traveling boots. The freezing water didn’t agree with her cramps, and as she waded deeper, she concluded that the night couldn’t possibly get worse.

  Then it did. The lantern finally drifted within reach, but before she could grab it, Hesina collided with something. Her hands shot out—a feeble attempt to stabilize herself. The water punched into her face as she fell, and she choked as she sloshed, her limbs tangled with ones that weren’t her own.

  Spluttering, she resurfaced and stood. Beside her, another form broke out of the water.

  Hesina couldn’t believe her eyes. She wiped at them, just to be sure. “Akira? What are you doing?”

  He sat up, coughing, fully clothed and soaked. “Floating.” Inky rivulets snaked down his temples. “Well, not anymore.”

  She would not be reduced to speechlessness. She would not. “But why?”

  “Er. Moon-gazing?”

  Moon-gazing.

  Speechless, Hesina raised a sleeve. It was drenched in black. That settled one matter; she would have no choice but to wear Lilian’s ruqun to the negotiation.

  A perplexed laugh escaped her, then another. Before she knew it, she was doubled over in laughter, teeth chattering in the cold. Who would have known that a good, icy dunking was what she’d needed all along?

  It was Akira’s turn to stare. “You’re not here to moon-gaze, I’ll guess.” He looked about, his gaze landing on the lantern. “Is that yours?”

  “No.” She sounded out of sorts and out of breath. “Well, yes, but I made it for you.”

  “Leave it. I don’t need people making lanterns for me.”

  “Too late.” She lifted her sopping skirts and resumed wading. “I’ve already fallen into a lake for you.”

  He reached the lantern first and scooped it from the water. “What did you wish for?”

  She snatched it before he could see. “For you to be free—”

  From the things that trouble you in your sleep.

  “—From your crimes.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes, all of them.”

  Akira rubbed the back of his neck. “You’ll need more than one lantern, then.”

  “How many merchants did you rob?”

  “I don’t remember, but definitely more than one.”

  Another laugh burst out of Hesina. She welcomed it and the bewilderment from which it was borne. It freed her from all the things she was supposed to do, feel, say. “Well, have you had your fill of moon-gazing?”

  “After this?” Akira pushed back his wet bangs. “For a few years, yes.”

  Said the one who’d been half-submerged in the first place.

  With a shake of the head, Hesina offered him her hand. “Let’s go back.”

  Her heart did a funny little dance as he grasped it. It was as if she’d never held a hand before, which was almost as preposterous as floating in a lake to moon-gaze. But she couldn’t stop from homing in on the feel of his hand in hers, and how hers might feel to him. Was it too cold? Too pudgy? Could he detect her quickening pulse?

  Better question: Why was it quickening at all?

  She almost pitched forward again when Akira pulled himself up.

  The camp was still empty when they returned. Hesina built up the fire and set the lantern on the embankment of stones to dry. Then they sat to dry themselves. A zither melody warbled in from the direction of the village. She recognized it from a play the imperial troupe performed every autumn.

  It was said that nine suns once flamed in the sky, roasting rice paddies and people alike. A great warrior rode out in her chariot and shot down eight. The ninth consumed her. Her mother spent the rest of her life reading all the scrolls in all the libraries of the world, looking for a way to recover her daughter. She breathed her last over an open book, and the gods, impressed by the tenacity of the mortal mind, brought the woman back as a sage. They blessed her with immortality and gifted her with a giant crane that flew her up to the lunar palace, where the warrior’s spirit resided. Thus, mother and daughter were at last reunited.

  It was a story as old as the sun and moon themselves, inscribed on turtle bones by shamans that predated the sooths. The relic emperors had interpreted the crane as the key to immortality. The Eleven had interpreted it as wisdom. Hesina picked neither. She didn’t care for living forever when one lifetime was hard enough, and she was, in general, biased against stories of devoted mothers.

  But tonight, it occurred to Hesina that she envied the daughter for her courage. She’d confronted not one sun, but nine. Hesina could barely face her own destiny.

  “What is destiny?” she wondered, half to herself.

  Akira, the master of saying random things, wasn’t perturbed. “When you’re really good at something.”

  Hesina hadn’t thought about it that way. Now that she did, it was depressing. She wasn’t good at much. A long, long time ago, she thought she had a knack for acting. She took to lying, and she preferred living in someone else’s skin as opposed to her own. But nothing squelched childish dreams quite like inheriting the throne. Learning to rule was an all-consuming pastime.

  “What would you say I’m good at?” she asked Akira.

  “Making lanterns.”

  She glowered and he smiled, the corners of his mouth soft.

  “The truth,” Hesina demanded.

  “I didn’t say you were good at retrieving them.”

  She snorted, then rather wished she hadn’t. It made her sound like a pig, and apparently she still had some dignity left to lose in front of Akira.

  “What about you?” She blamed the fire for the warmth in her chest. “Were you a good robber?”

  Akira poked a twig into the flames. “Good robbers aren’t caught.” The twig burned down to a nub, and he dropped it. “I knew someone who was better than the rest of us. His skill defined him. But one day he took too much. I haven’t found him since.”

  “Was he a friend?”

  “You could call him that.”

  “You must miss him.”

  He gave a noncommittal shrug that she understood better
than any yes or no. Missing some people was like missing air. You did yourself no favors by wondering how you survived without them.

  But tonight, Hesina let herself miss her father. She missed him. She missed him a lot. As the distant chords flowed into their little clearing, winding with the strings of her heart, she imagined herself riding on a chariot to face the Kendi’an Crown Prince. And later, when she slept, she dreamed she died, but her father read her back to life, and together they flew to the lunar palace on the backs of their giant cranes.

  Of course, the next morning, she wasn’t a warrior. She didn’t ride a chariot in blazing glory to the Kendi’ans. She was a queen whose hands were shaking so badly she could barely dress herself.

  “We counted six, dianxia,” reported the scout from the other side of the tarp, her shadow faint against the oiled fabric.

  Hesina coached herself through putting on the many components of her clothes. Cross-wrap the ruqun. Strap the sword between the shoulder blades. Tuck in the bombs. Fasten the broad-belt, string on the royal seal, the jade mandalas, the trio of knotted cords. “Are you certain?”

  “Yes,” the scout confirmed. “Six, excluding the Crown Prince himself. Four slaves, two advisors.”

  Now the cloak. She drew the tassels tight at the hollow of her neck, hiding every speck of headless-dragon embroidery.

  The Crown Prince had honored the terms of negotiation. No army awaited them. Maybe Hesina wouldn’t even need Sanjing’s help. She had every reason to relax. “Have you concealed your weapon?”

  “Yes, dianxia.”

  “Good.” Her voice didn’t betray her nerves, but her hands did, twitching, sweating. She curled them into fists. “We depart in ten.”

  Overnight, black-and-scarlet tents had sprung up along the far lakeshore, pitched against the golden dunes. Kendi’an pennants of the same colors flew high, snapping in the desert wind.

  One last time, Hesina checked that her sword and bombs were all in place. Then she marched herself and her entourage across the gritty plain to the largest of the tents. A Kendi’an advisor greeted her in the common tongue, instructed her guards to wait outside, and lifted the dragon-emblazoned flaps.

  Yan Hesina wasn’t ready.

  But she wasn’t Yan Hesina when she stepped into the Crown Prince’s lair. She was a warrior, a queen, fully costumed and ready to bluff her way to success.

  FOURTEEN

  NO HUMAN SHALL BE OWNED BY ANOTHER.

  ONE OF THE ELEVEN ON SLAVERY AND SERFDOM

  FREEDOM IS EVERYONE’S RIGHT.

  TWO OF THE ELEVEN ON SLAVERY AND SERFDOM

  She wasn’t the first queen to negotiate with Kendi’a. She wouldn’t be the last. Generations of Yan monarchs had tried to establish something more than a trade partnership with the land of sand and fire, and generations had failed.

  It became obvious why, once Hesina’s eyes adjusted to the dim. Icy Ning was like an older sister, swampy Ci a younger cousin. Their differences existed, but they were reconcilable.

  Kendi’a was oil to Yan’s water. Yan philosophers and literati lauded cooperation; Kendi’an ones encouraged competition. Yan aesthetics drew on complementary colors and motifs; Kendi’an ones took inspiration from the volatile nature of fire itself. This tent was a classic case: panels of red and black horsehide fanned the circumference, and bronze dishes filled with flames dangled from rickety chains hooked to the wooden crown above. Any moment now, a chain might break, a dish might fall, and the whole tent would burn. That would be one way to die—if Hesina didn’t asphyxiate herself first.

  Breathe. As she tried to, her eye caught on the salt picks strung across one of the hide panels. They weren’t so different from the sickles used to reap millet in the northern provinces. If it came down to it, Hesina could fend off an attack with one. Her breathing picked up speed.

  “Seen enough to your liking?”

  Slowly, she brought her gaze to the hypothetical attacker.

  The Crown Prince sat on a rattan divan next to a tapestry-covered mound. He wore a loose, burgundy robe with a V-neck that slashed down to his lean stomach and disappeared under a jade girdle. Hesina scanned his body for concealed weaponry, and he grinned wolfishly. “Or would you like to see more?” he asked in accented common tongue, fingering the girdle’s lacings.

  She flushed, and he laughed.

  “I imagine your life must be boring.” He rose. “A queen without a harem.” He was around Caiyan’s age. Perhaps a year or two older. Hesina focused on that fact as he circled in. “A queen without slaves.”

  He stopped several reed lengths away. “What is the point?”

  She shrugged like a puppet yanked into the motion. “I rule. Every now and then, I also travel nine hundred li to see princes like you. Now, make it worth it.”

  “I will.” He went to the covered mound and yanked off the tapestry.

  Salt. Hexagonal pillars of it, stacked like honeycomb. It was more than Hesina had ever seen in one place. Ground down, it’d make for a hundred sacks at the very least.

  “We have fifty more waiting for you,” said the prince.

  She wet her lips. “We’ll match you with water.”

  “Oh no. We do not want water.”

  He came close, and closer. Hesina envisioned molten steel funneling down her spine, branching through each leg and pooling in her heels, melding her to the ground. Don’t move, she ordered herself as he leaned in from the waist.

  Kohl darkened his lashes. Silver studs arced over his brow. His breath brushed her nose when he spoke. It smelled of star anise and copper.

  “We want your soothsayers.”

  The steel of her spine liquefied.

  This was just bait. He was waiting for the right moment to pounce. She had to tread carefully or end up cornered.

  Buy time to think. “For?”

  It’d seemed like the safest reply. But when the Crown Prince smiled, Hesina’s stomach sank.

  “So the rumors are true,” he mused. “You know nothing about them.”

  “Nothing” seemed like an overstatement, but Hesina wasn’t in a position to argue that when the Crown Prince snapped his fingers.

  Two figures emerged from the shadowy interior of the tent. Hesina tensed, relaxed when she realized they were children, then tensed again when she saw the chains between their wrists and the iron collars around their necks. A red lily had been tattooed below the gray shadow of their shaved hairlines. The Kendi’an slave mark.

  “Do not be alarmed by what you see next,” said the prince. “I hear your kind fears them, but there is no need to fear anything in chains.” Then he waved a hand. “Show her.”

  Their eyes slid shut.

  The air chilled. Hesina’s clothes clung to her skin—and not from sweat. Tiny, clear globules oozed into existence, condensing midair into a globe the size of a summer cantaloupe, a globe of water.

  “Enough,” ordered the prince.

  The globe splattered on the ground, immediately swallowed by the parched earth. The children swayed as their eyes blinked open. Beads of blood rolled from the inner corners. One swiped at her cheek and licked her knuckles clean. The other was slower. He whimpered as the smeared blood sparked, flamed blue, and died, blistering the skin.

  Sooths had just bent reality before Hesina’s very nose; she should have fainted from terror. Instead, her hands balled. These were children. They shouldn’t have been slaves.

  But they were because the Eleven had forced their ancestors from their homes. Because all the Yan kings and queens since then had failed to expunge the hatred.

  Including Hesina.

  Her fury congealed to nausea. For a dangerous moment, she thought she might sicken at the Crown Prince’s feet and reveal not only the contents of her breakfast, but also her biggest secret: she was a sympathizer. Her heart didn’t beat to the rhythm of her people’s. And now, as the Crown Prince watched her, it hammered to no rhythm at all.

  “Away, my little monsters. You are frighte
ning my guest.”

  The chains clinked as the children retreated.

  “Soothsayers,” he mused when they were gone. “The name brings to mind the ones that See into the future. And yet—”

  He glided to the decanter resting on a stool and poured some ruby-red liquid into a ram’s horn. “It fails to describe the ones that can actually manipulate the future.

  “You think Kendi’a is dry,” he said, sipping, making Hesina all the more aware of her own parched mouth. “You are not wrong to think so. Kings have been killed in times of drought. Citadels have fallen over wars for water.” His thumb journeyed around the rim. “But come morning, even the air here is filled with dew.”

  He began to circle her. The surge of bile in her throat had settled, but Hesina didn’t trust herself to speak or move.

  Sooths who manipulate the future.

  The dews come morning.

  “Imagine summoning the dew of tomorrow morning to today.” His breath caressed the nape of her neck. She resisted the urge to spin around.

  When he spoke next, it was to her right side. “Imagine summoning the dew of a thousand tomorrow mornings.”

  Comprehension dawned. “You’d be moving the air into a future state.”

  And with the future air came the future dew.

  Dew. Water. This was how Kendi’a planned on getting the water it so desperately lacked: through the slave labor of sooths.

  Hesina didn’t know what to think or feel. She imagined it was like learning, as a relic emperor, that the elixir of immortality could be derived from the blood of humans instead of cranes. A horrible but painfully obvious revelation.

  “Yes.” The prince circled back to face her. Hesina fought to keep her surprise hidden, but his lips drew back as if he detected it all the same. “Your old emperors kept this knowledge of how the magic worked to themselves. Your eleven saviors too.”

  The Eleven. Her head churned, frothing with memories of old lessons and histories, of the miracles that’d occurred shortly after the Eleven’s ascension. The sudden recession of water levels. The calming of torrential rains. Blessings from the heavens, One and Two claimed. Signs that they’d been anointed to rule. But what was the line between miracles and magic? Where did heaven-ordained end and sooth-made begin?