by Joan He
Hesina slumped, choking on air. Akira lifted a hand as if to pat her back, but withdrew when she flinched away. He removed a jar from the cross folds of his hanfu and tossed its contents over the flames. The fire died under the rain of white powder.
He retrieved the vial of poison from the ash and embers and showed her what once had been the orange-toned liquid, now reduced to a gray powder. He explained his process of condensing the gas into a liquid and distilling it, outlined further tests he planned to conduct. It was more than he’d ever spoken at once. It was a plea to forgive and forget.
He was talking about how all substances had distinct boiling and disintegration points when Hesina couldn’t take it anymore.
“Stop that.” Akira fell quiet, and she leaned her head against the wall, wheezing. “Are you okay?”
He wouldn’t meet her gaze. “I should be asking that of you.”
Hesina was a little shocked, a little bruised, but mostly she was fine. She wasn’t the one who’d drunk a horn full of poisoned wine. “I’m summoning the Imperial Doctress if the poison is still bothering you.”
“Not the poison.” He gathered his hair back and retied it at the nape. “It’s okay. This is normal.”
Sleeping through fires wasn’t Hesina’s definition of normal. And Akira didn’t look okay, upon closer inspection. The skin under his eyes was creased and translucent. His face was sallow. His collar had shifted to the side. Again, Hesina caught sight of that inked leaf, hooking over his shoulder like a demon’s claw.
She made up a story of a boy who’d done terrible things in his past. It was a tale of names shed like leaves, and old ghosts that visited when he slept—if he slept.
Am I right? Hesina wanted to ask. But it didn’t feel right to take his secrets from him, so she took his face instead, cupping it between her hands.
“Akira, I’m here.” She searched his eyes, willing him to understand. “I see you. You could be a convict or a merchant robber, and I would still see you as you are now. My representative. My friend.”
His lashes beat once as he blinked. Slowly, he closed a hand over her wrists and eased her hands off his face. But he didn’t drop them. The pulse in Hesina’s veins went erratic, and without thinking, she gave a tentative tug on her wrists.
He didn’t resist.
She drew him to her. The crowns of their heads met. Their breaths mingled, mismatched, her inhales his exhales, his exhales her inhales, tasting without touching, stealing what they willingly gave. His hold on her wrists tightened. Thin skin and warm air stood between them—nothing else. Nothing could stop Hesina from giving more.
“Don’t.”
The whispered word warmed her lips. Then it was gone, snuffed like a flame as Akira pulled back. “Do you know why I’m helping you?”
“To watch the spectacle.”
But Hesina knew it wasn’t true even before Akira shook his head. It was just another one of his non-answers.
“You seemed so certain of what you wanted.” Akira released her wrists, and her hands dropped to her lap. “I’ve never been. I helped you, hoping to find myself along the way.”
He lifted his rod and considered it. It’d gained several nicks from the journey, but his gaze glossed over the imperfections and flicked to her throat.
“But you haven’t,” she guessed. It wasn’t her fault, but she felt as if she’d let him down.
“No.” His lips quirked with a rueful smile. “Only I can help myself.”
“That’s not true.”
The smile disappeared, and Akira shrugged. “You say you see me, but you don’t. And trust me, you wouldn’t want to.”
His words unmoored her, left her floundering with no reply. She cast her gaze out to everything but Akira before anchoring on the book on the floor.
“I can read it.” She could almost hear Lilian’s groan. Tactless. Luckily, Lilian wasn’t here to see Hesina flush when she realized she’d never shown Akira the book. “It was the item in Mother’s chest.”
To his credit, Akira took it into stride. “The title?”
“Tenets of Eleven.” She opened it to the first page. “The original.”
She prickled from head to toe as Akira leaned in. But then sensation faded. Her mind quieted as she read out loud, sinking herself into worlds and words forgotten.
WHAT IS TRUTH? SEEK IT. WRITE IT. GOOD KINGS PAY GOLD TO HEAR IT. BUT IN TRYING TIMES, TRUTH IS THE FIRST THING WE BETRAY.
Akira turned the page. “What is this language?”
“Complex Yan.”
“Can you read the rest?”
With practice? “Probably.”
“Why would your mother have it?”
The question tripped her. “I don’t know,” she said after a pause.
“Then what do you know about her?”
Much less than she should. Her hand drifted to the back of her skull. The pin’s nick had healed. A shame, Hesina thought tartly. Pain always reminded her of her mother. “She was the daughter of a baron from the northern provinces,” she started. “My father met her when he was touring the realm on his eighteenth namesday. They married a year later, and had me the next.”
Images came to her unbidden. Snuff bottles stoppered with nubs of red coral, scented sachets stuffed with ginseng and angelica, ruqun hems embroidered with autumn leaves. It was easier to think of her mother in components. “Father said Mother was whip-smart and brave. But the mother I knew was…different. She was mercurial. Distant.” Her voice lowered. “Frightened.” Hesina hadn’t been able to admit that as a child, not when her mother frightened her.
“How so?” asked Akira.
She focused intently on a scuff on the zitan floor. “She had nightmares.” A fact that Hesina was ironically privy to because her mother would punish her and forget about her, leaving Hesina kneeling well after the maids retired from the queen’s chambers.
“And sometimes she spoke to people.” The words tasted acrid, secrets not meant to be swallowed in the first place. “She had conversations even when she was alone. There was also…”
Hesina broke off. Her hands grew clammy. “…There is also a scar, around her neck. And I…” She hadn’t told this to anyone. Not Caiyan, not Lilian. “I’ve seen it bleed.”
“An old scar?”
She managed a nod. Perfectly healed too. It shouldn’t have reopened. It made her queasy, remembering.
“And your father?” asked Akira. His expression was as impassive as ever. “What did he do?”
“Everything. He summoned the best physicians of Kendi’a, Ci, and Ning to court. He even sent out explorers for the mystical Baolin Isles and the panacea rumored to grow there.” An action met with public criticism, since the relic emperors had done the same in hunting for the elixir of immortality.
There was some criticism in Akira’s voice, too, when he said, “Then he sent her to the Ouyang Mountains.”
“It was for the best.” Hesina spoke in her father’s defense. She heard him as if he were here, alive, his shoulders under her legs, her hands resting atop his head, the mist on their faces as they watched the queen’s carriage fade into the gully. The mountains will do her good, Little Bird. The clear waters and pure spirits will heal her.
She’d believed him then. She’d tried to keep that belief alive with each passing year.
Her breath went shallow, as if to suffocate the embers of pain sowed among the memories. But she could face them. Akira could make her face them, push her past her discomfort. She waited for him to do so.
Instead, he simply lifted the vial of gas. “This poison was more complex than I expected. I’m close to isolating the final components, but I’ll need a new sample. The body should have continued to emit the gas—”
The body?
“—as time went on. We can collect traces from the coffin. It wouldn’t need to be opened, if it can be unearthed.” His gaze swung to her, inquiring. Can it?
Coffin. Unearthed.
“That…�
�� Hesina’s mind darkened, shuttering against Akira’s request.
Unearth her father’s grave. Unearth her father’s grave.
No. We can’t. It’s not possible. Never mind what the people would think, what the court would think. How could she bear it?
The answer was easy: she had to. For Mei, and all the other innocents to come, Hesina had to end this trial once and for all by finding the truth, no matter what it took, even if it was unearthing her father’s grave.
Could she bear it? No. But could it be done?
Yes.
Her lips molded around the word. Whispered it. She rose, lurching when she realized what she’d agreed to. Akira reached to steady her, but she wrested away, grabbing the book as she went. “I’ll read the rest of it.”
Hesina stepped into the corridor. Let the panel fall shut behind her. She stood in the dark, motionless, breathless. Moments ago, she’d run through this passageway, the book a key in her hand.
She should have known better.
This book wasn’t a clue. She was wasting her time.
Tears welled in her eyes. Books and snuff bottles, goblets and costumes, medallions and wedding locks. She couldn’t remember why she’d ever thought these objects precious. They were just fragments. If her father were whole, he’d take her hand and call her a silly Little Bird for even thinking of unearthing his grave.
Hesina dragged back her tears, sinuses smarting. Then she returned to her chambers and muscled through a dozen pages of the real, original Tenets. One of the Eleven, in particular, said things that resonated through the pulsing of her head, and she went to bed troubled by how she related to them.
In trying times, truth is the first thing we betray.
She had lied for the truth, blackmailed for the truth, implicated innocents for the truth. Soon she’d unearth her father’s grave for the truth. But could she face the truth? Hesina had once known the answer to that question.
She no longer did.
EIGHTEEN
ONE ACT OF TREASON PAVES THE WAY FOR A THOUSAND OTHERS.
ONE OF THE ELEVEN ON LAW
IF THE PEOPLE APPROVE THE LAW, IT MUST BE FOLLOWED.
TWO OF THE ELEVEN ON LAW
“Na-Na?”
Lilian blinked from the opening in her fuchsia-and-gold fretworked doors. Hesina knew how she looked. It was two gong strikes past midnight, and snow dusted her hair; the first flurries of the season had started coming down after she left Akira’s rooms. “I couldn’t sleep,” she whispered.
It was all the explanation Lilian needed. “Don’t mind the silks,” she said, ushering Hesina in.
The silks were partly why Hesina had come to the Western Palace. She couldn’t seem to face her own chambers after Akira’s proposition, and the clutter and color here chased the demons from her head. She lay on the bed, and Lilian flung down beside her. It’d been a long time, Hesina realized, since the days when the two of them would hide here. They’d make a tent of the blankets, and Lilian would speak of all rainy nights she and Caiyan had huddled beneath crumbling awnings and stone bridges, of orange rinds chewed to paste and roach bites that ripened with pus. She’d hug Hesina tightly afterward, and later, when she snored, Hesina couldn’t bear to wake her.
Now, like before, Lilian rolled over and threw her arms around Hesina, enveloping her in a cloud of osmanthus and peach-blossom perfume. Her sister’s breathing evened. Slowed. The snores started, and a smile curled on Hesina lips.
Then came the unbidden image of Lilian thrown into a cell. Lilian, interrogated like Mei.
Lilian, framed by Xia Zhong.
Impossible. Lilian didn’t have blood relations other than Caiyan, Kendi’an or otherwise. She was just Hesina’s sister, for whom Hesina would do anything—perhaps even declare a war.
Her bones filled with ice. Slowly, she wiggled free, pulled the blankets up to Lilian’s shoulders, and stepped out, closing the doors behind her. She tilted her face to the heavens, snow landing on her lashes, and made a promise.
She’d go to the Ten Courts of Hell for unearthing the grave of the deceased, but she’d take Xia Zhong with her.
In the morning, Hesina went to Akira with an armful of star charts.
“We’ll need to wait,” she said, pointing to a date before Mei’s trial the following week. “When Shu’s two minor moons intersect in orbit, the arc of the sun drops one degree. We can unearth the tomb under the pretense that it must be propped at an angle for the spirit to receive the most direct rays.”
Akira scratched his head. “That’s very elaborate.”
Elaborate and vague—two things any good cover story required. She was about to become the first Yan ruler to unearth a tomb. This white lie would pacify the people if they found out, but to perfect it, Hesina needed the Minister of Rites’ seal.
Suffice to say, Xia Zhong wasn’t thrilled to see her so soon. He kept his distance as she made her request, a scarf wrapped around his neck. She almost sympathized—until he made his counter-request. He’d sanction her unearthing the tomb if she let him open a silver coffer for “provincial shrine projects.” She had no choice but to agree.
In the evening, Sanjing met with Akira to disclose information pertinent to the trial. Hesina was present to facilitate, but her brother got along with Akira just fine.
“You seem like another mysterious one,” mused Sanjing at the end. “My sister certainly has a taste for them.”
Hesina’s blush ruined her glare.
“At least you can fight. The guards say you were a formidable opponent.”
Akira lifted his rod. “With this?”
“Anything you master can be called a weapon.”
“I’m afraid I’d disappoint. I’ve never played the flute before.”
Sanjing blinked, then pretended Akira hadn’t spoken. “When all this dies down, find me. I’ll see that your talents aren’t wasted.”
“Stop trying to recruit my representative,” Hesina said to Sanjing after they left Akira’s room.
“Stop letting him delude himself. That thing can’t possibly be a flute.”
“It has holes. And it’s hollow.” I think.
“Flutist or not,” said her brother, “he’s a swordsman, through and through. Did you see the way he was positioned?”
“Positioned?”
“Yes. He angled himself toward my dominant side immediately.”
“Jing,” said Hesina carefully, “you were both sitting.”
“All the more impressive, for him to be able to sense it.”
“Jing, you don’t have a dominant side.”
“Exactly. He sensed my ambidexterity, Sina.”
She held back a snort but let him go at it, grateful he was thawing a bit. Still, he wore his tension like a heavy mantle. Her pages reported that her brother spent most of his nights guarding Mei’s cell, and as they came to a split in the corridor, Hesina wanted to tell him to take care of himself and leave the worrying to her.
He left before she could.
Today was the day.
Hesina began it like any other—first by attending court, then by visiting Mei. The swordswoman raised a brow as Hesina slid steamers of crystal shrimp dumplings and shaguo pots of chili-oil jellyfish noodles through the cell bars. “I feel like a hog being fattened before my execution.”
Hesina grumbled something about food improving any situation. Lilian believed in it, but Mei seemed skeptical, and to be quite honest, Hesina was too. Her appetite had shriveled, and with hours still to go before the unearthing, she skipped supper and went to her rooms.
The space was empty, lifeless, the cranes embroidered on her screens punched black by moonlight. Carefully, Hesina retrieved her mother’s chest from under the floorboards, where it rested next to Xia Zhong’s letters. She undid the silver wedding lock, removed the original Tenets—disguised as The Medicinal Properties of Exotic Fungi—and sat down with it at her desk.
She read until the gong strike, then met Akira in his room,
handing him a fur cloak. Together, they made for the eastern courtyard, where a covered palanquin awaited under the snow-covered plum trees. Servants helped Hesina in. Once they were both seated, pole-bearers hoisted them up, and they were off.
The night was clear and sharp, with a slight musk to the air when Hesina pushed aside the brocade curtain. The palace gates groaned shut behind them, and the palanquin jolted as they descended the terraces.
She let the curtain fall. “I finished the book,” she whispered, facing Akira.
He took to the dark like a blade to a sheath, eyes alert, yet also at ease. He was no stranger to these soulless nights, and with that in mind, Hesina added a stroke to her story. The boy was an assassin who used the night as his cover. He gave his targets no time to scream. A shiver fingered her spine—and not entirely in fear.
“Is it the hair?”
Hesina blinked. “What?”
Akira pushed a hand through his bangs. “You’re staring.”
“No. I’m not.” She wheeled her thoughts around. “I was just thinking about the book.”
And then she really was. Her heart stopped doing clumsy acrobatics, and her voice dripped with disappointment when she said, “It was exactly what it claimed to be. A book of tenets.” One’s sayings weren’t answers, regardless of how they resonated, and Hesina was almost grateful when they reached the imperial tombs not long after. She didn’t want to dwell on her inroads—or lack thereof.
The paifang archway to the tombs rose just outside the city walls, facing the nearby Shanlong mountain range. The pole-bearers set the palanquin down before the tall pillars, and after Hesina instructed them to wait, she entered with Akira.
She’d been wise to fast; acid shot up her throat as they traveled through the concentric tombs. Each was a couch of granite curved like a womb; together they gleamed like rings and rings of vertebrae.
Wrapping her fur-muffed cloak closer, Hesina passed kings, queens, princesses, and princes, some competent, some inept, but all checked by the six ministries, and none as corrupt as the relic emperors. She made for the center, where the gazebo for One and Two, first rulers of the new era, towered.
