by Joan He
The words pushed against Hesina’s lips. She could have vomited them out. But not here where the maids might overhear.
“Father’s study,” she croaked, and the blush immediately cleared from Caiyan’s complexion. Lilian straightened. The twins followed Hesina through the knit of corridors into the king’s study. Hesina bolted the zitan doors.
Akira came to stand by her, and she braced herself before facing the twins.
The hardest part was starting. Once she opened her mouth, she couldn’t stop, and when she finished, Hesina felt ten times lighter—lighter and barer. There. She’d given Lilian and Caiyan every reason to walk away from her. She was their sister, but not in blood. She didn’t have a choice but to accept her father. They did.
Her fear spiked when Lilian frowned. “Na-Na…have you been dipping into the jiutan?”
“I’m not drunk, or hallucinating. I saw it with my own two eyes.” And felt the beat of his heart, and the brush of his breath.
“It’s true,” said Akira, earning himself a grateful glance.
Of the twins, Caiyan was more likely to reject myth and superstition. But when he said, “I believe you,” and Lilian sighed and did too, Hesina loosed a breath of appreciative relief.
Caiyan started pacing, a fist cuffed over his chin in thought. “Why do you suspect the dowager queen?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” Hesina had been justifying her mother’s actions for too long. Was she wrong to see the facts for what they were?
“Do you have hard evidence?”
“I have the poison.”
“But can you prove that she was the one to set it?”
“Still trying to identify the residue on the goblet,” said Akira.
The whirlwind of her thoughts slowed, and Hesina nodded. If the residue matched the poison in the vial, then the poison had been served in the goblet. The next step would be to trace the goblet’s origins. Whoever had delivered it would be their first true suspect.
But none of that was going to happen before Mei stood trial tomorrow. “I have to stop the trial.”
Lilian went to her favorite daybed but didn’t lie down. “How?”
If Hesina could commit treason to bring the trial into existence, she could commit treason to end it. But it was out of her hands, sustained by the machinery of court and law.
She joined Caiyan in pacing the length of the study, then came to a stop at the wall of books. She’d been thinking in the wrong direction.
The solution wasn’t to commit more treason.
It was to admit to what she’d already committed.
“I can show the people that the trial was never legitimate.”
“How—”
Hesina whirled on Lilian. “Xia Zhong,” she said breathlessly. “If the court learns that he didn’t select Akira at random, the trial will be terminated.”
Lilian blinked. “But won’t he claim you forced him to? I’m all for taking out the slug, but not if it means implicating yourself.”
“She’s right,” said Caiyan. “He’s not worth it, milady.”
“Are you saying Mei isn’t worth it? Or the others who will inevitably be framed?” Hesina’s voice rose as her fears spiraled. “This isn’t about Xia Zhong. This isn’t some scenario where I can cut my losses and walk away. Yes, this trial will come to an end, but only on the day I let it claim an innocent as its victim.”
The study had gone deathly quiet.
“If I sink,” Hesina said firmly, “Xia Zhong sinks with me.”
“Na-Na…”
“Have you thought about the people, milady?” Caiyan stopped midpace and faced her. “Ending the trial prematurely won’t answer the question of who killed the king. The uncertainty will poison their minds. Suspicion will mount against everyone, not just the Kendia’ns.”
People aren’t like that, Hesina might have once said. But she no longer could.
“Let Akira acquit Mei the way he acquitted Consort Fei,” continued Caiyan. “Gain another victory over the Investigation Bureau. Rattle the court, and show them who the villain really is. Then…”
“Then?”
“Frame Xia Zhong for the king’s death. Kill two birds with one stone. Rid yourself of an enemy, and avoid condemning your own mother for the king’s death.”
“For once, I approve of this political underhandedness,” said Lilian as Hesina stared at Caiyan, dumbstruck. He wasn’t suggesting anything beneath what Xia Zhong might do himself, but the proposal, coming from her brother’s lips, unsettled her.
“How confident do you feel about acquitting Mei?” she finally asked Akira.
“If it’s fabricated evidence again, decently confident.”
Hesina didn’t like this plan. But the same could have been said for every plan she’d made since rising to the throne. And Caiyan had a point. He always did.
“I won’t reveal my treason yet,” she said, and relief fanned over Caiyan’s face. “But we’ll discuss this again after tomorrow.”
Then, one way or another, either by condemning herself or framing Xia Zhong, the trial would end.
But first, she had someone to write to.
Caiyan’s chambers overflowed with organized stacks of books, but Sanjing’s were spare. The kang tabletops were clear, the zitan cabinets empty, and everything was filmed with dust, as if the maids knew better than to clean for someone who came home so sporadically. Ever since taking over command of the Yan militia at the tender age of fourteen, Sanjing had divided his time between the palace and the various fronts.
Now, walking into his rooms felt like walking into his mind. In this forlorn space, it occurred to Hesina that her brother’s jealousy might not have been jealousy at all, but rather fear that she’d replaced him in his absence.
Was it true? Hesina didn’t know, nor did she have the time to ruminate. She’d come as an intruder.
She’d come as a thief.
Quickly, she pulled open his drawers. Most, like his cabinets, were empty. One held a sad ball of twine, a whetstone, some ink sticks, and an inkstone. The drawer beneath it was promisingly heavy, and Hesina jerked it open only to find a stack of letters, from their mother no less.
A lump grew in her throat before she reminded herself this was exactly why she was snooping through her brother’s things. She used to write to their mother, too, always waiting for a reply, somehow convincing herself that each and every one of her letters—so carefully sealed with rice glue and posted by dove—had gotten lost. Her delusions died the day she caught Sanjing receiving replies to his.
Hesina hadn’t written since.
She found what she was looking for behind the stack of letters: a plain huanghuali box filled with an assortment of seals carved with her brother’s name. In her triumph, and in her dilemma over which to pick, she missed the sound of the door opening behind her.
“Fancy seeing you, Sina. You never do guard your back, do you?”
Hesina froze, then deliberately turned, leaving the drawer ajar like a childish challenge. Go on, it seemed to say. Fight me.
Sanjing regarded her coolly. “And what, may I ask, brings you here?”
“To borrow a seal.”
“Borrow, you say.”
“Steal.” She would confess to the theft, but not the reason behind it.
“Ah.” Sanjing took a step into the room. The space between them suddenly shrank tenfold. Hesina tensed, and her brother stopped in his tracks, tilting his head to the side. “Why? Did you suddenly end up with a shortage of your own?”
“No.”
“Then did you tire of your name?”
“Just let me have a seal, Jing.”
“Not until you tell me what you need it for.”
She was at the end of her patience. She snapped a random seal into her hand, but her brother blocked the doorway with an arm. “It’s a simple question, Sina, that requires a simple answer. Preferably the truth.”
The truth.
“Though a lie will also do
, if it’s easier for you,” Sanjing said as Hesina turned away from him, clenching the seal so tightly that it hurt the bones in her hand.
The truth.
The truth was that their father had deceived them.
The truth was that she suspected their mother.
The truth was that the dowager queen would only read a letter marked with Sanjing’s seal, and this, on top of everything, was more than Hesina could take. Tears rolled down her cheeks before she could wipe them.
“Sina.” Her brother was suddenly standing before her; he held her by the arms. “Sina, what’s wrong?”
There were no simple questions, or simple answers, Hesina decided bitterly. There were only truths sacrificed for other truths.
“I need the seal for Mother.” She threw off Sanjing’s hands. “Because I want to write to her.”
She read Sanjing’s emotions like clouds in the sky. The confusion, the skepticism, the confusion again, scattered by sudden understanding. Then there was only vast, blue pity.
She didn’t want his pity. “You should have just said so,” he said as she made for the doors. “Wait, Sina.”
It wasn’t enough to stop her, not like what came out of her brother’s mouth next:
“I’m sorry.”
In disbelief, Hesina turned.
“I know…” Sanjing broke off, sighed, and pushed a hand through his hair. “I know you didn’t mean for this to happen. It’s just hard.” He opened a palm and fisted it. “It’s hard feeling helpless.” He met her gaze, and she was perplexed to find guilt in his. “But I know you must feel helpless too.”
Her confusion cleared.
Her brother thought he was to blame for her tears.
Fresh ones filled Hesina’s eyes. She wanted to close the distance between them, smooth down his cowlick, and tell him she was sorry too.
But if she did that, she would be tempted to share the burden of the truth.
“I’ll see you at the trial tomorrow,” she managed before making her escape. After Akira acquitted Mei, she would tell Sanjing everything. Until then, she would spare him this pain.
TWENTY
EQUALITY IS NOT THE NATURAL WAY OF THE WORLD. IT MUST BE NURTURED.
ONE OF THE ELEVEN ON THE NATURAL ORDER
WHO ISN’T POWERLESS AGAINST THE WILL OF THE COSMOS? BUT WHO DOESN’T TRY ALL THE SAME?
TWO OF THE ELEVEN ON THE NATURAL ORDER
It was the day of Mei’s trial, and Hesina hadn’t slept. After talking with Sanjing the night before, she’d stayed up in her study to draft the letter, telling her mother that she’d found the chest, the book, the truth about her father—and that now she wanted to hear it from the dowager queen herself. Hesina had summoned her to court by the full moon, stamped the envelope with Sanjing’s seal—a strange-looking thing chiseled with a half-lion, half-dog creature—and handed the letter off to her page. Then she’d taken out her father’s box.
Once more, she spread out his possessions. The snuff bottle. The Tenets. The courier’s hanfu. The paring knife. The corded medallion. All that was missing was the goblet, still in Akira’s room.
The objects themselves hadn’t changed, but through the refraction of what Hesina now knew, they appeared like artifacts from another realm. She touched a trembling hand to the character for longevity carved onto the medallion’s surface, and suddenly remembered seeing the same character within a book about sooths. The book claimed that sooths could extend their lives by speaking true visions. It was supposed to be a rumor. A myth. But was it possible her father had been a sooth himself? Hesina wasn’t—she’d cut herself in the red-light district, been wounded at the Black Lake, and her blood hadn’t burned. But she also wasn’t sure if she had ever seen her father bleed. There’d been no blood when the Imperial Doctress dissected him, and every memory Hesina had of her father seemed distorted.
He wouldn’t have lived long as a sooth anyway, Hesina thought numbly as she set the paring knife back in the chest and strung the corded medallion onto her own sash for further inspection. He’d told too many lies.
She returned to her bedchambers, but didn’t try for sleep. She watched the stars set and the moon turn fish-scale transparent in the lightening sky, and when her eyes tired and she closed them, all Hesina could do, it seemed, was cry. She didn’t want to suspect her mother. Didn’t want to distrust her father. She hadn’t asked for any of this—or had she? Hadn’t she gone so far as to commit treason for this trial?
Come sunrise, the face reflected in Hesina’s bronze mirror was blotchy and red.
“More,” she ordered when the maid stopped powdering.
“Dianxia, I really don’t think—”
“I said more.” She could afford cakey powder. What she couldn’t afford was walking into the most important trial of her life looking like she’d sobbed into a pillow.
Ming’er sent the younger girl away and took up the brush herself. She swirled it through the powder jar and tapped off the excess, resting her pinkie against Hesina’s cheek to steady her hand.
When Ming’er was done, Hesina studied the results. She didn’t look her best, but she didn’t look like a flaky winter-melon pastry either. Her true face was hidden. It would always have to be, just like her father’s.
Ming’er helped her into her trial robes, cross-wrapping the collar of the dove-gray ruqun. Anticipation and dread broke against each other like waves, and sweat drenched Hesina’s back when it came time to affix the bixi panel to the skirts.
“Will you wear a hairpin today?” asked Ming’er.
Hesina hesitated. None compared to her father’s gift. All reminded her of Xia Zhong. But she didn’t know her father anymore, and Xia Zhong’s influence over her was nearing its end.
At her nod, Ming’er inserted a red coral pin to complement the scarlet phoenix embroidery on the ruqun’s sleeves. She accompanied Hesina down the Hall of Everlasting Harmony, adjusting the gown’s train one last time outside the court doors.
The sight of Ming’er on her hands and knees, fussing with a hem as if it meant the world, fogged Hesina’s chest. She bent and raised her lady-in-waiting by the elbows.
“My flower—”
“Thank you,” Hesina interrupted firmly. Then she said it again, more quietly, to the woman who had wiped her tears with her own brocaded sleeve, who had sewn rose petals into her pillow logs and braided trumpet lilies into her hair. Ming’er had made Hesina her princess before the people had made her their queen.
Hesina stepped into the court, sweeping past the ranks that fell in koutou and up the suspended walk, reaching the imperial balcony just as Sanjing made his entrance.
“He’s a bit overdressed,” remarked Lilian as Hesina sat.
An understatement: Sanjing was dressed for war. He strode down the aisle as if it were a battlefield, his liuyedao sheathed at his side, the clip of his horn-heeled boots stunning the court into silence.
Then the mutters broke. They trailed Sanjing as he ascended the steps to the imperial balcony, and Hesina sighed as he took the seat beside her. “Are you planning on killing someone today?”
“Many, if I must.”
She couldn’t tell if he was joking or serious; she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
The doors parted, and they both tensed as the guards dragged in Mei. Her fingers were still bound, her beige dungeon issues smudged with grime, but her braid was sleek and her eyes defiant as they pushed her up the dais.
Mei’s representative was to enter next. Hesina fidgeted as she stared at the great doors. Xia Zhong had surely selected a more competent scholar this time.
But no one came through the doors, and it was the director himself who climbed the dais. “Last time, we witnessed the unprecedented act of the plaintiff’s representative volunteering as the defendant’s. In the spirit of fairness to both parties, the Investigation Bureau has decided to do a thorough debrief before proceeding with the trial. Let us review the evidence together, shall we?” he asked Akira, smi
ling. “We wouldn’t want you missing anything.”
So this was their play. Do away with the representative entirely, thereby allowing the director to personally oversee every beat of the session. Smart, and probably against the rules written in the Tenets, though Hesina shouldn’t have been surprised. Xia Zhong held the Tenets in lower regard than she did herself.
“Fine by me,” said Akira, unruffled. “Again, I’d like to see the maid you have listed as a witness. Please,” he said when the girl stepped to the front of the witness box, visibly trembling. She was young and scrawny, and though she was about to deliver whatever incriminating evidence Xia Zhong or the director had prepared, Hesina could commiserate. “Share your account.”
“It was morning…” Her eyes darted about before fixing on the director. “It was morning, and I was bringing the king’s breakfast to his study.”
Hesina’s mouth thinned. The first of many blatant lies to come. No one had delivered any food or drink to her father on the day of his death.
“And what might that have been?” asked Akira.
“Congee and cider.” The maid bit her lip.
“Please continue.”
“Right before I reached the hallway to the study, she…” The maid pointed at Mei. “She attacked me.”
Mei snorted, and the maid flinched. She shrank as Akira approached the half wall between them.
“Define ‘attack.’”
“W-what do you mean?”
Akira motioned for a nearby page. “Pardon me,” he said, then grabbed a fistful of the boy’s hanfu and reared a fist back. “Like this?”
“N-no.”
“Are you part of the imperial troupe?” crowed a marquis from the upper ranks.
Sanjing seethed. “How do you stand this? Do you just take it?”
“Yes,” Hesina muttered. “Even better, you pay them no mind.”
A skill Akira seemed to have mastered better than her. He released the page and faced the maid again. “Describe the attack the way it unfolded.”
