Descendant of the Crane(103)

“Tell us what you found in the queen’s chambers.”

“I came across a loose floorboard while I was oiling the woodwork last week. It led to a hidden compartment stacked with drafts of letters written in the queen’s own hand. I didn’t intend to read them at first. I only handled them to clean off the oil that had dripped onto the paper. But I couldn’t help but notice a word.”

“What word?”

“The ‘Sight.’”

Hesina stared at Ming’er with glazed eyes. Why?

“To whom were they addressed?” asked Caiyan.

“Someone by the name of the Silver Iris.”

Why am I losing you too?

“Yes,” said the previous witness from the box. “That was her name.”

“Lies.” Hesina found her voice. She whirled on Caiyan. “You planted those letters.”

He ignored her. “Match the handwriting.”

Pages came forth bearing Hesina’s most recent decrees and spread them beside the letters on the ground.

Caiyan summoned the head of the imperial scribes. “By your expertise, are these letters forged?”

The man leaned over the spread of papers, gaze twitching between the letters and decrees.

“No, they’re not forged. See?” The scribe held up a decree in one hand and a letter in the other. “A skilled forger can replicate the form of someone’s character perfectly but still fail to transfer the imperfections. If you look closely here, you can see that the queen doesn’t quite wrap the tails of her ‘si,’ ‘su,’ and ‘shao’ characters correctly. Her hand wavers, and the ink feathers as a result. This is consistent in both the decree and the letter.”

Caiyan ordered that the letters and decrees be circulated. As pages ran them to the rest of the ranks, Hesina snatched a letter off the ground. Her gaze raced up and down the columns of characters.

Every stroke of ink was identical to hers, right down to the imperfections. Who— “Last but not least,” Caiyan said, but his voice faded, replaced by the memory of the two of them sitting side by side, his hand around hers as he helped her with her characters.

You never form the ‘si’ correctly. The tail of the third stroke doesn’t quite wrap around the first.

That memory bled into another, of the throne room, where Hesina had marveled—and lamented—over Caiyan’s perfect rendition of her name.

The letter fell from her hand. Colors, shapes, lines kept morphing, as if she were looking through a waterfall. Someone bumped into her from behind, and it took Hesina a full second to register, process, and step aside.

The page scurried past, a gilded tray in his hands. Caiyan lifted an item and held it up. “Do we all recognize this?”

Pinched between Caiyan’s fingertips was a white-jade hairpin with a crane unfurling at its end, last seen disappearing into Xia Zhong’s pocket.

Let this be a dream. Hesina’s heel slipped over the dais edge. She regained her balance, but not her sense of self. Hazily, she took in the commoners down below, the nobles up above. Please, let this be a dream. In nightmares, she could run. She could jump off this thin suspension of a walk and bolt upright in a sweat. Here, she was trapped. Perspiration trickled down her back.

“I remember that,” said one of the ministers. “It was a gift from her father.”

“Yes, for her first namesday,” said another.

“And when was the last time the queen wore this pin?” asked Caiyan.

“That…” The ministers glanced at each other. “We can’t be certain.”

Caiyan looked pointedly at Ming’er.

“The queen hasn’t worn this pin in quite some time,” she murmured. “It’s been missing from her drawers for four months.”

Four months? It had to have been one month, at most—

“That’s because this was found in a particular courtesan’s chambers.” Caiyan turned, holding the pin out for all to see. “A courtesan by the name of the Silver Iris, the same sooth who burned in the riot.”

The court erupted with voices. A page pounded a staff for silence, but questions rang out, one louder than the others: “What did the queen need a sooth for?”

Without answering, Caiyan summoned another witness—a dungeon guard.

“Did the queen give you strange orders on any occasion?” he asked the woman.

“Let’s see…She did ask us to search for a convict with a rod.”

“When?”

“It must have been four months ago.”

“And was such a convict found?”

“Yes, in fact. Convict 315, who’d been charged with merchant robbing, was found in possession of a rod.”

Caiyan dismissed the guard and faced a ring in the upper ranks. “Minister Xia, you may come forward now.”

A sea of silk hanfu parted for Xia Zhong’s passage. Hesina stared as he stepped onto the walk.

“As many of you probably noticed,” began the minister, “the queen’s representative was quite adept. That’s because she hand-picked him from the highest rank of scholars and planted him in the imperial dungeons. She tricked me into selecting him by taking advantage of my egalitarianism.”

The pin hadn’t been enough to convince Hesina. Ming’er hadn’t been enough. But this was.