Descendant of the Crane(104)

Caiyan had allied himself with Xia Zhong.

The realization struck Hesina like a hand to a zither. The fibers of her being twanged, and she snapped, shuddering as the marrow returned to her bones, the blood to her veins, her heart to her chest in all its raw fury.

“You forget,” she gritted out, “that we sink and swim together.”

Now sink with me, Xia Zhong. She tore off her sash, split apart the seam, and flung the letters he’d written to Kendi’a. Five, ten, twenty burst from their stitches and rained over the court below. The rest fluttered onto the walk.

Pages ran to distribute them to the upper ranks. Paper crackled like twigs snapped underfoot.

Hesina held up the letter she’d saved for herself. “Xia Zhong, how will you explain this correspondence?”

A page ran a letter to the minister. Teeth clenched, Hesina pinned her gaze on his bald head as he tilted it down to read.

Finally, it lifted. “Your Majesty,” said Xia Zhong. “Or should I say, your disgraced honor.”

The last of the letters were opened, and a hush fell over the court.

Hesina’s heartbeat slowed as she looked down at the letter in her hand. She wasn’t sure what she feared as she unfolded it—she’d sewn them together herself just a week ago—but this…

This couldn’t be.

There hadn’t been an addressee on the letters before. Now there was, and it was Hesina.

There hadn’t been an addresser on the letters before. Now there was, and it was the Silver Iris.

The letter wobbled in Hesina’s hand. She couldn’t read all the characters in between.

She didn’t need to.

Howls rose from the ranks, accusations merging like a pack of wolves. They lunged for her, a defenseless queen. They shredded her with tooth and claw.

“Maggot lover!”

“Traitor!”

“Death by a thousand cuts!”

“Take her away,” ordered Caiyan, and guards seized Hesina by the arms.

“I admit to speaking with a sooth!” she shouted as they dragged her down the walk. The court went into an uproar. A guard clamped a hand over her mouth; he yanked away when she bit down. “But I will never confess to treason! Speaking to another human shouldn’t be a—”

They gagged her. They lugged her through the double doors, which swung in like window shutters, narrowing her view of the court until only Caiyan’s figure remained in the sliver of space.

She willed him to look at her. It was the least he could do as he betrayed her. But he simply turned and ascended the dais. He was still ascending when the doors folded him out of view.



Hesina tumbled into the cell, concrete sanding her palms. The doors clanged shut behind her.

She picked herself up and stared blearily through the bars. A normal cell, she noted. Not a tianlao cell, where someone who’d committed her caliber of treason should have been locked. But she hadn’t bothered to rebuild after the explosion, and she guessed Caiyan hadn’t either. His first and only oversight.

She scooted against the cinder-block walls and hugged her legs tight to her chest, making herself smaller, as if that would diminish everything else.

Caiyan had sided with Xia Zhong.

Caiyan had convinced Ming’er to betray her.

Caiyan had forged letters in her hand. He’d swapped out the ones in her sash, or the sash entirely. It would have been easy for him. He was family. No one would have batted an eye if he visited her rooms one night while she was buried deep in the archives.

Or he could have gotten Ming’er to do it for him. Hesina shook, too stunned to weep. Caiyan had crafted an airtight case, considering that the Silver Iris had died. Had she been alive, he might have dragged her before the court and bled her himself. She’d be executed right alongside Hesina, a means to an end, a pawn on a board. They all were to him.

Even then, guilt fringed the hems of Hesina’s mind. When weariness finally overtook her, she dreamed that it was Caiyan who took her place at dawn, his flesh that the executioners carved, not hers. Afterward, she crawled to him, clutched him, and wept. Before he’d betrayed her, he’d been her brother. Before he’d turned everyone against her, she’d killed his only family. Her tears and remorse could be explained.

His blood and sacrifice could not.



Beyond the bars stood the Grand Secretariat, a decree scroll in hand. Hesina’s own official had come to read her sentence.

For threatening a high minister, Hesina was barred from entering the court for the next three months.

For manipulating the random selection of the representative, Hesina was forbidden from forwarding cases to the Investigation Bureau for a year.

Of course, none of that mattered, because for colluding with a sooth, Hesina was to be executed by a thousand cuts at the sixth gong strike tomorrow.

The Secretariat rolled up the scroll. “You have a visitor,” she said, retreating as the newcomer approached.

Hesina braced herself for Xia Zhong.

“My flower.”

But if she’d known it’d be Ming’er, she wouldn’t have braced herself at all. She had no defenses against her lady-in-waiting, and her heart went brittle as the woman crouched by the bars.

“Don’t call me that,” Hesina snapped. “And stop crying.”

Ming’er wiped at her apple cheeks. She parted her lips.