Descendant of the Crane(108)

“No one notices the attendants,” said Rou, nodding at Akira. “They’ll be looking at me. And they’ll be looking at my mother, and you look like her.”

Hesina had to trust. Still, she held her breath as they approached the guards. Nothing came to pass. The guards bowed for them. They made it safely out of the dungeons without trouble, and soon they were traveling down the covered galleries that zigzagged through the snowy jujubes. The maids and pages they encountered hastily moved to the side and bowed, then scurried away, whispering as they went, their eyes darting to Hesina. Her hands balled. She glanced to Rou, but he was reactionless.

“The carriage is this way,” he said when they arrived at the courtyards.

She stopped him. “This is far enough.”

“Where are you going?”

“Xia Zhong’s. He has something of mine,” she continued as Rou stared at her, aghast. “I can’t leave without reclaiming it.”

“But how will you get out?”

By one of the passageways that started in the gardens. None of them led beyond the palace walls like the one behind the soapstone reredos, but she couldn’t risk entering the Eastern Palace.

“Don’t worry about me. I have my ways.” Hesina caught Rou’s arm before he could protest any further. “Thank you,” she said firmly, meeting him square in the eye. “For everything.”

He blinked, then swallowed. “I’ll see you again, won’t I?”

“Yes,” said Hesina with more confidence than she felt. “You will.”

She waved him off and waited for him to leave before facing Akira. “You should go too. Take the carriage out.”

“I’ll come with you. I need to stretch my legs anyway.”

So be it. There was a good chance she’d need Akira’s help.

“Keep guard outside,” Hesina said once they reached the Northern Palace. “I can handle the minister on my own.” Then she marched up the steps to Xia Zhong’s courtyard house and sidled up against his lattice windows. She poked a hole in the oil paper with her finger and peered through.

Past the partition of antiques and relics, Xia Zhong sat at his kang table, reading a bamboo-strip scroll. Alone.

Hesina burst in, and the scroll fell out of his hand. He scrambled back as she climbed onto the kang and grabbed the sword hanging on the wall behind. A xia was engraved on the hilt. A family heirloom, the length of its steel blade gleaming as Hesina pointed it at the minister. “Where’s the book?”

He stared at her blankly. “You…”

She ripped off the headpiece.

His eyes narrowed. “You.”

“Where is it?”

“I don’t have it.”

“Lies.” Why else would he have given her the master key? “One last time: where is it?”

“Why don’t you look for yourself?”

Hesina was trying to part on somewhat civil terms, but Xia Zhong wasn’t making it easy. She stalked to a wall of drawers and yanked them out. Scrolls tumbled onto the floor, then books from the next drawer. None of them were the original Tenets.

She slammed them in, then stopped.

The impact had caused the walls to jingle.

Hesina stalked to a peeling wall bare of shelves and thrust Xia Zhong’s heirloom sword through the seam between two panels.

“No,” cried Xia Zhong. “No, no, no—”

Like a painter with a brush, Hesina stroked left.

From the slash poured ingots. Gold. Silver. Bronze. It was like watching someone’s innards fall out—ghastly, yet impossible to look away. Hesina slashed another panel. This wound wept red, of rubies. The next wept blue, of sapphires. It seemed that Xia Zhong had stuffed his entire fortune into the walls of a house that was otherwise falling apart.

The minister crawled after the rolling gems, futilely trying to gather them up. Disgust reared in Hesina, and without thinking twice, she’d pinned his hand with his own sword.

“Where have you hidden it?” she asked over his earsplitting howl.

Instead of answering, Xia Zhong howled more. “How could you?”

What a strange question to ask, when it was clear that she could, and had, just shoved a blade through his knuckles. “What do you mean?”

“You’re your father’s daughter. You said so yourself.”

Hesina hardened. “My father is dead. Now, where have you hidden the book?” When he kept howling, she gave the pommel a twist, working the blade a hair deeper into the wood beneath. His screams went shrill. “Where?”

“It’s not here! It’s not here! T-the viscount was right! He said you’d try to trick me! Now take it out!” he screamed, scrabbling at the rooted blade himself. “Take it out!”

His voice faded as Hesina’s blood went cold.

She had forgotten what Caiyan’s alliance with Xia Zhong meant in its entirety. That the things she said to the minister would reach her adopted brother’s ears. That he would dispense advice. Read her mind.

As if on cue, the sounds of clashing metal rose from outside.

Akira.

This was a trap, and she’d walked both of them into it.

Xia Zhong caterwauled as Hesina yanked the sword free. “If it’s not here, then where is it?” she demanded.