Descendant of the Crane(20)

A page carried two ewers of yellow wine to Hesina. Mothers hushed their children as she lifted one. Her hand shook under its weight as she poured. Wine splashed onto the ground, a libation to the buried and the dead.

“A toast to the past, and to the sacrifices made for the new era.”

Heads bowed for the nine of the Eleven who’d perished before the dynasty’s fall, and for the hundreds of thousands of commoners who’d died for the revolution’s cause.

Unwittingly, the face of the Silver Iris flashed in Hesina’s mind. Tens of thousands of sooths had died for this era, too, but she could never voice her remorse over that.

“And a toast to the future,” she said over the lump of guilt in her throat, lifting the second ewer. “My first advisor will be Viscount Yan Caiyan.”

Caiyan made his way forward. He nodded at Hesina when he reached her, and it was all the encouragement she needed.

“My first gift will be the commodity we lack most.”

Imperial guards carried forth sacks of salt. As an old saying went, water and salt made lifeblood. Yan had been blessed with lakes, rivers, springs, but it relied on Kendi’a for the white crystal essential to food preservation and medicine. Kendi’a’s recent incursions had disrupted trade, driving the price of salt in Yan to historic highs, and families wept in gratitude as the guards divvied out allotments.

Impatience soured the moment for Hesina. She could barely contain herself as she waited for the excitement to settle. “My first decree…”

She drew a deep breath.

“…Concerns the king’s death. He passed far before his time. The Investigation Bureau deems there to be sufficient evidence for a trial. The truth must be found, and justice delivered.”

The night went thick and airless. No one breathed; no one moved. Hesina searched the sea of faces for a flicker of support. She drowned in the silence.

“A trial?” someone finally asked.

“The Investigation Bureau?”

“What is there to investigate?”

A voice cracked through the others like a cane. “Nonsense!”

It came from a wispy old woman who still wore the white mourning headband. “What are you trying to suggest?” she snapped at Hesina as if she were a misbehaving child. “That the king was murdered?”

Murdered. The word raked through Hesina, overturning her banked fury. “Yes. Yes, there is reason to believe so.”

“Lies!” shouted a man. “That’s impossible!”

“Who would want to kill our king?”

“The decrees said he died peacefully!”

Faces boiled red. Voices swelled. Hesina’s went unheard. Her anger sizzled, smoking into panic.

Who was she fooling? She couldn’t do this. She wasn’t her father, who inspired empathy. She wasn’t her mother, who radiated authority. She wasn’t Sanjing, glowing from another victory, or Caiyan, riveting with his rationale, or Lilian, charming her way into hearts. She was just Hesina, the princess who couldn’t sit still during her imperial lessons, who found agriculture more interesting than statecraft and legends more engrossing than history. Inadequate as always.

“Dianxia.”

Slowly, as if manipulated by some mechanism outside of her body, her head swiveled from the raging crowd to the new voice at her side.

The imperial guard bowed. “A scout from General Sanjing’s seventh borderlands legion has just arrived,” she reported. “He demands to see you.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

Blearily, Hesina looked back at the people. Her people. Except in this moment, their ranks teemed like the enemy, and she was the vanguard they were trying to break down. “Can’t he wait?”

“He’s already here and”—the guard lowered her voice—“he doesn’t have much time. His final wish is to speak to his queen.”

As if on cue, hooves clipped against limestone. The sound punctured the din, because the din was quieting. Gasps replaced the shouts. People fell back as the rider emerged. Caiyan tried to shield Hesina from the sight, but it was too late. She had already seen.

There was no way anyone could look the way the rider did and still be…alive.

The man had no face. Where there should have been features, there was only black char. He’d been burned so badly that the rope strapping him to his mount had rubbed away the fabric, the skin, over his thighs. The flesh beneath was scarlet, and as the horse approached, the ropes exposed more.

Then two white maggots popped out under the man’s brow bone. Hesina gasped. The maggots blinked. Not maggots at all.

The man had opened his eyes.

Acid laid waste to Hesina’s throat. She wanted to escape. To hide. Instead, she stepped forward. “What happened?”

“They’re back.” His voice whistled like wind through a bamboo thicket. “They’re back, and they’re with the Kendi’ans.”

“Who?” She took another feeble step forward, nearing the horse. “Who are ‘they’?”

They are inhuman. They are—

“The soothsayers.”

—monsters.

Hesina couldn’t hear the reaction of the crowd. All she could hear, it seemed, was her brother’s voice.

They’d lost a village, Sanjing had claimed. It was gone, Sanjing had claimed.