Descendant of the Crane(22)

But her need for real answers grew as the trial drew closer, and the night before its start, Hesina changed her course, going to the Investigation Bureau instead. She was determined to see it for herself.

Two lines of imperial guards—more heavily armored, it appeared, than their dungeon counterparts—bowed as Hesina made for the stone doors at the end of the hall. Padlocked and chained, each door bore a mirrored carving of the mythical taotie face. Bronze charms and paper talismans hung from the beast’s protruding horns, meant to ward off the sooths.

Had they ever worked? Hesina reached for a talisman, and the guards tensed. They relaxed as she withdrew her hand, then tensed again as she placed it over the taotie’s stone snout.

The stone was cold. She wished for the power to see through it, into the room that processed every case in the imperial city.

“It doesn’t do well to forget, my queen.”

She turned to see Xia Zhong come down the hall. Light from the candelabra yellowed his skin.

“Do you remember?” He joined her side, rubbing his fingers over his beads. “Nobles used to enter and leave the Bureau as they pleased. They’d hire sooths to see the evidence and suspects in advance, and orators to manipulate both to their desired outcome in court.”

“I remember.” It was the reason why the Bureau had the level of security it did now, and why no one but the Bureau members were privy to the evidence or the suspects prior to a trial. Plaintiffs, defendants, and their representatives would learn all the information there was to learn in the court.

“Then why are you here?” asked Xia Zhong. “Do you doubt the system?”

“No!” Hesina blurted out. “No,” she repeated, quieter. “I just…I just wanted to see how it worked. To understand.” She glanced at the minister, hoping that he might provide guidance or comfort, be the ally he had been in her mother’s chambers. “There is so much I don’t understand.”

“There is only one thing you need to understand.” Xia Zhong reached into the cross folds of his hanfu and withdrew a handful of dry tea leaves. He popped them into his mouth and began to chew. “Nothing is ideal. There is better; there is worse. There is less; there is more. Was it better before, when the people believed that the king had died a natural death? Is it worse now, when you have the very trial and representative you asked for? You be the judge, my queen.”

“What do you think?” Hesina didn’t know what was better and what was worse. The clarity of her goals dimmed as they came within reach.

“A minister dares not decide for his ruler.”

“But a minister is supposed to guide and remonstrate.”

Xia Zhong turned away from the door. “If you ask me, the only thing you have less of now than you did before is faith.”



“Enough is enough,” declared Lilian, slamming a tray of salted duck eggs and braised water chestnuts onto Hesina’s desk the next morning. “You need food, sleep, and a change of clothes. Talk some sense into our queen,” she ordered Caiyan.

“The life of a queen is busy by nature—”

Lilian pinched his ear. “Sense, I said!”

“—which means you can’t manage everything by yourself.” Wincing, Caiyan tugged his ear free, before eyeing the handwriting samples stacked before Hesina’s nose. “The trial must go on, milady. The decree has been shared, the proverbial die cast. The people are waiting. Your representative is too.”

“He didn’t run?” Hesina was disappointed. She would have run, if given the chance. Away from this palace, where faith was something she could possess one day and lose the next.

“No, milady.” Caiyan offered his hand. She took it after a second, and he helped her out of her seat. “He’s dressed and ready.”

“Like you should be.” Lilian thrust out a silk-wrapped bundle. Hesina undid the ties.

A dove-gray ruqun spilled out. Crimson embroidery trellised up the length of each billowing sleeve and plumed into phoenix tails at the shoulder. The silk was luxuriously heavy, but also cold in Hesina’s hand. Its folds slithered through her fingers like eels.

She clenched it.

Caiyan and Lilian were right. She couldn’t stall forever. She would have faith, even if she had to borrow it from the two of them.



Like the throne room, the court was a vestige from the relic era, its strange design imported from some far, western land across the Jieting Sea. The imperial architects called it a double dome, but Hesina and her father had known better. Between cases, they’d sometimes catch each other’s eye and smile, because really, the court was an egg. It had a pointy top and rounded bottom. When ministers pounded their staffs and debated the fate of the realm, it was all happening inside an egg.

But today, if the court were truly an egg, it’d be cracking. Nobles crammed the balustrades ringing the upper half. Commoners in the bottom half merged into a patchwork of grays, browns, and beiges.

A suspended aisle arced between the two halves, starting at the double doors, folding into a short set of stairs, and ending at a dais flanked by witness boxes. Hesina and Lilian walked the aisle together, climbing to the imperial balcony overhanging the dais.

The imperial balcony was largely empty. As a court official, Caiyan’s place was in the upper ranks. Sanjing sat in saddles more often than chairs. The dowager queen, for all intents and purposes, lived in the Ouyang Mountains. Hesina’s father had been this balcony’s one constant, and her throat closed as she remembered all the cases she’d watched from his lap.