Descendant of the Crane(27)

“So it’s corrosive,” he said.

“Extremely. It can even discolor glass.”

Lilian growled something about the Eleven and their mothers. Hesina didn’t have enough air in her lungs to do the same.

But Akira seemed unaffected. “I have a task for you,” he said, pivoting to Rou.

Rou looked slightly green. “Me?”

“Yes, you.” The court tensed at the sudden ferocity in Akira’s voice. “Fetch me the consort’s most recent trash.”

Silence.

The court broke into laughter.

“Enough of this!” bellowed the director, but Rou had already scampered to the doors. The guards, snickering themselves, didn’t give him a hard time, and in a flash of blue, he was out of the court.

“What’s Akira’s endgame?” Lilian whispered to Hesina.

To help me find the truth. But right now? “I have no idea.”

The Southern Palace was a twenty-minute walk to and from the court. To burst through the doors less than ten minutes later, Rou had to have sprinted. Red in the face, he huffed up the dais with a woven hemp bag and emptied it at Akira’s command.

The director wrinkled his nose as trash spilled onto the marble. “Do you take this court for a pigpen?”

Akira ignored him and knelt by the crumpled knickknacks. He picked up something white. “Was this yesterday’s trash?”

“And the day before,” said Rou without missing a beat.

Hesina straightened. Where had her half brother’s newfound confidence come from?

“Do you agree with your prince?” Akira asked the lady-in-waiting.

She considered the heap. “Yes, I think so.”

He stood. “Then why,” he said, holding out a white square of silk, “would this facial handkerchief be here?”

He raised the square for all to see, and Hesina squinted along with the rest of the court.

Peach-pink powder smudged the white cloth.

“Is this the color of the powder before the change?” he asked the lady-in-waiting.

“I don’t remember.”

“But didn’t you suggest only men lacked an eye for these things?”

“It could be the switched powder. It could just appear darker on the cloth.”

“No.” Akira’s gaze glinted like whetted steel. “No poisoner would be so foolish as to apply corrosive powder to her own face.”

“Maybe she used another box.”

“But you claimed she only has one box. Do you doubt your answer?”

Courtiers and ministers whispered among themselves. Hesina caught Caiyan’s eye among the viscounts and he, for all the gripes he’d had before, had a set to his brow she knew well. He thought they could win. He was never wrong.

Hope hatched in Hesina’s chest. Fragile, delicate hope, almost crushed when she returned her attention to the dais below and saw the director marching over to Akira.

But Akira turned the powder box upside down, and the director stumbled back from a cloud of peach ash. “Enough! That is enough!”

Akira peered into the ceramic box, then held it out for the court’s viewing. “Look carefully at the inner porcelain. What do you see?”

“Nothing but white!” jeered one courtier.

“Are you certain?”

“Do you take me for a fool?”

Akira’s lips quirked. “Of course not. In fact, I think you’re very smart for reading my mind. I find it interesting that a poison with the ability to discolor glass should leave its porcelain container perfectly white.”

The court fell silent.

Hesina’s head spun. Had the Imperial Doctress lied? Was the poison not poison at all?

“The poison is real enough,” said Akira, handing the empty container to a page. “But I daresay this powder box is a duplicate. The consort probably continues to use her old powder without a clue. I also daresay that the poison has been in its container for no more than a week. If you gave me the time to make a sample, I’d show you what a month of corrosion looks like. Regardless…”

Akira’s gaze hit like a pebble in water, casting ripples through Hesina’s heart, each echoing the same question.

Shall I tell the truth?

She nodded.

Akira turned back to the court. “…I think we can agree that this powder was planted.”



Shame was a wildfire. It raged in Hesina’s chest as she left the court. Flames of it blistered her throat, consuming her as she made for her rooms. But like a wildfire, it was unsustainable. When there was nothing left of her to eat, it crackled and popped and grew.

Shame became blame.

Hesina couldn’t escape it. She was to blame for this farce of a trial.

But she wasn’t the only one.

She took up her sword and left her rooms as quickly as she had come. Step by step, she gained momentum, blame snowballing around shame, and rage melting both. Nothing and no one could stop her this time. Not the charms, not the talismans, not even the chains on the Bureau doors.

The guards tried to hold her back, but she unsheathed her sword and spun, daring them to unsheathe theirs. When they didn’t, she lunged at the door and struck. Another strike, and the chains fell. She wriggled out of the guards’ grasp and shouldered through the halves of stone.