Descendant of the Crane(29)

She reached the Northern Palace, where the relic emperors had housed their favorite concubines. Even Xia Zhong’s courtyard complex, the shabbiest of all the ministers’, exhibited traces of odious elegance. Dragons reared at the upturned roof points, their claws forming hooks from which paper lanterns dripped like mandarins on a branch.

Hesina hung up her lantern with the others and knocked on the latticework doors. They swung apart almost instantaneously, and she stumbled back as a maid hurried out.

The sight rattled her. Had Xia Zhong been plying the maid just as he, or one of his cronies in the Bureau, had plied Consort Fei’s lady-in-waiting?

Hesina still had trouble visualizing his involvement. But she’d seen the green-stained Tenets. Matched the handwriting. Found a motive. And now, when his voice came from the inner chamber—“Who’s there?”—she tasted something as foul as the tea leaves he always chewed.

“Your queen.”

The minister hurried out from behind the partition, one arm slid through a patched yi. “My chambers are unsightly,” he said, shrugging his other arm into the shirt jacket. “You shouldn’t be subjected to such filth.”

No filth, Hesina decided as she crossed the threshold and shut the doors behind her, could be worse than Xia Zhong himself. “Your chambers will do just fine.”

Xia Zhong bowed. She didn’t bother relieving him, and he remained hunched as he led her around the partition, inviting her to his inner chambers. Cheap sheep-fat candles smoked on bronze candelabra, releasing a gamy stink as they burned. The low kang table—piled with copies of the Tenets—looked cheap, too, nicked and scratched and denuded of most of its lacquer. Only the double-edged sword hanging on the wall appeared to be worth something. It was plain and unadorned, but the steel shone of quality.

It wouldn’t surprise her, thought Hesina dryly, if Xia Zhong was secretly a swordsman too.

She sat on a threadbare cushion before the low kang.

“I’ll go make tea,” said the minister, backing away.

“Stop right there.”

Xia Zhong stilled in his tracks.

“Come,” said Hesina, and the minister came. “Sit.”

The minister knelt on the cushion opposite the kang, the Tenets atop it nearly eclipsing him. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

Hesina answered by reaching into her sleeve and tossing a letter onto the table.

“What is this?” asked Xia Zhong. He sounded like a weary man who’d read too many documents and couldn’t possibly look at another.

“I think you know very well.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Then let me explain it to you. You know that Yan’s salt mines will never outcompete the Kendi’an ones as long as trade exists between our kingdoms. And yet lately, you’ve invested in quite a number of mines in the Yan provinces of Yingchuan and Tangshui. It’s as if you foresaw inter-kingdom trade stopping because of a war…a war you’re trying to orchestrate by writing to the Kendi’an court.”

The words came out polished, like bones picked clean by carrion birds. Hesina’s voice didn’t shake, didn’t tremble. Anger had cauterized her nerves. Numbly, she went on to say, “You’re feeding information to their raiding parties. That is treason.”

Xia Zhong didn’t react. He merely tucked his hands into his wide sleeves. “Passage 2.3.2: ‘Suspicion poisons the heart. A ruler should see her advisors as friends and mentors rather than competitors.’”

To think she’d ever tried to mimic him. “Open it, if you don’t believe me.”

Xia Zhong drew the letter toward him. “I see you’ve taken a liking to your selected representative.”

Hesina pinned the letter down.

Their gazes locked over the table and the paper bridged between their hands. Cunning shined in the minister’s fishlike eyes; in the past, Hesina had mistaken it for fanaticism.

“Let’s say we’re even,” said Xia Zhong. With grace, he withdrew his hand from the letter. “You forget these letters, and I’ll let you keep the convict.”

“I earned my representative.”

“Earned?” Xia Zhong laughed like a chirping frog. “My dear,” he said, leaning in, his shadow falling over the table. “I gave him to you so you would feel comfortable about forwarding your case to the Bureau.”

“You—”

“I spoke for you in front of the dowager queen because I knew you would investigate your father’s death if given the power.”

He pulled back, drawing the breath in Hesina’s lungs with him.

In speechless horror, she stared at the face of her true opponent.

“Don’t look at me like that,” said Xia Zhong. The monk was gone. His diction had changed. Even his voice had slickened. “Without a war scare from Kendi’a, the people never would have accepted your investigation as anything more than the whim of a grief-stricken daughter. Consider our purposes aligned. If you are wise, wiser than your father, you will work with me.”

“Work with you,” Hesina repeated, the words foreign.

“Yes. Give me my war, and I’ll give you your trial.”

The cushion beneath Hesina couldn’t have been more than a finger-width thick, but she suddenly felt as if she was sinking, suctioned into a swamp of desire for control—and shame for even considering the price of it toward him. “The Tenets forbid war,” she said weakly.