Descendant of the Crane(38)

“But she burned,” someone cried.

“Who? Who burned?” Hesina demanded when the people failed to answer.

They led her to the tavern by the music house. The path to the counter was strewn with broken tables and chairs, mosaicked with smashed jiutan of sorghum wine.

Brushing aside the people’s warnings, Hesina strode toward the dark shape in the back, coughing on the gray motes clouding the air. Her eyesight gradually adjusted, and she made out the chair. She made out the person bound to the chair.

Clothes, shredded.

Torso, slit.

Skin, charred.

Eyelids, silver.

Silver like her name, and like her voice, metallic in Hesina’s memory. A nice parlor trick, don’t you think? the Silver Iris had said, lighting the candle with her own blood. But this time her blood had lit her, burning from the deepest part of the gash outward, consuming everything in its wake.

Hesina fell to her knees and vomited.

Feet crowded around her, joined by hands and elbows as people offered their handkerchiefs. No one suspected. No one guessed that it wasn’t the carnage that revolted their queen, but the world, how easily it turned silver to ash, ashes that were on her skin, in her lungs, on her tongue.

Hesina retched again. More hands and handkerchiefs crowded into her vision. She pushed them away. “Get back. Get out.”

The commoners rushed to follow orders.

Her guards weren’t so obedient. Shakily, Hesina rose and turned on them. “Get out.”

Once everyone had retreated to the tavern’s columned entrance, Hesina made for the counter. She didn’t know why. She was apart from herself, a spectator watching the queen rummage for a box of matches, watching her strike one, watching her hold it until the flame burned down the stick and then, and only then, watching her let it fall.

With a roar that drowned out the cries of alarm, the spirit-soaked ground came alive with blue flames. The hue wasn’t quite the same as what had danced atop the Silver Iris’s candlewick, but it was close. Hesina had watched the Imperial Doctress light enough alcohol burners to recall this property of sorghum wine. Now, she made a demonstration out of it. If eyewitness accounts spread like fire, then she would ignite her own. For every person who claimed that the Silver Iris burned blue, there would be three to claim that wine burned blue too. With enough debate, wine would become blood, and blood would become wine. Was there an infestation of sooths in the red-light district or drunkards who spent too much time around flammable liquids? Whom to believe? And whom not to? No one was king in the realm of rumors.

It was already happening. As Hesina joined the commoners and guards outside, disagreements were rising.

“Do you think…you think that’s why she burned blue?”

“No, she was a sooth!”

“But did you see it for yourself? Did she really burst into flame?”

“No, but that’s what the men told me!”

The voices hushed as Hesina threw out her arms.

“The world is full of tricksters,” she shouted above the crackle at her back. “And there is no greater trickster than fear. Tonight, we fell victim to fear. We let it blind us. We thought we were hunting monsters…”

She stared out into the sea of flame-washed faces. It took all her strength not to look away. But we were the monsters.

Then she watched the fire of her own making grow and grow. As the flames leapt to the rafters, her eyes welled. Convincing the people that there were no sooths to hunt was all she could do. Her gift, in return for the Silver Iris’s truth, was this lie.

The flames reddened as they finished off the wine and licked the wood. Beams and pillars dissolved. Half of the roof came crashing down, spraying embers into the night sky. It was very black, the night sky, Hesina remembered thinking, before her world went black too.





TWELVE





WE WILL ALL BE REBORN AS EQUALS.

ONE OF THE ELEVEN ON THE NEW ERA


FIRST, THE OLD MUST GO.

TWO OF THE ELEVEN ON THE NEW ERA

When she came to, Hesina felt like one of her father’s shadow puppets. Her flesh was paper. Her bones were reeds.

“Jia!”

A terrifying jolt rocked through her. She clung to the closest solid thing—a wrist—and dreamed it was her father’s.

You coddle her, her mother would snap if she saw.

Her father would reply with a smile and a shrug. I’m the only one who does.

But the arm Hesina gripped now was too slim to be her father’s, even padded with a black leather guard. Reins sprouted from a fine-boned fist, and as Hesina’s gaze tilted up, the rider barked another jia!

Another sickening lurch. The world around them blurred faster. But the rider’s face remained stationary. Russet eyes. Raven braid.

Mei.

Mei’s arm, holding Hesina upright in front of her. Mei’s horse, wherever she’d gotten it. Mei’s cloak, reeking of rust and sticky to the touch.

“You’re bleeding,” Hesina whispered, startled by the broken sound of her voice.

Mei kept her eyes ahead. “I’m not, but you are.”

An ache fanned from Hesina’s wrist. She vaguely recalled cutting it. What a strange thing to do. Her eyes slid shut.

“Stay with me now.” The arms around Hesina tightened. “What’s your name?”