Descendant of the Crane(47)

Breathe. As she tried to, her eye caught on the salt picks strung across one of the hide panels. They weren’t so different from the sickles used to reap millet in the northern provinces. If it came down to it, Hesina could fend off an attack with one. Her breathing picked up speed.

“Seen enough to your liking?”

Slowly, she brought her gaze to the hypothetical attacker.

The Crown Prince sat on a rattan divan next to a tapestry-covered mound. He wore a loose, burgundy robe with a V-neck that slashed down to his lean stomach and disappeared under a jade girdle. Hesina scanned his body for concealed weaponry, and he grinned wolfishly. “Or would you like to see more?” he asked in accented common tongue, fingering the girdle’s lacings.

She flushed, and he laughed.

“I imagine your life must be boring.” He rose. “A queen without a harem.” He was around Caiyan’s age. Perhaps a year or two older. Hesina focused on that fact as he circled in. “A queen without slaves.”

He stopped several reed lengths away. “What is the point?”

She shrugged like a puppet yanked into the motion. “I rule. Every now and then, I also travel nine hundred li to see princes like you. Now, make it worth it.”

“I will.” He went to the covered mound and yanked off the tapestry.

Salt. Hexagonal pillars of it, stacked like honeycomb. It was more than Hesina had ever seen in one place. Ground down, it’d make for a hundred sacks at the very least.

“We have fifty more waiting for you,” said the prince.

She wet her lips. “We’ll match you with water.”

“Oh no. We do not want water.”

He came close, and closer. Hesina envisioned molten steel funneling down her spine, branching through each leg and pooling in her heels, melding her to the ground. Don’t move, she ordered herself as he leaned in from the waist.

Kohl darkened his lashes. Silver studs arced over his brow. His breath brushed her nose when he spoke. It smelled of star anise and copper.

“We want your soothsayers.”

The steel of her spine liquefied.

This was just bait. He was waiting for the right moment to pounce. She had to tread carefully or end up cornered.

Buy time to think. “For?”

It’d seemed like the safest reply. But when the Crown Prince smiled, Hesina’s stomach sank.

“So the rumors are true,” he mused. “You know nothing about them.”

“Nothing” seemed like an overstatement, but Hesina wasn’t in a position to argue that when the Crown Prince snapped his fingers.

Two figures emerged from the shadowy interior of the tent. Hesina tensed, relaxed when she realized they were children, then tensed again when she saw the chains between their wrists and the iron collars around their necks. A red lily had been tattooed below the gray shadow of their shaved hairlines. The Kendi’an slave mark.

“Do not be alarmed by what you see next,” said the prince. “I hear your kind fears them, but there is no need to fear anything in chains.” Then he waved a hand. “Show her.”

Their eyes slid shut.

The air chilled. Hesina’s clothes clung to her skin—and not from sweat. Tiny, clear globules oozed into existence, condensing midair into a globe the size of a summer cantaloupe, a globe of water.

“Enough,” ordered the prince.

The globe splattered on the ground, immediately swallowed by the parched earth. The children swayed as their eyes blinked open. Beads of blood rolled from the inner corners. One swiped at her cheek and licked her knuckles clean. The other was slower. He whimpered as the smeared blood sparked, flamed blue, and died, blistering the skin.

Sooths had just bent reality before Hesina’s very nose; she should have fainted from terror. Instead, her hands balled. These were children. They shouldn’t have been slaves.

But they were because the Eleven had forced their ancestors from their homes. Because all the Yan kings and queens since then had failed to expunge the hatred.

Including Hesina.

Her fury congealed to nausea. For a dangerous moment, she thought she might sicken at the Crown Prince’s feet and reveal not only the contents of her breakfast, but also her biggest secret: she was a sympathizer. Her heart didn’t beat to the rhythm of her people’s. And now, as the Crown Prince watched her, it hammered to no rhythm at all.

“Away, my little monsters. You are frightening my guest.”

The chains clinked as the children retreated.

“Soothsayers,” he mused when they were gone. “The name brings to mind the ones that See into the future. And yet—”

He glided to the decanter resting on a stool and poured some ruby-red liquid into a ram’s horn. “It fails to describe the ones that can actually manipulate the future.

“You think Kendi’a is dry,” he said, sipping, making Hesina all the more aware of her own parched mouth. “You are not wrong to think so. Kings have been killed in times of drought. Citadels have fallen over wars for water.” His thumb journeyed around the rim. “But come morning, even the air here is filled with dew.”

He began to circle her. The surge of bile in her throat had settled, but Hesina didn’t trust herself to speak or move.

Sooths who manipulate the future.

The dews come morning.

“Imagine summoning the dew of tomorrow morning to today.” His breath caressed the nape of her neck. She resisted the urge to spin around.