Descendant of the Crane(52)

She looked away, cheeks burning. “He’s dead, Jing. I’m so sorry. We couldn’t save him.”

“All my scouts are alive and accounted for.” Her gaze snapped to her brother, but Sanjing didn’t give her a moment to think. “Six’s bones. A captured scout is a security liability. You think one would be able to ride up to you at your coronation, just like that?”

“I—”

“No, you didn’t, because you never think,” Sanjing continued, relentless. “The guards should have stopped him. It’s a red flag if they didn’t. You should have closed the investigation immediately.”

“And leave the question of who murdered Father unanswered?” What could she have possibly said to the people? I take it back! Forget everything I said about the king dying before his time!

“Who urged you to go on with it?” demanded Sanjing. “Your manservant?”

Evading the inevitable was not a strategy, and Caiyan had seen that. But Sanjing wouldn’t understand, so Hesina didn’t explain.

Her brother cursed at her silence. “You don’t listen to me, but you listen to him. I warned you from the start, but you—”

“So I made a mistake,” she snapped. “Haven’t you? Or have you forgotten about that day on the pond?”

Then, before she could see his expression, she steered her mount around and trotted ahead.

They stayed apart for the rest of the ride. Hesina filled her mind with the logistics of resituating the returning militia members and passing new salt taxes to reflect the normalization of trade. But it was like applying a thin bandage to a wound; her thoughts bled through the administrative work and returned to her brother. She didn’t know what pained her more—that they brought out the worst in each other, or that they hadn’t always.

When they stopped for the night and set up camp in a bamboo thicket at the juncture of two streams, she put aside her pride and went to Sanjing’s tent. She was two steps short of entering when her brother spoke to someone inside. “I can explain.”

“Yes,” came a voice that sounded like Mei’s. “I’m sure you can. But that doesn’t change what you did. You loosed that arrow.”

“What did you want me to do? Let my people capture her? Have her brought back to the palace, where she would have died by a thousand cuts?”

“She hadn’t flamed yet.”

“She didn’t need to. She was dead the moment she moved the sand. You haven’t been on the front, Mei. You haven’t seen what my men and women have seen. They can spot sooth work from a li away now.”

Silence.

Mei broke it. “I think I understand why you ordered me to stay behind. You said it was for your sister. I believed you. But it was also to keep me from seeing this side of you.”

“What? No,” Sanjing said earnestly—too earnestly, like that time he denied filling Caiyan’s pillow log with dead tadpoles. “Mei—”

The flaps parted without warning, and Mei flitted by like a wraith.

Blinking, Hesina cleared her head. She wasn’t here to eavesdrop. She pushed through the flaps and almost ran into Sanjing, who looked to be in midpursuit but froze at the sight of her, deliberately turning away as she approached.

Her wound, surprisingly shallow thanks to Lilian’s gown, still throbbed under the bandage when she reached for his shoulder. “Jing…”

The harder her brother tried to hide his emotions, the more they bristled. She could practically feel the spines of his confusion and guilt. She withdrew her hand. “This is about the sooth, isn’t it?”

“So what if it is?”

“I…”

What did she want to say?

The truth. Tell him the truth.

But what was the truth?

Recently, it was the thing she found hardest to admit. “I would have done the same.” She would have killed the girl to save him too.

“I know,” said Sanjing, and Hesina relaxed. Then he faced her, black eyes burning. “You’re like all the others.”

“The…others?”

“What are you here for?”

Hesina couldn’t remember. She did remember that she’d come grounded with intent, with justification and reason and solution, all blown away as they coasted toward the same old ruts. “I—I just wanted to say thank you. For coming. For helping.” Her throat went tender. “I’m glad we could work together.”

“Of course. Issue the summons anytime you need a hand in killing some helpless slaves, and I’ll drop everything and come running like I did today.”

His words dashed over her like cold water. When he brushed past, she couldn’t grab him or order him to stay. Her lips parted with the tent flaps, and the air leaked out of her after he left.

This was what they did, Hesina reminded herself, too weary for anger. They broke themselves. They took the shards and drove them up the chinks of each other’s armor.

She stayed in the tent for a little longer, unready to face the world. When she finally did emerge, the moon was high and round, just as it had been yesterday. But everything else had changed. No legends circulated around the bonfire tonight. Sanjing’s soldiers had joined Hesina’s guards, whispering about sooths who aged young children to death, sooths who, with a single blink, turned breathing livestock into steaming meat.