Descendant of the Crane(53)

“But what about the women?” ventured Hesina’s scout, her face lit by the flames. “What happens to them during their yuejin?”

“They burn,” said a clean-shaven soldier, yelping as his female comrade elbow-locked his neck and knuckled his head.

“Jun, you idiot,” sighed the girl, before looking to the scout. “Don’t listen to him. The monthly cloths you and I use? Sooths stuff theirs inside so the blood can’t evaporate. But that’s where our similarities end. Want to know what mothers do to their newborns?”

“What?”

The girl released the clean-shaven soldier. Leaned toward the fire. “They blind them,” she whispered. “With the same bloody knife used to cut the umbilical. Makes the Sight stronger—”

Stomach clenched, Hesina escaped to the banks, where the autumn breeze drowned out the bonfire stories but also combed goose bumps over her arms. As she rubbed them away, tempering her nausea, the shadows beside her rippled with a familiar presence.

She let out a heavy breath. “Don’t be angry at him.”

“Why? You are.”

No, Hesina should have said, of course not. A queen had better people to be angry at—hotheaded Crown Princes and two-faced Ministers of Rites, for example.

“Anger is a form of confidence,” Mei said when Hesina didn’t reply. “A hope that the ones we admire will change for the better.”

But why be angry at all? No one else was upset at Sanjing. They celebrated the death of a sooth.

“Something wrong?” asked Mei.

“Nothing.” But a strand of woodsmoke and laughter strayed their way, and Hesina shivered.

Mei watched her carefully. “Do you believe what they say?”

“I’m not sure.” Could she believe in anything else when she knew nothing? “Do you?” asked Hesina.

“I believe sooths are human. There are the good, the bad, and all the ones in between.”

It was obvious, in retrospect. “You’re a sympathizer.”

“I’m not the only one.”

Mei didn’t say Hesina’s name. She didn’t need to. Her words connected with their target even before her gaze hit Hesina’s arm, the one she’d cut in front of the mob.

Irrational relief filled Hesina. She wasn’t alone. Someone finally knew the princess who’d committed treason and been foolish enough to let it change her.

She couldn’t reveal that, of course. She’d made a promise to Caiyan, and now she kept it by stepping back. “Don’t be so sure,” she told Mei.

She retreated to her tent. Within its dark privacy, she pushed up her ruqun sleeve. The cut she’d given herself had been shallow and clean. It should have healed without a scar. But no queen had time to apply tiger balm twice a day, and a bumpy seam of new skin gleamed under the lantern light.

Hesina traced it, recalling that night. The blood. The shouts. The fire. The ash.

She slid the sleeve back down.

The Crown Prince had tried to kill her for what she’d learned today. Would he have done the same had her father also possessed forbidden knowledge? Could it be that the Kendi’ans really were behind the king’s death? No outsiders had been in the palace that late summer day, but the murderer didn’t have to be an outsider. Xia Zhong couldn’t be the only one in secret correspondence with the Kendi’ans.

Speculating out in the hinterlands of Yan was no use. Hesina had to get back to the imperial city.

They’d ridden out at a hard pace; they rode back harder, pushing the limits of what their mounts and bodies could take. Soon, the last stretch of land disappeared. The rolling hills flattened. When the imperial city walls teethed on the horizon, Hesina’s doubts broke the surface too. No one knew how the Eleven had breached the massive structures of pounded earth and stone. Scholars had hypothesized everything from gliding over to tunneling under, but was the Crown

Prince right about the Eleven using the magic of sooths? Hesina wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of a lot of things anymore. Knowledge is truth, her father had said, yet all knowledge had done was unveil a world of lies.

News of their return preceded it, and throngs of people paved the limestone boulevard wending to the Eastern Gate to welcome them back. They chanted the name of a queen who’d kept her promise to avoid war and secure salt. But it was also the name of a girl who’d broken her promise to protect all, regardless of blood.

Again, Hesina tasted ash. The flavor fermented as they rode into the eastern tunnel, becoming more sour than bitter, more dread than regret. Dread of what, Hesina didn’t know. That happened to be the nature of dread.

No one ever knew what they dreaded until it came to pass.

The moment they emerged from the tunnel, city guards poured into the gateway and surrounded Hesina and her entourage.

“Seize the suspect!” shouted the director of the Investigation Bureau, who stood behind the regiment. “Protect your queen at all costs!”

Hesina’s stallion startled. For a dangerous moment, she slipped in her saddle. Then she jerked the reins tight, wrangling back control. “What is the meaning of this?”

The director bowed. “A grievous oversight on the Bureau’s part. We couldn’t find the next suspect when we went to apprehend her. We scoured the city, thinking she’d gone into hiding. Little did we know…”