Descendant of the Crane(54)
Two guards passed by Hesina and her mount, dragging someone between them. They kicked the person to her knees and yanked her head back by the hair.
By the braid.
The russet of Mei’s irises became the red of Hesina’s shock, then rage, as the director gazed down at the swordswoman and sniffed. “…the vixen was with you all along.”
SIXTEEN
THE PERSON PURCHASING RIGHTS SETS A PRICE OTHERS CANNOT MATCH.
ONE OF THE ELEVEN ON CORRUPTION
WEED IT BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.
TWO OF THE ELEVEN ON CORRUPTION
It was the director who arrested Mei, his men who dragged her away.
But it wasn’t the Investigation Bureau that Hesina stormed.
Ten sets of heads turned as she burst into Xia Zhong’s residence. She stared at the young courtiers, kneeling on thin reed mats, brushes poised over note-taking paper. They stared at her, their faces slack with awe and shock—and terror, too, when she started laughing.
Marvelous. To think that Xia Zhong was grooming the young officials of her court, lecturing them on the values of—Hesina glanced at one courtier’s notes—honesty and humility.
“Class dismissed,” said Xia Zhong, clutching shut the scroll in his hands.
Books went into bags. Brushes slid into oxhide wraps. The courtiers rose, bowing at Hesina and murmuring dianxia as they passed. The doors had barely shut behind the last one when she spun on Xia Zhong, who had lowered himself to his hands and knees and was rolling up each mat.
“Release her.” Hesina loomed over him as he continued his busywork. “We both know she isn’t the murderer.”
“Of course she isn’t.” Xia Zhong stacked one rolled mat atop two others. Hesina wanted nothing more than to kick them apart. “She wouldn’t have stayed around if she were, unless it was to kill you, which means she would have attempted on the road.”
“You—”
“You made your move. An elaborate one, at that, traveling a thousand and eight hundred li just to stop a war. Now I make mine.” With a groan, the minister rose, knees popping, and shuffled to the mats on the other side of the room. “I thought you knew the rules of the game, my dear.”
His not-quite-black robes bunched as he squatted again, reminding Hesina of a roosting pigeon. A pigeon, she realized with a burst of fresh fury, who pecked at her as if she were millet on the ground.
“It doesn’t matter who you frame. You won’t get your war.”
“What’s to stop me from trying? Do you propose that I sit idly by and accept ‘fate’?” Xia Zhong chuckled, shaking his head. “You sound like a sooth.”
Ice speared up Hesina’s spine, but the minister had already moved on to gather all the mats. She followed him warily to the partition of gridded shelves dividing his inner chambers from outer.
“Why?” she demanded as he stuffed the mats into the grid holes. “What are you doing all of this for?”
“You know why, my dear. The letters are still in your possession, if you need to refresh your memory.”
Hesina could accept sooths drawing water out of thin air, but she couldn’t, no matter how she tried, stomach the idea of Xia Zhong going to such lengths to increase his personal wealth. It had to be something more, something to explain the fire in his eyes.
His hand went to the beads around his neck, an accessory Hesina had found monk-like before. Now that she was close enough to count the liver spots on his drooping face, and his head wasn’t bowed in obeisance, she saw that the beads were actually onyx, polished to a wood-like matte.
“Have you ever heard of the Xia family, my queen?”
“Which?” There were only a hundred or so surnames in the Yan language, and sharing one didn’t necessarily mean sharing blood.
Somehow, her question seemed to be enough of an answer for Xia Zhong. He dropped the beads. “The Eleven destroyed more than just the sooths. They tore apart the fabric of society.”
He paced to the other side of the partition, the grid coming between them. “The Xia family used to be one of the greatest patrons of the arts and culture. They sponsored academies across the kingdom, including a minority that instructed the sooths.
“They brought us down by affiliation, those ingrates. Now, the only names the people worship are those of eleven thieves.” His gaze pinned her through a hole in the grid. “I will regain what we lost, ingot by ingot, right under the nose of this dynasty.”
Unasked for empathy stole away Hesina’s words. A lost legacy wasn’t so different from an untold truth. She identified with the weary anger in the minister’s watery eyes, the mirthless mirth.
She would never admit that, of course, and when Xia Zhong went on to say, “Yet, you and I, we’re the same,” she found her voice again.
“We’re not.”
“The world denies us the things we desire. We go to great lengths to secure them. You blackmail me with letters; I arrange a little tragedy at your coronation. You ride to Kendi’a; I—”
“The scout at my coronation was your doing?”
“I’m surprised you didn’t realize sooner, my dear.”
People had alarming amounts of faith in her ability to notice every tiny detail while running a kingdom.