Descendant of the Crane(59)

“Tenets of Eleven.” She opened it to the first page. “The original.”

She prickled from head to toe as Akira leaned in. But then sensation faded. Her mind quieted as she read out loud, sinking herself into worlds and words forgotten.


WHAT IS TRUTH? SEEK IT. WRITE IT. GOOD KINGS PAY GOLD TO HEAR IT. BUT IN TRYING TIMES, TRUTH IS THE FIRST THING WE BETRAY.


Akira turned the page. “What is this language?”

“Complex Yan.”

“Can you read the rest?”

With practice? “Probably.”

“Why would your mother have it?”

The question tripped her. “I don’t know,” she said after a pause.

“Then what do you know about her?”

Much less than she should. Her hand drifted to the back of her skull. The pin’s nick had healed. A shame, Hesina thought tartly. Pain always reminded her of her mother. “She was the daughter of a baron from the northern provinces,” she started. “My father met her when he was touring the realm on his eighteenth namesday. They married a year later, and had me the next.”

Images came to her unbidden. Snuff bottles stoppered with nubs of red coral, scented sachets stuffed with ginseng and angelica, ruqun hems embroidered with autumn leaves. It was easier to think of her mother in components. “Father said Mother was whip-smart and brave. But the mother I knew was…different. She was mercurial. Distant.” Her voice lowered. “Frightened.” Hesina hadn’t been able to admit that as a child, not when her mother frightened her.

“How so?” asked Akira.

She focused intently on a scuff on the zitan floor. “She had nightmares.” A fact that Hesina was ironically privy to because her mother would punish her and forget about her, leaving Hesina kneeling well after the maids retired from the queen’s chambers.

“And sometimes she spoke to people.” The words tasted acrid, secrets not meant to be swallowed in the first place. “She had conversations even when she was alone. There was also…”

Hesina broke off. Her hands grew clammy. “…There is also a scar, around her neck. And I…” She hadn’t told this to anyone. Not Caiyan, not Lilian. “I’ve seen it bleed.”

“An old scar?”

She managed a nod. Perfectly healed too. It shouldn’t have reopened. It made her queasy, remembering.

“And your father?” asked Akira. His expression was as impassive as ever. “What did he do?”

“Everything. He summoned the best physicians of Kendi’a, Ci, and Ning to court. He even sent out explorers for the mystical Baolin Isles and the panacea rumored to grow there.” An action met with public criticism, since the relic emperors had done the same in hunting for the elixir of immortality.

There was some criticism in Akira’s voice, too, when he said, “Then he sent her to the Ouyang Mountains.”

“It was for the best.” Hesina spoke in her father’s defense. She heard him as if he were here, alive, his shoulders under her legs, her hands resting atop his head, the mist on their faces as they watched the queen’s carriage fade into the gully. The mountains will do her good, Little Bird. The clear waters and pure spirits will heal her.

She’d believed him then. She’d tried to keep that belief alive with each passing year.

Her breath went shallow, as if to suffocate the embers of pain sowed among the memories. But she could face them. Akira could make her face them, push her past her discomfort. She waited for him to do so.

Instead, he simply lifted the vial of gas. “This poison was more complex than I expected. I’m close to isolating the final components, but I’ll need a new sample. The body should have continued to emit the gas—”

The body?

“—as time went on. We can collect traces from the coffin. It wouldn’t need to be opened, if it can be unearthed.” His gaze swung to her, inquiring. Can it?

Coffin. Unearthed.

“That…” Hesina’s mind darkened, shuttering against Akira’s request.

Unearth her father’s grave. Unearth her father’s grave.

No. We can’t. It’s not possible. Never mind what the people would think, what the court would think. How could she bear it?

The answer was easy: she had to. For Mei, and all the other innocents to come, Hesina had to end this trial once and for all by finding the truth, no matter what it took, even if it was unearthing her father’s grave.

Could she bear it? No. But could it be done?

Yes.

Her lips molded around the word. Whispered it. She rose, lurching when she realized what she’d agreed to. Akira reached to steady her, but she wrested away, grabbing the book as she went. “I’ll read the rest of it.”

Hesina stepped into the corridor. Let the panel fall shut behind her. She stood in the dark, motionless, breathless. Moments ago, she’d run through this passageway, the book a key in her hand.

She should have known better.

This book wasn’t a clue. She was wasting her time.

Tears welled in her eyes. Books and snuff bottles, goblets and costumes, medallions and wedding locks. She couldn’t remember why she’d ever thought these objects precious. They were just fragments. If her father were whole, he’d take her hand and call her a silly Little Bird for even thinking of unearthing his grave.