Descendant of the Crane(61)

“Exactly. He sensed my ambidexterity, Sina.”

She held back a snort but let him go at it, grateful he was thawing a bit. Still, he wore his tension like a heavy mantle. Her pages reported that her brother spent most of his nights guarding Mei’s cell, and as they came to a split in the corridor, Hesina wanted to tell him to take care of himself and leave the worrying to her.

He left before she could.



Today was the day.

Hesina began it like any other—first by attending court, then by visiting Mei. The swordswoman raised a brow as Hesina slid steamers of crystal shrimp dumplings and shaguo pots of chili-oil jellyfish noodles through the cell bars. “I feel like a hog being fattened before my execution.”

Hesina grumbled something about food improving any situation. Lilian believed in it, but Mei seemed skeptical, and to be quite honest, Hesina was too. Her appetite had shriveled, and with hours still to go before the unearthing, she skipped supper and went to her rooms.

The space was empty, lifeless, the cranes embroidered on her screens punched black by moonlight. Carefully, Hesina retrieved her mother’s chest from under the floorboards, where it rested next to Xia Zhong’s letters. She undid the silver wedding lock, removed the original Tenets—disguised as The Medicinal Properties of Exotic Fungi—and sat down with it at her desk.

She read until the gong strike, then met Akira in his room, handing him a fur cloak. Together, they made for the eastern courtyard, where a covered palanquin awaited under the snow-covered plum trees. Servants helped Hesina in. Once they were both seated, pole-bearers hoisted them up, and they were off.

The night was clear and sharp, with a slight musk to the air when Hesina pushed aside the brocade curtain. The palace gates groaned shut behind them, and the palanquin jolted as they descended the terraces.

She let the curtain fall. “I finished the book,” she whispered, facing Akira.

He took to the dark like a blade to a sheath, eyes alert, yet also at ease. He was no stranger to these soulless nights, and with that in mind, Hesina added a stroke to her story. The boy was an assassin who used the night as his cover. He gave his targets no time to scream. A shiver fingered her spine—and not entirely in fear.

“Is it the hair?”

Hesina blinked. “What?”

Akira pushed a hand through his bangs. “You’re staring.”

“No. I’m not.” She wheeled her thoughts around. “I was just thinking about the book.”

And then she really was. Her heart stopped doing clumsy acrobatics, and her voice dripped with disappointment when she said, “It was exactly what it claimed to be. A book of tenets.” One’s sayings weren’t answers, regardless of how they resonated, and Hesina was almost grateful when they reached the imperial tombs not long after. She didn’t want to dwell on her inroads—or lack thereof.

The paifang archway to the tombs rose just outside the city walls, facing the nearby Shanlong mountain range. The pole-bearers set the palanquin down before the tall pillars, and after Hesina instructed them to wait, she entered with Akira.

She’d been wise to fast; acid shot up her throat as they traveled through the concentric tombs. Each was a couch of granite curved like a womb; together they gleamed like rings and rings of vertebrae.

Wrapping her fur-muffed cloak closer, Hesina passed kings, queens, princesses, and princes, some competent, some inept, but all checked by the six ministries, and none as corrupt as the relic emperors. She made for the center, where the gazebo for One and Two, first rulers of the new era, towered.

Her father’s tomb was one ring away. The gravediggers waiting by it helped Hesina and Akira pour boiling water over the frozen ground, melting it to sludge. Shovels soon rasped in and out of the earth. The sound scraped Hesina’s insides raw. It went on for what felt like hours before the diggers struck the coffin. They climbed out of the pit, and Hesina handed each a small pouch of banliang. She waited until they were gone before nodding at Akira.

The real work began when he jumped into the pit and bore a hole into the coffin’s side. He hammered in a metal spout, then inserted a ceramic pipe that fed into a vial he had depressurized by burning out the air. Before Hesina knew it, he was climbing back out, gas collected.

“Got it.”

Perfect, she should have said, then gotten them out of this place.

Instead, Hesina wandered over to the still-steaming pit. Here lay her father, or what remained of him. The least she could do now was look at his final resting place with fearless eyes. She leaned over, straining to see the coffin.

“The edge—” Akira started to say.

—was unstable. The sopping earth fell out from under her, and Hesina tumbled down in a flurry of cloak and skirts, her fall broken by something hard.

Seconds passed as she lay winded. Then she scrambled upright, rolling off the coffin. She thought she heard Akira’s voice, but the world above was muffled, the moon and stars distant. Down here, the gleam of her father’s lacquer coffin was her only source of light.

Queasily, Hesina crouched at the coffin’s side. The zitan was carved into a simple log shape. Kings in this era no longer had mausoleums built in their names, or ordered their concubines to follow them into the tomb and play the pipa until they suffocated.

“Are you hurt?” asked Akira, landing beside her.

She shook her head, her eyes pinned on the hole that Akira had made in the zitan. It was no wider than her little finger, but the darkness beyond appeared to contain a universe.