Descendant of the Crane(64)

She staggered out, gulping air. They’d only climbed halfway up the terraces, but it was enough for her to see the city sprawl below: the courtyard compounds, the limestone alleyways, the black tiled roofs shimmering like scales in the predawn. The glow encapsulating the red-light district dimmed as other quarters blinked awake with lanterns. Merchants would be loading their wagons. Raft pushers would be heading for the moat, sedan carriers for the main boulevard. The rest of the kingdom would soon follow in waking, living, and believing their king had been murdered by some Kendi’an assassin, by some poison lethal to an ordinary, mortal human being.

Wrong! Hesina wanted to scream from the terraces. You’re all wrong! But she was the source of all their misbeliefs. Without her, there would be no trial. No search for a truth that ultimately implicated the sooths.

Without her, the ghosts of a previous generation wouldn’t have returned.

She buckled under the load of her guilt, but an arm caught her. It drew her close and supported her. Everything will be fine, Caiyan would have said, and Hesina almost expected to see his face when she raised her watery gaze.

Instead it was Akira, hair in his eyes, dirt on his cheekbones, insubordinate as usual.

She pushed at him. “I told you to go.”

“I did. I went and came back down.”

“I’m going to be sick.”

Akira released her, only to sit her down on the terrace. He slid a hand over the back of her neck, his touch featherlight as he coaxed her head to her knees.

Her nausea passed; her need to cry didn’t. But after several minutes, Hesina found the strength to stand. She climbed the terraces. Akira didn’t stop her. She waited for him to tell her it was going to be okay, but he didn’t do that either. He simply followed her to her father’s study, where she instructed him to wait. Then she headed for Caiyan’s chambers.

She made it halfway before her body spasmed. She clutched at the facades, breaking cold sweat.

Her father wasn’t dead.

Yet someone had tried to kill him all the same.

Who?

Someone close, close enough to have known about his immortality. Closer than Hesina herself.

Black lines zigzagged across her vision, carving up her mind like strokes of ink. Together, the strokes formed the characters of her mother’s name, a name that had never made it onto the suspect list. And the dowager queen? Akira had asked, brush hovering beneath Xia Zhong, Lilian, and Caiyan.

Hesina had rejected the idea, but no one else could have known about her father’s immortality. No one else had an army of attendants to act in her absence. The snuff bottle made sense. The matching silver locks made sense. Everything blended like segments on a painted top, fusing in motion.

Her mother.

It could only be her mother.

A hiccup escaped Hesina, the beginning of a sob, a scream. If she didn’t reveal this, Mei would stand trial tomorrow for a crime she didn’t commit, but if she did reveal this, then what about her mother? She clapped her hands over her mouth and ran the rest of the way to Caiyan’s chambers, until her lungs seared and there was no air left for sobs or screams.

“She’s going further than I expected.”

Hesina skidded to a stop at the sound of Lilian’s voice.

“Give her time.” Caiyan’s voice. Hesina approached his door, then flinched back when he went on to say, “Sooner or later, she will break from the truth.”

Her blood froze over.

“And if she doesn’t?” asked Lilian. “What if she decides it’s up to her to mend things?”

The ice melted, and her veins throbbed with heat.

They were talking about her.

“It won’t come down to that,” Caiyan said, but Hesina didn’t hear the rest. With a bang, she burst through the doors, whirling on her siblings.

“Perfect,” cried Lilian in delight, without a fluster of guilt. “More brains to solve this problem for my apprentice.”

Hesina narrowed her eyes. “Your apprentice.”

“Yes. Panling. You remember her, right?”

“No.”

“Fine if you don’t. You can still help. So here’s the thing: she’s besotted with this poet who thinks he’s oh-so-special when he’s about as evocative as a donkey in heat. But the real problem”—Lilian lowered her voice—“is that he’s already married and leading her on.”

Pieces of what Hesina had overheard slid nicely into this new framework—except for one.

She turned on Caiyan. “You know her?”

“He more than knows her,” Lilian answered for her twin. She pinched his cheek, and Caiyan, to Hesina’s dazed surprise, flushed. “Which is why I can’t let her be blindsided by that pretentious ass.”

“Oh,” said Hesina. She should have said more; this was the first time she’d ever heard of Caiyan having a love affair with something outside of academia. But all she said was “oh” again, too relieved and too ashamed to have suspected anything in the first place. “Just tell her the truth,” she finished.

“It’s not that easy,” said Caiyan. “It would hurt her.”

Lilian sighed. “You two are useless. I’ll deal with it on my own. So, why don’t you explain your new aesthetic?” She flourished a hand at Hesina’s ruqun. “There are easier ways of dyeing something brown, you know.”