Descendant of the Crane(67)

WHO ISN’T POWERLESS AGAINST THE WILL OF THE COSMOS? BUT WHO DOESN’T TRY ALL THE SAME?

TWO OF THE ELEVEN ON THE NATURAL ORDER

It was the day of Mei’s trial, and Hesina hadn’t slept. After talking with Sanjing the night before, she’d stayed up in her study to draft the letter, telling her mother that she’d found the chest, the book, the truth about her father—and that now she wanted to hear it from the dowager queen herself. Hesina had summoned her to court by the full moon, stamped the envelope with Sanjing’s seal—a strange-looking thing chiseled with a half-lion, half-dog creature—and handed the letter off to her page. Then she’d taken out her father’s box.

Once more, she spread out his possessions. The snuff bottle. The Tenets. The courier’s hanfu. The paring knife. The corded medallion. All that was missing was the goblet, still in Akira’s room.

The objects themselves hadn’t changed, but through the refraction of what Hesina now knew, they appeared like artifacts from another realm. She touched a trembling hand to the character for longevity carved onto the medallion’s surface, and suddenly remembered seeing the same character within a book about sooths. The book claimed that sooths could extend their lives by speaking true visions. It was supposed to be a rumor. A myth. But was it possible her father had been a sooth himself? Hesina wasn’t—she’d cut herself in the red-light district, been wounded at the Black Lake, and her blood hadn’t burned. But she also wasn’t sure if she had ever seen her father bleed. There’d been no blood when the Imperial Doctress dissected him, and every memory Hesina had of her father seemed distorted.

He wouldn’t have lived long as a sooth anyway, Hesina thought numbly as she set the paring knife back in the chest and strung the corded medallion onto her own sash for further inspection. He’d told too many lies.

She returned to her bedchambers, but didn’t try for sleep. She watched the stars set and the moon turn fish-scale transparent in the lightening sky, and when her eyes tired and she closed them, all Hesina could do, it seemed, was cry. She didn’t want to suspect her mother. Didn’t want to distrust her father. She hadn’t asked for any of this—or had she? Hadn’t she gone so far as to commit treason for this trial?

Come sunrise, the face reflected in Hesina’s bronze mirror was blotchy and red.

“More,” she ordered when the maid stopped powdering.

“Dianxia, I really don’t think—”

“I said more.” She could afford cakey powder. What she couldn’t afford was walking into the most important trial of her life looking like she’d sobbed into a pillow.

Ming’er sent the younger girl away and took up the brush herself. She swirled it through the powder jar and tapped off the excess, resting her pinkie against Hesina’s cheek to steady her hand.

When Ming’er was done, Hesina studied the results. She didn’t look her best, but she didn’t look like a flaky winter-melon pastry either. Her true face was hidden. It would always have to be, just like her father’s.

Ming’er helped her into her trial robes, cross-wrapping the collar of the dove-gray ruqun. Anticipation and dread broke against each other like waves, and sweat drenched Hesina’s back when it came time to affix the bixi panel to the skirts.

“Will you wear a hairpin today?” asked Ming’er.

Hesina hesitated. None compared to her father’s gift. All reminded her of Xia Zhong. But she didn’t know her father anymore, and Xia Zhong’s influence over her was nearing its end.

At her nod, Ming’er inserted a red coral pin to complement the scarlet phoenix embroidery on the ruqun’s sleeves. She accompanied Hesina down the Hall of Everlasting Harmony, adjusting the gown’s train one last time outside the court doors.

The sight of Ming’er on her hands and knees, fussing with a hem as if it meant the world, fogged Hesina’s chest. She bent and raised her lady-in-waiting by the elbows.

“My flower—”

“Thank you,” Hesina interrupted firmly. Then she said it again, more quietly, to the woman who had wiped her tears with her own brocaded sleeve, who had sewn rose petals into her pillow logs and braided trumpet lilies into her hair. Ming’er had made Hesina her princess before the people had made her their queen.

Hesina stepped into the court, sweeping past the ranks that fell in koutou and up the suspended walk, reaching the imperial balcony just as Sanjing made his entrance.

“He’s a bit overdressed,” remarked Lilian as Hesina sat.

An understatement: Sanjing was dressed for war. He strode down the aisle as if it were a battlefield, his liuyedao sheathed at his side, the clip of his horn-heeled boots stunning the court into silence.

Then the mutters broke. They trailed Sanjing as he ascended the steps to the imperial balcony, and Hesina sighed as he took the seat beside her. “Are you planning on killing someone today?”

“Many, if I must.”

She couldn’t tell if he was joking or serious; she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

The doors parted, and they both tensed as the guards dragged in Mei. Her fingers were still bound, her beige dungeon issues smudged with grime, but her braid was sleek and her eyes defiant as they pushed her up the dais.

Mei’s representative was to enter next. Hesina fidgeted as she stared at the great doors. Xia Zhong had surely selected a more competent scholar this time.