Descendant of the Crane(75)

“You’re right.” Hesina picked at a loose thread in the brocade of her sleeve. Once, she’d envied Caiyan’s intelligence. Theory came to him easily. So did reading massive tomes and calculating impossible sums on the abacus. But it was hard to be envious of someone who learned for the love of learning, and she admired Caiyan for always admitting ignorance whenever admission was due. She still struggled with that.

“There’s still so much I don’t understand,” she confessed. “I want to help, not make things worse.”

“There will be time to learn, milady.”

Would there be? Mei’s execution was at dawn. After that, it was a matter of time before word reached the Kendi’an Crown Prince. Once Siahryn realized Yan was killing sooths instead of enslaving them, he’d see Hesina’s threats of harnessing their powers for what they were: hot air. Kendi’a would attack their borders again. That would trigger another wave of anti-sooth sentiment. More anti-sooth sentiment would lead to more Meis.

Everything would crumble. Everything already was. Just considering the chain of events crushed Hesina’s will. “I can’t be the only one, right? To realize there’s something wrong with this kingdom?”

“I don’t think so.”

Caiyan didn’t sound nearly as confident as Hesina would have liked. “Then why hasn’t anything changed?” she asked. “It’s been three whole centuries since the fall of the relic dynasty, but everyone…everyone’s still the same.”

“Memories are short. History plays out in cycles. Tables turn; the sufferers rise and make their oppressors suffer. This is simply human nature.”

“But that’s terrible.” Terrible to be a sooth. Terrible to be a human. Terrible no matter how Hesina looked at it.

“Stone-head!” Lilian’s voice echoed across the cavern. “A little less pontificating and a little more help, please? I think this man has a broken wrist.”

“Excuse me, milady.” Caiyan went to his twin, leaving Hesina on the periphery. She wanted to help, too, but the encounter under the bridge had shaken her. How could she do anything when she represented everything the sooths feared?

What would Father do?

Simple. He’d be himself. Elders regarded him as a son; grown men and women regarded him as a brother. Children chased him, begging for a ride on his shoulders, and he’d always oblige, sometimes carrying one on each just like he’d carried Sanjing and Hesina. He treated them like his own. He told them the same truths. The same lies.

Hesina’s hands closed into fists. He had no reason to tell the people about his immortality. But he should have told her. She was his daughter. He had named her and raised her. She deserved his honesty more, for example, than the little girl who tugged on her sleeve.

“When can we go back home?” asked the girl. Her hair had been parted lovingly into three pigtails for luck, and a jade mandala rested against a padded coat with pink cloth-nub buttons.

“Ailin!” A woman ran over, scooping the girl into her arms, shielding her from Hesina. “D-Dianxia.”

Hesina should have acknowledged the woman. She should have soothed her fears, told her that she’d never harm a child. But the girl’s innocent question had netted her, drawing her into the harsh reality she had created.

When can we go back home?

She passed the mother and child. She passed the group of raft pushers. Their scowls glanced right off her.

When would these people be able to return to their lives?

Would the commoners notice their absence? Would they guess that the missing mantou vendor or the sedan carrier had actually been a sooth? Perhaps Hesina had saved them. Perhaps she’d also condemned them to an eternity in hiding.

Different conversations and voices all washed into one, asking the same question:

When can we go back home?

Hesina backed into the cavern side, then into a random tunnel opening. The voices eventually faded, but she kept going, sloshing through pools of stagnant rainwater, pushing onward until she came to a dead end of stones, perfectly stacked to form a wall.

Who had sealed this passageway? And why? What lay beyond?

Hesina froze. The cavern was somewhere beneath the eastern market sector. She’d come a long way from it. In fact, she must have been nearing the city walls.

Aboveground, the hour struck. Each note was muffled, dulled by layers upon layers of earth, yet the air about Hesina vibrated as if the gong tower was directly above her.

Four notes passed.

Could it be…that this tunnel ran all the way to the city walls?

Was this how the Eleven had breached them?

Impossible. The Eleven were heroes. They hadn’t brought an entire era to an end by worming through underground tunnels. No, the passageways were Hesina and her father’s little secret, a puzzle they had worked on together between the tedium of ruling and imperial lessons.

Unless their cherished secrets were sketched out of lies too.

Hesina shivered, shrinking into herself, but that brought her closer to the ache in her heart.

I miss you. I miss you, even if you were a lie. I hate the truth of you.

I hate you.

“I hate you,” she whispered aloud. “I hate you.” She whirled and screamed into the yawning tunnel way. “I hate you!”

Her words echoed back threefold.