Descendant of the Crane(83)

She wobbled to a stop, and he spoke again, still facing away. “You shouldn’t have bothered.”

“Jing—”

“Do you want to know the first thing I thought when I came to?” He turned. His face was pale but uninjured. It was his eyes, the black of them matte like Go stones, that sapped the last of Hesina’s strength.

“When I learned she was gone, I blamed you. I blamed you for the explosion, for the fact she was in that cell to begin with. I told myself nothing would be this way if it hadn’t been for your trial.”

His first words pierced her, needles to her heart. His next tugged, drawing out the crimson threads.

“Then I saw you. You were on the bed next to mine. I woke. You didn’t. I was walking the next day. Your fever didn’t go down for a week. When the Imperial Doctress changed your bandage—”

He broke off, throat bobbing.

“They say you threw yourself on top of me,” he whispered after a long silence. “They say they had to pry you off. And too late, I…I—I realized—”

“Jing.”

“—you still saw me as your brother—”

“I always—”

“—when I didn’t deserve—”

“Jing. Stop.”

He did, and silently began to sob.

She lurched over and pulled him into her arms. “It’s okay.” She didn’t mind that he blamed her, or that they only knew how to make each other whole when they were broken. For once, she didn’t want anything more than just to hold him. “It’s okay.”

He shook harder, his fist clenched around a figurine. It was the seal Hesina had taken from him, not quite lion, not quite dog, a funny-looking thing that Sanjing wouldn’t have picked for himself. A gift.

He held on to it as though it was the only thing he had left.

Her throat closed. “What happened to…to the others?”

He shook his head.

So they were dead like Mei. Gone. Blown to pieces. Irretrievable.

Then why, why, why were they still alive?

Sanjing wanted to know the same thing. “Why?” he gasped when the sobs racking his body diminished to spasms. “Why are we still here, Sina?”

“I don’t know, Jing.” She didn’t want to know. But if the reason was what she’d suspected, she’d never tell. She’d taken away her brother’s only friend. She wouldn’t also take away his memory of their father.



After Hesina’s little act of rebellion, the Imperial Doctress stationed imperial guards outside the infirmary doors. Hesina pleaded for her release. The most secure dungeons in the entire kingdom had just been breached. Five of the elite guard had died, along with the first soothsayer convicted in the last thirty years. The people could be razing the city to the ground, for all she knew, while she lay in bed and let it burn.

Her arguments would have impressed Caiyan, but the Doctress was immune to rationale. “The people want to see a healthy queen,” she said testily. “Not a fainting queen.”

Hesina railed and hissed and downright threw a fit, but mostly, she hated the woman for being right. Her back was healing at the rate of a silkworm’s crawl. Her thoughts ran sluggishly, like a stream choked with sediment, and if she wasn’t hallucinating hummingbirds into the beamed ceiling, she was pining for Akira, which, in Hesina’s opinion, also counted as a sort of hallucination. But she didn’t mind those as much. Akira slowed the pace of the world around her and made it easier to breathe. She wanted him here with no words, no gestures, no intentions between them, just the quiet rain of wood chips from his rod pattering onto the floor.

He didn’t come. Neither did Caiyan, much to Hesina’s consternation. When the Imperial Doctress could finally be persuaded to allow visitors, Lilian and Rou were the first to bear news of the outside world. Hesina asked after Mei’s parents and the sooths in the caverns. Safe and provisioned for, they reported. Hesina let herself relax for all but a heartbeat before asking about the state of the kingdom.

Lilian and Rou glanced at each other.

“It’s not pleasant,” Lilian finally said.

“Show me,” Hesina ordered as the Imperial Doctress ushered them out.

Several folded papers made their way onto her breakfast tray the next morning, tucked beneath the steaming shaguo of black sesame porridge. They were torn, their ink characters smudged, as if hands had grabbed them fresh off the printing blocks.


TERRORIST ATTACK IN IMPERIAL DUNGEONS

SOOTHSAYER PRISON BREAK ENDS IN MURDER AND DESTRUCTION

QUEEN HESINA ON BRINK OF DEATH KINGSLAYERS AGAIN ATTEMPT REGICIDE


No wonder Caiyan hadn’t visited yet; Hesina could only imagine the state of the court. Appetite gone, she set the tray aside and hobbled to the fretwork sliding doors, pulling them apart to reveal the patio.

Another dawn. Another view of the mists enshrouding the silk ponds, the banks cottoned with snow, lily pads dotting the surface like little white islands. So peaceful.

So false.

Her mouth soured. She turned away from the patio, hands balled, her heart jittering behind her ribs like a caged bird. She’d reached the end of her patience. Tomorrow, she was getting out.

She had one of the apprentices send a message to Rou.



In the morning, Yan Rou of the Southern Palace came down with a dreadful case of diarrhea that required the Imperial Doctress’s immediate attention. The moment the woman left, medicine chest packed for the hike across the imperial grounds, Hesina glared the apprentices into submission and had her pages call an emergency meeting with her vassals and ministers.