Descendant of the Crane(86)

The protests died down to mutters.

“If you still object, speak now,” Hesina ordered.

A minister shuffled forward. “It will take time…”

Another took a stand to her right. “It will be expensive…”

A third joined on the left. “But it’ll cap the chaos and curb the infighting.”

Then suddenly, there was an outpouring of support.

“It will reinstate order.”

“If everyone is subjected to a cut, private disputes will no longer lead to fights to the death.”

“It returns power to the imperial guards.”

“Good.” Hesina rose—a terrible mistake. Caiyan caught her arm as she stumbled. “It is settled then,” she said through her teeth, gritted against the pain. “Grand Secretariat, prepare a procession route for tomorrow and select the palanquin bearers.”

“Understood, dianxia.”

She would round up the sooths and strip them of their cover, giving the people half of what they wanted. Then the real test would begin. Could she reverse centuries of hatred and turn this city into a sanctuary before it became a burial ground?

Or would she become a murderer no different from her father?





TWENTY-FIVE





NURTURE THE PEOPLE AS IF THEY ARE YOUR CHILDREN.

ONE OF THE ELEVEN ON RULING


THE MASSES MAY BE MISGUIDED, BUT THEIR HEARTS ARE TRUE.

TWO OF THE ELEVEN ON RULING

As the ministers streamed out, the weight of what Hesina had decided came down on her shoulders alone.

She’d had no choice. They’d come to an impasse. It was her ideals against the people’s. One side had to give, or more would die.

Still, the thought of tomorrow horrified her, and it wasn’t until Caiyan had walked her back to the infirmary and was turning to go that Hesina realized he hadn’t said a thing since leaving the throne room.

“Wait.”

A wince cracked Caiyan’s face as she caught his right arm. Hesina froze. He started to pull away, but she was faster. She pushed up his sleeve, recoiling at the sight of his skin. It was black and blue and red and swollen, as if something heavy had fallen and crushed the very bone.

Her hand dropped as he doubled over, grabbing the bed frame as his body convulsed with coughs.

This was why Caiyan had seemed so strained in court. Why he hadn’t visited all this time. Why he was so eager to make his escape.

The reason behind his injured arm.

“Look at me,” she whispered.

Caiyan smoothed down his sleeve. Adjusted the brocade cuff. Hesina was on the verge of ordering him again when he raised his head.

“You were there, weren’t you?” she whispered. “Right after the explosion?”

Caiyan didn’t answer.

He must have been one of the first responders. He must have inhaled all the smoke and ash in the immediate aftermath, rushing to rescue her as the prisons came down around them.

He’d put himself in danger.

Hesina couldn’t keep the tremble out of her voice. “How did you know—”

“You promised you wouldn’t jeopardize your rule.”

She flinched, then recovered. “You shouldn’t have risked yourself. You shouldn’t have acted on your own.”

“You shouldn’t have been there.” Caiyan’s words landed like the strokes of a whip. “You shouldn’t have survived.”

He left her in stunned silence as he paced to the fretworked doors. “I moved both of you up the arcade before summoning the guards. If they found you by the sooth’s cell, spared by an explosion that had blown the rest to pieces, how would they have explained it?”

The fight trickled out of Hesina. She could see it all too well. Caiyan, immediately realizing how suspicious the scene looked, struggling to drag both Sanjing and her out of it. Always thinking ahead, even in the face of peril.

“Let me call the Imperial Doctress,” she said through the pressure in her throat.

“There’s no need.”

“Please.” It was getting harder to breathe. Hesina couldn’t see his arm anymore, but now she was visualizing the hilly scar that gouged up the crook of his left elbow, white like the new ice on the koi pond that winter morning. Sanjing had just turned seven. He’d lured Caiyan out onto the ice, expecting it to crack, hoping to give his rival a good scare, but never imagining that broken ice would cut skin like knives, or that Hesina would jump in to save a brother.

One prank gone wrong. Dozens of apologies she never accepted. The ice on the pond melted in the spring, not the ice between her and Sanjing’s hearts.

“Please,” Hesina begged when Caiyan remained silent. The notion of his pain rivaled the pain in her back.

“I’ll see to it myself.” Again, he turned to go. “You should rest, milady.”

“Wait.”

He stopped at the doors, a hand on the latch.

It wasn’t fair of Hesina to ask more from him, but she needed his opinion. “Did I make the right decision today?”

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t feel that way.”

Caiyan said nothing for a second. “There’s a tale. The tale of Yidou.”

“Tell it to me?”