Descendant of the Crane(98)

Regardless, Hesina made a note to change the hiding spot.

When she returned to her father’s study, her mother flicked a finger at the desk. “Place it.”

Again, Hesina obeyed, setting it beside a miniature jiutan of sorghum wine that had appeared in her absence. She knew better than to question it.

She sat as her mother flipped the book open, and stared as the dowager queen tore out a fistful of pages.

Hesina was too stunned to make a sound. A relic, destroyed just like that.

But then the pages floated out of her mother’s hands and fused back into the book.

Hesina had seen sooths draw water from air. She’d seen whole pots crack into shards. But this defied everything she knew. If all magic stemmed from reeling the future into the present, how could this be? Paper couldn’t heal itself.

Yet it had. Gingerly, she pulled in the book and ran a finger down the pages. Smooth. Seamless. The tear gone without a trace, much like the cut on her father’s abdomen.

Her head spun. “What was that?”

“The same magic that makes us immortal.”

“You—”

“I am Two.”

The gong struck six. In the gathering dark, Hesina stared at her mother. Two was characterized as brave and spirited. The dowager queen was neither of those things. But now Hesina saw the way she looked at the book, her gaze heavy. These words were her words. The stories they told were her stories. A part of her remained preserved in those pages, no matter how she’d changed.

“How?” she still asked. If her mother was in fact Two, how was she immortal? By enlightenment or elixir?

Her mother took a long draw from the jiutan. “When we finally breached the imperial walls,” she said, voice like ground glass, “there were only five of us left. We couldn’t have defeated the emperor. It was Kaishen—your so-called Nine—who suggested we seek out the most powerful sooth in the kingdom. She saw a future in which your father and I lived on in the commoners’ hearts, our names and feats kept alive in tales and sagas. She Reeled the immortality of legend into our flesh.”

Her gaze slid to the Tenets. “Unbeknownst to us, she did the same to this book. Its teachings will forever prevail. The commoners worship every word we wish we could take back.”

So this was why the commoners were so opposed to war. Why they hated sooths and couldn’t be persuaded otherwise. This…book was the source of Hesina’s plight. She didn’t care if it’d heal itself; she wanted to shred it.

Her mother took another swig. “Wen suspected the book’s indestructibility was tied to our own.” It took Hesina a second to place her father’s name. “We tried to kill ourselves. Burning. Drowning. Beheading—we’ve done it all.” She tapped the scar at her throat, and Hesina blanched. “Some attempts healed worse than others. When all failed, we faked our deaths to give other rulers a chance to right our wrongs.”

She raised the jiutan.

Hesina seized it before it met her lips. “Why are you telling me now? Why did the two of you return after your first reign? And if Father faked his death again, why leave any clues for me to find at all?”

“Let go.”

She did, and her mother tipped back the jiutan. “Tell me,” murmured the dowager queen, setting it down hard. “Was the truth worth it?”

Another deflection. Hesina’s jaw tightened. “No.”

“Good. Pack your things, and—”

“But searching for it has opened my eyes to the kingdom’s wounds. I want to help it heal.”

“It’s rotten, not wounded. Can you be the knife to cut away the parts that fester?”

It doesn’t have to be that way. But words and reason could sway people only so much, and there wouldn’t always be a Lilian to take the fall. “I can.”

“You’ll ruin yourself,” snapped her mother.

“Someone has to.”

“Foolish girl.” The dowager queen lifted the jiutan again, frowned, and set it back down. “So be it. You want to know why we returned for a second reign? It was for you.”

“You came back just for…” Me? Hesina couldn’t repeat the words without the risk of laughing out loud.

“We’d adopted children, but never had our own. You were the first. Wen saw you as the kingdom’s hope.” Her mother chuckled without warmth. “A dreamer to the bone.”

“Hope. I’m to be the kingdom’s hope.”

“Ludicrous, am I correct?”

Yes, very. “If what you say is really true, then why haven’t I been told this before?”

“Your father decided that the best way to tell you was to show you. He faked his death prematurely knowing very well that you’d pursue a trial, that your actions would throw everything wrong with this kingdom into sharp relief. Now you know exactly what you’re up against. To stay or to leave is your choice, and your choice alone. This was his wish.”

The knowledge settled over Hesina like cold mist. A choice. Her father’s wish was to give her a choice.

Is that all? But then she thought back to the cavern behind the reredos, those words on the walls. Her father hadn’t wanted the mantle of a hero. He was giving her the choice he hadn’t been given himself.

And he’d done so at a cost she couldn’t accept.