Descendant of the Crane(5)

The brazier at Hesina’s feet was still spitting flame, but her toes had gone cold. She shouldn’t have come here. The Silver Iris had bled for her and Seen for her, but Hesina had given her no choice, just like the patrons before her. She staggered out of her seat.

“I…I’m sorry. I never…I never meant…We’ll leave—”

“A convict.” The Silver Iris slid on a different ruqun—this one sheer and crimson—and tied it shut with a braided cord. “The one with the rod. That is all I can see. My blood is diluted. Few of us are as powerful as our ancestors. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

Meaningfully, she met Hesina’s gaze in the bronze mirror atop her vanity.

Hesina’s mouth opened and closed. No words came out.

A rap sounded at the door, then Lilian’s voice. “Someone’s coming up the steps.”

“You should go now.” The Silver Iris opened a drawer, withdrawing a tiny pot. She unscrewed the top and dabbed a fresh coat of silver over her lids. “I have patrons to tend to.”

“Y-yes,” stammered Hesina. “We’ll go. I…I’m sorry.”

She backed up. Caiyan joined her side. He held the door open for her, but suddenly Hesina couldn’t move. A question rooted her, climbing up her esophagus like a weed and choking her mind:

“Why tell me anything?”

“What makes you so certain I haven’t been lying to you all this time?” asked the Silver Iris, gaze chilly.

Because Caiyan said you wouldn’t. Because rumor said lying would cost you.

“Because you showed me more than I deserve,” said Hesina truthfully. “And…” She bit her lip and looked away. Naive, the Imperial Doctress had called her. Reckless. “And because I want to trust you.”

Because I feel sorry for you.

The Silver Iris sighed. “Come here.”

Hesina went over cautiously, and the Silver Iris held out her index finger.

The prick from the hairpin was gone. As small as the wound was, there was no way it could have healed so quickly, and Hesina goggled at the smooth, unmarred skin, flinching when the Silver Iris’s breath brushed her ear.

“Your histories only tell you how our powers hurt us,” whispered the courtesan. “But there are benefits to speaking true visions too.”

She drew back, leaving the shell of Hesina’s ear hot and cold all at once. “Why are you telling me this?”

When the Silver Iris studied her this time, the ice in her gaze had thawed to pity, as if she were the human and Hesina were the sooth. “For the same reason you believe me: I am sorry for you.”



They left the red-light district at two gong strikes past midnight. Left and right through the eastern market, merchants packed up their stalls, loading jiutan of sweet-wine congee and fried bean curd back onto wagons. Hesina drifted through the traffic, a ghost, as Caiyan pacified angry mule drivers and palanquin bearers.

“Hey, watch it!”

“Are you trying to lose a leg?”

“I’m terribly sorry,” said Caiyan. “Excuse us. Pardon us.”

“Tell your missy to grow a pair of eyes!”

“Wait up, Na-Na,” called Lilian.

Hesina didn’t stop. She needed to think, and she couldn’t think standing still.

A convict with a rod was to be her representative.

The Silver Iris had told the truth.

But now what?

Her feet brought her to the abandoned tavern from which they’d come. Her hands filled a pitcher at the counter pump. She dribbled water down the throat of the concrete guardian lion at the entrance, and the statue rotated aside at the base.

One by one, they descended the tight drop. The dark waxed over them as Lilian rotated the statue back in place, and Hesina suddenly knew her next steps.

“I need to become queen.” She made her declaration to the humble dirt walls of the underground passageway. Her voice echoed, hollow as the feeling in her chest.

“Of course you’ll become queen,” said Lilian, referring to the rites of succession that passed the throne from deceased ruler to eldest child.

“When your mother returns from the Ouyang mountains, you can ask for her blessing,” said Caiyan, referring to the tradition of parental validation that all heirs, imperial or not, observed before staking their claims.

The twins went back and forth as they walked down the tunnel. Rites. Traditions. Rites. Traditions. Neither seemed to realize that Hesina had said she needed the throne, not that she wanted it.

She envied Lilian, who was allowed to spend her days overseeing the imperial textiles. She envied Caiyan, who positively breathed politics. She even envied her blood brother Sanjing, who led the Yan militias. The throne never stood in the way of their hopes and dreams.

But for the first time in her life, Hesina had a use for power.

“I want an official investigation.” Her father would have wanted the truth delivered by the codes of the Tenets. That meant going through the Investigation Bureau, not a sooth. “I want a trial.” The ground rose beneath their feet as they approached the end of the passageway. “I want the people to see the truth unfold in court.”

“So you really think there’s a convict with a rod?” asked Lilian as they emerged from a miniature mountain range situated in the center of the four-palace complex.