Descendant of the Crane(8)

“I didn’t want to show you this,” said Sanjing as she tried to make sense of what she was reading. “I figured it’d make you worry. But it’s time you opened your eyes.”

The papers were pages torn from a copy of the Tenets. But the characters scrawled between the vertical columns of text weren’t commentary or critique. They were reports—fine-grained accounts detailing the security and transportation systems of several borderland towns, information that would have been very helpful to a Kendi’an raiding party.

Only a Yan official could have written these letters.

“My scouts confiscated several suspicious bundles before they could cross into Kendi’a. These letters were hidden among the tariff reports, in a chest stamped by the Office of the Imperial Courier. Someone in this palace has been helping the Kendi’ans terrorize our villages. Someone wants a war. Hand them a murder case, and they’ll hand you a Kendi’an.”

Sanjing sounded far away. His words circled Hesina’s head like wasps. Or gnats. It was the latter, she decided, setting the letters down on the desk. Gnats were harmless. “There are hundreds of officials in this court, most of them unimportant,” she said. “One person cannot obstruct the course of justice.”

“And what if they are important? What if they have friends?”

All conjecture. Hesina waved it aside. “You have no way of knowing. Besides, if we withheld cases from the Investigation Bureau for every small quibble, would we still have a court?”

“This is different. A king has never been killed before.”

“He was our father before he was the king. We owe this to him. Enough.” Hesina raised a hand before her brother could go on. “Ride to the borderlands. Take five thousand militiamen and women with you, and see if you can quell the raids for the time being.”

“Really, Sina?”

“Yes. That’s an order from your future queen.”

Sanjing shook his head. “You’ll regret this.”

So much for “we.” What had Hesina expected? Sanjing was no Caiyan. If something didn’t go his way, he abandoned course. Weeks, months, years of his cold-shouldering reared in her mind, and with a bitter laugh, Hesina said, “One of us has to love Father and what he stood for. He believed in the people, he believed in the courts, he believed in truth, and he believed in the new era. I will too.”

A long silence passed between them.

“Fine.” The shadows fell from Sanjing’s face as he straightened. “I’ll go.”

The cowlick sweeping above his right brow was more prominent in the light. He was General Yan Sanjing, prodigy of the sword arts, master of strategy, commander of the Yan militias, but he was only sixteen, one year Hesina’s junior, and for a moment, her heart wavered. Perhaps she’d been too harsh—

“I hope ruling is everything you ever wanted.” He wielded his words like his sword: with precision, stabbing into her insecurities. “I hope this investigation is too.”

“Don’t worry.” She went to the door and held it open for her brother. She could walk any path, with company or without, as long as the justice her father deserved and defended waited at the end. “It will be.”





THREE





JUSTICE CANNOT BE BOUGHT.

ONE OF THE ELEVEN ON TRIALS


IT’S A LUXURY, PLAIN AND SIMPLE.

TWO OF THE ELEVEN ON TRIALS

The letters were stained along the edges. Hesina hadn’t noticed by candlelight. It was only when she’d stacked them all to the thickness of a pamphlet, and when the night drained out of the sky, that she saw the moss-green tint around the width.

The pages had been torn from a special edition of the Tenets. It was the only identifier she had, and the only one she wanted. Sanjing had planted a seed of suspicion, but she didn’t have to let it grow.

She pushed the letters away. Put them in a drawer. Opened the drawer and read them again, fingers drumming against the edge of her desk.

She summoned one of her pages. “Find whatever handwriting samples you can from members of the court,” she ordered. Damn Sanjing, and damn his paranoia. Damn the letter writer too. “Bring them to me along with a report on the officials with connections to Kendi’a. Any connections,” Hesina said firmly before the page could ask. How was she to know what might tantalize a person into betraying his own kingdom?

“Understood, dianxia. Will that be all?”

Hesina palmed her eyes. “That will be all.”

Once the page left, she put on her oldest dress, a plum-colored ruqun with an unraveling hem that wouldn’t mind being dragged through a few dungeon puddles.



Simplification had been the defining word of the Eleven’s reign. One and Two, the first co-rulers of the new era, had hacked away any relic excess they could. They pared down the complex written language invented by nobles to bar commoners from learning. They forbade tailors from spinning hanfu and ruqun from precious metals that could be used to fill coffers. They dissolved the imperial alchemy, dedicated to developing an elixir of immortality for the emperor. Monthlong festivals turned into weeklong festivals. Elite military sects were absorbed into the militia.

But the underground dungeon system remained an elaborate labyrinth of crypts, cells, and torture chambers. The relic emperors had filled them with rebel leaders and commoners. The Eleven had filled them with sooths.