by Joan He
“Yan has water,” said Sanjing. “Kendi’a does not. Their steppes grow drier and drier with the years. Invasion is inevitable, and we need to be ready to meet it with an army. The Tenets forbid wars fought for gain; we fight for self-defense. But starting a war and officially declaring that the king was murdered? Don’t you see the issue?”
No, Hesina did not. “The people will want to know who killed their king,” she said, more certain of this than anything else.
Her brother’s eyes flashed. “They’ll want a scapegoat, Sina.”
“They’re better than that.”
“What makes you so certain?”
“Father loved them.” In the same way he loved her—regardless of her flaws, teaching by example.
“Father wasn’t always right.”
Hesina stared at her brother as she would a stranger. When had they grown so far apart that they’d stopped seeing eye to eye on this too?
“We should start by examining the poison on our own,” Sanjing continued. “Find the truth for ourselves—”
“What’s wrong with you?” Hesina hadn’t shouted, but Sanjing stiffened as if she had. “Why do you have so little faith in our court?”
His expression hardened. “Because of this.”
He tugged papers out from under his breastplate and tossed them onto her desk. They spread like the wings of a crane, scattering on impact. Some landed on the floor.
Under the heat of Sanjing’s gaze, Hesina bent and gathered the papers that had fallen. She stacked them with the rest, shuffling everything into place, and grudgingly gave her attention to the contents.
“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.
Now most of the cells were empty. The handful of sooths who had escaped execution either lived like the Silver Iris or had scattered to the far reaches of the other three kingdoms. Only common criminals remained, such as the robber across from Hesina.
They sat in an old interrogation chamber, perfectly soundproofed for private conversations but aesthetically compromised by the bloodstains on the wall. The convict slumped in his chair, mute as a toad. His head was cast down, a shock of brown hair curtained over his eyes, making it hard to tell what he was feeling or thinking—or if he was even breathing. At least, in this way, Hesina couldn’t see his bruises and lament over the terrible first impression she’d made.
Nothing had gone as planned. Convicts weren’t allowed personal possessions, and the gnarled, crooked rod discovered in the robber’s cell apparently qualified as such. Hesina had stopped the guards from crushing it under their boots, but she’d been too late to spare the robber from their fists. Now she placed the rod on the table between them. She hoped—yet doubted—the peace offering wou
ld be enough.
The convict took the rod without a word.
Hesina cleared her throat. “Forgive me.” She hedged on the side of sounding overly formal. She didn’t want her emotions to betray her as they had in front of the Silver Iris. “I know this is all very”—strange—“sudden.”
Silence.
“You must have many questions.”
Evidently not.
With a breath, Hesina began to explain the circumstances of her father’s death. The words came slowly, then fast, tearing out of her as if they, too, were trying to outrun that day in the gardens.
She finished by describing the golden poison. Her chest heaved for air.
“As you can tell, the king didn’t die a natural death, contrary to what the decrees…” Did convicts look at decrees? “What the rest of the kingdom knows. Once I open an investigation, the Bureau will see the truth in the evidence. When they forward the case to the court, I’ll need a representative, and”—how long could she beat around the bush?—“well, when that time comes, would you be willing? To be that representative?”
Silence upon silence upon silence.
Hesina’s hands went clammy. She took inventory of other things, like the color of the convict’s hair. It was a brown like clay, at least three shades lighter than the lamp-black fuzz Yan babies were born with.
Maybe he wasn’t Yan. Maybe he couldn’t understand a thing she’d said. It wouldn’t be the first wrench in her plans, but it’d be the most unfortunate. How was she to make him appear like an examinee hopeful if he wasn’t literate?
“Excuse me.” Hesina whispered, as if he were dozing and she didn’t want to wake him. “You do understand the language, don’t y—”
Her breath hitched as his gaze snapped up.
Beneath all the swelling and discoloration, the robber was surprisingly young. His eyes, like his hair, were oddly pigmented, gray as stone, impenetrable as they captured hers.
Without warning, he took her right hand. She almost yelped as he pressed a finger to her palm and drew out the shaky characters of the common tongue.
I AM A LOWLY MERCHANT ROBBER. I CAN’T HELP YOU.
This was a start. “I’ll support you in any way that I can.”
WHY ME?
WHY SEARCH?
WHY THE ROD?
His grasp tightened as her hand closed. Cocking his head to the side, he examined her. He tapped on her knuckles, and after fighting to pace her racing heart, Hesina reluctantly uncurled her fingers.
YOU CAN’T SAY.
The writing stopped, then continued.
HOW WILL YOU TRUST ME WHEN YOU DON’T TRUST YOURSELF?
Gone were the uneven strokes and crude lines of someone unfamiliar with the language.
He was one to speak of trustworthiness. “Honesty on matters of the trial is all I ask for,” Hesina said with confidence she didn’t feel. Could he see the secrets she held under her tongue? Or had the lies stained her teeth?
AND IF I REFUSE TO BE YOUR REPRESENTATIVE?
“Then you refuse.” Her stomach dropped when she imagined the scenario—having courted treason all night only to walk away empty-handed. “You have that right.”
A PERSON OF PRINCIPLE.
WHO LIES FOR THE TRUTH.
Hesina held his impassive gaze. Well? she thought as the seconds passed and it became clear that he’d seen her for who she truly was. Her father had taught her honesty, but deception had been her first language. Well? Can you work with a hypocrite?
He drew the characters slower this time, as if he was making up his mind. He lifted his finger, and Hesina hardly dared to breathe. She looked down, even though the words were invisible, and searched for an answer in the tingles of his touch.
DO YOU KNOW HOW TO DUEL?
“A duel?” asked Caiyan after Hesina recounted her conversation with the convict.
It was the next day. After morning court, they’d met in the king’s study, sitting around a zitan game table on squat, jade stools carved to resemble napa cabbage heads.
“Yes, a duel.” Hesina considered the pieces on the ivory xiangqi board. “He said he’d only represent me if I won.”
“He’s mocking you,” concluded Lilian. “Or flirting with you. Or both.”
“His motives are unclear,” rephrased Caiyan. “But if he didn’t want to represent you, he wouldn’t have set terms at all. What do you think, milady?”
Think before you act, Hesina’s tutors always said. They made it sound so easy. In reality, Hesina acted more often than she thought, and her cheeks warmed as she recalled the course of their conversation. “He seems honest enough.” And shady enough. “I think I can trust him to keep his word.” Though she didn’t even know if he could speak.
But the Silver Iris hadn’t lied about the rod, the one and only in the entire dungeons. And the convict was clearly more than the merchant robber the prison documents claimed he was. Hesina remembered the strokes of his finger. The flush on her face extended to her neck. She quickly pushed her chariot three squares over, lining it up with another and entrapping Caiyan’s emperor.
“I’m still peeved that you met him without me.” Lilian’s voice rose from the daybed, where she lay on her back, an ankle propped on one knee and a cat’s cradle made of hair ribbon webbed between her fingers. Cyan and ochre blotched her apron. It’d been a dyeing day at the workshops.
“With any luck, you’ll see him in court,” said Hesina.
“Rod and all?”
“Please,” said Caiyan as he blocked the course of Hesina’s chariot with a black-powder keg, simultaneously endangering her steed. “It’s barely midday.”
Lilian snorted. “Says the reader of erotica.”
Caiyan sighed, but Hesina thought she caught a glimmer of a smile in his dark eyes. With a tug of jealousy, she looked back to the game board. Bickering was never so simple between herself and Sanjing.
“I’d recommend brushing up on your swordsmanship if you’re going to duel, milady.”
“You’d recommend?” Lilian hooted with laughter. “At least Na-Na can use a sword.”
“That’s debatable,” reminded Hesina. She was a flapping yuanyang duck next to Sanjing’s hawkish skill with the sword. But Lilian had a point. Hesina had never witnessed Caiyan holding a weapon, and she’d seen him injured only once. It wasn’t a memory she wanted to revisit.
With her double chariot formation foiled, Hesina resorted to the black-powder keg reserved for protecting her own emperor.
Caiyan advanced a foot soldier. “There’s a hole in your plans, milady.”
Hesina half-heartedly defended her emperor with a chancellor. “Do tell.”
Caiyan’s foot soldier crossed the river running down the middle of the board and was promoted. “Let’s say a trial is declared after the Investigation Bureau reviews the evidence and narrows down the suspects. You win the duel, and the convict agrees to be your representative. How will you convince Xia Zhong to pick him for you?”
“That’s easy.” Lilian fluttered a hand. “Spout something convincing from the Tenets. Passage 1.1.1. ‘A minister must serve!’ Passage 1.1.2. ‘A queen must have a convict with a rod as her representative!’”
Caiyan shook his head at Lilian’s impersonation while Hesina suppressed a giggle. Xia Zhong did, in fact, interpret the Eleven’s teachings of asceticism to the literal extreme. Word in the palace was that his roof was leaking; there were more mice droppings in his rice bags than rice; he slept on a praying mat, kept only one brazier running in the winter, and had been wearing the same underwear for ten years. For the minister’s sake, Hesina hoped the last one wasn’t true.
“I’ll think of a way,” she said to Caiyan. Hopefully soon.
“You won’t be able to bribe him.”
Even a monk had to want something.
“Sure,” said Lilian when Hesina voiced as much. “He’d probably ascend if you brought him the original Tenets.”
He wouldn’t be the only on
e. Scholars all over Yan would worship Hesina if she recovered the version penned by the Eleven themselves. It had disappeared shortly after the fall of the relic reign, and Hesina was as likely to find it as she was to find the mythical Baolin Isles.
Caiyan won the game, and Hesina rubbed her temples. “Only the Tenets?”
“I mean, it’s Xia Zhong.” Lilian flung away the cat’s cradle and stretched out on the daybed. “Elevens. I could never live like that.”
Yet she had. The twins didn’t share much about their past, but Hesina saw its fingerprints whenever Lilian took up the warmest spot in any room, and whenever Caiyan filled his empty rice bowl with tea and drank down the last grains. They lived life as if they might lose its comforts someday, as if they remembered what it was like to be without shelter, food, and father.
But Hesina wasn’t like the twins. Losing her father wasn’t like returning to a world she’d once known. She’d been unprepared.
She was alone.
Slowly, she pushed away from the square zitan table. She climbed a short set of stairs to the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the study’s upper half.
The sweet smell of overripe peaches rose from the imperial gardens below. Each palace followed the same layout: courtyards placed within courtyards, halls nested within halls. Her father’s study was the exception to the standard sprawl. Half of it rested atop an outcrop of granite, giving Hesina her favorite views of the four gardens—koi, silk, rock, fruit—and their respective ponds, connected by covered galleries zigzagging between mountain formations and thickets of jujube trees.
Hesina’s chest locked. Had her father looked out these windows eight days ago as she was looking now? Had the smell of summer peaches lured him to the gardens through the secret passageway behind the shelves? He had left his favorite tortoiseshell chair askew, his wolf-hair brushes dipped in ink. Abandoned on his desk, scattered and waiting, were a three-legged bronze goblet, a snuff bottle, a copy of the Tenets, left open to One of the Eleven’s biography. Hesina had agonized over whether to leave them be or accept that her father was never coming back.