by Joan He
MEMORANDUM OF THE INVESTIGATION BUREAU
ON THE FIRST DAY OF THE 10TH MONTH, YEAR
305 OF THE NEW ERA,
AFTER 2 DAYS OF REVIEW,
UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF THE DIRECTOR,
THE BUREAU HAS DEEMED THE FOLLOWING CASE OF
{ THE KING’S MURDER }
SUFFICIENT IN EVIDENCE AND IN SUSPECTS.
MAY JUSTICE BE DELIVERED IN COURT.
“Shall it be posted?” asked her page.
“Not yet.” She reread the memorandum, marveling at the words. They were real. They were so real they bled, the fresh ink imprinting on her hands. Hesina finally put the document aside, placing it among the new maps, books, brushes, and scales covering her desk, offerings from ministers and officials of her court.
Tonight. It hit her again, a punch to the gut, that her coronation was tonight. Two days ago, she’d been begging for her mother’s blessing. Unlike her mother’s blessing, the memorandum had arrived quicker than she’d expected. Timely, too, since tonight she was to issue her first decree, a document to set the tone of her reign. What could be more fitting than announcing the trial? Tonight suddenly felt too far away.
Hesina wrote her first decree. Then she wrote her first pardon and handed it to her page along with a small pouch of money, enough for a few nights’ lodging in the city.
“Make sure he eats.” Ideally, Akira would put on a few jin between now and the trial. “As for clothes…” Unfortunately, there was no time for tailor-made. “Buy him the best set of scholar robes you can find.” Hair! She’d almost forgotten hair. “And have him see a barber. I want him well-groomed.”
“Understood, dianxia. But there is one thing…Is he strong?”
“What?”
“Is he fast?” asked her page. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to catch him if he runs.”
“Oh.” Hesina leaned back in her seat. “Don’t worry.”
Her page frowned, worried. “A newly freed convict can be unpredictable. Perhaps a guard should accompany us.”
Hesina had considered it. She had the most to lose, after all, if Akira slipped away. But she wanted a representative she could trust, not a mule on a tether. If he broke his promise, she would consider it an arrow dodged. “No, it’s fine. You won’t be able to catch him if he runs, so don’t try.”
Lilian entered as the page left to his new assignments. “Poor thing. I’ve never seen someone look so confused. What did you do to him?”
Hesina fiddled with one of her new bronze scales. “Nothing scandalous.”
“Good. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss out.” Then Lilian lifted the ruqun hanging over her arm. “I come bearing gifts from the workshop. Do you like it?”
“It looks like a funeral gown.” Which, Hesina assumed, meant it was her coronation gown. The entire ensemble—from the billowy sleeves to the brocade bixi panel that would hang down the center of the skirts—was white. Bleached of color and of life, cut from coarse linen instead of silk. That was the point, of course. The coronation was more of a commemoration than a celebration, a time to remember that the peace of present had been built on the blood of the past.
Lilian cocked her head to the side. “It is lacking a bit of color. Shall I spruce it up?”
“Please don’t.” Hesina would cause enough of a stir by revealing the king’s true cause of death. She would wear the white, and it would suit her, because while the others mourned the heroes of the past, she would mourn the end of her life as a princess.
It’s for Father, she reminded herself after Lilian left and her maids streamed in. When they dusted her face with rice powder, she pretended she and her father were powdering their opera masks. When they helped her into the ruqun, she pretended she and her father were trying on costumes. But when they started pulling at her hair, forcing it into some gravity-defying coiffure, Hesina wished her father were really here to spirit her off into a secret passageway.
He would never rescue her again. Instead it was Ming’er, her lady-in-waiting, who swept in and shooed the maids away.
“How you’ve grown,” Ming’er cooed as she took her place by the vanity and set out a selection of pins. “Just yesterday, you were barely the length of my forearm, and you hated being bathed.”
Babies were odd creatures, Hesina concluded. “I hope I haven’t been too troublesome.”
“Oh, my flower. Time is the only troublesome one.”
For Ming’er, Hesina tried to smile. Then she glanced down at the array of hairpins before her. Garnet, opal, sapphire. Jewels befitting a queen. But one was missing.
“Ming’er, where’s…”
Her voice trailed off as Ming’er slowly set the final pin in the center. A crane in flight rose at the end of the white jade length, its wings spread and feathers individually carved, the longer ones tipped in obsidian.
Her father had gifted her this pin as he’d gifted his love: from the moment of her birth, when her hands had been too small to grasp its form. Her eyes moistened. She closed them, hiding the tears as Ming’er combed her hair—one stroke, two strokes, three strokes before the doors flung apart with a bang.
Hesina’s eyes flew open. Her maids fell to their knees and pressed themselves down in koutou, lending her a direct view of her mother.
The queen stood in a shaft of noonday light. Her face was pinched, her hair untamed. The cross-wrapped front of her thin underrobes gaped open, showing the cord of scar tissue at her throat.
Hesina’s own throat bobbed as she swallowed. She didn’t know what could have possibly left a scar so thick and so complete, a collar in its own right, but the sight of it exposed set her on edge.
Her mother drifted through the sitting room, under the painted beam, past two silk screens embroidered with cranes, and into Hesina’s inner chamber.
“Leave us,” she said when she reached her daughter’s vanity. Ming’er set down a pin. Hesina’s heart sank with it. The dowager queen had given a direct order; Ming’er couldn’t disobey. Still, Hesina hated to see the woman she cared for bow in submission. Ming’er drew the silk screens shut as she retreated, enclosing mother and daughter.
The dowager queen lifted a lock of Hesina’s hair and began curling it around a dowel, and Hesina tensed at the uncharacteristic gentleness. She should have said something daughterly, but there was no point in pretense with her mother, so she stayed silent and fixed her gaze on the slant of bronze mirror reflecting both their faces.
The resemblance never failed to startle Hesina. With irises more black than brown, skin more olive than peach, and ebony hair that never faded in the sun, each strand straight as bamboo, she and her mother were like the same person at two different points in life.
Today, though, her mother’s cheeks were flushed. Her breathing was heavy and laden with a scent that cut through the sweet varnish, something clear yet bitter, like ashes, like ice, like…
Sorghum wine.
“So,” said the dowager queen before Hesina could ask why she was drinking when the Imperial Doctress had explicitly forbidden it. “I hear you’ve set the Investigation Bureau on the case of your father’s death.”
Was this a trick? A test? Hesina wound her fingers in her skirts. “I have.”
“Foolish girl.” Her mother selected a long and slender opal pin instead of the white jade crane. “He’s finally gone. Why change that?”
The words came as a slap. Hesina’s heart stung, then tingled with confusion and horror. “Finally gone?”
The dowager queen hummed a melody.
“Father always said you were riveting. Whip-smart. Brave.” Hesina should have stopped. Apologized. Taken back her words. But she only made them quieter. “What happened to you?”
Her mother’s hand slipped. The hairpin slipped with it, a flash in the mirror as the tip jerked up and caught on skin. Pain exploded over Hesina’s scalp. She bit down on a cry, then gasped, “I thought you loved him. I thought you’d understand my actions for once.”
&nbs
p; Unless she was imagining it, her mother’s breathing seemed shaky too. She lifted the pin again, gave Hesina’s hair a hard twist, and successfully inserted it. “What happened? It was his time. It was all our times. And yet, we lived. The world loved us once. It no longer does. One day you will know what it means to be forsaken.”
Hesina already knew.
But this time, she kept silent.
On the palanquin ride down the terraces, Ming’er redid Hesina’s hair. Hesina should have told her not to bother. No one would care about a lopsided chignon if the dowager queen didn’t show for her own daughter’s coronation. But in the end, Hesina let Ming’er do her work because it comforted the woman, even if it didn’t comfort her.
In the end, Hesina was also right. The people were too busy whispering to notice her hair. Hesina caught snatches of their words as she ascended the Peony Pavilion at the base of the terraces. What has the daughter done to offend her?
They would soon find out.
Every coronation since One and Two of the Eleven’s had been held outside and shared with the people. In the same vein of tradition, a selected commoner climbed the limestone steps after Hesina. Hesina lowered her head, and the commoner rested the Rising Phoenix over her crown. It was a boulder of a headpiece with spread wings carved out of red coral. Each time Hesina bowed to the setting sun and the rising stars, she worried it’d topple and crush her toes. Miraculously, it stayed.
She straightened to deafening applause. Members of the six imperial ministries prostrated themselves in koutou below the pavilion. “Wansui, wansui, wan wan sui!” The rest of the crowd followed in suit. “Wansui, wansui, wan wan sui!”
May the queen live ten thousand years, ten thousand years, ten thousand ten thousand years.
The Imperial Breeder released a flock of red-crowned cranes; they took to the sky, blotting it white and crimson. Ning and Ci emissaries swarmed forward, offering chests of diamonds mined from the bottom of Ning ice lakes and pearls fished from the Ci clay swamps. The Kendi’ans were missing, but that became the least of Hesina’s concerns as dozens of hands fell to her skirts and crying babies were shoved into her face. The people’s fervor squeezed like an ill-fitting girdle. Her tutors had all failed. None of them had prepared her for this; she was going to suffocate and die.
“Make way!” Silver flashed through the throng of bodies. “I come to the rescue,” Lilian whispered when she reached Hesina’s side. She was stunning in a sleek, metallic ruqun printed with black medallions. Commoners immediately streamed to her; they worshipped the twins as physical representations of the king’s benevolence.
“About time,” Hesina wheezed.
“Let’s discuss payment.”
“Payment? Shouldn’t you be saving me out of the goodness of your heart?”
“Yes, but I’m also hungry.”
“Have some rodent.” Coronation fare was humble, to replicate the days when the Eleven, as fugitives, had subsisted on much less.
“Bah, no thank you.” Lilian shuddered. “I’ll save the mice for cats.”
“I think it’s squirrel.” Or perhaps raccoon. Hesina thought she’d seen something bushy-tailed in the Imperial Buttery.
“Tell you what. I’ll give you a discount. I only require three baskets of candied hawthorn berries for my services today.”
“Five if you stay.”
Lilian grinned, to Hesina’s relief. “Deal.”
By the time they saw to everyone, the moon had risen. Palace servants carried braziers out onto the pavilion, and under the stars, nobles and commoners alike roasted wild fennel bulbs and squirrel. The imperial troupe put on a reenactment of the last relic emperor’s beheading. The imperial engineers revealed their latest fireworks: sun-bright peonies and azaleas bloomed and wilted in the night sky.
Everything was exquisite—or so Hesina assumed. It was hard to enjoy the entertainment when she was its centerpiece. The night was cool, but watching eyes warmed her skin. She willed time to move faster. It didn’t, but the moment nevertheless arrived.
A page carried two ewers of yellow wine to Hesina. Mothers hushed their children as she lifted one. Her hand shook under its weight as she poured. Wine splashed onto the ground, a libation to the buried and the dead.
“A toast to the past, and to the sacrifices made for the new era.”
Heads bowed for the nine of the Eleven who’d perished before the dynasty’s fall, and for the hundreds of thousands of commoners who’d died for the revolution’s cause.
Unwittingly, the face of the Silver Iris flashed in Hesina’s mind. Tens of thousands of sooths had died for this era, too, but she could never voice her remorse over that.
“And a toast to the future,” she said over the lump of guilt in her throat, lifting the second ewer. “My first advisor will be Viscount Yan Caiyan.”
Caiyan made his way forward. He nodded at Hesina when he reached her, and it was all the encouragement she needed.
“My first gift will be the commodity we lack most.”
Imperial guards carried forth sacks of salt. As an old saying went, water and salt made lifeblood. Yan had been blessed with lakes, rivers, springs, but it relied on Kendi’a for the white crystal essential to food preservation and medicine. Kendi’a’s recent incursions had disrupted trade, driving the price of salt in Yan to historic highs, and families wept in gratitude as the guards divvied out allotments.
Impatience soured the moment for Hesina. She could barely contain herself as she waited for the excitement to settle. “My first decree…”
She drew a deep breath.
“…Concerns the king’s death. He passed far before his time. The Investigation Bureau deems there to be sufficient evidence for a trial. The truth must be found, and justice delivered.”
The night went thick and airless. No one breathed; no one moved. Hesina searched the sea of faces for a flicker of support. She drowned in the silence.
“A trial?” someone finally asked.
“The Investigation Bureau?”
“What is there to investigate?”
A voice cracked through the others like a cane. “Nonsense!”
It came from a wispy old woman who still wore the white mourning headband. “What are you trying to suggest?” she snapped at Hesina as if she were a misbehaving child. “That the king was murdered?”
Murdered. The word raked through Hesina, overturning her banked fury. “Yes. Yes, there is reason to believe so.”
“Lies!” shouted a man. “That’s impossible!”
“Who would want to kill our king?”
“The decrees said he died peacefully!”
Faces boiled red. Voices swelled. Hesina’s went unheard. Her anger sizzled, smoking into panic.
Who was she fooling? She couldn’t do this. She wasn’t her father, who inspired empathy. She wasn’t her mother, who radiated authority. She wasn’t Sanjing, glowing from another victory, or Caiyan, riveting with his rationale, or Lilian, charming her way into hearts. She was just Hesina, the princess who couldn’t sit still during her imperial lessons, who found agriculture more interesting than statecraft and legends more engrossing than history. Inadequate as always.
“Dianxia.”
Slowly, as if manipulated by some mechanism outside of her body, her head swiveled from the raging crowd to the new voice at her side.
The imperial guard bowed. “A scout from General Sanjing’s seventh borderlands legion has just arrived,” she reported. “He demands to see you.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
Blearily, Hesina looked back at the people. Her people. Except in this moment, their ranks teemed like the enemy, and she was the vanguard they were trying to break down. “Can’t he wait?”
“He’s already here and”—the guard lowered her voice—“he doesn’t have much time. His final wish is to speak to his queen.”
As if on cue, hooves clipped against limestone. The sound punctured the din, because the din was quieting
. Gasps replaced the shouts. People fell back as the rider emerged. Caiyan tried to shield Hesina from the sight, but it was too late. She had already seen.
There was no way anyone could look the way the rider did and still be…alive.
The man had no face. Where there should have been features, there was only black char. He’d been burned so badly that the rope strapping him to his mount had rubbed away the fabric, the skin, over his thighs. The flesh beneath was scarlet, and as the horse approached, the ropes exposed more.
Then two white maggots popped out under the man’s brow bone. Hesina gasped. The maggots blinked. Not maggots at all.
The man had opened his eyes.
Acid laid waste to Hesina’s throat. She wanted to escape. To hide. Instead, she stepped forward. “What happened?”
“They’re back.” His voice whistled like wind through a bamboo thicket. “They’re back, and they’re with the Kendi’ans.”
“Who?” She took another feeble step forward, nearing the horse. “Who are ‘they’?”
They are inhuman. They are—
“The soothsayers.”
—monsters.
Hesina couldn’t hear the reaction of the crowd. All she could hear, it seemed, was her brother’s voice.
They’d lost a village, Sanjing had claimed. It was gone, Sanjing had claimed.
The work of sooths, Sanjing had claimed.
Fear streaked into her revulsion, one marbling around the other, a tumor that blocked her senses, allowing her to catch only a handful of what the man said next.
He’d been captured…Kendi’ans…drenched him in…blood of sooths…let…burn…strapped into saddle…given one mission…
“—you’ll pay.” The whistling had turned to gurgling, the man’s every breath and word greased with blood. “They wanted me to tell you that you’ll pay for your ancestors’ crimes.”
Then he choked to a stop.
Hesina lurched forward, hand outstretched, while Caiyan shouted for water. As someone rushed in with a goblet, the man slumped forward.
He didn’t move again.
Hesina’s hand remained outstretched, reaching. For what, she didn’t know. She lowered her arm as the shouts started up again, her fingers closing and her nails biting into her palms.