Descendant of the Crane

by Joan He

  Sooth work…Her husband…She’d just tried to kill him—

  “Take me to my child,” said Mei’s mother. “I’ll come willingly. Take me, but let me spare him.”

  Spare him.

  Understanding stabbed Hesina, a knife wrenched sideways by guilt. A person was a soothsayer by blood, and blood was passed from parent to child. By coming here, by declaring Mei a sooth, she was essentially sentencing the entire family to death by a thousand cuts. She’d forgotten because she could afford to forget, having never lived a life of terror and fear herself.

  Hesina crouched, met the woman’s eye, and made her voice steady even as she shook inside. “I’m here to lead you to safety.”

  “Lies.”

  “No.” Her brother joined her, his expression strained. It must have cost him to be here instead of with Mei. “It’s the truth. It was her wish.”

  Recognition sparked in those russet eyes, lighting into rage. “You,” hissed the mother, and Hesina flinched even though the anger wasn’t directed at her. “I warned her that day. I told her not to follow you out of this apothecary.”

  Sanjing stilled to stone—as did Hesina, when distant shouts floated through the oil-paper windows.

  “Milady,” Caiyan murmured in warning.

  Hesina seized Mei’s mother by the arms. If a sooth could break a jar by moving it into a future state, maybe a sooth could break Hesina too. She didn’t fully understand their powers.

  She didn’t care.

  “Mei’s been put into the tianlao cells of Heavenly Sin,” she said, enunciating each word clearly. “Cells that not even my master key can open, patrolled by a dozen of the elite guards at all times.

  “Tonight, I will go to her. No matter what, I will tell her I carried out her last wish and moved both of you to safety.” Hesina released Mei’s mother from her hold, but not her stare. “I hope I won’t have to lie.”

  Then Hesina rose. Straightened. Exhaled. “The people will be scared. Their fear will overpower their humanity. You may remember some as neighbors, friends, and customers, but they won’t remember you. To them, you’ll just be monsters. Maggots.” Her voice fell quiet. “Something to be destroyed.”

  Outside, the shouts drew closer.

  “There is no safety in this city,” Mei’s mother finally said. Her gaze flickered around their little shop, to the wall of medicine cabinets, the red paper cutouts pasted on the rafters for luck. They’d carved out this fragile existence for themselves. Hesina was taking it away.

  “Maybe not,” she said. “But I know of a place where you’ll be safe for the time being.”

  “I won’t hide and leave the others to die.”

  Convince her. Lie if you must. “Then we’ll lead them to safety as well.”

  The shouts turned their way.

  “Come,” Hesina begged. “Please.”

  Dismay strangled her as Mei’s mother turned away. But then the woman slapped her husband into semiconsciousness, coaxing him up to his feet. She draped his arm over her. “He’s not as light as he looks,” she warned as Lilian took the other.

  “No man is,” Lilian grumbled.

  They went through the back cellar and out the half door, checking both ways before slipping into the alleyway. They were but twenty paces down when shouts erupted from the apothecary.

  Hesina quickened her lead.

  “Where are we going?” Rou asked as she took them past the tavern from which they’d come.

  She let the way answer for her.

  They went down a set of crumbling, moss-covered steps and came to the shrine. Not the imperial-sanctioned one where commoners went to pray for healthy children and grandchildren, but a dilapidated structure that kings and queens before Hesina had considered tearing down and replacing with a public well. Ministers of Rites had advised against it, citing the presence of vengeful spirits Hesina had never encountered herself. Only thieves visited this shrine, and they’d pilfered everything but the praying mats, furred with mold, and the altarpiece, veiled in spider silk. The tablet underneath was etched with strange symbols, but Hesina’s heart stopped as symbols became words.

  To the gods who betrayed us.

  The characters were complex Yan. Just like the original Tenets, the shrine must have existed three centuries ago. Everything in this kingdom was older than Hesina expected, and with a spurt of vexation, she yanked aside the hemp skirt encircling the altar base, revealing a hole in the ground.

  They crawled in one after another, with Hesina going last. She fixed the altar skirt behind her before turning, momentarily disoriented by the dark. A hand caught her wrist, and she followed its pull down the steps, bumping into Akira once they reached flat ground. Rou complained about the low visibility. Hesina, red in the cheeks, thanked it.

  “Hold on to the person in front of you,” she ordered, then strode down the very passageway in which she’d lost her way so many years ago. After her father had rescued her, she had returned, determined to learn it once and for all. Something about being here again, in this place where she’d conquered her fears, made her bolder.

  Rasher.

  The need to do the right thing took root in her mind, and as they went down a slope, the tunnel yawning ever wider, Hesina faced Mei’s mother. “Tell us where the others are.”

  The population pockets of sooths, she learned, were scattered all across the imperial city. Hesina was suddenly glad the others had insisted on coming. Once they reached the cavern, she turned on her group.

  “Do you all remember how to get here?”

  They nodded.

  “Rou, gather the sooths in the red-light district.” Her half brother flushed, and Hesina backtracked. “Lilian.”

  “On it.”

  “Sanjing and Akira, to the trading sector. Caiyan—”

  “I’m coming with you,” he said, his voice leaving no room for argument.

  Hesina shook her head. “I’m going to the moat.”

  “Then so am I.”

  “No.”

  “And I,” said Mei’s mother, coming up beside her.

  Absolutely not. “Neither of you,” Hesina said at the same time Caiyan said, “That won’t be necessary,” which Hesina found dreadfully hypocritical.

  “You don’t know their faces,” said Mei’s mother. “And they won’t trust you.”

  “Then give us a sign, a code, something that will make them trust us,” said Hesina.

  Mei’s mother considered for a long moment. “Tell them the crane has died.”

  “What about me?” piped Rou.

  “Stay here to receive the newcomers and keep order,” said Hesina. Rou nodded. If only all her brothers were as obliging.

  Together, Caiyan and Hesina headed for the main boulevard, where mobs barged into shops, demanding that everyone submit to a cut on the palm, while the city guards stood by, letting it happen—condoning it, probably. Disgust rippled through Hesina, but Caiyan tugged her down a side alleyway before she could act on it, and soon, they were at the moat.

  It snaked through the market sector and the residential wards like a silver chain strung with small barges and passenger rafts. The pushers whistled and hollered their fares, blessedly oblivious to what was happening elsewhere in the city.

  Hesina wished she were a pusher. She wished to be the one wearing the broad-rimmed straw hat, leaning idle against a long bamboo pole, and not the one tasked with marching up to a raft and blurting out, “The crane is dead.”

  The raft rocked as the pusher straightened. “Eh? Is it now?” Hesina held her breath, but the man simply sang, “A shame, a shame. But there are many more to be seen, just around the bend. I can take you to them for two banliang. Consider it a deal…just two bronze!”

  It sounded like a lovely deal. Hesina hated to turn it down.

  “It really is a fine day for a ride!” the pusher called as Caiyan ushered her away.

  “We should try under the bridges, milady.” Caiyan nodded at the one up ahead, and H
esina discerned a group of workers sitting under the arch. “It’s more efficient—”

  His hand tore from hers as a gaggle of giggling noblewomen swept between them, wrapped in rabbit-fur-lined cloaks dyed in sepias, grays, and roses—all the colors that Lilian had made fashionable this winter season. A mule-pulled wagon stacked high with porcelains barreled by next.

  “Caiyan!” Hesina rose to the balls of her feet, relaxing when she spotted her brother’s topknot beyond the rattling pots.

  He would catch up to her. Alone, Hesina hurried onward to the bridge, down the pebbled slope, and through the frozen cattails. She ducked under the spandrel arch and stumbled into the company of men and women. There were six in all, either drinking wine, playing the trick-taking card game of madiao, or both.

  She interrupted with, “The crane is dead.”

  And now, thanks to her, so was the conversation.

  A young man lowered his hand of cards, setting it facedown as if he expected to return to the game. “Who are you?”

  Hesina ignored the question. “Your lives are in danger. You need to follow me to safety now. Gather the others, and I’ll explain as we go.”

  “Really, A-Lan?” sneered one of the women as the young man pushed to his feet. “We don’t even know who she is! Lose the hood,” she snapped at Hesina.

  “Bring the others first,” Hesina snapped back.

  The one called A-Lan left and returned with three men. One had a mass of angry-red scar tissue in place of his right eye. Hesina drew back as he leaned in and sniffed.

  “A-Lan claims we have a brethren among us. A brethren who hides her face.” He chuckled as she took another step back. “There’s nothing to be scared of, darling. I know all the people in this city.”

  He made a grab at her hood. Hesina, seeing the attack from a li away, snatched and shoved two of his fingers back, wringing out a howl. She dropped his hand like a hot coal, and he cradled it to his chest and laughed.

  “A little skittish, aren’t we?”

  He whistled. In an instant, someone grabbed Hesina’s arms and yanked them behind her. She bucked, but the person was too tall, and her head thumped against a chest.

  “Skittish, so skittish. Why?” mused One-Eye. “If you’re really one of us—”

  He stripped away her hood.

  “—then you should know we have only one enemy.” His left eye studied her, slow and thoughtful. A smile spread over his pockmarked face. “And that enemy would be you, dianxia. Well, well.” He twirled one of his good fingers, and the person holding her spun her around for the others to see.

  Cards went down faceup. Wine jiutan overturned as people leapt to their feet.

  “What do you know?” said One-Eye, licking the pad of his thumb. “It seems that we’ve caught ourselves the queen.”

  Hesina was in danger, but so were her attackers. She’d made a promise to Mei and Mei’s mother, and through the thrum of her panic, she told the situation as she had before.

  She finished to laughter.

  One picked up a rock. Another seized a piece of frozen driftwood. The others pushed up their sleeves, crowding in, forcing Hesina back until the underside of the bridge curved cold against her spine.

  Someone swung the driftwood. She dodged right. The blow connected anyway, and white fire blazed from Hesina’s temple to neck.

  Insults. Jeers. They’d predicted her dodge. Of course they had. They were sooths. Hesina was a descendant of the Eleven. Worse, she’d claimed that they were all going to die unless they followed her. It was no surprise they didn’t trust her.

  The laughter died, and they began discussing how they should kill her. Slowly or quickly. Painfully or humiliatingly. Their words should have inflamed Hesina, but her limbs were leaden with defeat. She didn’t fear death any more than she feared life, where every choice of hers determined the life and death of others. And if she was anything like her father, maybe she wouldn’t die at all.

  But as one of the sooths lifted a rock, her heart ricocheted against her ribs.

  Let it end quickly.

  “Go on,” came a sudden voice from behind them. “Kill her.”

  The rock wielder froze. So did Hesina’s heart.

  Because she knew that voice.

  It was Caiyan’s.

  TWENTY-TWO

  THE PAST IS DESTINED TO REPEAT UNLESS WE LEARN FROM IT.

  ONE OF THE ELEVEN ON HISTORIES

  READ. NEED I SAY MORE?

  TWO OF THE ELEVEN ON HISTORIES

  “Who the hell are you?” growled the woman.

  “Kill her,” Caiyan repeated, a calculating glint in his eyes as he neared. “Go on. Finish it.”

  Hesina’s stomach fell and kept on falling. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Then instinct kicked in. It didn’t matter if Caiyan was giving up on her; she needed to protect him.

  “Run!” she screamed. He was no Sanjing. He wouldn’t be able to defend himself if they attacked.

  But Caiyan did the opposite of run; he came closer. The edge of his black cloak spilled off the pebbled banks and trailed into the icy current. “Bring the fury of the kingdom to your doorstep, to your husbands and wives and parents. Have your little bonfire now, and sizzle later like moths in a flame.”

  Hesina almost wept. Caiyan was here to save her—with sense, of all weapons. Elevens, they were both fools.

  “There we go again,” sighed One-Eye. Hesina’s heart filled with dread as he limped up to Caiyan. The sooth was a whole head shorter, but his slight frame crackled with suppressed energy. “Lofty proclamations of doomsday. Grand, just grand. But I believe you were asked a question.”

  “I am the viscount.”

  “The viscount? Was a viscount not good enough for you?” More guffaws. “Today certainly has been full of surprises. First a queen, now the high and mighty viscount, all so concerned about our well-being.” One-Eye turned and threw his hands wide. “I believe our futures have changed, brethren!”

  Earsplitting laughter met his words.

  “Yes. I am the viscount,” said Caiyan, ever composed. “But are you even soothsayers? The future is hurtling down these city streets as we speak. Why don’t you look for yourselves?”

  More laughter.

  “I See,” came a whisper.

  The others turned to look at A-Lan. He’d gone very pale. “I See.”

  Silence.

  “Drop the stone,” Caiyan ordered. “Drop the wood.”

  Hesina waited for them to laugh as they had before.

  Instead, One-Eye nodded at the others.

  Driftwood and stone fell to the ground.

  “Now release your queen, and follow her.”

  Hesina didn’t pass out from the blow to her head, but she almost did from relief when she saw that Lilian, Sanjing, and Akira had returned safely to the cavern, along with the sooths they’d convinced to come. Rou was helping some settle down with the scanty belongings they’d managed to toss together. Others milled about, examining the torches mounted on the slate walls. Hesina had been awed by the torches, too, when she’d first found this place. They never burned out, never flickered, their flame sustained by something more than the usual sulfur and saltpeter. Now, her hairs rose as she watched them burn. The flames were unnatural, just like her father.

  Tamping down the thought—and the bile that rose with it—she conducted a count. Her heart sank. They’d convinced thirty-eight to come. In a city of one hundred thousand, this was likely a small fraction of the sooths.

  Lilian joined her. “Many didn’t want to follow.”

  Hopefully many had also hidden themselves so well they simply couldn’t be found.

  “They’ll need more provisions,” said Sanjing from her left.

  “Should I rob some merchants?” came Akira’s voice from behind.

  “I forbid it,” Hesina said at the same time Rou said, “I can go. N-not rob merchants,” he stammered when they gawked at him. “A vendor is indebted to me, so I can get us fr
ee supplies.”

  Rou left, and Lilian, Akira, and Sanjing dispersed to tend to the people. Caiyan came up beside Hesina.

  “How is your head?”

  “Fine,” she lied, wincing as he examined the knot swelling at her temple.

  “It missed the artery.”

  “I don’t think I’d be standing if it hadn’t.”

  Concern pleated Caiyan’s brow. “Be careful, milady,” he finally said. “Always assess the situation and your audience first. Then tell them the narrative they tell themselves.”

  “You’re right.” Hesina picked at a loose thread in the brocade of her sleeve. Once, she’d envied Caiyan’s intelligence. Theory came to him easily. So did reading massive tomes and calculating impossible sums on the abacus. But it was hard to be envious of someone who learned for the love of learning, and she admired Caiyan for always admitting ignorance whenever admission was due. She still struggled with that.

  “There’s still so much I don’t understand,” she confessed. “I want to help, not make things worse.”

  “There will be time to learn, milady.”

  Would there be? Mei’s execution was at dawn. After that, it was a matter of time before word reached the Kendi’an Crown Prince. Once Siahryn realized Yan was killing sooths instead of enslaving them, he’d see Hesina’s threats of harnessing their powers for what they were: hot air. Kendi’a would attack their borders again. That would trigger another wave of anti-sooth sentiment. More anti-sooth sentiment would lead to more Meis.

  Everything would crumble. Everything already was. Just considering the chain of events crushed Hesina’s will. “I can’t be the only one, right? To realize there’s something wrong with this kingdom?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Caiyan didn’t sound nearly as confident as Hesina would have liked. “Then why hasn’t anything changed?” she asked. “It’s been three whole centuries since the fall of the relic dynasty, but everyone…everyone’s still the same.”

  “Memories are short. History plays out in cycles. Tables turn; the sufferers rise and make their oppressors suffer. This is simply human nature.”