by Joan He
Even now, he didn’t want to hurt them.
Hesina ran toward him, skidding to a stop as some of the guards broke away from the ring and blocked her way.
“Capture her alive!” ordered one while the others charged. “Save her for the execution!”
Hesina dragged Xia Zhong’s blade through the snow, leaving a long, red streak. She flung the snow at the guards when they neared. They slowed, momentarily impeded, and Hesina cut around without engaging, yanking an empty sheath off one of their belts.
“Catch!” she cried to Akira, throwing it.
Akira swiped the sheath out of the air and slid it over his blade, becoming a new fighter—fluid and unrestrained, wielding his sword as he had his rod.
Hesina broke through to him and whirled so that they were back to back. They pushed back the guards, thinning their ranks, until a gap opened and Hesina spun to Akira. “Run.”
Hurry. They sprinted through the galleries of the outer palace, dashing through the corridors and scattering shrieking maids right and left. Hesina had lost the screened headpiece back in the fighting, and her face was on clear display, but she didn’t care. She slowed only to slash the facades. They toppled behind them, choking the path to the inner palace. Anything to buy them more time.
But no guards came after them, or waited in her father’s study when she burst in.
Hesina spun with her sword held out, ready to fend off another onslaught, dumbfounded to find none. Then she snapped out of her daze and ran for the shelves, honing in on the rough-bound spine nestled between The Annals of the Empire and Lizhu’s Chronicles.
The pages stuck to her clammy hands as she flipped through, scanning the insect-like characters. To be sure, she tore out a page and watched it fuse back, whole and unmarked.
“Where to?” asked Akira when she rejoined him in the corridor with the Tenets bound to her waist.
Hesina grabbed his hand. “This way.”
Once they were inside the throne room, she bolted the doors and faced the dais up ahead. The throne was empty. She wasn’t sure why she’d expected Caiyan to be here, or why her heart dropped when he wasn’t. Maybe it was because this seemed too easy, to be able to leave without a final confrontation. But she couldn’t complain, not when her back burned and her legs throbbed.
She went up to the dais, arm shaking as she pointed Xia Zhong’s sword at the soapstone reredos. “Help me destroy this.”
Without questioning, Akira unsheathed his sword and struck. Hesina slashed perpendicular to his diagonal. He slammed his pommel into the center of their cuts. Cracks spiderwebbed outward.
One more slam, and the screen collapsed in pieces.
Hesina clambered onto the throne and hauled herself over its back. She thumped to her feet on the other side. Akira landed behind her.
This time, she didn’t need to say “run.”
The passageway was longer than Hesina recalled. They must have been running for ten, fifteen minutes before the ground grew jagged with chunks of broken rock. She slowed to touch the wall. Her hand came away powdered with soot. Her nose smarted from the musk of black powder. Her eyes smarted from tears.
Take some sticks of black powder with you, and find the passageway sealed with stones, she’d ordered Lilian. Blast them away, and lead Mei’s parents and the others out of the city before I read the decree.
Lilian must have already been planning on condemning herself at that point. Even then, she had carried out Hesina’s final request, and now Hesina smiled in spite of the twinge in her chest. She wiped at her eyes as the gong struck six notes directly above them, announcing the hour of her execution.
It was time to finish this in style.
Hesina faced forward. Behind her lay the lacquer palace she called home. Beyond lay the life of a fugitive. She’d always dreamed of freedom, but this wasn’t quite the kind. How were they going to live? How were they going to feed themselves?
“For what it’s worth,” said Akira, making her realize she’d spoken out loud, “I can return to robbery, and you can…”
“I can what?” Pursue the truth? Rule? Hesina had proved herself quite incapable at both.
“Make lanterns.”
Hesina smiled—sadly. Wherever she went, she would go alone. She wouldn’t bring Akira down with her.
But for now, they crossed this boundary between worlds together, their jog slowing to a walk as they came to a fork in the dirt tunnel. The passageway on the right echoed silence. The left whistled with distant wind, probably leading up to one of the bamboo stands just past the imperial gate. Hesina craved fresh air but knew better than to go aboveground. The whole city would be learning of her escape any moment now, and the palace’s vicinity would be clotted with guards. The risk and danger were simply too great.
And they would only grow greater. Her empty hand went into the cross fold of her ruqun and came out glittering with Xia Zhong’s sapphires. She pressed the fistful into Akira’s hand. “You’re free to go. Leave.”
Then, before she could falter, Hesina turned on her heel and continued down the right passageway.
Footsteps trailed behind her.
She drew up short, her body tensed against her every selfish desire. “What did I say?”
“That I’m free to go.”
“And to leave.”
“I am. I’m freely leaving with you.”
Why did he have to make this harder? “You once told me you were searching for what you wanted, and that I couldn’t help you. Now I’m in a position where I can’t even help myself. You’re better off on your own. Go. Live. Make flutes or burn fires, but don’t follow me.”
“You did help me,” said Akira.
She stalked on, pretending not to hear him.
“You showed me that it’s okay to rely and be relied on.”
“I ruin everyone I rely on. I turn them into monsters.”
“I’m already ruined.”
She spun on him. “This isn’t a joke.”
“I know.”
“But you don’t.” Hesina shook her head and pushed her hands through her hair. “I found the truth, Akira. My father is One of the Eleven. He killed thousands of sooths only to realize his mistake. Then he tried to fix things, and nothing worked because this”—she whipped out the Tenets—“is cursed. So then he hoped that I would be able to change things. He killed himself just to show me everything wrong with this kingdom, so that I could choose to stay or leave. And now I’m leaving, and—and I don’t even know where I’m going!” Her breath came in pants. She was quickly unraveling. Maybe it’d scare him away.
But all Akira said was, “There’s nothing wrong with wandering.” Then he took her hand—loosely, so that she could shake him off if she wanted to. When she didn’t, he walked ahead. Being led felt strange to Hesina, but she followed. She didn’t try to lose him again.
Eventually, she would resume taking the lead, because she was a liar just like her father. She did know where she wanted to go.
She needed to reclaim her throne, and her own kingdom wasn’t going to come to her aid. Neither would the kingdoms of Ning or Ci.
But Kendi’a would. Kendi’a and its already growing military forces, its parched populace thirsting for her land. In this kingdom of unfulfilled wishes, Hesina would enter with her own. She would wipe her identity. Start anew. Whatever it took—a well-conceived costume, a fabricated backstory—she would infiltrate the court and make herself useful to the Crown Prince. She would gain the confidence of the necessary people while learning more about the Kendi’an sooths. And when the time was right, she would make Kendi’a’s wishes serve her own. Together, they would invade Yan.
It was all very ambitious—stupid even. But if brothers could turn traitor, enemies could turn ally. Only one thing was sacred in this world, and that was the vow in her heart, a vow Hesina spoke with every step she took into the dark.
I will be back.
EPILOGUE
He watches her go.
As he does, he remembers their first meeting. He’d been bone and skin and white with fever then, and she’d peered at him from the bedside and said: The Imperial Doctress says you might die, but sometimes she’s wrong. I hope she’s wrong.
She’d looked so serious, brow crunched into a frown, that he’d smiled. His chapped lips had cracked and bled. He’d quickly sucked away the blood and scolded himself for being careless. Carelessness was what got others like him killed, not fevers.
From then on, she’d been determined to become his friend. Not just a friend. Brother, she called him, especially in those early days when he refused to divulge his name, not even to the king who’d saved him. The less they knew about him, the better.
But she kept following him around. When she discovered his weakness for books, she carried hers to him. These are my favorites.
Assassins through the Ages was a strange book for a princess. Then again, she was a strange princess. She fidgeted through her lessons, but not because she didn’t want to learn. She was always trying to figure things out on her own. She liked asking him questions. Easy ones—Caiyan (his twin had finally slipped his name), why do we have to learn history? If fairy tales are set in the past, why can’t we just read those? And hard ones—Caiyan, why does my mother like Sanjing more?
The tutors called her slow. He called her steadfast.
“I don’t know what you’re looking at,” moans the miserable minister, cutting into his thoughts. “But I’m down here.”
He kneels by the man. “I was right, wasn’t I?”
“Forget about being right. You came too late.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Less talking, more bandaging.”
He takes that as a yes. Good. He needs them all to trust him.
Only then will his plan succeed.
He tears a strip of his court robes, wrapping it tight around the minister’s still-bleeding wound. The man groans. “Is she gone?”
He looks again. She’s in the tunnel now, quickly dimming in his vision as the distance between them grows.
“She is. But don’t worry. I have the guards hunting her down.”
“Good,” the minister whispers over him. “Dead or alive, it’s good that she’s gone.” He shudders, clearly shaken.
Caiyan agrees. It’s good that she’s gone.
His memory of that night glistens like a wound that’s never closed.
It had been right after the incident at the pond. Water had washed away most of the blood, and the freezing temperatures had crystalized what had soaked through his sleeve. He had told her that he was fine. He told her brother, who’d looked scared for once, that he was fine. Only he knew that he wasn’t fine, but he had no one to go to, Lilian least of all. He hated making her worry.
He’d hidden in his room, and when the shaking wouldn’t stop, he’d piled on the blankets. That’s how the king had found him: feverish, weak from blood loss, incoherent, but not incoherent enough to forget who he was. What he was.
He had tried lying to the king too.
He remembers everything so clearly. How the king sat at his bedside. How he looked at him with warm eyes, as if he were a true son. How his lips barely moved when he spoke those two words, so soft, so loud.
I know.
The king asked him what the weather would be like tomorrow. In a daze, he’d answered. The king asked him what the cooks would make for a feast a week from now. In less of a daze, he’d answered.
Question by question, truth by truth, the magic in his veins came to his aid, and the wound scabbed over.
That had been the beginning. Of late-night conversations over meaningless subjects, debates for the sake of entertaining new perspectives. No question seemed too big in the king’s study, and so Caiyan asked the one that’d been on his mind since the night he healed:
How did you know?
After all, he was nothing but careful.
The king poured him a cup of tea. Long ago, a sooth told me that I’d find a pair of twins, a boy and girl, on the roadside. He said that their veins would contain the blood I helped to spill, and that by protecting them, I might protect my own daughter from my legacy.
Long ago turned out to be three hundred years. The blood that the king had spilled turned out to be sooth. As for the king’s legacy, that was the legacy of One of the Eleven. By the time the king told Caiyan the truth about himself and the queen, the tea had gone cold.
He never saw the king as his father after that. But he didn’t hate him either, despite what the king had done to dismantle the power structures of the old era. Was that betrayal of his kind? He wasn’t sure. He’d always been overly rational, and to him, three centuries equaled many a lifetime and many a chance to start anew. The more the king told him about his hopes for a land where all were equal, the more he believed that the man once called One was trying to heal the kingdom’s wounds.
He still had questions though. You haven’t taught her to love the sooths.
I taught her to love the truth. You taught her to love learning. Your sister taught her to fight for what is right. Her mother taught her the pain of not being accepted for something she can’t control.
Those are things all children learn, he pointed out.
They are.
Not all children can end an era of hatred.
I want to give her a choice. Would you rather force one onto her?
He hadn’t known the answer then. But over time, as he read more about exactly what it took to end an era, his opinion began to form. As he watched her grow, he realized he wanted to preserve that smile she’d once shown him. His opinion solidified.
Last year, he’d finally reached the conclusion that it was better for her to never face a choice at all. He would end the era for her. He would save her from staining her hands.
Last year was also when the king had deemed it time. She’s ready.
Caiyan had disagreed.
Do you want to make your people wait any longer?
Of course not. But he could help his people and protect her at the same time.
The king couldn’t understand his reasoning. Love is giving someone the freedom to choose.
Love, to him, was protecting someone from unnecessary risk. But he didn’t say that. Instead he asked the king how he’d present the choice to his daughter.
By removing myself from the picture. My death will set her on the path of a private investigation. I’ll lay out all the clues. If she continues on her own volition and learns the truth about who I am, and still desires to rule, then that is her choice. But whatever you do, you mustn’t let her pursue a trial.
The king didn’t need to explain why. Ministers with political agendas would view a trial that significant as ripe fruit for the plucking. Then, the princess wouldn’t be faced with a choice, but a monstrous rupture of everything wrong with this kingdom.
It was what the king wanted to avoid—and what Caiyan needed to have happen. A series of monstrous ruptures would break her will. It’d force her to leave. If she left, she would be safe. It’d take a revolution to end the hatred against his people, and revolutions were dangerous things.
Promise me, Caiyan, the king had said. Promise me that you’ll be her guide.
So he’d promised. Then he’d gone to the queen, suspecting her opinion to be different from the king’s.
Why do you think I care? she’d asked after he revealed what her husband had planned.
He was always watching, always listening. Because she reminds you of yourself, so much so that you can’t bear to keep her close.
So tell me, what will you do? Advise her to go away? You can try, but she won’t listen.
She’ll want a trial. I’ll give her that trial.
He went on to explain what he intended to do, aware of the queen’s keen gaze. Few had seen this side of him before.
If it comes down to it, will you help me? he’d asked. Will you ask her to leave when she’s at her most vulnerable?
>
The queen didn’t say no, which was her way of saying yes.
I wonder, she mused as he bowed and excused himself. I wonder, Yan Caiyan, if you will go down as a villain or a hero.
He couldn’t be bothered with such trivialities. He was just a means to an end.
In the end, the trial was born out of her own will. He’d simply helped it along. He’d found her the sooth—the Silver Iris was just one of many he knew in the city. He’d encouraged that the trial go on. And when the pressure mounted, he checked her impulses, kept her from jeopardizing her rule. If all went as orchestrated, she would abdicate peacefully, and he would assume the burden of ending an era, reinstalling her when the worst of the bloodshed had passed.
But he wasn’t perfect. For every hundred predictions he got right, there was always one he got wrong.
This time, it was her brother.
He’d known that Yan Sanjing sometimes acted out of heart. He hadn’t predicted the strength of his heart until the sooths were already in the dungeons and the explosion was going off and it was too late. It was all too late.
He’d meant to break her will, not ruin her. She was never supposed to face the choice that she had, forced into throwing away her ideals because the kingdom demanded it. That was always supposed to be his role. His hands were supposed to be the ones wielding the knife.
It was never supposed to end with his twin.
It was supposed to end with her—with those russet eyes staring at him now.
She yanks at the restraints on her arms and legs as he takes a seat by the bed. “What do you want?” she hurls at him. Her raven hair is out of its signature braid, half of it lost to the fire. The rest of her is covered in bandages, the white of them a stark contrast to her usual black.
He almost lost his arm rescuing her.
But he never fails what he starts.
“I went through great lengths to save you,” he says calmly. “Now I want you to heal.”
She pulls on the ropes and they chafe her wrists. Any harder, and she’ll bleed and burn this lacquered room down.
He leans close so that she can see his face, see that he can—and will—do everything he says next. “If you can’t bring yourself to cooperate, I’ll have a medicinal candle lit in this room from dawn to dawn, dusk to dusk. You will heal nicely in your sleep.”