Six Crimson Cranes: Chapters 14–20

Every morning, your bodies are ripped apart as you turn into cranes. I had watched Hasho try to hold in a scream as Raikama’s enchantment consumed him. I had seen Yotan’s face blanch as the colors of dawn began to paint the sky.

The khagan of A’landi’s northern states has declared Kiata’s throne ripe for the taking, and he has been bribing some of our most powerful allies to turn on Father. Father’s called all the great lords to Gindara to repledge their fealty.

“The Wolf was his student before he revealed his true nature. He is treacherous and cruel, and very clever.”

Whatever it took to stop Raikama and break the spells she’d cast upon us, I would do it. Even if it took months or years, even if I incurred the gods’ wrath and made enemies of the dragons.

Dragons had not always been omens of good fortune, nor had they always been infrequent visitors to land. They were mercurial and violent, often indulging in their power to wreak chaos in the seas.

As starstroke grew wild all over Lor’yan, the dragons retreated into the sea, hiding there until the gods pleaded for their help in divesting Kiata of magic and sealing the demons within the Holy Mountains.

Kiki glanced down at Mount Rayuna, askance, before she relayed the rest of Hasho’s message.

It wasn’t hard to find the nettles. Their leaves, silvery green with dark red veins, were spiked, and their thorns were as sharp as teeth.

Your brother Andahai says that was very stupid, Kiki chided me as I rolled onto my stomach in the basket. She didn’t have time to relay any further reprimands.

“You’re all coddling her as if she were a silkworm,” said Reiji.

As long as I was careful not to touch their jagged edges, my fingers usually managed to escape unscathed.

They could not be removed unless I pounded at them with rocks that I collected along the mountainside. Pounding them off was slow, arduous work.

Within minutes, the starstroke became a skein of coarse, loose threads, glimmering violet and blue and silver like stardust against the twilight sky.

Slowly, the practice made my tender skin grow thick and resilient, and by the end of the month, I could grab an entire stalk of starstroke without so much as a wince.

I hoped he had gleaned something useful from his grandfather.

“You want to consort with a dragon?” Andahai exclaimed when I wrote my brothers about the impending meeting.

“We’ve prepared everything that you need,” said Andahai. “Food, water, a space to work on the nettles. Don’t leave unless it’s a dire emergency. Cavorting with dragons is not a dire emergency.”

Over the last week, the trees had lost their splendor, their limbs graying with frost as their leaves fell upon the earth in coats of brown and burnt orange. It made for a bleaker, entirely different-looking forest, but I knew my way to the river.

He hadn’t specified a time for us to meet, so I knelt on the soft dirt, tossing pebbles into the river and staring down blue- dappled lizards perched on the rocks beside me.

The snake lurched toward me, its mottled head high, two round yellow eyes ensnaring mine.

His armor was plain and unadorned—no deep blue chain mail—and the scabbard of his sword was bereft of the Bushian crest.

The light from her candle was weak, so I couldn’t see her features clearly, but I made out a sturdy figure in plain blue brocade and a thick woolen shawl.

“Is this the thief you wanted me to meet?” Zairena asked, bowing demurely.

Zairena patted my shoulder, drawing so close I could smell the incense suffused into her robes.

“This is not a respite from your chores, and if the maids see you on their way back from the orchard, I will not defend you.”

The halls were narrow, barely wide enough for two to walk side by side, and the paneled walls were wooden and sparse, unlike the gilded doorframes and painted murals in the imperial palace.

Nothing happened, no foreboding shadows.

But as I started to write, the ink splattered, spreading impossibly...into the shape of a nebulous black serpent.

There would be no writing to Father, no soliciting Megari’s help.

Monkeycakes were Chajinda’s most famous dessert. Even my brothers, who didn’t have a predilection for sweets, always sought them from the stalls at the Summer Festival.

“Hasege’s an idiot. You used to think so, too.”
“When I was your age,” Zairena said tersely.

I imagined arriving in a festive palanquin with plush silk satin cushions, attired in a scarlet jacket with a long brocade sash, and a headdress woven with silken plum blossoms and all the flowers of winter.

Braised pumpkin with pork and ginger, rice cakes with pureed red beans, sea bass marinated in sweet wine with pickled carrots…

I worried that boor of a sentinel might have killed you.

Yes. I nodded staunchly. I will.

All I needed was the crack of an opening so I could slip out, but the iron doors remained stolidly closed and locked.

My pulse quickened in counterpoint to my halting steps.

“Help me remove his armor.” I obeyed. I took off Takkan’s gauntlets, his boots, his sword, my fingers lingering only the briefest second over the carving on its sheath.

“It’s worse than I feared,” he rasped, positioning his fingers to stanch the blood.

Outside, the rain had abated.