Six Crimson Cranes: Chapters 30–40

Within moments, a sickeningly sweet smell pervaded the kitchen, and the pot’s contents blackened as if someone had thrown soot inside.

I cringed as glass bottles and jars shattered, Chiruan’s carefully curated sauces and cooking wines carelessly tossed to the ground.

Much as I wanted to, I couldn’t embroil myself in the fortress’s affairs any longer.

Was I truly commiserating with my stepmother? A little. She used to look so happy when I ran into her apartments, as if I were her only friend in the world. Why did that have to change?

She shivered as she slumped over me, listless.

Her pulse was ebbing fast.

I donned my best robe, a scarlet one patterned with peonies and kingfishers, and put on my warmest gloves.

Scratched and water-stained, it ruined any semblance of elegance I might have had.

As its wheels trundled down the hill, I watched the sky.

They brought rings of jade and crowns of pearl,
sumptuous silks and chests of gold.
What use have I for such riches? thought Imurinya.

For some reason, the look of chagrin Takkan shot his sister made my stomach flutter.

His nose looked endearingly ruddy from being in the cold, and his voice was like a favorite song I never tired of hearing.

If I were a character in a tale, I would be no hero. I was the firebrand who had shaken everything from its place.

As Hasege’s horse galloped up the hill, apprehension thickened in my gut.

“The Wolf told me he encountered your brothers in A’landi. They met him in the guise of his former master, a famous seer.”

“His ashes were consecrated on the Holy Mountains—the last of the dark magic left in Kiata. We priestesses hoarded them for decades—until we learned of you.”

My fingers were stiff from the cold, the ropes chafing my wrists.

He picked up the string of paper cranes strewn among the ashes.

It was difficult to talk while the wind blustered, but I could feel the questions weighing on Takkan’s mind.

“I am not the sort of man who reneges on my pledges.”

Emotions clotted in my throat—an unwieldy mix of rapture and embarrassment. I wanted both to hug him and hide from him at once.

“You made your distaste for the North quite well known, Shiori,” said Takkan good-naturedly. He paused meaningfully on my name. “I wasn’t surprised that your disdain extended to me.”

Kiki dove to stab Yuji’s eyes, and I launched a barrage of stones at his army while Takkan fired arrows at the treacherous lord.

Smoke curled from the amulet, at first just a tendril, and then many dark ribbons seeping out.

It was bad enough that he had impersonated Master Tsring and given the satchel to my brothers—that all those months of hating Raikama and making the net had been part of some horrible trick to steal her pearl! But to hear it from his complacent lips, as if he were apologizing to me.

His human frame convulsed, shoulders stretching out and nails growing long, piercing through the smoke at odd intervals.

He aimed his last arrow at the Wolf—at the white light flashing in his tenuous grasp—then released it.

The entire forest seemed to go still, a dark pall settling over the trees as the Wolf completed his transformation.

The thread was leading me to the pond, where demon-eyed carp leered greedily.

I started after my thread, refusing to fall for the demons’ ploy.

His face was full, not gaunt and drawn as it was now after months spent as a crane.

He was draped in an elaborate ensemble of silken robes, his jacket a horrific tapestry of dying gods and bleeding dragons and enchanters destroyed by the blood of stars.

I leapt for the fissure in the mountainside.

“No. I come from no home,” Raikama had replied, in stilted Kiatan.

Her beautiful face was like porcelain, leached of color.

In Tambu, my affinity with serpents gave me some power, but that was more of a curse.

She began to sing, in a low, rueful voice I hadn’t heard in years...

For one last time her voice turned imposing, a reminder that she was my stepmother. But no longer the Nameless Queen.

Finally I slept, succumbing to a dreamless void that my brothers later told me lasted three entire days.

“The most beautiful kingdom in the world,” said Seryu. “It makes Gindara look like a decrepit old village.”