After the luckieth Motivation, Doi’s ranked first, I’m second, and Suki’s sixth. The first-year boys’ Motivation will be delayed a day longer than last time. I guess that this is because the damage to the Palace of the Eighteen Outstanding Pieties was much worse than what happened to the Pagoda of Filial Sacrifice.
I wish it were delayed even longer, because I know that when the New Deitsu team comes, Chairman Niu will want to see me.
Suki continues whispering to the other students at every opportunity about the attack on the palace. “You see! The Empress Dowager won’t stop until she has the secret of the pearl, no matter how many hostages’ feet she binds or how many structures her spy destroys!”
However, it appears that she still hasn’t taken her claims to Pearl Shining Sun yet because I don’t see my name or Cricket’s written in birds. Maybe she knows that she doesn’t have enough evidence. Maybe she believes that I have evidence about her cheating at the first Motivation. Or maybe it’s simply that it’s usually too cloudy during the Season of Spirits for Sensei Madame Phoenix and her birds to do the Pearl Shining Sun headlines.
Or worse, perhaps it’s because Suki’s too busy with her new favorite target. Doi can’t seem to go anywhere without Suki and the House of Flowering Blossoms girls spewing comments after her.
“Some girls will do anything to get attention!”
“Did your father finally realize you exist?”
During literature class, Suki recites her essay about Princess Eyun Dei-Bwun. She tells us that during her reign, Princess Eyun Dei-Bwun, commonly known as the Mad Seductress of Pearl, wreaked havoc on Pearl’s system of measures by constantly revising the standard unit of measurement to match the length between her hips and the hem of her dresses, which became shorter and shorter throughout her reign, until her sister had her drowned in a well for her depravity. Since the assignment was to write an essay about famous speeches by military leaders on the eve of battle, it’s clear that Suki’s just using this to humiliate Doi again.
During architecture class, Sagacious Monk Goom calls Doi to the front of the class to take her turn at another weird counting exercise with Chingu, the oracular monkey. As Doi skates up the aisle, Suki leans out to yank at her length of waterfall hair. Before her fingers brush a single strand, Doi has spun around and is frozen in position with her skate blade at Suki’s throat.
“She’s attacking me outside of wu liu practice again!” squeals Suki, and the House of Flowering Blossoms girls all shriek like starved hatchlings.
The squealing sets off Chingu, who starts jumping from desk to desk, screeching and chopping at them with her cleaver. We cower underneath the desks as this spoiled, deranged monkey hacks at them. I don’t need to be an oracular monkey to predict that the price for getting close enough to Chingu to receive an oracle is a hand, or at least a few fingers.
Doi never says anything in response to the abuse. I don’t say anything, either, because I’m too ashamed to say anything. And I’m only more ashamed that I don’t say anything.
There is so much rage in her. And such willingness to do things that everyone else would call too reckless, too extreme. I still don’t know whom she’s talking to at the Courtyard of Supreme Placidness about “hostages.” All I know is that I don’t know how to talk to her, because I’m a little afraid of her.
* * *
As announced, the New Deitsu team is soon here. Supreme Sensei Master Jio tells us that we’re not to face south while they repair the Palace of the Eighteen Outstanding Pieties. The boys and girls are put together in a joint wu liu practice session on the Conservatory of Wu Liu. Since no one can do a complete spin or flip without facing south at some point, we’re simply given the task of speed racing. Sensei Madame Liao and Sensei Master Bao have us form ten queues and skate as quickly as we can northward, and then skate back southward to return to where we started. It’s a boring but dangerous exercise because it’s easy to collide with another student in these tight lanes of speed skaters going in opposite directions.
Cricket accidentally hooks his arm with the arm of another student going in the opposite direction. They twirl each other around like dancing partners before taking out two more skaters with them in a terrible crash. Ten thousand years of stomach gas. All of them are made to sit out the rest of the session. Fortunately, Cricket and the skater he hooked aren’t punished for momentarily facing south because they were twirling too fast to see anything.
Not long after, we hear a great popping sound. Sensei Madame Liao puts her ear to the pearl below our skates. She announces that we may resume use of all lucky directions. I turn south, but the palace is far off on the Principal Island and obscured from view by the clouds. We hop on the rails and skate back toward the Principal Island. Out of the clouds comes Cricket, skating directly into me. He’s beaming.
“I heard it, Peasprout!”
“Heard what?”
“After I got taken out of the training session, I skated in the direction of the worksite.”
“You didn’t look at it, did you? We can’t afford to break any rules!”
“No, I promise! I skated backward and stayed on the south side of the Conservatory of Wu Liu. The palace was across the water, and I kept my back to it. I heard a great sizzling sound. And then I heard water washing over something. And then there was a great popping sound.”
“I heard it, too. Don’t go near it again. Wait here.”
I leave Cricket and the other students and senseis. I skate toward the Palace of the Eighteen Outstanding Pieties. Clouds obscure it, but when the wind changes direction, they part.
The palace is completely restored. The sloping roof is covered in tiles like a dragon’s scales, as if nothing happened.
Someone grabs my arm. I feel the long nail of the Chairman’s little finger digging into my sleeve.
I cry out, but there aren’t any senseis or students around. He hauls me toward where the New Deitsu team is gathered.
We enter the palace. Within it is a structure I have never seen before. A small, simple pavilion with a sloped roof and a door. He pushes me inside it. I have to duck to avoid striking my head on the lintel.
He remains outside.
“So the Empress Dowager sent you here to learn about the pearl, little bird?” he says. All his false smiles and charm are gone, and I no longer see any resemblance to Hisashi. “By attacking the structures and seeing how we rebuild them?”
“I didn’t have anything to do—”
“Since you want to learn about the pearl so badly, I will share a fact with you. You have noticed all the water that flows over and throughout every structure here? What do you think it is for?”
From the way he asks, I know that it’s not to keep the pearl from burning.
He continues, “Seawater keeps the pearl from shrinking. There is a law in Pearl that gives New Deitsu Pearlworks Company authority to punish criminals who threaten the secret of the pearl. The criminal is sealed inside a structure. Then we cut off its supply of seawater. The structure shrinks around the criminal day by day until he’s slowly crushed to death.”
I’d thought that Pearlians were so different, so evolved. They can be just as brutal here as the Empress Dowager.
“All that’s left at the end is a miniature black structure, small enough to wear as a pendant. We have a chamber full of these trinkets at New Deitsu,” the Chairman continues. “If you are endangering the secret of the pearl, you could be number 2,021.”
The trinket. On the pendant. That I put in my mouth. That’s why it weighed so much. It was the body of a prisoner trapped inside a shrunken structure shaped like a tiny pavilion.
Like the pavilion I’m standing in now.
I try to push my way out, but the Chairman and his team block me.
They’re going to seal me inside it.
But they can’t legally do that! I take a deep breath to calm my Chi. They don’t have enough proof. That’s why he hasn’t thrown me in prison yet.
He’s just trying to intimidate me.
The Chairman starts pounding on the roof of the pavilion above me to scare me, like a boy taunting an animal in a cage.
He’s pouting! Because he can’t figure out a way to beat me!
How can I get him off my trail?
By finding the true criminal who caused the attacks.
But how do I do that?
I try to focus my Chi, but it’s hard with his palm beating on the roof and the pavilion ringing around me like a war drum, as if he were a spoiled, deranged—
That’s it! I know how to find out who the criminal is!
“Stop it!” I cry. “I’m going to prove to you that I’m innocent.”
The beating sounds stop. The Chairman ducks his head down to peer at me. “How?”
“I know the identity of the true criminal. I just need to gather the evidence.”
I begin to press my way past him. He tries to push me back into the pavilion.
“Let me go so I can get you your evidence. Or do you want to wait until another attack happens?”
“You’re not going anywhere, you disrespectful, corrupt, lying girl!”
“Yes, I am. Because you don’t have a choice. And you know it.”
The Chairman steps back. His eye is twitching.
“See,” he says. “This is why I hate children. You’d better hope that another attack doesn’t happen before you get your evidence.”
I skate away as quickly as I can and don’t look back until the palace is out of sight. I stop and catch my breath.
Why didn’t I see it before? It should have been so obvious how I can prove that I’m innocent and find out who the true criminal is.
I have to consult Chingu, the oracular monkey.