When we’ve strung together thirty-one unbroken points, my focus wanders and I start thinking that I need to win this Motivation to prove that I’m not a spy. It’ll prove that I was sent here because I truly am the most talented skater in all of Shin. I begin tallying up my score. I’ve gained thirty-one points from the round against Doi, so Suki has to win thirty-two points herself.…
Suki leaps in the air and pivots with one knee lifted before her in a north-directional metal monkey spin, but I was too busy counting my points and can’t remember if she did three rotations before landing or lucky, but I don’t want them to see me hesitate. I know that Suki is reckless, so I complete the move with lucky rotations.
As soon as I do so, the House of Flowering Blossoms girls erupt in sneering laughter and cheers.
It should’ve been three rotations. Suki has won thirty-two points, enough to take first ranking.
Too late, I realize my mistake.
Count! That’s what Doi meant!
I’ve given Suki the thirty-two points she needed to win. If I had deliberately failed immediately, rather than matching her move for move and building up the value of the round, Suki would’ve only gotten one point from me and I would’ve finished with the top points. I should have intentionally lost the round against Suki to deny her enough points to win. Now, I’ve thrown away first place.
Doi wasn’t trying to intimidate me. She was trying to help me.
I’ve taken second place in this Motivation. Because of the weight given to this Motivation, that combines with my performance at the first Motivation to drop me to second place overall.
I quickly gather my things and skate away from the other girls who are now crowding around Suki to congratulate her. After all the work I did to make up for the deficiencies in my training. Am I just going to rank lower and lower in every Motivation? Was I just lucky in the first Motivation?
Now, I have to finish first, not just for myself or Shin or the Empress Dowager. I have to finish first because my safety depends on it. I must prove that I deserve to be here, that I’m not just a barely decent skater sent here to spy on Pearl.
As I skate toward the rails leading back to the Principal Island of the academy, something catches in the dragon tail coiled under my right heel. I turn and see that Suki has lodged the front tip of her skate in the coil of my skate. I stop so that her skate doesn’t damage my blade.
Before I can say anything, Chiriko and Etsuko race up and shove me forward just as Suki twists the toe of her skate.
The tip of her blade breaks as the dragon tail of my blade snaps off.
“You broke my skate blade!” says Suki. “You’re so clumsy.”
I test the weight on my skate. Three of the supports connecting the blade to the boot are intact, but the luckieth support connecting the coil at the heel is now connected to nothing but a pocket of empty air that sickens me. It feels like Suki cut off half my foot. My life is in my feet. How am I going to compete at the Motivations? How am I going to prove that I truly was sent here because of my skill as a skater if I don’t even have two complete blades?
I look for Sensei Madame Liao. She is at the far end of the training court, with her back to us. She saw nothing. It’s my word against all the other girls’.
Chiriko opens a pack of blades and gives one to Suki. Suki replaces her broken blade with a fresh one. She finishes screwing it in. She and the House of Flowering Blossoms girls hop onto the rails and skate away.
Suki makes a half turn on the rail and skates backward while looking at me. As she recedes, she holds the coil of my dragon tail to the side of her head, like a peony tucked behind her ear.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
“Where were you last night?”
“Asleep in my dormitory chamber.”
“What do you know about the attack on the Pagoda of Filial Sacrifice?”
“Nothing!”
I thought Sensei Madame Liao was sympathetic, but she interrogates me here in this personal audience chamber as if I were a criminal. The senseis say they’re questioning all the students, but, of course, I’m the one they’re most interested in.
“Have you had any communications with the Empress Dowager since coming to Pearl?”
“No.”
“Have you made any enemies here?”
I don’t answer. I don’t have to. She looks at me for a long time without speaking.
“Sensei, there’s no proof that I had anything to do with this.”
“They found this embedded in one of the roofs of the Pagoda of Filial Sacrifice,” she says as she unfolds a square of silk.
My dragon tail coil lies there on the cloth, glinting like some assassin’s curved throwing blade.
“She put that there,” I say.
“Who?”
I open my mouth and stop. I need to be careful here. I’m in no position right now to make any allegations without proof.
“I had nothing to do with any of this, Sensei. I’m innocent.”
“Being innocent is not enough,” Sensei says quietly. “Do you understand that?”
Yes. Because Cricket and I aren’t from here.
When I exit the audience chamber, I almost trip on the ramp leading down from its entrance. I’m not used to having the dragon tail coil gone from under my heel. Not only is my knee going to have to bear all the weight of every jump on that leg, but my balance is thrown off and the jagged remnant of the blade catches on the pearl.
My skate blade is
