“I was working with my friends on the competition,” he whispers.
“What competition?”
“The architecture sculpture competition.”
Fool! I clench my teeth.
“You need to be using every White Hour to improve your miserable wu liu skills! Not wasting your time making toys! And what did I tell you about not looking too interested in architecture? Do you know what they’re saying about us while you’re playing with this?”
I grab his hand clutching the ridiculous little sculpture of the temple and lift it to his face.
He whispers, “No one else is carving the Temple of Heroes of Superlative Character. It’s too difficult. You have to carve the statues inside with a tiny metal wire. I’m going to win the competition.”
“Cricket, do you want them to blame us for the attack on the Pagoda of Filial Sacrifice?”
“But we didn’t—”
“It doesn’t matter! We have to work twice as hard and do twice as well and look twice as innocent as everyone else now. Because we’re not from here!”
“I couldn’t have done that damage to the pagoda. I couldn’t even get up to the third tier. Anyone who saw me jump at Vertical Battlefield knows that.”
He makes a fair point. Maybe that’s why Suki has been focusing on accusing me. Still, I’m not going to let him neglect what he came here to do.
“Cricket, you remember what the Empress Dowager does to returning emissaries who fail to accomplish their duties?”
“Yes.”
“You want to be sent to a labor camp?”
“Don’t talk about that, Peasprout.”
I don’t want to frighten him, but we have very real dangers on many sides of us. We’re not safe here in Pearl, but we’re not safe back home in Shin, either. He must understand how important it is that we do well at Pearl Famous.
“Then why aren’t you taking your wu liu seriously?”
The only reply I get is silence, like an empty field with nothing but the sound of crickets. Except the one Cricket I’m talking to.
“She never should have sent me here,” he mumbles. “I’m just not good at wu liu.”
“Yes, you are. You’ve sacrificed more for wu liu than anyone here.”
“I’m better at architecture.”
“Only three students in each class will be invited to devote to Architecture. These rich kids have been tutored in architecture their whole lives. You’re going to neglect your wu liu training because you think you’ll be in the top three in architecture? When were you ever in the top three at anything?”
Cricket plunges his chin into his breast.
“Cricket,” I say. “You know why I do this. We can’t look too interested in architecture. Don’t be irrational.”
“Yes, Peabird,” he squeaks.
“It’s up to me to keep you safe now. Father and Mother would want that, wherever they are. I want the best for you. You have the ability to attain it. I have faith in you, Cricket.” My own eyes begin to fill. “Even when you don’t.”
He doesn’t say anything. I put my arm around him, and he throws his arms around me. And I know that he’s still my little Cricket and always will be.
I coach him on his wu liu practice during the rest of White Hour. I mime the moves, since I want to preserve my blades and my right knee now that I don’t have the dragon tail coil on that skate anymore to cushion my landings or help me leap.
After White Hour, I head toward the Conservatory of Music. There’s a scroll posted in front of the rails leading there. It says that Sensei Madame Yao suffered a gong injury and that we’re each to spend the hour in private practice by ourselves.
As I watch Suki skate into the practice room, I have an idea. I skate back to my dormitory chamber and get the Chairman’s little trinket. He must be trying to send me a message. Suki taunted me during the second Motivation about lobbing bombs at the pagoda. Maybe the oddly heavy trinket is some sort of tiny bomb. Maybe the Chairman gave it to me because he thought that if I were the vandal and used one of these trinkets to attack the pagoda, giving one to me would scare a guilty reaction out of me. Maybe I can do the same thing to Suki. If Suki really did attack the pagoda with a trinket like this, nothing would be sweeter than baiting the trap with it.
I’m going to put it outside the practice room that Suki goes into. If she’s guilty, she’ll want to hide it as soon as she sees it. I’ll conceal myself in the sound-insulating hedges of the pearl sculpted to look like loropetalum bushes. When I see Suki open the shoji and pocket the trinket, I’ll summon a sensei to search her.
However, I’m slowed down by the weight of the trinket hanging around my neck and my damaged skate blade. When I get to the Conservatory of Music, everyone has already chosen a practice room. How am I going to find which one she’s in? The shoji doors are solid pearl without windows. I skate down the rows of rooms arrayed in rings around the central performing stage.
I go past all the rooms lucky times, but there’s no way to tell. I’ve already wasted half the practice hour. I don’t care about ranking highly in music, since it has no impact on my wu liu ranking, but Sensei Madame Yao is sadistic and I don’t want to give her any reason to humiliate me in front of Suki. I decide that I’ll put the trinket outside her dormitory chamber tonight instead.
There’s only one practice room available, with a ten-stringed zither, which is an instrument I need more work on. As I close the shoji behind me and prepare to kneel down on the pillow to the instrument, I notice that there’s a little cradle on the floor, and in the cradle is a real pearlflute! They are so prized in Shin, not even the Empress Dowager has one.
The guidebooks said that the pearlflute has the sweetest
