I’m just grateful that there’s no way that she could plausibly accuse Cricket of having the skills to cause the kind of damage we saw done to the pagoda. I should warn him never to talk to Suki, though.
The next morning, I look for Cricket after the morning assembly on the Principal Island of the academy. I don’t see him among the first-year boys headed to their literature class.
I find him backed up against a pillar covered in carvings of curling eels. A girl is standing in front of him, talking to him.
It’s Suki.
I pump my skates to reach them and swallow down the spikes of pain in my knee.
“Get away from him, you witch!”
She turns to me and smiles. “Cricket and I were just having a very interesting conversation. It seems that you weren’t the two best skaters in Shin.”
“How dare you?” I say. “I was the Peony-Level Brightstar and wu liu champion for all of Shui Shan Province five times before—”
“You might have somehow managed to win some village contests. But this one’s never won anything. So tell me, why would the Empress Dowager send him to represent Shin?”
She’s going after Cricket. He is my soft spot that she’s been looking for.
“And he’s done so well in the first two Motivations,” Suki continues. Cricket seems to crumble as he finally realizes his mistake. “Twenty-seventh in the last Motivation. Tied for last in the one before it. Two poor performances could be coincidence, but three is evidence. As soon as the third Motivation is done, I’m going back to Pearl Shining Sun with his miserable result. And with this.”
She reaches into her sleeve and pulls out her pearlflute, which she slaps against her palm like a weapon.
“It’s exactly like I said. You’re not really skaters. You’re just spies with enough basic skills to pass for skaters.”
What did Doi tell me to use against Suki if she came after me about—
That’s right! The thing that Suki put in the powder pit at the first Motivation that turned into pebbles when the other girls got their socks wet.
I smile at her and say calmly, “Why do I make you so uncomfortable, Suki?”
“You wish.”
“You look very uncomfortable, like you’ve got a pebble in your sock.” I skate closer to her. “Don’t worry, all you have to do is turn it upside down, and whatever it is will be expelled.”
Suki’s face goes from sourness to confusion to rage.
“You don’t have any evidence!”
“One way to find out, right?”
“You wouldn’t risk me going to the newspaper.”
“Try me, Suki.”
She seethes and sputters, but all that she can finally say is “Infuriate me to death!”
I grab Cricket, and we skate away quickly. Once again, Doi has saved me from Suki.
* * *
Cricket has to do better at the third Motivation. Our safety depends on it now. My stomach clenches when I remember that the boys will be doing Links of Eternity, a pairs combat exercise where each boy must keep hold of at least one of his partner’s hands while performing moves.
Back home in Shin, Cricket only learned girls’ moves. He learned mostly jumps, spins, and evasions, not punches, chops, and tackles. The first and second Motivations only involved racing and jumping, but now he’s going to be doing combat against boys employing boys’ moves. There’s no way he’s going to survive, much less place well. He can’t ask the senseis for special tutoring. And what boy would be generous enough to spend time to teach a potential rival?
Hisashi’s kind face comes into my mind. I can’t expect him to choose to pair with Cricket. Hisashi’s ranked fifth. But I have to try to persuade him and explain why it’s so important that Cricket do well. I make up my mind to tell Hisashi about the ivory yin salts.
He’s never easy to find. It’s clear that he doesn’t like crowds. I look for him where there are no gatherings of students. He’s not at the Courtyard of Supreme Placidness. Maybe he knows that Doi meditates there, so he avoids it. He’s not at the edges of the Principal Island. There are only Shinian servant girls washing the shore with buckets and brushes where the sea laps at the pearl.
After making a quarter circuit of the campus, I find Hisashi riding the rails between the Conservatory of Architecture and the Conservatory of Music, where they slope down so far that they must actually sink below the waterline at high tide. He’s wielding a two-handed staff, dipping it into the sea in graceful, precise pinwheels, and coming up with ribbons of a sea vegetable.
Before I skate close enough to say anything, he looks over his shoulder and smiles. As if he knew he would see me here, and as if nothing could please him more.
He takes off his smoked spectacles and hops around to face me while skating backward. Doing this on winding rails over the open sea should seem like boastful skating, but there’s nothing boastful in his manner.
“I was just thinking about you,” he continues. But when he sees the expression on my face, his smile disappears. “You have something serious to discuss. Let’s go someplace quieter so I can give you all my attention.”
I follow him along the rail leading to the Conservatory of Music. A tower rises out of the sea on the northern side. The tower is skirted with a balcony formed of sculptures of the Great Benevolent Jade Council of Divine Tortoises. He does a deft little double-heel syncopation and pops off the rail and onto the balcony with a confident one-footed skid that’s all boy. A boy’s move I’ve never seen before and that Cricket hasn’t, either.
I copy his move but misjudge my release of Chi a bit and end up colliding into him. He steadies me with a hand around my hip. I start to think that I liked that part, but then I see that there’s a
