The door slides open. It’s Doi.
“My father is on his way here,” she says, closing the door. “I’m going to try to talk to him.”
“I know how Suki destroyed the buildings! With salt! It melts the pearl!”
“How did you find that out?”
“I went into the city to buy wine for Chingu, and I bought some salt and it spilled.”
“I see.” Doi’s expression is unreadable. “Peasprout, don’t say anything about that to my father.”
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t want to look like you know how to destroy a building!”
“But I have to if I want to prove how Suki did it!”
“Suki’s going to say that you found this out so you could teach the Empress Dowager how to destroy our city if we won’t share the secret of the pearl with her.”
“Then I have to get to Chingu. She’s never wrong! She’ll name Suki as the criminal. You have to convince your father to let me consult Chingu.”
“Peasprout, just stay out of this. All you did was violate curfew and leave campus without permission and buy some wine. Maybe the senseis will still let you participate in the sixth Motivation.”
“Your father threatened to have me crushed alive! That’s why I have to prove that I’m innocent.”
Doi pulls away. “He wouldn’t do that.”
“He showed me the shrunken trinket,” I say.
She stiffens.
“Help me, Doi. I don’t have anyone else. If you don’t help me, I’m on my own. Don’t let me down! Like your brother did!”
“I’m not Hisashi.” Doi refuses to look at me. She cradles an elbow in her hand and presses her fist to her lips. There is so much struggle on her face that she looks as if she would rip in two down the middle. What would it cost her to help me?
At last, she says, “I’ll help you.”
The door slams open and the Chairman thunders in. He looks at me, then at Doi.
“What are you doing here?” he says to her.
Doi drops to her knees and lays her forehead to the pearl.
“Venerable and esteemed Father. I humbly beg you to listen to my worthless entreaty on behalf—”
“Get out!”
“Father, I beg you. Chen Peasprout needs to consult Chingu, the oracular monkey. Chingu will be able to prove that Chen Peasprout is not the criminal.”
“I have all the proof I need.”
Doi stands up, skates under one of the portraits, and kneels.
“Father, my request is worthless, but I beg you to indulge it, as a paragon of honor.”
She puts her head down to the pearl again.
The portrait is of a young man, as handsome as Hisashi.
“Niu Kazuhiro. Architecture First Ranking, First, Second, and Third Years; New Deitsu Pearlworks Company First Recruit.”
He was just like me once. Filled with pride for his achievements, hope for his future, and dedication to his honor. I turn my face away when the Chairman sees me looking at him.
The silence stretches through the gallery.
At last, the Chairman says, “Be quick about it.”
* * *
The Chairman, Doi, and I arrive at Sagacious Monk Goom’s little temple on pillars, along with Sensei Madame Yao. She insisted on coming when I asked for the wine back. I’m glad because I want as many witnesses there as possible when Chingu names Suki.
Sagacious Monk Goom looks at the vessel of wine and says, “Is that all?” When I tell him yes, his sighs could fill sails.
He takes the vessel from me. He pulls out the stopper and skates over to Chingu. He holds out the vessel warily and says, “Chingu! Look what I have. I have the nice nice! Very nice nice!”
Chingu’s screeches have not stopped piercing the air since we entered the temple. When she sees the vessel, she begins to alternate her cries with grunts and she hacks with even greater force at the lacquered box on which she squats. When the vessel comes within reach, Chingu claws it from Sagacious Monk Goom’s hand, plugs it into her mouth, sucks it empty, and flings it to the floor, smashing it into pieces.
Within moments, she goes slack and slumps down, her eyes roll back in their sockets, the lids close.
“Quickly!” says Sagacious Monk Goom. He scoops up Chingu. Her fist still squeezes the handle of the cleaver, but everything else is limp.
I help him open the lid of the lacquered box. Inside, it’s like a little sedan with two seats facing each other. The walls are composed of intricate latticework that lets in light but keeps the faces of the sitters veiled from the outside. He slides Chingu into one seat and places a tray on her lap with sixty-lucky tiles. He looks at me and points to the other seat.
“Get in.”
“Me?”
“You’re the one with the question, aren’t you?”
“What if she wakes up with me in there?”
“Ah, that would not be very nice. That would be very not nice. So quickly!”
I slip into the seat, and he closes the lid above us.
“Hurry, hold her hand and ask her your question.”
I grab Chingu’s hand without the cleaver. It’s padded and soft and leathery and cold.
I close my eyes and grip her hand and say the question silently in my mind: Who is responsible for harming Pearl Famous?
At that, Chingu’s eyes pop open. She starts screeching and hacking at the sides of the box with her cleaver, her eyes rolling.
I scream and drop her hand. She immediately stops and her eyes close again.
Sagacious Monk Goom opens the lid. “You asked her something too general, didn’t you? Ask something precise.”
He closes the lid on us, and I take Chingu’s hand again and silently ask her: Who attacked the structures of Pearl Famous Academy of Skate and Sword?
Chingu begins shrieking again. She hacks the walls of the box so hard that the box jumps and
