Chapter 9
Panic, that squirming sensation in her gut, that lightheadedness clouding into tunnel vision, used to be a rare feeling.
It made an appearance here and there, of course—Calla is not so arrogant as to refute its existence at all.
But she certainly preferred enduring her panic as a confined experience, braced by a start point and an end point.
When she realized August was interfering with Kasa’s games, intent on forcing Calla and Anton to go head-to-head in the final battle.
When she put her blade in Anton’s back, knowing she had won and would be brought into the palace within the next few minutes. Start and end.
Since she put the divine crown on her head and its qi made itself a tenant in her throat, she has not stopped feeling this constant hiss of panic.
She’s having trouble looking ahead, envisioning how triumph will appear following this war.
Defeating August is one thing. Snuff out the only other person in this kingdom who could issue a formal claim to the power that Calla seized with both hands.
But after…?
Lightning flashes over the twin cities. Its ensuing roar of thunder interrupts all conversation around the westernmost section of the wall.
Calla cups a hand over her forehead to slow the rain entering her eyes.
A faint green light colors the encroaching night, shining from the bulbs installed halfway up the wall.
When Anton expanded the boundary of San-Er, he refused to gather new materials, opting only to push the original wall out.
It was an effort to diminish August’s reputation, but Calla doesn’t know if a well-meaning expansion would have performed a cut above either.
She grazes the red bricks. Her palm comes back gritty.
This has been San-Er’s method of operation for decades.
Uproot everything that was already built in the provinces and then repot upon this peninsula in the southeast—pull and pluck and, if there is damage during reconstruction, put those faults where there is less likely to be scrutiny, between butchers and fishmongers, between brothels and substance dens.
The rain suddenly stops. Calla looks up. It isn’t her doing. It’s the umbrella Anton is holding above her.
“This is a very small group,” he says in lieu of a greeting.
“Even a hundred would have been small,” Calla replies. “We take what we can get.”
The king’s games had been eighty-eight, the number of fortune and prosperity. Calla and Anton had killed almost half of that cohort on their own.
“A statement about the heretics has been sent out,” Anton reports. “Venus is locked inside a vacant set of rooms in the east wing. I have Bibi watching her personally—no Crescents allowed.”
Panic. A new rush, and then its receding fizzle on Calla’s tongue, as though she’s ingested something carbonated.
After Tsosia arrived at the palace, accompanied by her temple’s members, the group of Crescents who had been playing Calla’s sentries scattered reluctantly.
Calla and Tsosia made the pretense of having a meeting while Anton stepped out to handle their miscellaneous affairs, which meant he was rummaging through the palace vaults.
“And the weapons?”
“Yes, I brought the weapons. Are you sure these few will know how to use them?”
Calla turns, peering over Anton’s shoulder, past the cover of his umbrella.
The cleric Tsosia is dressed all in black, save for her gray hair gathered in a topknot.
When she smiles to acknowledge a point, the crow’s feet beside her red eyes deepen like razor-sharp cosmetics.
She ushered her temple aside to discuss formation and approach, and Calla has been hovering out of earshot, mystified.
The Crescent Societies have always operated more like criminals than soldiers.
Suddenly, after one takeover, they want to put up this facade? Who are they fooling?
They’re currently plundering through the wagon that Anton dragged from the palace. Stacked with firearms that have not been used for a hundred years, buried away in the vaults when the palaces made them illegal.
“I haven’t a clue,” Calla answers. “Did you want one?”
Anton gives her a look. “I daresay I’m better at hand-to-hand.”
“I’m surprised you don’t want to leave your body behind in the capital.”
“I don’t trust Bibi not to draw a mustache on it.”
Calla has to resist rolling her eyes, which makes Anton grin.
She’s skirted her true question, which is to ask whether Anton wearing his birth body is a show of trust or a sign of coming catastrophe.
Either he thinks they will be in and out quickly enough that his body is not in danger, or this is a suicide mission, and he may as well go with his body so that it can’t be used by someone else afterward.
“I will stay close to you,” Anton decides. “I presume we send in the Crescents for the first wave.”
“Yes. The grounds are flat and open. If August tries to slip away in that initial attack, we’ll catch up with him before long.”
Anton nods. Across the mud-soaked field, the Crescents have cleared out the wagon, arming themselves with every sort of weaponry. The rain may affect gunpowder. Better to have swords on backup too.
“Are you going to kill him?”
Calla considers the question. She considers lying.
“No,” she says.
She should have taken his head during the coup.
But she didn’t, for the sake of whatever sentimentality she possesses for her cousin.
If she wanted to justify her actions, she could say she knew sending August back to his base meant the nobles would flock to him and evacuate San-Er, expediting the bumps in her occupation.
She could even say she expected all his Weisannas and a portion of the palace guards to flee too, abandoning their posts in San-Er and hurrying into Eigi.
Better to have her opposition expelled before launching an attack, or else the Weisannas in San-Er might be left in a prime position to launch an insurrection.
The truth is, Calla was not thinking about any of that.
She was thinking that August was not an unfair ruler, even if he is conniving and underhanded.
He wanted power, and he got in Calla’s way.
She is no less indictable, so why should she sacrifice him to the earth and taint the qi that fuels Talin?
“Best not to have a martyr,” Calla says evenly.
“I’ll keep an eye on the Crescents, then,” Anton replies.
Calla nods. “Besides,” she adds. “I doubt it would be that easy to kill August. Not if Otta has anything to do with it.”
“I’ll keep an eye on her too.”
“Thank you most graciously.”
Anton collapses the umbrella and rests it against the wall. Tsosia is waving at them. Her Crescents have concluded their discussion. They begin to move, taking their exits through the narrow opening in the wall, out into the provinces.
“You’re welcome, Your Majesty,” Anton says. He offers a scabbard that he’s been holding in his other hand. It’s her sword. She left it in the coliseum. “For you.”
Calla takes it. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“I figured you may want it anyway. When the crown gets tiring.”
She loves him—in the way where it flips to resenting him every now and again, and she can’t control what stirs the difference.
She loves him because she is known, and she hates him because she is known, and that has only proved dangerous when she does not know herself at all.
A princess of the Tuoleimi line, an orphan from Rincun.
Another flash of lightning strikes directly outside the wall. Goose bumps prickle down the back of her neck, responding to the storm brewing from the heavens.
“Ready?” Anton asks.
“Ready,” Calla replies.
They begin their march into the provinces without any fanfare.
An hour and some passes while they keep continual speed on the Apian Routes.
There is no need to track direction. They’ll reach August’s camp long before they reach the point where the Apian Routes diverge in Eigi.
With such a small troop, there are few instructions to call while traveling under the cover of night, short of following the natural rise and dip of the land.
It’s too dark to navigate using the stars. The clouds are impenetrable. Two Crescents at the front hold flashlights to direct the way. The moment they are within view of August’s camp, they will snap the beams off to retain some element of surprise.
Despite the soundness of their plan, Calla developed a restless itch as soon as they left San-Er.
A prickling around her collar, then an irritation in her eyes.
She scratches quickly, pressing into her tear duct.
The sensation persists. She keeps scratching.
Only when she senses a presence beside her does she lower her hand, trying to control herself before she can veer off course from scrubbing too vigorously.
“I wondered if I could offer some thoughts.”
Calla stifles a sigh. Anton is overseeing the front half of the troop. He’s walking too far ahead to catch her silent bid for rescue.
“I assume you are going to offer whether I accept or not,” Calla says wryly.
Tsosia, with her watchful red gaze, has been keeping up with her Crescents better than Calla expected.
Initially, Calla wondered whether there might be any relation to another Crescent—the woman with the red eyes who had tried to carve Calla’s heart out—or whether it might be the very same person, having slipped into a new body upon death, as some are known to do in San-Er.
But the shade of red isn’t the same, and besides, their temperaments are entirely different.
Pampi was imperious. Hubristic without any backing and, like Calla, was half fueled into believing she could drag a new path through San-Er purely because she was young.