Chapter 19
He’ll want to cut us off at the river.”
Anton stares at the map on the board, his head lolled into his fist. The war room has been cleaned since he last rummaged through it. Neat filing cabinets. Orderly seats circling the sturdy table.
He has taken the largest chair at the end, the one that would have been reserved for Kasa when he convened with his council.
It’s not as though Calla minds. She’s sitting directly atop the table instead, one leg propped up and her elbow resting upon it while she stares at the board too.
They had an employee—one of the elderly attendants who remained after the takeover, not a Crescent—pull some pins, some markers, and a map that shows Talin and its twenty-eight provinces.
Some of the color ink stopped working on the printer when it got to the northern end of the kingdom, leaving patches of the green land blue instead, but that’s no matter.
“He only needs to take Leysa and Janton, and then San-Er will be separated from the north,” Anton says.
“Even with their councilmembers dead, suppliers in the northern provinces can continue fulfilling orders from the capital for the right price. But the moment August occupies the provinces under the Jinzi River, those supplies stop by force. San-Er starves.”
“We still have the waters,” Calla muses.
“Er has the waters,” Anton counters. “San can afford a rice bowl per day, and when those grains run short, the city is going to riot.”
Calla kicks her feet off the table, letting them dangle. Her boots have started to tatter from wear and tear. They’re the very same pair that she had on during the games, probably purchased from some ramshackle shop. She has not traded them for anything in the palace wardrobes.
“So in conclusion,” she says, “a siege is going to kill the twin cities. By the time San-Er is relying on the southern provinces alone, there will be enough shortages to warrant mass evacuation.”
The very thought of civilians evacuating San-Er seems foreign.
For so long, any movement in Talin has been persistently downward.
The rural dwellers, running out of opportunity among farmlands and coming to the metropolis secreted in the southeast. So long as enough people stayed out there, San-Er could be fed.
San-Er could generate the money to spit back to the provinces—to purchase rice, purchase greens, purchase whatever the cold metal and hard soil of the capital repelled.
San-Er could be a paradise of freedom, no matter how crowded, no matter how miserable.
“Not to mention,” Calla adds after a beat, “the uproar if the Crescents succeed in blocking qi and people are trapped in their vessels by force. Evacuations will start even before cupboards have run dry. Bad climate. Bad morale.”
Great for the Crescents, all the same. The ordinary civilians will leave.
The megalomaniacs will thrive, picking up their swords and patrolling the streets, lunging into any shop for a free meal, bursting into the brothels screaming for service.
Anton met many of them during his time in exile.
Most find their kindred spirits within the Crescent Societies, even if it isn’t all Crescent Society members who behave this way.
“Okay.” Anton laces his hands atop the table. “Then August can’t be allowed to take Leysa and Janton. Or any combination of the northern provinces to that same effect.”
They fall silent.
The problem is that they do not have the faintest clue what August is intending. Which provinces he intends to target, whether he can take them in one swoop with Otta’s power, or if he will ratify his reign slowly and surely, by way of yamen officials and handshakes and paperwork.
“Knowing August,” Calla says slowly, “he will value formality over efficiency. He won’t care to risk the possibility that we slip in while he’s working on Leysa and Janton.”
She slides off the table. Picks up one of the markers and draws two question marks on Leysa, in the center of the south, and Janton, which hems the end of the Jinzi River. Her hand wanders back down to Eigi, directly outside the twin cities, where she draws a large circle.
“He’s going to target the north.”
Anton’s declaration comes suddenly. He isn’t sure what spurred it, but the moment he says it, he is certain he’s correct. August hates shortcuts. In school, August triple-checked his answers before turning in his worksheets.
Anton gets out of his chair, its legs scraping against the hardwood floor. Calla tosses the marker with the lid already removed, and Anton catches it smoothly. He draws a line from Eigi into Pashe, then through the center of the north, cutting into Lankil, Laho, Actia.
It’s also the very same route they took when the palace delegation set out to seek the crown.
“I didn’t see Councilmember Naov among the dead,” Calla says. “You think he’s joined August’s camp?”
It seems likely. But Anton doesn’t want to make false assurances, so he replies, “Maybe. Having Naov to secure Pashe would form the best route.”
Calla props her hands on her hips. There’s still some rainwater gathered on her clothing. When her scabbard adjusts, it releases a short series of droplets on the floor.
“Our focus needs to be meeting August in combat… and relatedly, facing Otta,” Calla says.
She keeps her voice even, but Anton hears the resentment.
“We’re getting distracted trying to predict their battle march.
August wants the throne. Otta wants the throne.
They’re in alliance waging a war across the provinces to win back the capital, but we just need to find them and kill them. ”
Anton doesn’t expect the jolt. The whole-body shock to hear Calla declare this end goal.
Before they marched on August’s camp in Eigi, they hoped that it would be a quick battle, one final loose end looped away and tied after a violent coup.
They hoped there would be a way to keep August imprisoned, in exile, removed from power, and then that would slow the response from the Crescent Societies too.
But that is out of the question for as long as Sinoa Tuoleimi is capable of dying and reviving herself a hundred years later. She will steer August Shenzhi until the end of the line.
And as long as August Shenzhi has sway, Anton is not safe.
“Hard to focus on the killing,” Anton says, “when there’s the impending starving.”
Calla’s hair unfurls over her shoulder when she glances at him.
It comes again: that sudden tightness in the throat.
He’s choked on the sensation several times across the past few days, and he hasn’t been able to work out what it is.
For a brief flicker of a second, Calla is very far away, and Anton is surrounded by mist. He is fighting his way out of it.
He is without hands, without feet, without sight.
Then he blinks, and everything is normal again.
Back in the alley with Bibi, he worried that the affliction was finally coming to a head and taking his qi away from him… only to realize he was experiencing the work of the Crescents and their block. Could this be the same thing? If it is, why would he alone be sensing it?
“Our problem,” Anton continues, shaking his head to rid himself of the sensation, “is that, in the provinces, August has an army of Weisannas and guards to do his bidding for him, but we do not have the Crescent Societies.”
“Perhaps we could recruit the Dovetail to meet August’s forces. They’d follow the crown.”
“Even if the Dovetail follow the divinely selected,” Anton says, “they have… a few hundred?”
“They’d be more powerful with sigils.”
“As would the Weisannas, who will still outnumber them. The Dovetail are the largest insurgent group in the provinces, but acts of insurgency remain few and far between. We cannot pull an army out of thin air.”
Calla tips her head back. Her crown catches the chandelier overhead, its angry ridges glinting. Her crown is supposed to be an army in and of itself, and it would be—if it weren’t for Otta. Once more, Anton feels somewhat responsible.
Calla’s posture straightens, as though she can hear Anton’s thoughts.
“What is it?” Anton demands.
“If we give Rincun independence, Youlia will also follow suit immediately.”
This again. Anton’s already bristling. “Calla—”
“No, listen to me.” She picks up the marker and draws a slash over Rincun, the line extending long enough to cross into the borderlands.
Another slash over Youlia, in the northeast, this line shorter.
“Removing Rincun and Youlia from Talin takes out two major trade routes for Actia’s villages, and Actia is always short on supply because desert land doesn’t grow produce.
Deprive it now, put those pieces in place, and August will, unexpectedly, find immense trouble securing it.
He will meet hungry villagers. Riots for his soldiers to resist. A whole host of problems that scatters his army, because our army is the province itself. ”
Anton considers the gamble. His hackles lower. He understands the disparate parts Calla has set out on the assembly line.
“Deprive Actia Province, and we meet August there to clash at his weakest,” he concludes.
Before he voices any approval, he eyes Calla carefully.
It bothers him that northern independence was already on her mind before they set out for the attack, and she is only refiguring it again and again until there seems to be a way it works.
She is too attached to Rincun, perhaps to her own detriment.
The correct move for Rincun may not be the correct move for Talin.
But…
“This doesn’t solve the problem of San-Er being blocked from the north.”
“It can,” Calla says. “We’ll send a representative to take the edict of freedom to Rincun directly. Negotiate its independence in exchange for keeping the trade routes open to San-Er. Only to San-Er, at least until the war is over.”
Anton leans back. “August will hear about this and switch gears.”
“Not if we send Venus Hailira,” Calla counters, “under the guise of our last loyal councilmember clearing the palace in the mountains. The news stations will spread the word: it is a critical mission during this time, while heretics are claiming to be old gods, wanting a piece of the kingdom. We cannot have someone taking a base there.” She breathes out slowly.
“Meanwhile, we make our way to Actia. Only us. We prepare our ambush.”
Anton tries to envision where August is, what August must be doing, how August will perceive the false news when it reaches him.
His mind wanders, naturally, to the idea of Otta standing over his shoulder, whispering in his ear.
What was it that she said at the base? San-Er killed your father while he was still mortal, but it didn’t kill you.
A cold sensation, dancing along his jaw.
Anton blinks, and Calla has leaned close to him, her finger gliding to his chin, lifting his face toward her.
At such proximity, he has trouble focusing on his lover.
Her features grow murky. Though her irises are a caustic yellow—same as they always are—his vision dances, and for a second, he can only see her eye whites.
His pulse jolts. He panics, assuming someone has invaded her.
When Anton jerks away, pulling himself out of reach, the chair behind him overturns with a loud clatter.
“Anton!”
His vision clears. It’s only Calla in front of him. Calla, appearing baffled at his behavior.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asks. Her eyes are yellow.
“Nothing,” Anton says quickly. He can’t shake the image. What’s wrong with you? he wants to ask in return. “Nothing. I saw a fly.”
Calla looks around, finding no buzzing insect in the vicinity. Rather than exasperation, which he expected to see, concern flashes across her expression, her dark brows knitting together. He must have been subjected to a trick of the light, dancing off her crown’s golden ridges.
“Are you feeling well?” Calla asks, and her voice turns soft.
It worries him at once. He senses that he is being handled delicately.
Otta used to take such a sweet tone with him if he was concerned about staying out too late.
She would be smiling when she threatened to wander off and enjoy herself alone if he couldn’t suck it up.
“Of course I’m well,” Anton says. His heart is still pounding.
“If you are ill—”
“I’m not,” he snarls.
Calla tilts her head. Her gaze sharpens in warning. And terribly, it is that which finally puts Anton at ease, because if Calla can get angry with him, then she will not leave him.
“I apologize for the commotion,” he says, his tone level again. “Let’s proceed with your plan.”