Chapter 20
In the palace, Yilas learned to wake on the faintest creak of disturbance.
The attendants shared their rooms five to one.
Not everyone could be trusted, especially not the newer girls who had been brought in on the lottery.
It wasn’t their fault that they were hungry for material goods, that they spent their first few months stashing extra blouses under their bed mats and stealing silver utensils to barter with in case they were fired from their jobs.
The palace required a certain type of mettle to survive, so attendants often cycled in and out.
There was always someone snooping about the quarters once the snores started, digging around for anything valuable to take.
Yilas got good at bolting dead upright from her sleep. That’s how she scared a few of the new attendants into behaving.
That was how she met Chami, when she first started at the palace.
Yilas had been there for two years already, and Chami—despite being from San-Er—had all the scrimmaging rodent tendencies of a new entrant.
Her hand had snuck around Yilas’s pillow, wanting to grab her bracelet, and Yilas closed her fingers over Chami’s wrist instead, scaring her into a scream.
Chami would claim that she was only trying to admire it, not steal it.
A month later, Yilas gifted that bracelet to Chami. She wears it often now.
She was wearing it when she snuck out the back door of the diner, triggering the faintest toll of its little bell. And Yilas, despite having gone down for her midday nap only seconds prior, lifted out from the bed immediately to hurry after her girlfriend.
Nothing feels right anymore. The rumors of old gods waking up in San-Er.
Matiyu getting his broken elbow patched at the hospital.
The twin cities are as gray as ever, roiling dark clouds fat with the rainfall.
Yilas slinks low in the alleyway. She catches a glimpse of Chami ahead, steering west. Chami has been acting beyond strange.
If she isn’t zoning out, she is hissing into the diner phone, and when Yilas asks who she’s talking to, she claims it is only their suppliers. Some light housekeeping, for the diner.
Yilas has half a mind to simply call out.
Ask Chami to stop, wait, she’s awake, she’s coming too.
But then Chami might clam up again; Chami might keep pretending there is nothing wrong, as she has been doing since the Crescent Societies took over the capital.
Why wait until Yilas was sleeping before leaving?
They had been talking about Matiyu only earlier when Yilas returned home, how frightening that he had been targeted, how fortunate that Yilas was there when it happened, or else he was alone in San-Er, with no one to look after him.
Yilas continues behind Chami, creeping as close as she can without being caught.
They spent a significant amount of their time together as attendants working side by side.
Yilas knows how to mimic Chami’s steps, how to prevent an echo from reaching Chami’s ear.
She pauses when Chami does, takes another alley when she’s pretty sure that Chami is proceeding directly straight for some time.
Yilas’s foot catches on a piece of discarded metal, causing a loud clang.
She scrambles to duck out of sight. There is enough of a peripheral hubbub—chatter inside the apartment buildings, basement-level mahjong tiles rattling—that the sound might not have stirred Chami’s suspicion.
After a few seconds, Yilas pokes her head forward again.
No sign of Chami. Yilas hurries to catch up.
They have trekked farther and farther north.
If they keep going, there is nothing here save for San’s wall.
Is Chami trying to let someone in from the provinces?
There would be no need—the wall is open.
Yilas emerges from the alley, taking inventory of the scene before her.
San-Er is high above sea level at its north, then drops lower and lower approaching the south.
She can already hear the water crashing against the cliffs.
The northern residential buildings overlook swirling dark waves, their windows sealed tight to prevent spindrift from salting their belongings.
“Chami?” Yilas finally calls, squeezing between two large flowerpots.
The wall materializes ahead of her like a magician’s trick, sloping at an odd angle. When they expanded the capital, they fucked up the westernmost segment. This messy swath of red bricks, a watchtower at the end. It is the only part of San’s wall that leads into Dacia instead of Eigi.
There are no Crescents standing guard this far west. Their job is with the main gate, where any invasion force from Eigi would be marching in. It is only Yilas and the rain. Yilas, at the other end of the field surveying the wall for movement, for any hint that this is where Chami must have come.
She’s certain she must be the sole witness when there is a rumble, then a deep fracture shooting down the middle of the red bricks. She freezes where she stands. A gasp lodges in her throat.
The watchtower crumbles first.
Yilas splutters for breath, already scrambling back when a hole blows through the base of the wall.
A man walks through. His eyes are wholly white, scanning the field while debris flies wide from the impact.
He calls out, and then a second figure enters through the broken wall behind him.
It takes Yilas a beat to understand that she recognizes the newcomer. Another beat to recall his name.
Galipei Weisanna.
“Shit,” Yilas whispers beneath her breath.
She reverses one step into the alley. Another. The moment she is out of sight from the wall, she pivots and breaks into a sprint. Yilas ducks through the first door she sees. Slams into a vestibule, gasping for breath, then thumps her fist on the nearest apartment door.
“Help!” she screams. “Call the palace!”