Chapter 25
There’s a racket coming from elsewhere in the palace, but Calla’s focus is getting Chami to the infirmary.
“But what if—”
“She’ll be okay,” Calla interrupts, lest Yilas descends into a nervous attack for the fifth time.
The moment Chami put her opponent out of action, she dropped into a dead faint too.
Though Yilas wanted to wait until Chami roused, the Crescents started to arrive soon after, and Calla needed to get her friends out of there.
The Crescents had not seen what Chami did—they could only surmise that there had been a heretic who came in through the wall and tore these buildings, crushed the residents before they’d had a chance to realize their home was collapsing on them.
They needed to keep it that way. Before any of them could begin to ask Calla for her recount, she’d looped her arms around Chami and picked her up, bidding Yilas to hurry up and follow.
San-Er had never appeared as empty as it was on their trek back to the Palace of Union. It possessed the first sign of desolation that Calla had seen in Lankil’s ghost city. The lights weak and the conversations muffled. The people, huddling scared, waiting for the alarms to turn off.
Calla and Yilas burst into the palace infirmary, scaring the medic on duty. Chami’s pulse is weak beneath her paper-thin skin. When Calla sets Chami on one of the beds, Chami stirs a fraction, though her eyes don’t open.
“I think it’s exhaustion,” Calla tells the palace medic. “But check her vitals. Just in case.”
Yilas pinches Calla’s arm silently, warning Calla to keep an eye on the medic while he works on Chami. Calla pinches her back without looking, conveying, Of course. They cannot speak about what happened. They cannot acknowledge it, or else—
Calla steers Yilas away, into a chair in the corner.
The infirmary is kept dark. Its bulbs imitate candlelight, a soft glow cast up the plain walls.
Calla almost can’t tell the difference between Yilas’s barely suppressed sniffles and her own frantic internal noise.
The wet ground of her immeasurable secrets is starting to come loose.
“Why is this happening?” Yilas whispers while the medic works.
“I’m afraid the only one who can answer that is Chami,” Calla says, leaning against the wall.
“And whatever it is, it happened long ago, unbeknownst to us. We’re just riding out the aftershocks.
” Chami was not invaded when she saved Yilas—her eyes were as pink as they have always been.
The old gods can only wake if they were put to sleep.
They can only walk the mortal realm if they had already fallen upon it.
“She’s going to be fine, Yilas,” Calla promises. Reassurance does not come easily to her, but she tries. She has to try. “She’ll explain it all when she wakes. Whatever qi attack she managed, it was no small feat. She tired herself out, but she will recover.”
Yilas goes quiet. Her hands grasp her knees. Her shoulders hunch small.
The medic has stopped bustling around Chami. He’s crouched at her side, his finger on her pulse, counting the old-fashioned way. If his indifferent expression is anything to go by, Chami’s vitals are normal.
“You should have finished the job.”
Yilas isn’t looking at Calla when she says it. She’s staring at her hands, her fists opening and closing. At first, Calla isn’t even sure if Yilas is speaking to her.
But Calla knows exactly what Yilas is talking about. When did she start relying on her two former attendants, after all? When did she become an outlaw in the kingdom she was set to inherit?
“I couldn’t,” Calla whispers.
“It should have been that night,” Yilas returns. “The moment you committed your massacre in the Palace of Heavens, you should have gone into Earth and finished the job. Why didn’t you?”
It is a fair question. It is a decision that does not make sense to anyone other than Calla.
“They were looking for me already.”
“You could have jumped. And then we wouldn’t have any of this—the kingdom in turmoil, the heretics in San-Er.
Matiyu is in the hospital, Calla. Someone attacked him.
If it didn’t happen today, it would have happened the next day.
Everything that is happening now is happening as a result of what you started. Why didn’t you finish it?”
One of the lights flickers, then dies. Somewhere nearby, footsteps echo into the wing.
“Yilas,” she says, “you know I don’t jump.”
But Yilas, clearly, cannot imagine why. Cannot fathom that this body isn’t hers. That she is an unknowable entity who sprang forth from Rincun. That Calla Tuoleimi, in those five years she’d been in hiding under King Kasa’s nose, had been more afraid of losing this body of hers than anything else.
“Look at what’s happening around us anyway,” Calla goes on. “If I had succeeded in killing Kasa that night, it would have sped us forward to this outcome. Would we have August inherit the throne?”
“Why not?” Yilas asks. “I mean it, Calla. I understand your war against him while it is you or him. Either he rules and you fall, or you rule and he falls.” She swallows hard. “But back then, how was he going to be any worse?”
The footsteps are coming closer. It isn’t just someone hurrying through the wing—they’re heading straight for the infirmary.
“Because I want better than not as bad for the kingdom,” Calla hisses.
“I was wrong. I’ve been wrong every step of the way.
I thought myself some savior, hand-selecting August as a replacement and giving him supreme power because he cares about keeping the people fed.
That’s not enough. What about letting Rincun speak its own language? ”
Yilas slumps in her seat.
Calla sighs. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.
” She scrubs her brow. Clears her throat so that her voice is level again.
“I know the side we’ve put up isn’t perfect.
But we have one chance to pivot away from how things are, and that’s by defeating August. Otherwise, nothing changes in Talin.
The provinces funnel everything toward San-Er, and San-Er stays shrouded in darkness. We will be miserable forever.”
Yilas looks up. Tears bead at her eyes, threatening to fall.
“Calla,” she says quietly, “we’re not so miserable.”
“I was.”
It slips out before she can help it. Perhaps Yilas will understand it superficially, that Calla could not spend a day longer in the twin cities.
The capital where civilians live one on top of another, where shelters use cages instead of beds, where there was not one empty gap left in San until they expanded the wall.
Or perhaps, finally, Yilas is perceiving what Calla has kept secret.
This body that belongs to a war from another time.
This power, this bloodline, entirely stolen.
The only ownership Calla can claim over anything is this crown, plucked from the cold, taken away from the borderlands before it could land in Otta Avia’s hands.
“Calla?” Yilas asks.
“I’ve felt it here my whole life.” Calla jabs a finger to her chest, right beneath her heart.
“This endless longing. From one goal to the next. It brought me into this life. It fueled my days in the dark, plotting Kasa’s death.
Now, it’s fixated on this war. On what we could do once August is out of the way.
I don’t think I’d survive if I ignore what it calls for. ”
Yilas’s mouth opens and closes. She does not know what to say. Neither does Calla, beyond that. She cannot define this sickness. But she’s always needed more.
“What’s wrong?”
Bibi’s voice booms into the infirmary suddenly. Yilas yelps out loud. Calla straightens off the wall, her eyes focusing on Anton’s sister hovering at the entryway.
“Nothing,” Calla says. “Chami fainted at home. I thought the palace had better facilities than the hospital.”
Bibi steps in. Observes the medic, who nods before returning to his task.
“You’d be right,” Bibi says. “The Crescents are scaring off the doctors at the hospitals. Major shortages.” She turns her gaze to Chami. “She doesn’t look so good.”
Yilas sniffs. “We’re aware.”
“No, I mean her qi is…” Bibi gestures with her hands. “Mangled.”
Calla tilts her head. There’s something about Bibi’s tone that gives her pause. The nobles in the palace have been known to make such remarks too—that jumping would water down their qi and weaken their energy—but this isn’t that. It is a surety, not a taunt.
“You can see her qi?” Calla asks outright.
“I can see everyone’s qi,” Bibi replies. “She’s got whole chunks taken out of her, but don’t worry. It looks like the holes are already closing. She’s healing.”
Calla blinks. Yilas shifts in the chair, hiding her frown. She clearly does not believe Bibi, taking the comment to be that of a rural dweller’s ravings, but Calla isn’t so sure.
“Bibi,” Calla says, “why can you see that?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bibi asks.
“Other people cannot.”
“Other people should not.”
This conversation is going in circles. Calla turns to Yilas and says, “Can you stay put and keep an eye on Chami?”
“Of course,” Yilas replies.
Without giving Bibi the option to protest, Calla walks toward her and takes her arm, steering her out of the infirmary. Bibi makes a noise of surprise, but otherwise matches Calla’s pace, going where Calla takes her.
The cold window at the end of the hallway. Gray daylight, streaming through the glass welded to its pane. Calla deposits Bibi right in front of it, and only then does she demand, “What do you mean? Why are you unique in seeing qi?”
Bibi scratches her forehead. “We’re still talking about this? It’s because I’m a Makusa. Anton is good at jumping. I can see qi. Our father said our bloodline is special.”
“What was he capable of doing?” Calla asks.
Bibi considers the question. “Come to think of it, I’m not sure.”
Calla is beginning to understand.
“Bibi, look me in the eyes,” she says.
Bibi’s lip twitches. She’s confused, but she follows orders. Her black irises are steady. “Are we going to kiss?”