Chapter 43
Calla skids back.
The attack flares through her body. She can’t control what she absorbs and what she releases, and then someone is barreling toward her with a blade. She isn’t armed. She can only deflect the slash with a surge of qi, shoving furiously to put distance between herself and the assailant.
“I was summoned,” Calla heaves. Her gaze flits about.
The moon has hidden behind cloud cover. It’s too dark to see much past the yamen—whether there are more assailants waiting, or if this is one person acting on their own.
She draws inward instead. Taps into the flow of power from the divine crown, and she feels their qi.
There are ten, twenty, thirty hovering in proximity, some on the scene, others inside the yamen and waiting for instructions.
This was an ambush. Why?
Another blast of qi, but this time Calla is prepared, crashing to the ground and rolling.
She lunges forward, trying to grab the assailant, but they block her arm, quick to grip her elbow in return.
Calla stifles a hiss, pulling back. Her opponent aims a fast kick at her knee.
It threatens to give, but Calla regains her balance with a sharp swerve, using the momentum to swipe against their ankle instead. The assailant goes down.
“Bring Venus out,” Calla demands, clamping her hand to their shoulder.
A searing flash. Her vision goes entirely white, and the assailant shoves their boot into Calla’s stomach. Her head strikes the ground.
Has West Capital been overtaken by rural insurgents wielding qi… or gods?
Calla strains against an invisible force. She’s been pinned in place.
“Don’t fret,” the assailant says, and she pulls a dark mask off her head. She appears familiar. “We needed to confirm your identity. It wouldn’t be the first time someone has sent a stand-in for an important meeting.”
“Such an important meeting would proceed more smoothly if you’d let me up,” Calla replies.
She runs through her options—every way she is capable of attacking the woman while this borrowed body is being held flush to the ground.
There is a disconnect between Calla’s power when she is not wearing her body, when the crown has been cast afar.
But she could cut her throat. She could pull qi from the skies and blast it down like a lightning strike.
Calla does not. She wants to know who she is dealing with first.
“I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of being introduced,” the woman says, and Calla is still immobile. “Erwen. Mayor of West Capital.”
Calla narrows her eyes.
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
With great strain, Calla cranes her neck back. There’s movement, outside the purview of the yamen lanterns. She senses it before she sees it.
“Tell me, Erwen,” Calla says. “How long have the Dovetail been running Rincun?”
“Since Hailira passed,” Erwen replies smoothly. She seems pleased to have been asked, her work finally appreciated. “His generals had varying levels of enthusiasm about answering to his daughter, which meant our first foothold into performing maintenance on the province.”
It doesn’t surprise her. She’s almost impressed.
When Calla accompanied the survey from the palace, she thought it odd how the locals didn’t care about the attacks.
She thought it odd, actually, that the first attack on palace soldiers happened in Rincun, which the rest of Talin regards as fringe territory.
Later, when they discovered that the attacks were happening because August Shenzhi had paid the Dovetail a sum of money to disturb the council and its command over their province generals, Calla should have put two and two together.
The Dovetail—the rural insurgents in Talin—have long expanded.
They have quietly established a foothold over Rincun’s affairs, keeping what they need to themselves, paying taxes to remain unnoticed.
“We really have you to thank,” Erwen goes on. “Your coup gave us the opportunity to plant our people everywhere we needed.”
Once money from the capital stopped flowing to the generals, and palace soldiers abandoned their posts en masse.
“So you should be amenable to my proposal,” Calla says. “You’ve heard it already, yes?”
“Your Highness, you offer us independence for continued trade. But we are already independent. The Dovetail have established momentum across the whole north. Youlia and Actia will turn next. What will you offer us instead?”
Her left arm prickles. A warning. Calla floods her senses, throwing out a tidal wave, hitting any insurgent within the vicinity.
She already figured it wasn’t Erwen holding her down.
When she succeeds in her mark and the hold snaps away, she lurches to her side, avoiding the lightning strike from the skies, scrambling to her feet.
“If this is a refusal, say it outright.” Calla can’t see anything in the aftermath of the strike. “Shut your borders. Don’t lure me here and waste my time.”
“But, Highness,” Erwen says, feigning sycophancy, “we need you to get rid of August Shenzhi.”
Calla swivels quickly, gathering her bearings in the dark. “You don’t think I’ll try my best without your encouragement?”
“There are old gods waiting in Ximili. They are being targeted and bent under control. They act at the behest of Sinoa Tuoleimi, who intends to puppet through August Shenzhi.”
“I’m aware,” Calla snaps, and she swivels again, covering her other side.
There are gods present among the Dovetail.
That would be the only reason why the mayor of West Capital is aware of Sinoa Tuoleimi, why a civilian of Talin knows how to speak accurately about this war involving gods and immortals.
“Are you?” Erwen asks. “Do you comprehend what they are capable of? We are pulling every force we have, invoking every sigil we know. Even then, we fear that we will barely make a mark when they march into Actia.”
Calla cannot comprehend where this conversation is going. So the Dovetail are planning… to help her? At the very least, they want what she wants, and their enemy is her enemy, thereby making them her allies.
That doesn’t change the fact that this group is still creeping closer and closer, treating her like prey. Where is Venus?
“We will not lose this territory. We have grand plans for its development outside the clutches of Talin’s throne.”
“Yes, I understand,” Calla says, refusing to budge. “I was hardly a fan of the last class of royals who sat on the throne.”
“But you are not fighting.”
“Of course I am fighting. From the moment I took the crown, I have only been fighting.”
“You are fighting to push August Shenzhi out of power. You should be fighting Sinoa Tuoleimi. That is what you were brought down to do, wasn’t it?”
Calla stills. Her breath is coming fast. Her throat is tight.
“August has called a meeting in Actia,” Calla tells them. The others, lingering upon the scene, invisible except their qi—their beating, immortal qi. “I will kill him. And then I will kill Sinoa.”
“You will not be capable in this form.”
The voice comes from the dark. It’s Venus Hailira’s voice. Calla lifts her hand, and with a jolt, her qi rises to her palm. It lights the scene, and there stands Venus, dressed in province linens, a shawl draped over her shoulders.
“What is this?” Calla hisses.
“The divine crown razes cities and levels mountains. The divine crown can part the seas and shatter the skies.” Venus steps closer.
Her face is half cast in shadow. “These are stories that mortals tell themselves to feel as though the gods never abandoned them. That there is still some form of heavenly mandate ruling the kingdom, selecting the one most deserving to hold the throne of Talin. But the stories about the divine crown have always been exaggerated, by commoner and royal alike. Talin needed to believe it, because there will always be great disparity among mortals. How do you keep the masses under control except to tell them that they deserve the station they were born into?”
Venus comes within reach. Calla meets her eyes. There has been no change to the powder-blue color. The change is in how she stares forward. Her unwavering gaze, harkening back to a time some thousands of years ago.
“The divine crown was made for mortal bodies. I helped make it,” the god wearing Venus says.
“I let it aid a mortal king into becoming half a god, because it is easier to settle subjects who are frozen in awe than in fear. I gave the mortals a taste of the divine, but it is nothing when the heavens have blown open on earth. You are not mortal, and you are being held back by its limits. We are trying to help you.”
“Don’t you dare,” Calla snaps. “If you free up my body, Sinoa will go after it.”
“Sinoa can be defeated when you acknowledge who you are. What you are capable of.”
“Stop.”
Calla’s heart is thudding. She has nowhere to run. She tries to jump, but her qi is being held down, just as her body was.
“This war must end. The realms must be separated. Sinoa Tuoleimi cannot return to rule.”
“Stop,” Calla shrieks. “Let me go!”
Venus Hailira stops in front of her. The expression that notches into her brow is familiar—familial. Her hand reaches out, gracing Calla’s forehead, and in a snap, she sees everything. The heavens, the palace, their king. Her sister wives.
The godling of qi smiles. “This is for your own good.”
Calla is drowning.
She has never experienced this sensation before.
Water, rushing up her nose, into her lungs.
Her flailing limbs disturb the stationary ground—sediment that has sat undisturbed for decades swirls furiously into the water.
Her hand grazes soil. Her foot collides with the plants underwater, her legs caught by tangled runners and dense tendrils.
She’s in a ditch. Some drainage ditch, running with disgusting, dirty water.
Calla gasps, fighting to extricate herself.
A burst of qi screams from her chest, light flaring through the water, and the runners disintegrate.
She pushes herself up, and the ditch was never that deep to begin with, her arms hauling over the sides as she splutters water from her mouth.
Her sleeves are loose linen. They’re too short for her. They end at her elbows.
She glances around. A dark field. No crops, no animals. The stars gleam brightly, showing the mountains in the distance. Rincun is unmoving.
She knows exactly where she is. The last place she left herself.
“No,” Calla whispers, clambering out from the puddle. “No no no—”
Fifteen years have passed. Plenty of time to let the insects feast on her birth body, let her bones sink into the soil during the time the empty vessel was abandoned.
At the very least, her clothing ought to have disintegrated into dust, but a strange force has kept her protected, just like Sinoa Tuoleimi’s body when they found her in the palace in the mountains.
Calla leans over the puddle. A furious breeze tears through the province, lifting her short hair back. The moon hangs low over the silken night. It casts back her reflection in the water.
An empty vessel is bloodless. An empty vessel slowly heals itself from injury even if it is an insentient thing, just as a plant can regrow its bud.
In fifteen years, her vessel has taken it upon itself to age with her, and though her face has changed, her eyes have not.
Pure white. A god who is blind to judgment.
A god who was cast out from the heavens, taking the last of its untainted qi to assume mortal form.
The godling of greed.
Anton returns to his body in a haze, barely aware that he has left the onslaught.
He is exactly where he left himself, curled up next to Calla.
Dew has settled over the marsh. An itch starts in his elbows and his knees.
Slowly he rises into a sitting position, trying not to make any sudden movements, or else his nausea will overwhelm him.
When he glances over to Calla’s vessel, she remains motionless. Empty.
She lies to him.
The color of the sky has changed. He does not know how long he was under, how long he was caught in that swath of memories and lives.
Battle, unending battle. The hour creeps steadily toward dawn, and Calla has not returned.
Could his presence in the body have blocked her?
He left himself as a vessel next to her, though.
She could have slipped into him instead, smacked him across the face, and told him off for wearing her. But she has not returned.
Anton staggers to his feet.
She lies to him.
Again and again and again.