Chapter 17
The outline of San-Er materializes beyond the torrent of rain, and Calla releases an exhale, finally taking her hand off the hilt of her sword.
An hours-long march after defeat is very different from slinking through the night preparing a surprise attack.
At every moment, Calla braces for August to send Weisannas after them.
Finish the job, or at the very least, hit harder while they’re weak.
But the path has been quiet. Just Calla and Anton and the Crescent Society troops, moving silently through the mist.
Of course it’s quiet, Calla thinks, her teeth gritted. August doesn’t want to waste forces killing her while San-Er remains occupied by the rest of the Crescents. It’s the very same logic she used to spare him while he was separated from his Weisannas.
The wall is clearer in daylight. Brick and metal, wrapping around the edges of San.
“It looks good,” Anton remarks, raising his voice to be heard over the storm. He almost sounds proud. The image is imposing—more than it used to be.
“Don’t make it seem like you actually wanted the expansion,” Calla mutters. “You approved anything that made August appear a maniac.”
Most memories of her early years in San-Er have faded with time: the minutiae while Calla adjusted to the palace, the conversations she fumbled through with her royal parents.
But she remembers the carriage ride. The trees as soon as they left Rincun.
The Jinzi River rushing underneath their wheels.
Then San-Er, its incomprehensible, hulking buildings.
She would come to realize later the apartment blocks in San-Er really weren’t so tall.
They couldn’t be, if the twin cities wanted to preserve the structural integrity in the levels below.
Knowing something wasn’t quite the same thing as believing it, though, because even now, when Calla gazes on the capital, all she can think is that it is a different world from the provinces entirely—a realm that shouldn’t have been allowed to exist, a forsaken sector of the heavens discarded and hauled down to rule the earth.
They pick up their pace. On open terrain, the wind is relentless, the storm threatening to blow them flat before they reach the wall.
Tsosia has opted to pull ahead, leading the charge while keeping her Crescents back.
She waves her arms. The Crescents standing guard around the wall sight her and hurry down from the top walkway.
There’s visible confusion. The rest of the Crescent Societies weren’t aware that Tsosia’s temple had even left.
Tsosia, with no patience for wasting further time in the provinces, strides ahead and through the entrance.
Anton draws close, offering his arm to Calla upon entry. The footpath into San-Er is wet and slippery from overuse. As soon as Calla takes hold of his elbow, he leans in.
“I think,” Anton mutters against her ear, “we are reaching the end of this short-lived alliance.”
“Perhaps,” Calla replies. She keeps her stare ahead, preventing suspicion from the watchful Crescents. “But they will need to maintain a front until the twin cities are calm. And I smell smoke.”
“One at a time!” a Crescent bellows by the gate.
The entrance is narrow, so Calla lets go of Anton’s arm to step through first. To her surprise, Bibi is waiting near the buildings, a cigarette dangling from her fingers.
She drops it upon sighting Calla, then stamps the butt into the yellowing grass.
Her shoulders relax when Anton comes in next.
She gestures frenetically for the two to hurry up and join her.
The Crescents don’t seem very happy to be back when they come through the wall. They toss their weapons onto the ground, the firearms weathered from battle. A few of the barrels still appear to be smoking.
“I assume it wasn’t possible to stay put,” Bibi says when Calla stops before her.
“No,” Calla replies.
Across the field, Tsosia has pulled aside another cleric to talk. Their heads are bent together, Tsosia’s posture tense while she—heavens willing—relays what Calla urged regarding their next move.
Of course, Tsosia may return to Calla and say that her hands are tied, even while she agreed that August must be quashed.
The numbers of the Shard Temple are lower than they had been when they left—after such a catastrophe, their members are not subtle about glancing over, their brow furrowed with ire.
Not merely in Calla’s direction… but Bibi’s too.
Bibi doesn’t pay them any mind, grabbing Anton’s wrist to inspect a cut bleeding down his arm.
Anton assures her that it is fine, and he will put some disinfectant on it.
Bibi tells him that he better, or his arm is going to rot and fall off.
Calla continues to observe the Crescents all the while.
The thunder in their eyes, the thunder rumbling overhead.
While Bibi shakes her head at Anton, the Crescents frown, turning away to whisper.
One of them mimes a gesture, and Calla wonders if she’s misunderstanding or if, indeed, they meant to do an impression of a lapdog.
“Let’s get out of sight,” she says. “I don’t want the Crescents siccing another crew of guards on us.”
She steps into the alley. The exterior walls on either side are damp, misting with condensation.
Piles of bricks litter the space too, some buildings still under construction after the expansion, and Calla takes the lead as they drop into single file.
All the ground-level windows they pass are shuttered. The front stoops are silent.
“We lost,” Anton explains to Bibi when it seems none of the Crescents are making chase behind them. “August still holds his camp.”
“What?” Bibi demands. Though Calla walks ahead, she feels Bibi’s eyes on the back of her neck. “But—”
“Otta was on the scene. She’s…” Anton hesitates. “There’s something unusual about her qi.”
The smoky odor that Calla caught outside the wall is stronger as they proceed deeper into San.
She feared explosives again, but there’s no appearance of plumes wafting over the city.
Calla grabs an abandoned wet rag off someone’s rusting laundry line and ties it around her head, hoping it might hide her crown.
The people of the capital do not care to look too closely at their neighbors; the people of the capital do not wish to make someone else’s business into their problem.
It’s how Calla survived on the run for so long, and it’s how Calla has no problem now walking through a busy makeshift market selling trinkets and treats without anyone calling out that Her Majesty has arrived.
“What are you saying?” Bibi asks, waiting to continue the conversation only after they’ve left the market behind. “Is she using different sigils?”
“I did see many sigils on her,” Calla calls over her shoulder.
They make a new turn, onto the main thoroughfare. Calla shifts to avoid a man pushing his stall. Then she falls back to allow a cluster of schoolchildren to pass, each of their wrists tied to one another so their teacher won’t lose a charge.
“I don’t understand,” Bibi says. She hurries forward, walking at Calla’s side. “The divine crown—”
“You warned us about qi being threatened in San-Er,” Calla interrupts. “What’s happening?”
Bibi’s jacket is too large for her. When she tugs at the zipper tape to wrap the two sides around her torso, they go all the way around, like the clerics’ robes.
“City dwellers are rising against the Crescents, what else?” Bibi mutters.
Her eyes narrow for a moment, signaling that she’s observed the timing of Calla’s interruption, but she will let it slide.
“It’s been an eventful night in San-Er. Five of the temples formed a syndicate and stormed the financial district. They’ve shut down the banks.”
“Ah,” Calla says immediately. “Er would not like that.”
“They did not. Not one bit.”
The city of Er was considered Calla’s people back when the Palace of Heavens stood. She knows the sort: the men who fancy themselves the next class after palace nobility, the families who send their children into the academies to rub shoulders with Weisannas and councilmember offspring.
“You didn’t stop them?” Calla asks.
Though she didn’t intend for the remark to be cutting, Bibi throws her a glare. “I would love to hear how you wanted me in the ears of five clerics at once. My seduction prowess only goes so far.”
“Ew,” Anton contributes from behind.
“I was under the impression you had more sway,” Calla replies, as sincerely as she is capable of sounding. Which isn’t easy. “You led the attack on the palace.”
“There were others who had infiltrated the palace too. Any one of us could have put the pieces in place,” Bibi counters.
“I gave them the blueprints that my mother had drawn, yes, but I was under Tsosia’s wing facilitating the Shard Temple’s part.
At best, I’m a prodigy who rose quickly through Crescent Society ranks.
At worst, most Crescents see me as an aristocrat predestined to suffer my father’s fate the moment I tangle myself back with palace affairs. ”
Calla grimaces. Suddenly the image of the Crescents eyeing Bibi at the gate seems less unusual. Each time she is spotted alongside Anton will worsen such an association, revising her from Dovetail insurgent into Calla’s enlisted foot soldier.
“My apologies,” Calla says.
Bibi shrugs. “Whatever. I didn’t intend to stay long in San-Er anyway after I got my fill. Even if the Crescents have primed the capital perfectly for people like me. They deleted every record of civilian identity numbers last night too.”
Calla stops dead in her step. “Heavens.”
Smoothly, Anton slides his arm around her shoulders when he catches up to her, keeping her moving.