Chapter 22
She decides to use the rooftops.
It’s what San-Er is good for. The densely packed buildings.
The teeming twin cities. Despite the expansion of the wall, the structure of San has changed very little.
Calla can still dart from one building to the other without trouble, bracing her knees against the shock.
She doesn’t look down. If she falls, the awnings will catch her.
Unfortunately, the alarms are unbearably loud from above.
She has half a mind to kick out some of these speakers, make some attempt at dampening the noise.
But time is of the essence, and there is little value to destroying a few when the entirety of San-Er is screaming.
Calla picks up the pace, gritting her teeth.
She arrives at the western edge of the city just in time to see the building ahead collapse in on itself.
It’s there one second, then gone the next.
Calla, aghast, draws to a halt. Ten floors of concrete and wood, glass windows and sturdy furniture that residents pushed up the stairs when they first gained the keys to their place.
She can only stare in horror as each floor eats the one above it, as the building loses its shape and becomes a mound of rubble.
The sound is deafening, booming over the alarms. It has taken her too long to arrive.
This section of San’s wall has already been decimated.
“Yilas!” Calla shouts into the rain. Her heart is pounding. “Yilas, are you here?”
No response. It was a long shot, thinking her voice would carry to her friend.
Calla rushes for the entry hatch into the building and slips through, taking the stairs down with all possible haste.
Who knows if these apartments will collapse suddenly too?
When she bursts into an alley, she can barely see through the clouds of ash accompanying the various sites of rubble.
Some buildings have their top halves missing.
Others have been entirely uprooted from the ground.
Calla draws her sword. She doesn’t know what she’s going to find, so she should reserve her energy. Despite the effort to label them heretics, she will not deny the damage that these individuals have proved themselves capable of.
Movement, in the corner of Calla’s eye. She turns fast, squinting through the rainfall, but it’s only civilians running from the damage, sticking close to the cliffs and heading south to avoid the war zone.
Yilas said it was only Galipei, not a group of Weisannas.
But why come alone, why cause destruction for the sake of it?
Another flicker, up ahead. Calla wishes this incessant rain would stop. She can’t fucking see.
“Yilas!” Calla bellows. “Yilas, where are you?”
She races toward the destroyed building.
There is noise from underneath the rubble: the foundation is made of metal, and one corner juts out beyond the chunks of rock and brick bestrewn into the alley.
Calla, following a gut feeling, casts a nervous look toward San’s wall, then pulls at her qi.
She shoves the largest piece of rubble aside.
A whole host of people are huddling in the gap, rushing for the light as soon as Calla clears the path. She searches through the faces as they scramble to exit, and then…
“Yilas!”
Yilas is gasping when she stumbles before Calla, losing her strength as soon as Calla grabs her arms.
“Calla, you’ve got to find her,” Yilas wheezes.
“Find Chami?” Calla demands. She struggles to keep Yilas upright, the sword in her hand held at an awry angle. “Why is she here?”
“I don’t know!” Yilas cries, and her voice cracks.
“I followed her here, but then I lost her right as the man came in through the wall. I thought I should get help so I ran and borrowed the phone but then the whole building collapsed on us and I don’t know where Chami is, Calla. What if she’s hurt? What if—”
A colossal boom resounds nearby, and Yilas squeaks in fright. Its initial clap is followed by groaning metal. Another building, caving in on itself.
Calla grabs Yilas firmly, ushering her away from the rubble, toward the cliffs. “I’ll find Chami,” she promises. “First, I need you to get somewhere safe.”
“Galipei Weisanna came in too,” Yilas says, her words pitched high. “He went into the city. What if he has her?”
“Yilas,” Calla says firmly. “He doesn’t know Chami. He has no reason to take Chami.”
“But she came to the wall. What if…”
What if she came to meet him?
Yilas leaves the rest of the worry unspoken, but Calla hears it all the same. She puts Yilas’s hand in hers, guiding her over to the field. The residents are still evacuating, carrying bags and umbrellas.
“We can deal with that later,” Calla says. “Come with—”
A flat slab of debris collides with her back, sending her skidding across the wet grass.
Calla’s rolling before she can stop her own momentum.
She comes to an abrupt halt only when she hits a water pipe protruding from the devastation.
Stars flash in her vision. The lip of the pipe has pierced through her shoulder.
“Calla!”
Her pain is barely the worst of it. Calla blinks hard, trying to gather her bearings. Yilas remains where she is. She doesn’t look like she’s capable of moving. Her arms are locked straight on both sides.
“Calla—”
Calla’s sword has scattered beyond her immediate reach. She finally wields her crown. A pulse of qi shudders through the air, all the little hairs at the back of her neck standing straight. It directly counters the attack that the man throws when he suddenly appears from over the top of the rubble.
The sensation is akin to a physical collision, as though Calla has launched herself against an opponent in a test of strength.
Pressure smothers one side of her head. The exertion increases when her opponent steps toward her, drawing closer, then closer.
It has never felt like this. It didn’t during the coup.
It didn’t during the battle at August’s camp.
Anton, Calla thinks unwittingly. The only difference is that he is not here.
“Yilas,” Calla hisses. “I can’t hold this—”
The man strides forward. He has no color in his irises. There is a sigil painted on his forehead. Calla does not recognize it, but her body knows to fear it. When she hauls herself to her feet, her knees are weak, her head spinning.
The man lifts his arms. To Yilas’s left—where an apartment complex climbs seven floors tall, where the curtains have been pushed back to show frantic, small faces witnessing the scene outside—the structure starts to groan.
Calla wheezes for breath. It had almost been easy, before.
Cutting through all those guards, those Weisannas.
Now she can barely steady her aim trying to go up against this white-eyed man.
Her mind feels as though she is trying to split steel.
When she turns her attention, trying to pull the building away from him, his power is as slippery as water, slinking through the gaps of her fingers.
The divine crown has given Calla monumental power. It has given her qi that streams from the heavens. But it does not put her on equal ground to a god.
Her mouth hinges into a silent scream. The crown sears hot around her head, protesting its exertion. Sacrifice has not been fulfilled.
“Yilas, get down—”
Calla releases her qi, sparing herself before she can drain herself empty. Rather than trying to move the man, she redirects her power to shove the first bit of falling rubble. It lands next to Yilas with a dangerous crack.
She reaches inside her again, calling to the crown desperately.
She’s weak. After all the stories and the promises surrounding the divine crown’s power, Calla forms only the image of a mortal in this moment, bound to the heaviness of the earth.
Still, when the building begins to tip, threatening to crush Yilas where she stands, Calla has to try.
The building lurches. It stills. Calla gasps and crumples onto her knees, because she was not responsible for stopping it.
Chami is, bursting from the fallen awning she was hiding beneath.
Calla can’t comprehend what she is seeing.
Her former attendant, her friend. Chami’s face is inscrutable when she restores the building into position, her right hand moving only at her wrist, the rest of her arm staying level.
It only takes a second—a thunderous click of metal returning to its foundation—before she turns to the god standing over his massacre.
He frowns. He is slow to react. His white eyes keep him far-flung from the scene even while he stands amid it, and he is utterly monotonous when he asks, “Which one are you?”
“How dare you.”
Chami, sweet Chami, steps forward. For as long as Calla has known her, she has considered Chami the most softhearted person in the kingdom.
Easy to agree to any favor, no matter her personal cost. When Calla needed to hide in San, she used Chami’s identity number.
When Calla lacked anything in the years she was a known fugitive, Chami supplied it without hesitation.
Before the god can brace for the attack, the air around them clogs so thickly of qi that Calla cannot finish her inhale. Her breath gets stuck in her throat. Several paces away, Chami only scrunches her fingers into her palm.
As rain pours from the heavens, trickling into Calla’s eyes, she could almost think she imagined the gesture.
But the attack has landed. The god who came in from the provinces—his head… disappears in a shower of red mist. His body collapses where he stands.
And San-Er goes quiet.