Chapter 31
Of course Calla doesn’t trust him.
In a show of goodwill, Galipei let himself be moved into the private cells instead, deposited into the room where they kept Leida Miliu a lifetime ago.
Anton paced the hallway above the cells until Calla emerged, at which point he examined her from head to toe as though he were afraid that Galipei had invaded her while she escorted him behind the thick door.
“So?” Anton asked when they started to walk.
“He claims he does not have exact routes, because he was shut out of August and Otta’s planning,” Calla relayed. “That being said, he was in August’s office prior to his departure. The lines on his map move toward Actia. You were right.”
That didn’t seem to please Anton, though.
“If I can guess August’s most likely course,” Anton muttered, “I gather that his beloved bodyguard can too.”
“What does he gain by lying about a path we already predicted?”
“He could be leading us away from August’s true course.”
“That would imply we were never accurate about August’s course at all, so why would he need to lead us away? Anton, be reasonable.”
He didn’t like that either. “Does he have a count of the Weisannas? Locations of temporary camps where the army will diverge to establish loyalty in a province? Does he have anything that would prove a gain for us?”
Calla offered him a dull look.
“He has information about the one advantage we might be able to gain over Otta.”
Now Calla latches her backpack and swings it onto her shoulders.
Dusk drapes its veil atop San-Er slowly.
Anton is sitting in the corner of their quarters, his legs pulled up on the plush chair.
Once they leave for Kelitu, Bibi can stand guard over Galipei.
The Crescent Societies will find out about his presence in the private cells eventually when the other prisoners tattle, but they have some time before those repercussions.
Before Bibi’s standing among the Crescents is questioned and the capital starts to slip from Calla’s grasp.
She has to hope that Venus has reached Rincun by then, that their plan has kicked into gear and Actia is positioned as the final battlefield.
“Get moving,” Calla says.
“I think he’s lying,” Anton says, once more.
“I have no doubt that Galipei is scheming something.” She checks her scabbard. “But he would not agree to defect lightly. He doubts August. That, he can’t fake. And if he truly believes collaborating with the enemy can save him, he will not put that at risk. He’s telling the truth.”
A loud clatter, directly outside their window.
The Crescent Societies have stopped making arrests.
There’s no room anyway, and their focus has turned to nipping the problem at the root.
Calla lifts the window, listening in case the Crescents have put guards to monitor the perimeter, but the voices drift away.
“Yeah,” Anton mutters. “It would be nice if he simply had the sigil from the Dovetail letters. Rather than offering us vague promises of it being found at my family’s house.”
“Either we check the house, or you reach deep in your memory and realize you’ve had it all along. Which will it be?”
Silence. Anton’s bag is at his feet. He’s always readily packed. Like her, he owns very little, short of what’s on his back. Clothing, weapons. A meowr floats from the open wardrobe, and Calla pokes her head through the hangers, petting Mao Mao nestled inside.
“Be good to Joselie,” she says. “And don’t use my silks as a litter bed. I’m coming back for those.”
Mao Mao nuzzles into her palm, protesting her departure.
A small exhale escapes her, and she offers him one good scratch before withdrawing, lest she grow tempted to take him with her.
Calla reaches for a square scarf to distract herself.
She folds it once along the diagonal. By the time she’s tied it around her crown, Anton still has not moved.
“Anton,” she says. She puts a foot up onto the windowsill. The alley behind the palace is very narrow. A light from above shows rainwater gushing downstream, carrying plastic lids and cigarette butts and discarded take-out boxes. “Are you coming?”
Anton’s eyes lift. She almost flinches. On a cursory glance, she would think that his black irises had turned Tuoleimi yellow entirely, the glow spilling at full capacity.
She keeps her breath trapped in her lungs. It is a temptation that she does not realize was impossible to abstain from until it is presented before her, qi clearly growing past a limit that Anton needs. He sighs and grabs his bag, and Calla can’t resist.
A small wisp. He won’t notice. Her lungs shiver and expand.
“Okay,” Anton says. “Let’s go.”
The block begins to form when they’re only a few minutes short of the city’s wall. That warping vacuum sensation, opening like a chest cavity. Calla’s step falters, her hand snapping out to brace against cold stone.
“You felt that too?” Anton asks.
“I suppose they have stronger sigils after all,” Calla replies.
There’s an ongoing evacuation effort for residents too close to the wall.
Mothers bundling their children, families pouring from the back doors of their buildings.
Most evacuees are going east, away from the devastation at the westernmost border, but the damage has rippled across the wall mercilessly.
Aftershocks from the full-scale collapses have induced loose cement beams and wobbly balcony decks.
It would be better to go to Er, actually, because anyone attacking the capital will have to stamp through San first.
Calla grimaces, moving aside for a man carrying cardboard boxes stuffed with dirty hay.
They’re outside San’s stables, which used to be run by palace guards, hidden in the second and third floors of a commercial building.
She’s surprised to find that it’s still functional, its employees clocking in to keep that industrial elevator greased and oiled for transporting horses.
The man catches her eye, then performs a double take.
“Your Majesty!” he bellows.
“Hush,” Calla says. “No need to draw attention to me.”
“My apologies!” he says, continuing to boom at the top of his lungs. “I am at your service!”
Calla gestures for his badge, taking him up on the request. Truthfully, she was planning to walk into the stables and make a quick getaway, but this might be easier.
The man scrambles to unclip his electronic badge and passes it to her with gravity.
She waves for him to continue with his business.
Though he risks breaking his neck for how he cranes to look, he does walk on.
Anton’s watching the interaction with fascination.
“What?” Calla asks.
They slip in through the entrance. The ground floor groans with the weight of its waterlogged tarps, strung over the windows where the glass has broken. Calla sights the elevator hidden at the back of the stairwell.
“It is strange,” Anton remarks, “to witness a San-Er who loves their king again.”
The elevator doors slide open. Anton follows closely on her heels, stabbing his finger at the button for the second floor.
“The people believe the crown selected someone deserving,” Calla intones. “After decades of fraudulent rule, finally we have been righted.”
She wishes she could believe her own words.
That there wasn’t a persistent voice in the back of her head now, wondering whether the crown is truly as all-encompassing as the palace was led to believe, or if it is only one piece of the kingdom’s anticipation for Sinoa Tuoleimi.
She will have to play her hand carefully upon her return from the war.
Invoke all the right messaging to take San-Er away from the Crescents.
Even if it means playing a new imposter. Playing as Sinoa Tuoleimi.
On the second floor, Calla and Anton make quick work selecting a horse for travel, maneuvering it from the stables, back down to the ground level and around the building.
Only once they’re in open air, the rain misting on the grass, does she finally ask, “Do you think your father would have been loved?”
Anton is distracted fixing the saddle. He doesn’t answer immediately, but his shoulders tense, signaling that he heard the question. Up ahead, a group of Crescents have gathered at the main gate. Another warping sensation twists through the twin cities.
“You say that you think my father was a god,” Anton says.
“Yes.”
He smooths out the saddle. “It almost seems silly to deny what seems obvious in light of Galipei’s information. Supposing that he tells the truth, of course.”
Calla wasn’t going to push it. But, indeed, their destination may be bringing the kingdom’s past to light at last. What would it take for someone to believe himself an opponent of the Tuoleimis and Shenzhis, prepared to lead a coup?
To believe himself worthy, to possess no fear of being struck by the divine crown.
Who else but the crown’s maker himself—someone powerful enough to pass on heavenly qi, to give Anton that aberrant light swirling behind his eyes.
A god among gods.
Anton hooks his foot onto the stirrup and swings himself onto the horse. He does not say it outright. Neither does Calla. They were told to search the Makusa manor for the sigil that calls to the king of the heavens… and well, that speaks for itself.
“Last chance to back out,” Anton says. “Because if Galipei is lying and puts us on a detour while August marches on San-Er, we’re fucked.”
Calla’s gaze lifts. A handful of Crescents stands visible from where she and Anton linger. She inspects their cloaked figures, their hoods keeping off the rain. The crescent-moon tattoos on the backs of their hands, along the sides of their faces.
“I don’t think he’s lying,” she says quietly. “Besides, the Crescents are holding San-Er at peak strength. August will not risk invasion until they are weak.”
Calla does not have an invading army. But she does have a defense force. Like it or not, whether the Crescents actually want to help her at this time, they are holding the capital for her.
When Anton turns to face her, she takes a deep breath.
Stop, she urges herself, but it’s too late—power rushes her lungs.
Her bones, her blood. A Crescent yells out by the wall, and Calla decides she needs this.
She will stop afterward, but while they’re making their exit, they need to move forcefully if they are going to escape obstruction.
“Calla,” Anton says, “I’m not sure if I can go back to Kelitu.”
The qi block is forming. Calla feels it in the air. They have to move.
“I need you to remember what we escaped.” Calla puts one hand on his leg, the other to the saddle.
She props her foot into the stirrup too, but she doesn’t lift herself yet.
“August had us bound and surrounded by his forces. The threat of exile at best, our deaths at worst. We took the only path out, but we’re still on it for as long as Otta Avia keeps revising the roadmap. We’re not clear yet, Anton.”
The divine crown is supposed to be the most powerful weapon on earth. Had Calla been given a realm of mortals to rule thereafter, this would be an easy war.
But they’re playing with gods.
“Venus will need five days to reach Rincun,” she goes on, “and August has his work cut out for him while he continues to aim for the north. From Kelitu, we can cross the Jinzi River and travel through Ediso. We don’t add any more time than we would if we went straight to Actia. We’re still abiding by our campaign.”
Calla risks another glance at the Crescents. Her voice drops to a whisper.
“Galipei is smarter than August gives him credit for. He always has been. Why do you think he offered this, first and foremost? He knows we need something good before clashing in Actia. He knows that our battle with August is all for nought if we’re weaker than Otta. Going to Kelitu is unavoidable.”
Anton grimaces. For several moments, he is quiet.
Then he says, “Do you want to ride first, or shall I?”
“You,” Calla says, and she closes her eyes to concentrate, knowing that she has won him over. “I’ll open up a path.”
For the first time since she put on the crown, she exhibits patience, she lets herself feel everything.
She waits until she can sense each body around the wall.
The rushing rain collecting in the gullies beside the buildings.
The whizz of electricity running to power the fans, the televisions, the light bulbs.
Everything of their world possesses qi. From the smallest speck of dirt to a living, breathing person.
Calla pulls. It starts as a rumble underfoot. The field quivers, its yellow grass shriveling into itself. The metal latches of the gate vibrate, trying to hold on to its hinges.
A heinous noise erupts around the wall. It wrenches from the soil.
Seized afloat so that it levitates a considerable distance in the air.
The Crescents shout to back up. Grab weapons.
Get ready for the possibility of incoming attack.
Calla’s eyes snap open; she tears a fissure in the wall for their exit.
The bricks change ahead, its shuffle lost while the Crescents are distracted.
It is her last spurt of effort. Calla releases her hold, her crown searing hot.
There’s an explosive thud as the wall drops back down.
“Go, Anton,” she hisses, climbing on behind him. “Go!”