Chapter 35 #2
Anton pauses on a bundle of letters, scanning his father’s handwriting.
He is used to making quick work of searching a place—taking inventory to grab what is valuable and leave what is not.
When he was in exile, clearing out a place before he left a body; when he landed in August, hurrying to search the king’s belongings before he lost the authority.
But for the first time in recent memory, Anton has returned to his birth body, in a place familiar to him, left to his own devices. And there’s nothing useful to be found.
“Princess?” he calls.
No response. Anton can hear her presence nonetheless, so he gets up and follows her footfall down the hall. He could walk this route blindfolded. Hide-and-seek would finish in the office and then he’d be flying down these stairs, already counting another round for Bibi.
Anton enters the room at the end of the hall, the only place that Calla viably could have entered. The balcony door is wide open, blowing the sound of the eastern seas into the room, but he can’t see her.
“That’s not quite accurate anymore, is it?”
Anton whirls around. “Heavens.”
He didn’t expect her to be behind him. He had forgotten about that piece of furniture, a wobbly, practically three-legged dresser that Calla climbed onto for height.
She’s on the tips of her toes, her hands clasped to the edge of the storage alcove above the door.
Calla is tall, but even still she lacks a few more inches before she can get her eyes on the clutter in the alcove.
“Sorry,” Calla says, turning over her shoulder. “I thought you’d noticed me already.”
“I had not,” Anton replies plainly. “You’re not going to find anything up there.”
“No?” Calla pulls her hands back. She maintains an impressive amount of balance before she leaps onto the carpet with a hearty thump. “I’d already lifted myself up by the time you stepped in. Nothing interesting.”
“I could have told you that. This was my bedroom. I doubt my father would store a record of his sigil here.”
The room seems smaller than he remembered.
He could have sworn there was enough space to tumble and roll, fake-fight with Bibi until she was actually upset that he shoved her too hard.
In his memories, the pastel-blue wallpaper caught the light from the balcony, shimmered from corner to corner as though he occupied his own private bubble drifting across the land.
“You got the nicest room,” Calla remarks. She slinks toward the balcony. “Your parents didn’t want this view?”
Anton shrugs. “I guess they loved me a lot.”
“Must be nice.”
Calla’s tone is indecipherable. She steps onto the balcony, pushing the door, and Anton is close on her tail.
It’s raining over the waters, a gossamer sheet dangling from the clouds.
A clear line marks the point where the rain stops before it reaches the shores of Kelitu.
Someone is protecting the province with unnatural force.
For a moment, the both of them can only stare. The cliffs, the fronds, the serrated trees that protrude from the rocks.
“I didn’t expect what’s happening here,” Calla says quietly.
“In Kelitu?” Anton asks.
“In the provinces.” Her crown takes on a faint glow. “A man absorbed my sword.”
Anton crouches, picking up a wilted branch that has blown onto his balcony. There is still a single berry attached to the bark.
“I thought he ate it.”
“Same thing.”
Anton tosses the branch over the railing, back onto the grass.
The wind catches the throw, sweeping it farther inland.
Talin’s eastern seaboard has always had a bad reputation.
It is where fishermen get swept out beyond recovery if they let down their guard.
It is where high tides beat their own records each year, and mothers must warn their children to stay in sight if they are playing anywhere within reach of the water.
“One day,” Anton says, “when we are not hunting for a way to win the war, when we have all the freedom in the world—I’d like to show you the sea.”
Calla gives him a wry look. “We are staring at the sea right now.”
“It’s not the same. You need the sand beneath your feet.”
You would survive it, Anton adds silently. Only a certain type of person can withstand Kelitu’s waves.
“One day, when we are satisfied with the state of the kingdom,” Calla says under her breath. She turns to him. “Have you found anything?”
Anton shakes his head. “Nothing.” He doesn’t want to say I told you so, but it is looking more and more as though Galipei was mistaken. Or lying. “I’m not sure what I’m even looking for. A notebook? A photograph?”
“Perhaps there was some record here, but it has been taken since,” Calla offers. “There must have been one or two brave souls in Kelitu who came through over the years.”
Anton doesn’t think so. He would sense it if someone had been rummaging about. His memories may blur, but this house is more loyal than he is. It responds to him like a childhood pet, willing to tattle on the presence of strangers.
“We can’t linger long,” he reminds her. “We are expected in Actia. Venus Hailira will be arriving in Rincun soon.”
“Yes,” Calla says. Her eyes stay over the sea. Yellow eyes, steadily bright against the daylight. She is unmoving despite her response.
Then, suddenly, Calla turns and departs his room, striding down the hall.
Anton makes haste, shutting the balcony door and following after her. “Calla?”
There is something ugly about the way his heart falls whenever someone walks away from him. He has half a mind to accuse Calla of doing it on purpose. She likes to watch him scramble, to subject him to this misery of being left behind again, yet again.
But when he finds her in the atrium, she’s staring at his family’s mural. Utterly deep in thought, her head lolled back. She wasn’t waiting for his reaction.
“Calla?” he asks again.
“Tell me if I’m losing my mind,” she says, “but could this… thing be a sigil?”
Anton’s gaze whips up to the ceiling. Despite how strange the imagery was, he never thought to question its depiction as anything but. His father said it was conventional rural art, and so it was conventional rural art.
He squints.
“Fuck,” he says.