Chapter 38
Lightning flashes through the dark clouds. Rain pummels the beaches, forming treacherous terrain at the western seaboard of Janton.
Anton clutches his arm, where the cut he made has not yet healed over. He doesn’t realize he’s doing it until he catches Calla looking at him, and only then does the sting register.
“I forgot to mention,” Calla says suddenly. “You gave me a bloody nose.”
Anton frowns. He’s trying to keep his gaze ahead, pinned on the basin that curves into the shore of Janton, where half of August’s army has made camp, but each time he stares through the dark he has to seek it out again.
The shapes of the tents dart and move before his eyes can settle, and he has to wonder if it is a facet of qi, if the guards have made use of some sigil to push his attention away.
“What are you talking about?” Anton replies. “When we were riding west?”
Calla’s brow stays scrunched to keep the rain out of her eyes. She doesn’t answer. After a few beats, Anton figures it can’t be that important if she doesn’t feel the need to elaborate, and he gazes onto the camp again.
This will be a conundrum. They do not want to make a big ruckus, because the longer it takes news of an attack to reach August, the farther away he will be, and the less likely he sends additional soldiers, or pivots the whole army to focus on blocking travel routes at the river.
They also do not want to make a small ruckus, because if the entire task force in Janton is not eradicated, then any attack was for nought.
August will continue occupying the province in collaboration with the yamen and the palace soldiers.
This army did not travel light—they would have come bearing coins and jewels.
Gifts and deeds and titles for the barracks that continue to be staffed in Janton Province, and if there is pouring rain, there is no heretic who has made their claim for territory yet.
“We are two people against two hundred, give or take,” Calla says. “The only advantage is the hour and the likelihood that most of the camp is sleeping. But the moment one guard on night duty spots something, they’re all going to be up and running.”
A flash of light arcs up from the basin. Someone is jumping. Before the light has settled, a second flash comes, sending them right back to their originating body.
Anton knows what technique that is. He’s seen the Weisannas employ it around the palace. Post fewer guards on the perimeter to create a false sense of negligence, then check in by jumping into satellite bodies. Brings about faster response times than calling for help.
Calla eyes the scene. When there’s another flash of light, she asks, “Satellite guards?”
“It would appear so,” Anton replies. “They made camp this far from the yamen to prevent being ambushed.”
It wasn’t easy finding the camp. The yamen seemed abandoned when Anton and Calla rode by.
Their assumption was that the army would stay in the vicinity of the yamen—how else would they enforce their roadblocks for travelers going southward?
But the plains were empty, as was the mouth of the wide province roads.
Calla, with her hood pulled high, took it upon herself to interrogate two farmers and one man bracing a fishing rod over his shoulder.
The farmers had no interest in answering her questions, whether palace guards had set up in the area and where their base of operations could be found.
While they argued back and forth with Calla to an infuriating degree of evasion, their hands would gravitate to their pockets, and Anton braced for an attack, for drawn blades or provisional explosives.
But each farmer went their way before long, pulling no weapon, and Anton realized they were in fact feeling around to check on the coins they received.
In any case, the fisherman turned out to be a better source. He complained that he had been finding discarded nutshells washing up on the rocks of his special spot. Those cursed guards from the capital, thinking they can pay their way through the provinces.
So here they are. On the fisherman’s rocks.
“They kept most of the Weisannas with August,” Anton states. “When I looked across the front line, it was an unbalanced count. Almost no regular guards. They would have sent most of them here to perform blockade duty, alongside a handful of Weisannas they could spare.”
Hence the dummy perimeter, with Weisannas jumping to keep an eye over the scene.
“I imagine that the best form of ambush involves jumping and striking,” he goes on. “But there are still enough Weisannas present to make it risky.”
Even a handful can turn the tide. Can grab him while he’s moving in and out, trap him in place, and kill him.
Another flash of light—but this one came from the clouds. Calla turns her head skyward. She glares into the clouds. Thunder rolls along the basin.
“I can,” she says softly.
Anton frowns.
“Jump Weisannas,” Calla clarifies when the silence draws long. “Remember?”
But she has not jumped elsewhere since she took the crown. Since her possession of this object—this divine object that marks the difference between palace brats performing theater and a true coup.
“If Otta is anywhere in the vicinity—”
“She’s not,” Calla says. “I’d feel it if she was.”
“Nonetheless, you can’t play with fire and leave your body,” Anton says. Not for long, anyway. Their escapade swapping with each other was something different.
“Wear it.”
Water builds up in his ear canals. Sloshes about, threatening to slither inside his body and slow him down.
“What?”
“Move to a safer nook. This will be over in a few minutes. If it’s not, come to my aid.”
And before he can protest, Calla drops. He curses violently.
Glances around, trying to determine the chances someone could approach him here, the chances that someone invades Calla while there’s no qi inside the vessel, but the rules have changed anyway.
It doesn’t take proximity to invade Calla when Anton jumped across three provinces from the manor in Kelitu, for fuck’s sake.
No more time to waste.
Anton jumps and opens his eyes in Calla’s body.
Calla is still rather new to the feat of jumping.
During the games, she could not fathom how Anton did it with such indifference.
The problem, Calla considers, is that she’s never forgotten how awful her first jump was.
Searing pain, starting deep and tearing outward, ripping her apart and apart and apart.
It has never happened like that again, but it is hard to leave the memory behind.
She lands, and her shoes are too tight. Gentle flooding has hit the lowest part of the basin, where the army makes their camp. Calla takes inventory. She must consider every detail before she acts, because once she starts, she can’t stop.
A Weisanna stands within view, at the side of the tent. He’s holding an electric lamp and letting the blue-white light cast a wide net, his silver eyes watching the outer ring where their regular guards wait. Calla reaches down. Finds a knife looped through the belt that this body wears.
How safe the Weisannas have always considered themselves. Arrogant enough not to sheathe their blades. Arrogant enough to let them sit within quick and easy reach.
Calla plucks it and plunges the blade into her throat.
Anton grabs his collapsed birth body. Just as the first muffled shout echoes into the night, he draws back into the line of the trees.
His step skids on the mud. He has misjudged his balance, not because he isn’t used to moving in a new body, not because he needs to adapt to another body while he’s staring at his own, but because there is endless qi swirling within him, and it is a staggering sensation with each breath.
He couldn’t comprehend the extent of it when he’d swapped rapidly with Calla.
When he’s steadily wearing her, though, his throat turns warm, his heart threatens to thud from his chest.
All this power. How does Calla ever manage to sit still while holding it in?
“All right, come on,” he mutters, throwing his empty vessel over his shoulder.
They’d hitched their horse to a tree, out of sight from the beachfront.
He considers returning, but he bristles against being put out of commission from battle.
An in-between, it is. Anton braces his knees, grimacing at Calla’s loosely laced shoes, and descends the slopes onto the shore.
His vision flickers. Just as his feet hit the sand, a sharp sensation dances across his forehead, and he winces, his hand flying to the base of the crown. Light flashes from the camp. Overhead, the storm takes on the appearance of a beast’s maw. Jaws unhinging, ready to swoop in on its grub.
You’ve doomed us.
Anton turns fast. He lunges for a blade, but Calla is not armed; her sword went missing in Daol.
He’s left only to throw his hand out… except there is no one behind him anyway.
Only furious waves. Water frothing up the sharp rocks, water jettisoning down its various fast-moving conduits.
He thought he heard a voice. He thought—
White light flares across his vision. He slaps at his face, frantic, trying to resist the intrusion.
It isn’t quite the sensation of someone trying to jump him, but it isn’t unlike it either.
The overwhelming presence of another qi source.
The push to consume what is in its wake, and in this case it’s Anton, merely trying to protect Calla…
He drops to his knees. He can feel the rain on his face, his fingers digging into the sand.
He is perfectly aware that he remains crouched in this part of Janton Province while Calla flits about August Shenzhi’s camp, but before his eyes, he sees a palace.
White-and-gold walls. Long, sturdy tables made of stone.
A throne that grows a hundred feet tall, and a man seated upon it, equally large.
“You must answer for what you’ve done,” the man booms, and Anton staggers on the beach.