Page 54 of Vilest Things
Anton eyes the movement of her token. She’s overtaken him, at seventy-five.
“Have you considered,” she says, “that maybe I am here for you?”
“Sure,” he replies. “Finding your opportunity to force me out of August.”
Calla practically stabs her token down. “Protecting you. I acknowledge my wrongdoing in the Juedou, but outside of those coliseum walls, I was fightingbesideyou for most of the games. I am still that same person.”
If he can help it, Anton tries not to think about that final battle. The moment he relives the bag being torn off his head to begin the Juedou, he remembers August’s role in getting him there, and then he can concentrate only on August’s silence over the years, saying nothing of his family. The moment he goes back to the image of the coliseum at night, crowds cheering on all sides, he can only hear Calla saying,I love you. I love you, so this is a favor to you, and enough fury boils in his blood to burn him inside out.
Anton, here, says nothing to preserve the temporary peace they’ve found. He rolls the dice. Pushes his token to eighty-nine. And despite being a gasp away from reaching the last row, it is this exact number that has a chute taking him all the way back to square one.
“Oh, that is so vile,” he mutters beneath his breath, following the chute down. Anton sighs, gesturing for Calla to take her next turn. “Go on, then. Victory is yours.”
“Can’t.”
Another machine screeches from a distant corner. “Excuse me?”
Calla shrugs. “I’m out of rolls. Game over.”
Surely she is joking. Anton doesn’t know any kid who still plays by the ten-rolls rule.
“Just like that?” he asks. “You’ll accept loss while you’re so close?”
“They’re the rules, Anton. I can’t change the rules.” She pauses, scoffing. “I suppose I could do this.” With one finger, Calla flips over the whole game board. Their tokens go flying across the table. “Now we both win.”
He shakes his head. Any earlier humor dancing crookedly to fit between them has since disappeared.
“Don’t push her, Calla,” he says, returning them to the matter at hand. “For the good of the kingdom. You can dothatfor me, can’t you?”
Calla puts the tokens back into the box. Then the dice. Her lips have thinned, and Anton reads the expression for irritation. That, at least, is what he expects before Calla looks up and meets him with misery in her yellow stare, and suddenly he wonders if he can read her at all.
“You have so quickly forgotten,” she says quietly, “that I would have razed the twin cities for you. There wasoneirreconcilable matter in what you could ask of me, and you pressed on it too hard.”
Winning in the arena. King Kasa dead.
Anton hesitates. “Princess—”
She’s already stood up. Her sleeves flutter on either side of her. After spending so long in the games together, he has half a mind to warn her that she should detach those before they tangle her up in a fight.
“Yet now,” Calla says, “now the irreconcilable matters between us grow and grow. But I’m in no mood to yell about that tonight, so fine. You can keep Otta compliant. Learn the secrets you need. But don’t forget that you arenotthe one who’s supposed to be acting for the good of the kingdom.”
“And you are?”
Calla freezes in her step. “I beg your pardon?”
“You seem to like playing executioner,” Anton continues, refusing to heed the warning in her voice. It’s easier to speak to her like this, when she’s turned away from him. She becomes a shadow of a woman, made up of hungry wisps and the smell of smoke, something impossible to grasp and therefore something he was only meant to lose. “Getting rid of the people you’ve deemed worthwhile sacrifices, so on and so forth.”
He could be talking about himself. Or Leida Miliu, who used to be his friend, who used to insist she didn’t mind dying on the job, until her mother did. What a terrible way to go instead—without the glory of a fight but the quick plunge of a profane princess’s blade. Perhaps he should be grateful that, at least, Calla offered him the fight.
Without another word, Calla leaves the arcade, her sleeves sweeping after her like twin streams of blood. In her absence, Anton can only shake his head, listening to the hum and the clank that surrounds him. “Winner! Winner! Winner!” that persistent machine hawks, and Anton finally gets to his feet with a heavy breath. Maybe it is a reminder directed at him. San-Er didn’t make him their victor, but he won the king’s games nonetheless.
Winner! Winner! Winner!
“I sure don’t think so,” he says, dragging a hand through his hair. The truth is, his fight with Calla never ended with the Juedou. If they’ve been exchanging blows since then, San-Er’s victor is still pending.
Calla has long disappeared from the stairwell. He waits a moment, paranoid that she is there, hiding, having decided to take him by surprise and shut him up.
Nothing.
