Page 55 of Vilest Things
Anton makes the slow amble back to his room.
CHAPTER 18
While a slow rain creeps into the southern provinces that next morning, San-Er receives less than a drizzle, which trickles down the cramped building exteriors at such slow speed that the rivulets have practically dissipated by the time they reach ground level.
Yilas doesn’t like it when it rains. Before she scrimped together enough money to get corrective surgery on her eyes, the world was always blurry. Perhaps she could have worn her glasses more often, but the cities were too damp, and if she clamped on a mask during the colder, plague-ridden months, her glasses would fog up constantly. It felt easier to walk around squinting, her brow furrowed in a permanent frown. Other attendants working the palace thought she was so rude. She never smiled at familiar faces when they passed each other in the hallways. Chami had once offered a solution by suggesting that Yilas smile at everyone she passed, and Yilas decided she preferred it if they thought her unbearable.
Her world is usually crystal clear these days. When it rains, though, it brings back some of those old feelings, that weight in her chest. The water on the windows smudges the lights into amorphous blots. Mist congeals the neon signs, forms a muggy veil over the city.
“Good morning.” Chami descends from the apartment above the diner, walks over, and drops a kiss on Yilas’s bare shoulder. They’ve got a few minutes before opening. “You’re up early.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Yilas says. She cups her mug of tea closer to her chest. Sadly, it has gone cold since she made it. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
Chami shakes her head, and a lock of her hair drops into her pink eyes. Instinctively, Yilas reaches to tug the lock, which makes Chami smile. She’s always reminded Yilas of the godlings in their storybooks, the deities that haven’t grown power-hungry enough to claim a title of their own but still flit about the world prettier than anything a mortal mind can comprehend.
“You can always wake me.” Chami leans forward, her eyes closing again for a momentary rest when her cheek meets Yilas’s arm. Yilas is still dressed in her pajamas, the worn fabric fraying at the left shoulder strap. Chami must notice the detail too, because she loops her finger through it and tugs once.
“Didn’t I buy you new pajamas last month?”
“These are perfectly fine, I’ll have you know.”
“Yes, but”—Chami shifts, only to bite on Yilas’s shoulder, taking a solid chomp—“you can also buy new clothes for the sake of it. The city isn’t going to strike you down for that.”
The logical part of Yilas knows that. The frightened part still lives in that palace, counting forward the months that her savings could last if she finally ditched the job. She could have it worse, she knows. She could have been born outside the wall. She could have been born without two parents who spent every day of her childhood making sure she had food. Still, working in the palace opened her eyes to howsomeof them were allowed to live, and perhaps she didn’t have it that bad, but it would only take a small hole opening in her beat-up safety net to land her there.
“I’ll wear the new ones tonight,” Yilas promises.
“Great,” Chami says. “I can’t wait to take them off.”
“You—”
A loud thud on the diner’s doors cuts off the rest of her teasing reproach. Immediately, she and Chami prepare for the worst, lunging for a spatula and a fork, respectively. When the doors thud again, Yilas hears “It’s me! It’s meeeeee!” and she rolls her eyes, setting the spatula down.
Chami blinks. “Is that Matiyu?”
“It sure is,” Yilas mutters. She goes to unlatch the glass door, then hurries her little brother into the diner. His face is entirely obscured under a mask and a low hat, but she’d know his voice anywhere, however muffled. “What are you doing here?”
“I can’t stay at the palace anymore.” With a huff, Matiyu starts yanking off his layers. He slaps the mask covering down onto the table. Chami winces and uses the fork still in her hand to scoop it up for the trash can.
“What happened?” Yilas asks. “It’s hardly dawn.”
“People aredying! There are bodies showing up everywhere!”
“I heard that was Calla,” Chami calls from the kitchen, where she’s depositing Matiyu’s mask.
Matiyu plucks his wool hat off. “She only went after Leida Miliu. Calla’s not even in San-Er anymore—the delegation set off yesterday. They took lots of Weisannas with them too. Terrible idea, because the palace is clearly vulnerable and under attack.”
A smallmeowr!chirps from under his jacket.
Yilas blinks hard. “Did you kidnap Mao Mao from the palace?”
“Kidnap?” Matiyu yelps. He opens his jacket. Pliant as ever, Calla’s cat slowly pokes his face out from the crook of Matiyu’s arm, not the slightest bit stressed. “Irescuedhim. I was hoping you still had contact with Calla and could get a message to her.”
“About Mao Mao?”
“No!” Matiyu exclaims. He lets Mao Mao emerge from his jacket, leapingto the floor. The cat sniffs a sticky puddle by the booth. “The murders, Yilas! In the palace!”
He pulls a disk out of his pocket. Chami waves Mao Mao over in the kitchen doorway, cooing about feeding him raw meat, and he patters to her on his fluffy paws. Matiyu tilts his head in that direction too, shaking the disk in his hand vigorously.
