Page 67 of Vilest Things
… don’t… it’ll work… listen to me… Sinoa, no, no—
Calla squeezes her eyes shut, bracing her head in her hands. She keeps hearing that name. Again and again, whether the words draw nearer or flitter farther, she’s hearing the same name.Sinoa.
Across the tent, Joselie is fast asleep. Calla pushed all the pillows at the old woman and took station in the corner, sitting with her arms propped on her knees. Joselie—thank goodness—didn’t bother protesting and promptly went to sleep.
… lose… can’t defeat me.
Calla gets to her feet. Enough. She isn’t so much of an idiot to think she’s conjuring anameout of nowhere, so it can’t possibly be delirium without cause. Every spasm at the base of her head prompts a hiss of voices, and each time they get louder, she has the peculiar sense that they are memories she’s forgotten about.
This wasn’t her original name, though. No way. She would know if it was. She would recognize it. The more she tries to bear it, the more she’s certain these voices aren’t talking toher.Certainly not the little orphan girl she would have been when she possessed a different name.
Calla tries to stretch out her arm. The wound complains as soon as she moves and, registering the feeling of the bandage soaking through, she winces and goes to undo it. Underneath, the cut has mostly stopped bleeding. Changing her bandages once more should do the trick to soak up the rest of the goop.
Calla stops. She leans back, putting her arm in the lantern light beaming through the tent fabric from outside. It’s too dark. She tosses the bandage onto the floor and leaves the tent, goose bumps rising on her arms immediately.
With better light, she eyes the smear of blood below her puckered wound.She feels deranged at first. The voices continue whispering in her ear—she must be searching for a place to put blame. But this isn’t conjured. The smear of blood makes one straight horizontal line, then a double loop upward. This isn’t an inadvertent stain. This is another sigil.
A new burst of pain explodes behind her eyes, as if confirming the realization. Stumbling, Calla goes back into her tent and grabs her sword, leaving her attendant to sleep. She moves quick and low, keeping out of the eyeline of the guards. Calla reaches Otta’s tent in seconds, opens the flap before lunging in.
The tent is empty.
Calla pauses, drawing to a stop and recalculating. She scans the neat pallet and finds nothing of interest. It’s not like there is anywhere on the campsite that Otta could go. Any guard who spots her would politely ask her to return to her tent.
Sinoa… now…now…
She reverses back out through the tent flap. There must be rainfall nearby in the province. Mist hovers low to ground, painting the surroundings with a gray haze. The voices echo, again again again, and by some instinct, Calla turns and gazes into the distance, toward the abandoned city.
Now I’ve got you.
“What the fuck?” Calla says out loud. “Otta?”
Come on.
Calla waits a moment, trying to determine whether she’s hallucinating this entire episode. In her periphery, there stands a guard humming, bored, while he peruses his surroundings. He hasn’t noticed her yet. Though Calla remains where she is, a terrible twisting sensation funnels up her nose, presses at her eyes, illuminates the space around her. She almost gags when she blinks and finds yellow light pressing behind her eyes.
“Shit,” she spits. She clamps her arms around her head. The night tilts; the world tilts. All her other cheap tricks aren’t working this time—when she triesto throw her hands out to push the feeling away, nothing ejects. She is an animal sealed inside a glass cage, shaken by a giant’s hand for amusement.
“Stop,” Calla gasps. She scrabbles for her collar. Maybe if she scrubs the sigil off, this will all be over. Maybe if—
The light in her eyes flares to an intolerable point. The moment the nearest guard turns away, Calla breaks into a dead sprint, heading for the city.
CHAPTER 22
The city is gated. Although Calla can see between the gaps of its tall bars, dirt has clumped around the structure over the centuries, sticking to the hinges and rusting over the latches. It would be quicker to climb to the top using the dirt mounds as support rather than attempt to pull the latch open.
She’s scrambled up the bars in seconds, then leaps onto the other side with a hard crunch on the gravel. The half-moon is sufficient to light her way. The city streets take shape before her, glowing faintly with the yellow brightness coming from her own eyes.
The whine in her ears prompts her to keep going. No time to linger. She needs to find Otta, and then she’s going to bash her head in until Otta tells her how she can stopherhead from doing this.
Sinoa… don’t do… to me…
The voices are persistent. Calla swallows hard, pressing down on her sword while she runs so it doesn’t make noise knocking against her leg. The streets here are far wider than San-Er’s. While she moves fast, the buildings stand sentry on both sides. Some windows have been smashed in, others smeared with enough dirt to turn them opaque. There aren’t electric signs anywhere in sight. Stonetiles pave the roads, leaving enough room to push wooden barrows. One has been parked outside a white door.
“Otta,” Calla ventures, “I’m here. Come out.”
Silence. She slows. The structural damage worsens the deeper she goes into the city. A shopfront marked withPHARMACYis half caved in. A door on its other side appears to be the entrance into a residential block, the paper billing at the front asking prospective tenants to call a short number. Calla tilts her head. So it hasn’t been long enough that the paper has rotted. Yet it has been long enough that the phone towers have since gone down in the provinces. This city was emptied before the war, not after.
A howl travels through the night. Some mixture between animal and the cold sting of wind. Calla has to suppress the shiver dancing down her neck. The provinces are too large, too wide. San-Er guarantees every threat is forced into close proximity, but out beyond the wall, in the arena of the grand kingdom, someone could be waiting for an immeasurable amount of time before playing their hand.
