Page 10 of Vilest Things
It could all be chalked up to acting too fast, too rashly trying to establish himself as king, if it weren’t for the wall.
August has decided San-Er should be expanded. The wall is to be torn down and repositioned deeper into Eigi. None of it makes sense. August doesn’t do anything without planning for weeks—even months—in advance. August would not act on a whim. August would not plot anything without consulting Galipei first.
Yet in the two weeks since his coronation, he has done exactly that. Galipei surrenders to an involuntary shiver, feeling a bead of water land on his neck from the crawling pipes overhead. San-Er watches him move through the streets, omnipresent surveillance blinking from one dense walkway to another. It’s the same inside the palace. He hasn’t found a moment alone with August from thesecond he became king. On the few occasions where Galipei has tried to speak to him, to ask if he’s all right and offer counsel, August has been much more concerned about what his cousin Calla is doing—no, listen, Galipei, there must be some way to take her off this advisor role before she gets back from Rincun… Yes, I am perfectly fine, there’s no need for me to read over that report if they’re following instructions… Someone get me a list of the other royal advisors…
The palace comes into view, one of its turrets catching a flare of sunlight coming through the clouds. An unusual sight. The twin cities are normally as gray as sludge, the sky clogged and the streets dark without its nighttime lights.
Galipei frowns, circling around the rough bricks of the coliseum and blocking out the bustle of the marketplace within. He enters the palace through a side entrance. The mud under his boots trudges in with him.
“Galipei! I thought you’d never show up!”
He suppresses a sigh. He should have known he would be ambushed.
“Seiqi,” Galipei greets plainly. His stride doesn’t slow. He’s got work to do, and anyway, a Weisanna can walk and talk at the same time. “If this is about the wall, I’m not your reporting superior. I don’t know whether you’ll be posted on it.”
“I knowthat,” Seiqi replies, sounding a little offended that he would assume otherwise. She breaks into a light jog to keep up with him, her long braid flying up behind her. “You’re on the king’s private detail. Even my superior’s superior should answer to you.”
Technically, Seiqi’s superior’s superior would be August. So that is untrue.
“What is it, then? Must be important to spend so much time locating me.” There’s commotion ongoing in the south wing, somewhere overhead. Briefly, Galipei turns his head while they pass the junction between palace wings, curious enough to eye the servants who are hurrying down the broad green staircase. One of them has a soiled bedsheet bundled in her arms.
“I wanted to ask about the gala. Kayen says it’s still happening.”
“Then it’s still happening,” Galipei replies. The grand gala is just another occasion to have a banquet so the council can do a self-congratulatory pat on the back. “It’s an annual event and it’s been on the calendar for a while. Why would it stop this year?”
Seiqi grimaces. “It’s technically Kasa’s gala. You should tell King August to cancel.”
“Council isn’t going to like that,” Galipei counters. If there’sonematter that August needs to be careful with, it’s the council. The common people must fall in line no matter what he declares. He could proclaim that all civilians of Talin shall walk backward from now on, and they would do it. So long as there are soldiers ordering it, they will do it.
But if the council turns on him, he loses everything. The council controls the generals. The generals dictate orders to their soldiers. That is the only way Talin knows how to operate.
“The palace is practically in shambles, and we don’t have the resources to support another banquet tomorrow.”
“Yes, we do. It’s a large royal vault.”
“It’s not about themoney.Regardless of how many new palace employees Calla Tuoleimi lets the staff hire, we don’t have enoughguards. I mean, listen to that rumble upstairs. A whole unit of Weisannas is doing reconnaissance on the palace infirmary because of that blood-vomiting interloper. Waste of our talents, if you ask me.”
Is that what the sound is? Galipei, finally, slows down. There’s another staircase at this end of the corridor, with an accompanying flurry of activity too.
“Wait a moment.”Blood-vomiting interloper?“Is someone sick?”
Seiqi flips her bangs out of her face. They’re short, so she barely moves them, but the attitude behind the motion is there.
“Too good for palace gossip, are you? I don’t know how you haven’t heard. Northeast Hospital brought her to the palace an hour ago and said she’s beenscreaming about being a noble. Someone must have validated the claim if we’re letting her stay.”
Galipei halts completely, right next to the smaller staircase. A pit opens up in his stomach, as potent as a pulsing wound. There’s no chance. Absolutely none.
Do you have cinnabar?he asked his aunt.
For what? Are you trying to create an immortality elixir?
He bolts up the stairs, his head whirring in disbelief. The south wing grows tall before him, a silver fan running fast at the center of the painted ceiling. A selection of the pantheon—the most important cosmic gods—stretch their arms above the foyer space.
In their earliest years, before their war with Sica, before Talin conquered places like Rincun and Youlia, the kingdom would send delegations through the independent provinces in search of gods. The borderlands supposedly granted entrance to the heavenly plane. The old gods had disappeared into the mountains and left the land to mortals, allowing kings to rule in their stead, but the kings—as kings tended to—desired more. It wasn’t enough to accept the old gods watching over the kingdom once in a while on a prayer. The kings sought outright favors instead, if only they could find them.
So they dug through the mountains.
Though they found no gods, they did find cinnabar. The first people to mine the substance started to shake and seize. Later, they would claim to have seen the heavens and been within reach of immortality. They brought the mineral into the kingdom, into the Palace of Heavens in the north, then the Palace of Earth in the south. Royal chemists were given the instruction to carve open the line between mortal and god—their palace would supply them with as much of the mineral as they needed.
