Page 23 of Vilest Things
“Let’s make this quick,” Anton declares.
He doesn’t take a seat at the table. He walks right past the guards toward Leida, and Galipei grabs his elbow. Calla crosses her arms over her chest, waiting for the outcome, and unsurprisingly, Anton pays Galipei no mind, brushing him off as he would any irritating councilmember bringing an irrelevant agenda to the throne. The lights in the room are dim. It is hard to argue that there is anything odd about the way Anton doesn’t look directly toward Galipei.
He stops before Leida. While he inspects her, Calla looks down and stares at her own ragged fingernails, sighing to herself. If there is any danger, Galipei will step in. He’s always been somewhat of a kicked dog in August’s presence, and it’s ten times as bad with Anton playing imposter. Poor loyal Galipei. It must hurt when the one you love most disappears.
Calla doesn’t realize she’s been picking at her nail bed until a bead of blood wells by her thumb. She winces, smooths down the skin, and clasps her hands firmly behind her back. Though the meeting room doesn’t cleanly face the marketplace the way the throne room does, she can hear the bustle outside the palace. In her mind’s eye, the coliseum flashes vividly—the circular walls that boxed her in when she entered the final battle, the imposing masses on either side that wouldn’t let her leave when they dragged Anton in.
August hadn’t given them a chance to run. The moment Calla and Anton faced each other at the end, only death would preserve whatever love they’dthought they possessed. Really, it’s August’s own fault he’s been invaded as a result.
Yet he will still blame her when he comes back.
“Leida,” Anton says. “Do you know why we’ve brought you here?”
“I’m blindfolded, not earplugged,” she says. “I can hear all this muttering.”
“Good. It would be a waste of my time to stand here and explain it. Did you plant more of your people in the provinces?”
Leida doesn’t answer immediately. Her brow furrows, half disappearing behind the fabric of her blindfold. The air conditioner in the corner of the room blows lukewarm air. Calla can’t tell whether it’s supposed to be cooling or heating.
“No.”
“No?” Anton mimics August’s head shake. It’s subtle: the smallest left-right-left with his lips thinned. Calla has never seen Anton do that in any of his other bodies, so surely this is a maneuver adopted intentionally for faithful emulation. It shouldn’t, but the realization takes her by surprise. She forgets sometimes that Anton and August were once very well acquainted. Far more than she was with August despite their familial connection, and certainly more than she was with Anton despite the frantic, heedless time she had with him.
“I’ve already confessed to conspiracy inside the twin cities. I have nothing to do with the provinces.”
Calla feels an itch skate along the side of her face. Her eyes flicker to its source.
“Somehow, no one in this room believes you. What about your co-conspirators in the Crescent Societies? Any names come to mind with connections to the provinces?”
Otta, upon catching Calla’s gaze again, smiles. Calla looks away, then wonders a second later if she shouldn’t have hastened, in case the response made her appear intimidated.
“No one in the Crescent Societies was myco-conspirator. They’re religious fanatics. I offered them an opportunity to commune with the old gods, and they took it.”
Someone at the table clears their throat. Calla can’t immediately place the woman who stands, though her eyes are a steely gray, familiar in a way where Calla suspects she might have once been a councilmember for the Palace of Heavens.
“An attack in Laho found three generals with their chests carved clean and their hearts taken,” the woman says. “This is nearly identical to what the Hollow Temple did on your instructions.”
Leida tilts her head. “Is that you, Councilmember Savin?”
The woman grimaces. She glances around the table like she’s seeking backup, but none of the other councilmembers look too eager to jump in. Most of their faces blur together—Calla could name a handful and would start to stutter after that.
“It is.”
“I thought I recognized your voice. Is that all? Is this why I have been disturbed from my eternal imprisonment?”
“It doesn’t have to be eternal,” Councilmember Rehanou interjects. “We’re at liberty to have you executed at any point.”
Anton holds up a hand. His sleeve falls to his elbow. “We don’t need to be issuing threats.”
He was once friends with Leida too, Calla reminds herself. August Avia, Leida Miliu, and Anton Makusa—even from the other palace, she knew their names in tandem, knew that the three came together as a unit. She forgets, because the trio fell apart when Anton was exiled, and before that, when he and Otta became a unit of their own.
Otta is still watching her.
“As I stated to His Majesty weeks ago, I never instructed the Hollow Templeto do that.” Leida’s voice remains steady. “I shared my knowledge about jumping. They took it too far.”
“Tell us this, then,” Councilmember Savin says. She has a tablet in front of her. A clunky thing, probably only with enough storage to hold one picture and three documents. “What do you know of the Dovetail?”
Calla, almost unconsciously, steps forward, chasing that first appearance of a thread. Though a few guards look at her askance, she’s saved from rudely interrupting when Venus Hailira grimaces and says:
