Page 30 of Vilest Things
The guards exchange a look. “We’re going to have to take you in until we can verify your identity.”
Bibi sighs. She slides one palm along her bag handle, gauging its circumference. “Really? Is that necessary?”
“It’s only protocol.”
“Come on,” Bibi pleads. “There aren’t cameras on this alley, anyway.”
“Yes, but—” The guard pauses. Frowns. “How do you know that?”
Bibi swings the handle of the bag around the neck of the Weisanna in a sudden lurch. She has her hands tight around the ends, squeezing hard, and ducks when his arms flail out, trying to loosen her hold. The other guard is taken aback for a second, then he’s scrambling for his pager, a weapon, any idea of what the fuck they’re usually supposed to do when a civilian is stupid enough to attack an elite guard of the palace.
It takes a decent amount of time to strangle someone, but it also takes a decent amount of strength to hold them down for it. Maybe the other guard knows he will lose this fight if he engages. Instead of pulling his baton, he simply turns on his heel and runs out of the alley.
Bibi finally feels the Weisanna fall slack. She grunts, letting him collapse to the ground before closing her eyes, tapping into her surroundings. Her lungs seize. Blots appear before her vision: moving qi there, and there, andthere—
She jumps, stumbling the first few steps when she takes over the orange-eyed guard’s body. His legs are still in motion, running at high speed, before her qi seizes control entirely and she grinds to a halt, her hand bracing against the brick wall. The coliseum rumbles behind her. She rests her hands upon her knees, letting her frantic heart still.
The guard’s uniform is unfamiliar on her skin. Rough and bunched at the elbows. She goes to scratch her arms, and then she’s sobbing in loud gulps, trying to expunge the hot pellet that sits in her lungs.
Bibi cries every time she kills someone. It’s not that she feels bad. She would cry just the same after she ran a lap around a farm in Laho or raced the neighborhood kids to climb the tallest tree in the sparse grove. The tears feel like a release after such exertion, confirmation that her body is capable of strong, strenuous matters.
She wipes her tears off her face, the scruff of facial hair scratching her palms. She’s got to go back for her birth body. It’ll be safe in her new apartment while she wears this guard. Then she’ll check in, report that this little roach they’ve plucked out of the provinces is good at her job.
Step one is causing fear. Paranoia. The sneaking suspicion that something will come skittering over the palace’s bare feet the moment they stop for a rest.
The next step is infestation.
CHAPTER 10
Galipei doesn’t follow lockdown protocol. He hears that August has been sighted in the east wing, speaking with Otta. In that moment, he makes up his mind to leave him be. He puts on a long jacket in his rooms. Leaves his pager behind so that Seiqi can’t annoy him any more than he’s already annoyed. When he passes the guards watching the west exit, he nods, and they let him through.
A light mist of rain falls from the skies. Dreary afternoon hours. It’s the time of day when no one has much energy for anything, and across the twin cities, activity draws to a lull. Night will breathe a second wind onto the day, push everything into motion again once the moon rises over the horizon. Until then, most of San-Er is only buffering with lackluster effort.
Not Galipei, though. He pats down his trousers, checking that he has his weapons. No one will stop him from going off to do his own thing, but itisrather frowned upon to be away from his charge for so long. Probably no one is stopping him because Galipei is usually the one frowning if other guards don’t put in enough hours.
Nothing has made sense lately. He knows as well as anyone that August is prone to disappearing periodically, jumping across the cities to complete a taskhimself. But Galipei was always in the loop—always the one covering for him so that the rest of the guard thought August was resting peacefully in his rooms.
Galipei has never been on the other side of that before.
You only want his attention,the most vicious part of him whispers.You’re bitter that the rest of the kingdom needs him too.
No,he fights back. It’s not only that. The dismissals. The distraction. The newdye. August has been shedding every part of himself, and Galipei is flummoxed trying to parse the logic behind it. It took seeing the jet-black hair to be certain that this isn’t merely his imagination.
That night years ago, when August asked for help the first time he bleached his hair, he was more upset than Galipei had ever seen him.
“What’s wrong?” Galipei demanded. “Did something happen?”
“Nothing more than an ordinary day in the wondrous Palace of Earth,” August replied wryly. It had been a few months since Galipei had been assigned to him. On the other side of the capital, the Palace of Heavens hadn’t fallen either, which meant King Kasa hadn’t yet gone off the rails with security. He was happy to provide when August requested a study of his own, up in the palace’s highest turret. Galipei thought it was because the prince wanted the view; August would tell him soon after that he wanted the isolation, away from visiting nobles or aristocrats begging a favor. That study was his reprieve from the world, and only those who really needed to seek him out would climb that high.
Galipei remembers taking the brush from August and crouching down to help. There was a mirror hanging on the wall—it’s since come down after Leida nudged it too hard two years ago and put a chip in the corner—and Galipei watched August’s expression slowly ease while he spread the dye.
“This lightener is good quality,” Galipei remarked. “Barely leaves a smell.”
“Only the best,” August replied quietly. “Or else it wouldn’t be permitted in the palace.”
Already, Galipei knew he was putting together a picture of August Shenzhi.The crown’s heir hated the palace with a volatile energy, yet he couldn’t separate himself from it. To stray too far would be to lose the power it gave him, and to get too close meant sacrificing the grand ideas he had in his head about change. The Prince August of back then had wanted to wield the throne in his way, and according to his beliefs. It would be vastly different from the way Kasa managed it.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” Galipei asked when August finally emerged from the bathroom.
