Page 40 of Vilest Things
Anton chokes out a laugh. The sound must be distinct enough to travel through the door, because on the other side, Seiqi Weisanna stops trying to summon his presence. She goes still, listening, and Calla shoots Anton a warning glance. He ignores her.
“This is rich,” he hisses. “You replaced an ugly tyrant with a prettier one, Calla. One who will smile and shower pleasantries about your health, then release a brigade of soldiers to burn your village nonetheless.”
“Shut up.”
“Did you think King Kasa’s only problem was being sadistic enough to let his civilians kill each other in his annual games? You don’t think it might be the provinces he continued to starve for his wealth? The noble families he wiped out as soon as they disagreed with him? You didn’t save the kingdom, Calla. Unless a new throne means Talin splintered back to its original form, your victory didn’t change this kingdomat all.”
Calla staggers back. Her throat is closing. She doesn’t register her legs moving, nor does she notice she’s still trying to make distance until her neck is cold and flush with the wall. Her hands grope around to get her bearings. She buries her fingers into a tapestry, feeling the threads dig into skin.
“If you are so righteous,” she gasps, “then why don’t you do it? Pluck out the royal soldiers in each province. Stop taking their crops, stop collecting taxes. Let San-Er produce its own blood.”
It’s dangerous to say this. Someone like Anton might do it simply to prove a point. He will raze a trail wherever he flits and leave those remaining afterward to deal with the fallout.
“I don’t want to,” he replies easily. “Unlike someone”—August; he speaks of August, but he knows that Seiqi might hear him—“I can admit that I prefer it when everyone answers to me. I have everything at my disposal.”
Calla releases the tapestry in her hands, forcing her posture straight with conviction. The fibers have carved markings into her fingers, drawing a map ofmourning. Quietly, so quietly that she can barely hear herself, she says, “You don’t have me, do you?”
Maybe there would have been a time when that meant something. Anton pauses, and he must know what she’s saying. He must hear that she would still run with him now if he was willing; he must feel that her anger exists only in the space they’ve made before them.
“I should condemn you to execution.” He turns away. “But I think it’s better that you suffer the consequences of your actions. Open your eyes, Calla.”
He yanks the door open. Seiqi Weisanna immediately scuttles back, trying to act like she wasn’t struggling to make out what was happening in the room.
“Your Majesty,” she greets. She peers over Anton. “Princess Calla, are you coming too?”
“Go ahead without me,” Calla says.
Seiqi doesn’t waste any time. She ushers Anton off, and then Calla is left alone in the sitting room, listening to activity rumble through the palace—through the walls, the floors, the ceilings.
She looks down at her wrist again. Otta’s splotch of blood has dried, barely larger than a thumbnail.
Images of the Hollow Temple play again before her eyes. The bodies that the Crescent Societies had stolen, stacked, and sacrificed.
I want her heart,Pampi Magnes says in her mind’s echo.It is a very special one.
The arena, then, flashes in vivid memory too. The body that Anton was wearing, bleeding out under the plunge of her knife. It was barely comprehensible in Calla’s overwhelming grief. She shouldn’t have needed to do it. She wouldn’t be arguing with him now if they had left before the arena.
Calla scratches at the blood drop. It comes off easily, flaking to the carpet.
It’s not fair,she wants to scream.Why? Whyher?
How strange it is if their bodies have always had the ability to use qi like this.How strange that ordinary civilians haven’t stumbled onto it if that is the case. Instead, it’s fucking Otta Avia who can freeze a knife in midair.
Resentment trickles down Calla’s throat like a syrup. Once the council debates the severity of having a false crown, they are most certainly going to go looking for the real one. Calla needs her sword back. She needs answers.
Making up her mind, she zips up her jacket and storms into the hallway, in the direction of her rooms.
CHAPTER 14
Despite their best attempt to keep a clamp on the hysteria, news spreads in an instant.
Heavens knows how, given the palace is on lockdown. Yet the whispers travel beyond their doors, hit the streets before the clock can strike the new hour. San-Er has never been built for wide-scale chaos. The most it can handle is the king’s games: a handful of players across the millions, uncaring of governance because all but one will be wiped out by the month’s end anyhow. It used to be that anyone who disrupted the twin cities met a quick fate. The palace guards easily outnumbered the small outbursts. They would put a stop to the fuss, and San-Er would release a breath of relief that the clog in its arteries had been unblocked.
“Main thoroughfare is entirely gridlocked,” Galipei reports into his field radio. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
This time, it is a spontaneous eruption. Civilian after civilian, streaming out from their homes in the only display of discontent they are capable of. San-Er wants answers. They want a king chosen by the heavens. A king confirmed by the heavens. Without the crown’s mandate, they haven’t had a real kingdom since the war with Sica, and this is a terrifying prospect—as though the sky hasfallen and the ground crumbles under every step. Without the crown’s mandate, they may have tolerated a cruel monarchy for no reason other than someone’s sly tricks centuries ago on Talin’s first mass migration into the twin cities.
“We still have most of the guards waiting at the coliseum. Should we move some numbers?” one of his cousins responds on the radio.
