Page 13 of Immortal Longings
The table rattles as a giant mallet thumps beside the blades, its handle decorated with gold. Too lavish. Too gaudy.
Calla spares a glance at the digital clock on the shelves.
“How about a thin sword?”
“Thin?” The shopkeeper frowns, looking almost offended. “You want something thin?”
“Give me the skinniest, sharpest thing you have.”
He mumbles something beneath his breath, hunching over carefully to look in a different drawer. After a few seconds, the shopkeeper brings out another sword, this one so narrow that it almost appears circular. When he turns it, letting the metal catch the light, Calla sees there is some flatness to the weapon after all—no more than an inch—tapering to create two bladed edges and allow for slashing.
Perfect. Calla holds out her hand, accepting it without further question.
“Are you sure? It’s not very—”
The security gate shudders. In that single heartbeat, Calla’s gaze whips over, and her arm strikes out of its own accord, drawing the sword from the shopkeeper’s grip. The gate whips up; a figure lunges in. Before the player has scarcely taken three steps into the shop, Calla plunges forward and has her blade deep in his gut. She twists. Pulls it sideways until the sword exits.
The player drops. His wristband smacks against the linoleum ground with a discordant sound, followed by his body.
And Calla stumbles, losing her balance.
For the good of the kingdom. For the good of the kingdom.
She recovers quickly, her hand bracing against the wall before she can fall into the bloody puddle. The player stares up at her, eyes pale yellow and dull. If he had escaped fast enough, the body would merely be abandoned. It would sit empty, a bloodless vessel with a cut down its middle, ready to be reused and occupied by another once the cut slowly stitched itself together. Empty vessels know how to fix themselves, just as a plant can regrow its bud. But if the qi inside dies first, the body follows, rapidly gaining the odor of rot, skin sagging right off the bone.
The shopkeeper sighs. “This is not the first year the fight has been brought inside, but I do wish you would be more careful with the splatter.”
Calla glances at her sword. The blood has dripped off, leaving the barest red stain upon the blade. She forces back the tightness in her throat, takes a deep breath until she has expelled the weight on her chest. The shopkeeper is waiting for her to respond, wearing the plainest expression on his face, and she clings onto the sight to convince herself that this is fair, that she’s only doing what she is meant to do.
“Better hurry, then,” the shopkeeper says, shooing her. “Out the back, go on.”
Calla has never claimed to be good. She has never wanted to be good. But she seeks it in every corner of the twin cities: a sign that goodness is something Talin is capable of. Every day, she wakes up and she begs for what she has done to mean something, for the kingdom to tell her she is right to believe it could be honorable, that it’s befitting to spill blood until there is nothing left of her, until all the pieces are gone, until she cannot feel this twinge of doubt each time her blade slips in and out. There is peace at the end of this. There must be.
Calla tightens her grip on her sword, takes its sheath, and whirls out the shop’s back door. Each second in the open is a second exposed. Especially now, when the players are all congregating so close…
She pauses at the end of the alley, listening hard. The crackle of an electric wire. The whirring of an enormous factory exhaust fan. Someone is near, watching. The sleeves of Calla’s red coat cut off shortly above her wrist; she doesn’t bother hiding her wristband. If she is combatted, she’ll fight as a player should.
The rustle finally comes again—from above. Calla darts back, grimacing when her boots splash into a dirty puddle, but she has narrowly avoided another player’s sword. The woman whirls around, her face caught in a snarl, her hair scrunched in two symmetrical buns at the top of her head. Blue-white light darts along her blade, as if a live current of electricity is running through the metal. On the ground now, she gears up for another slash, her knees bent and braced.
Calla was trained like that too, to stand so that no one could tip her off-balance. To imagine herself as heavy as a mountain. For her first lesson, she was taught that she wasn’t allowed to flinch, and they couldn’t move on until she learned how to plant her feet down and hold her ground no matter how hard she was hit.
Don’t you want to be strong?they had asked.Don’t you want to be infallible?
Yes,Calla had answered. Twelve years old and honed to be a weapon. Fourteen years old and molded into an unquestioning arm of the throne.
Good.In her memory, every face in the training room blurs together—former generals and retired soldiers who held enough favor in the Palace of Heavens to be teaching the young princess. They didn’t care to go easy on her. They all said the same things.Take the cuts. Take the burns. You will heal, and you will be braver.
Braver? I want to be stronger.
Strength is a conscious effort. First, you will be braver, and then you will be stronger.
They trained her for war. And she rose up to wage it on them.
The other player lunges. Calla’s sword arm lifts without thought. Instinct determines how she holds herself, blocking the strikes and deflecting them away.
“Coward,” the woman hisses. “Are this year’s games made of the weakest that San-Er has to offer?”
“I hope you’re not talking about me right now.” Calla throws a glance over her shoulder. It would be a faster course of action to retreat. She only needs to find an opening…
