Page 15 of Immortal Longings
Fifty-Seven pulls her sword out. When she turns around, her long hair whips into her face, and though the footage is fuzzy, though the saturation is turned so low it is almost grayscale, her eyes are bright with their unidentifiable color.
The crowd around him starts murmuring about the player, stunned by how professional her strike looked, enthralled by how fast she was. As Anton stands there, however, staring at the screen even when the newsreel moves on, he realizes what it is that has caughthisattention.
Number Fifty-Seven was not at the Daqun. He would remember someone like that. Even if she has swapped bodies since then, there was no one moving with her precision, because if there was, he would have marked her as a threat immediately.
“Interesting,” he mutters, stepping away from the crowd. He pulls his collar up, ruffling the short hair at the base of his neck. No one gives him a second glance as he merges back onto the streets. “Very interesting.”
San closes in around him. He picks his way through the wilting alleys, careful to watch his feet at the inclining steps on certain corners and paying even more attention at the declining ones in case he trips. If it weren’t so dark, he might take the rooftops instead, hopping from building to building above the city instead of below, but at this hour, there will be Crescent Society members peddling drugs and littering needles, and Anton isn’t eager to get into more fights than necessary, especially if they’re not game related.
He hasn’t been walking long when he comes across another gathering. Curiosity slows his stride. There’s a clump of people inside a small shop—one ofthose little corner businesses among hundreds that line the street-sides, operating in close proximity to one another. While the shops next to it have shuttered, this one has its overhead lights thrown on, and the owner stands right in the middle upon a table, raving to his captive audience.
Instinctively, Anton eyes a body in the crowd and prepares to jump again, just to get the itch out of his system. Then his gaze catches on the shop owner delivering his spiel, and though he hears none of what the middle-aged man is saying, he does see the flashing wristband.
A better idea occurs to him. He doesn’t mull on it a second time; once his mind is made, the course is set. Anton Makusa has always liked being the initial aggressor, and it has served him well for as long as he can remember… though, really, that isn’t saying much. Anton remembers very little of his childhood, nothing but shades and impressions when he tries to think back. Maybe it’s grief that has pushed it away. Maybe it’s trauma, his mind protecting him from his past because it would hurt more to access it. He doesn’t recall the palace before he was given a room alone. He doesn’t recall the first eight years of his life except in vague feelings: when his father sat on the council and his mother, the daughter of a former councilmember, strolled through the corridors of the Palace of Earth like she owned the whole kingdom.
The Makusas were high palace nobles. And one day, when his father took the family out on vacation to their house in Kelitu, the province he oversaw in rural Talin, a group of country civilians charged into the house armed to the teeth. That’s his earliest memory. It’s the only memory that ever plays with vivid color in his mind’s eye: his parents, diving in front of Anton and screaming for him toGet back! Get back! Go hide!and an intruder swinging steel and five-year-old Buira running and ten-month-old Hana upstairs crying as she woke up from the noise. That moment in time—that everlasting, terrifying moment—is the only reason he still remembers what his parents look like. When they were taking wound after wound, and all Anton could think wasIf I could jump into thebad man, I could stop him. I could stop anyone who ever wanted to do bad things. If only I could jump.
He knows now that it would have made no difference. There were too many of them. His parents might have tried, even if their skill was rusty given the palace’s intolerance for jumping, but they were more worried about pushing him out of the way, and then it was too late. Anton had been only eight years old. He could do nothing except hide behind the cupboard and watch his parents die, watch the attackers snatch Buira and storm the house for Hana. He didn’t know why they hadn’t come searching for him. They had seen him when they entered the house, but he had been spared, maybe because the scene had been too chaotic and he slipped their mind, maybe because he was too old to be of any use. When the palace guard arrived from the distress call, they said his sisters were gone. Assumed dead, but likelier trafficked into rural Talin as farmhands where help was needed. Anton wants to believe they are dead. It seems like a better fate.
They never found out why his parents had been attacked or who was behind it. They simply appointed a new noble as Kelitu’s councilmember and settled Anton back into the palace like nothing had ever happened. San-Er doesn’t care. The throne doesn’t care. Even councilmembers are replaceable if it lets King Kasa avoid acknowledging why his rural civilians hold such ire for his reign.
Anton would develop jumping when he was thirteen. The ability is hereditary, and so he had known he only needed to wait. He had passed those preadolescent years with a feverish energy, testing and testing until, one night, it finally happened.
Then he went overboard. With no parental figure to reprimand him or remind him that jumping was an act frowned upon in their elite society, he scared all his schoolmates with how often he did it—he even scared his best friend when they were reading together on a dull afternoon, jumping in and out of August Avia without permission, but August didn’t tell him off. August only asked whether Anton had found anyone hecouldn’tjump into yet.
That was an easy question, the answers all obvious ones. Bodies that weretoo feverish and sick, which automatically repelled invading jumpers. Doubled bodies that had already reached a two-qi limit. The Weisannas, with their birthright that somehow allowed an imitation of being doubled. Everyone else was fair game, so long as he concentrated hard enough.
The shop owner has reached the end of his spiel, if the interspersed laughter is any indication. Hovering outside the shop, Anton spots a hooked blade hanging off the man’s belt, stained at the edges like he hadn’t cleaned it properly after its last use. Given Anton’s childhood, a natural assumption would be that he couldn’t handle bloodshed. But blood is faultless. Blood is only a consequence. Better to draw blood before it can be drawn from you; better to exert power and hold control—toseizepower and maintain control.
Anton leans his body up against the alley wall. He readies himself. After seven years in exile, he’s learned that he’ll always choose the easiest path. Not the most honorable, not the cleanest, not the messiest. If he’s offered an opportunity, he will take it.
Anton jumps, opening his eyes after the flash of light, standing in the middle of the crowd. They jerk back suddenly, blinking in bewilderment.
“My apologies,” Anton says. His voice is scratchy, unaccustomed to such a low timbre. “You may wish to step back.” Then he pulls the knife from the player’s belt, holds it to his throat, and slashes. He feels the blood move fast, but before it can sap his own qi, Anton is jumping again, invading the body he left by the wall and letting the other player return to his own body, to the gaping wound made in the artery gushing at his neck. The crowd gasps—some in terror, some in delight.
Whatever their reaction, Anton is already hurrying away, looking for the nearest surveillance camera and tapping a finger to his wristband when he spots it. They need to know that it was his doing, in case the reels don’t put two and two together without seeing the flash of light. He wants the hit logged to him.
He wants the palace to tremble.
August follows the sound of the television broadcast into his study. He barely stops to shake the mud off his shoes first, even as he presses dirty prints onto the gleaming marble tiles. Palace servants apply a new layer of polish to the flooring every afternoon anyway. By tomorrow, all the mud will be gone.
The window in his study is open. When he enters, cheeks reddened from exertion, the cool easterly air from the distant seaside is a shock to his senses.
August reaches for a blindfold on his shelf.
“Dozing on the job?”
Galipei startles, jerking upright in his chair. Beside him sits August—or his birth body, blond head lolled downward and crown lopsided as if he’s simply having a rest.
“I figured I’d hear intruders approaching,” Galipei mutters, standing, “so long as it wasn’t you and your ghost feet.”
“Did you hearme?”
Galipei jolts again, his stance immediately shifting for combat, before the owner of the voice makes her appearance around the corner and Leida strides into the room. She pulls her breathing mask down to her chin so that they see her thin lips press into a line, immensely unimpressed.
“I’m starting to think you keep around one of the worst Weisannas,” she says to August.
“I’m inclined to agree,” August replies.
