Page 18 of Immortal Longings
“It’s fine,” he says tightly. “He won’t be trouble. He doesn’t have the resources to be trouble. I don’t want to draw more attention to this than necessary, and Anton is nothing if not an attention seeker.”
He’s also a powerful jumper. One who might put up a fight against Calla, who needs to win. But the mistake has been made, Anton Makusa has been drawn into the games, and now there’s nothing to do except let him play and try not to wince when someone takes him down.
Before Leida can argue against the verdict, something tremendous shakes in the distance, creaking the floor beneath their feet. At once, August and Galipei hurry to the window, searching through the night. The disturbance is easy to see: an explosion engulfs a section of Er, the flames flickering high and tossing debris off the buildings it has swallowed.
Leida sighs. She strolls to the window too, albeit with an unhurried air.
“That’s going to be tiresome to sort out,” she says. “We’d better hope the nonplayer casualties are too poor to bring it to the council.”
August says nothing. All else is forgotten in that moment, even Calla Tuoleimi and Anton Makusa, both entered as players in the king’s games. There is much to tend to, starting with possible foreign intruders in his city wreaking havoc before he can take over.
He reaches out and slams his window closed.
CHAPTER6
If Calla hadn’t grown up in the Palace of Heavens surrounded by maps and encyclopedias, she might have believed that a different kingdom beckons at the edge of San-Er, right where the land ends and gives way to sea.
She stands at the cliffs, looking out into the water. Each wave collides with harsh impact. Sprays salt up onto the city in droplets and splashes. There’s nowhere else in San-Er that feels like this, like she could dive past the jagged rockface, slice into the water, and then just keep going and going. Ten paces to her left, she would merge back into the alleyway and the city of San would envelop her again. But so long as she stands here, she is the ruler of this new kingdom, the conqueror of a large, unknowable terrain.
Calla breathes in deep, folding her arms over her chest to fight off the chill. Along the rest of the coastline, the twin cities have built small bays to let fishermen push their boats out to sea, but the truth is, no one goes very far. South of San-Er, there is only nothingness. Venturing too great a distance risks complete disorientation, losing all chance of return. Some of Talin’s bravest travelers saythere are other island-nations out in the waters, but if they do exist, they are of no use to the kingdom. As far as Talin is concerned, their only foreign contact is in the north, past the rural provinces and bleeding up into Sica.
A shiver dances along her spine. Calla turns over her shoulder.
The palace claims that, before there was just San and Er in the southeast, ruled by one family and two kings, there used to be a third island city along the edges of Er, hundreds of years ago. A third king, who had also held some part of Talin, fleeing when Sica came. Then its ruler was struck down by divine intervention, deemed unfit to govern, and when he refused to relinquish his throne despite edicts from their gods, the entire city sank into the waters along with its civilians.
Calla has always had trouble believing that story. In the era before surveillance cameras and electronic records, the palace could change the truth whenever they wished, and their tale about a third city that once stood in the distance seems too convenient to be true. Unlike the rest of the kingdom, Calla doesn’t even believe in divine will. If there are gods, then they are cruel for letting Talin carry on like this. Day after day, with no end in sight.
Calla finally steps away from the cliffs. She returns to the alley that will take her back into San, ducking into the tight passage with resolve tightening in her stomach. The time for lingering has passed. Her course of action today, which is not so different from these past few days since the Daqun, is to linger around the busiest parts of San, where she’s most likely to find the other players. It’s early morning, but the streets fall darker the moment she leaves the city periphery, moving farther inland. Grimacing, she pinches her nose to block out the acrid smells as she passes a row of factories. They rumble belowground, machines churning long bundles of noodles running side by side with those producing coat hangers and rubber plungers.
“Careful!”
Calla is ducking before the call even comes, swerving away from two menand the stepladder carried between them. They’re covered in sweat, stripped down to the waist from the factory heat. Some cramped streets in San exist without fuss, where one can only hear the all-surround symphony of their dripping pipes. Others are their own revolving worlds, bursting with activity of every sort. When Calla finally reaches a quieter walkway, she releases her nose and takes a deep breath. The air still stinks. Water collects in every grimy nook, but wet rot is better than the stench of trash.
She looks at her wristband. No alarm. The day of the Daqun is always a whirlwind, followed by silence thereafter. The palace does this on purpose, giving the games a false lull before they start sending their location pings. In such a dense environment, players could hide themselves away forever if they wanted to, and because there’s nothing entertaining about that, each player is sent an alarm once a day to direct them toward their nearest competitor. Without these daily pings, they would be playing entirely based on luck, hoping to catch a flash of a wristband in the open. One round could last years. Even if Calla watches the newsreels and tries to remember her competitors’ faces, most will change bodies at breakneck speed. Only Calla stays unchanging, opting to put a mask over her face instead.
She adjusts her mask cover, her face growing hot when it traps in her sigh. There is only one objective to playing in the games. Wipe the other players out as fast as possible, get her victory, kill the king. The quicker she does it, the quicker they are freed from this awful state of living. The quicker this collective suffering can ease and stop clanging through her ears every second.
As if the wristband heard her urges, it suddenly buzzes against her skin. Calla’s heart begins to pound.Finally.She almost forgets her training, tempted to surge forward immediately in her eagerness. But her body knows how to regain control, its muscle memory running through the same series of commands:Breathe in, calibrate, formulate action. As she whips her arm up to tap the screen, she heaves a deep breath, letting the stench of the street still her nerves. They’ll ping players in pairs or in small groups, which means it won’t happen untilthey’re within range of one another. The palace is always watching the wristbands move; they’ll put in the alarm when the players aren’t close enough to be ambushed, but aren’t far enough to engage in a wild goose chase. Calla has time. She lets the rush of incoming battle temper her bones.
2 players nearby. Choose.
An arbitrary decision. She keys in the number 1 at the bottom of the screen, then looks around to take inventory of her surroundings. To her left, an impenetrable wall. To her right, another wall, but with a window that peers into a gambling den.
11 meters up.
Calla moves. She shoves her foot against a jutting brick and climbs in through the window, drawing cries of concern when she lands with a thump on the sticky den floor.
“Don’t mind me,” she says. She blows a kiss, which is rather difficult through the mask. “I’m only passing through.”
Outside the gambling den, she skids into the main stairwell of the building, then sprints up the steps three at a time, boots clunking. Calla calculates the eleven meters, bursting through the first inner door she sees and emerging in a busy market area, shops on both sides and her wristband trembling incessantly. Her hair whips into her eyes as she peruses the scene, trying to catch an attack before it comes. Nothing seems out of the ordinary.
Nothing except Calla, standing in a leather coat with her sword sheathed at her side while shoppers in their plain cotton button-ups stare at her.
“Where are you?” Calla mutters under her breath, gauging the distance between floor and ceiling. About two meters, probably. Flat floor, flat ceiling. How many other levels has she climbed? Six? Which means…
Calla hurries through the market, searching for some other exit. She passes a candy store. A noodle shop. Finally, in front of a butcher whacking his cleaver down onto a pig’s carcass, Calla spots a hatch inside his stall.
“Using this, thank you!” Calla calls, diving for the hatch and lifting it with a grunt. She jumps down before the butcher can respond, dropping into the passage running below the market. Vendors store their perishables here to keep them fresh, cold air running at a temperature that raises goose bumps on her arms immediately. She lands among a row of animal carcasses hanging by large hooks, her hands slapping onto the bloody floor to steady herself. Though she would have assumed the blood to be dried and old, when she lifts her hands and stands straight, her palms are marred with bright crimson. It’s fresh.
