Page 2 of Immortal Longings
Galipei’s lips part in protest. He recovers quickly from his brief enthrallment. “Would you quit jumping like—”
But August has already left, fixing his sight onto the child and slamming right in, opening his new eyes with a quick snap. He has to adjust to the height change, off-balance for a second as the people nearby jolt in surprise. They know what has happened: the flash of light between jumps is unmistakable, marking the arc from old body to new. Though the palace has long made jumping illegal, it is still as common as a beggar swiping a rice cake from an unwatched stall. Civilians have learned to look away, especially when the light is flashing so closely to the palace.
They just don’t expect their crown prince to be the one jumping.
August looks up at the palace. His body has dropped like a stone, collapsed in Galipei’s arms to enter stasis. Without a person’s qi, the body is only a vessel. But a vessel that belongs to the heir of the throne is an incredibly valuable possession, and when Galipei’s gaze meets August’s pitch-black eyes in the girl’s body, he mouths what appears to be a threat to strangle him too.
August, however, is already walking in the other direction, giving Galipei no choice but to guard his birth body ferociously, lest someone come within ten feet and attempt to invade it. In any case, it wouldn’t be hard for him to boot an intruder out. August’s qi is strong—if his body were doubled, he could wrestle back control from the other person easily, either forcing them to find another host or subject them to being lost. When it comes to doubling other bodies, there is no vessel in the twin cities that he cannot invade as long they have come of age: twelve, maybe thirteen, when the gene for jumping manifests.
The problem isn’t so much the matter of someone using his body for pleasure or power. It’s troublemakers who might invade with the purpose of destroying his body out of protest, making one quick throw off the edge of a building before their prince can jump back.
August nearly collides with someone and flinches, ducking to find a less crowded path through the market. The sudden assault on his senses always takes some getting used to: the louder noises, the brighter colors. Perhaps he has dulled the senses of his birth body too much, and this is true normalcy. When a shoe-shiner barks at him from behind a stall and holds out a few coins, August simply reaches his small hands out and receives them, uncertain why. The child must be some sort of errand runner. All the better. Very few civilians are powerful enough to jump into children, which makes them the most trusted, darting between buildings and into every corner of San-Er without notice.
August makes quick time exiting the coliseum, emerging onto the one main street that acts as a thoroughfare from north to south of San. He is well-acquainted with the lefts and the rights of his byzantine city too, so he steps off the main street for the less populated routes, hurrying under drooping electric wires and barely wincing when the damp pipes overhead drip water down his neck. But the cold moisture irritates his skin after a while, and with a sigh, August enters a building, deciding to travel by staircase and wayward building passages instead. There isn’t enough on this body to draw any conclusions about its identity, though that is an answer in and of itself. No markings or tattoos, so no allegiance to the Crescent Societies.
“Hey! Hey, stop there.”
August—ever accommodating—stops. An elderly woman has called out to him, the picture of concern as she hovers in front of her apartment door, a water bucket clutched to her hip.
“Where are your parents?” she asks. “This area is no good. The Crescent Societies have their eye on it. You’ll get yourself invaded.”
“I have it handled.” From the girl’s body, his voice comes out high and soft and sweet. Only August’s tone is too confident. Too regal. The woman can tell, and her expression shifts into suspicion, but August is already walking again. He follows the spray-painted directions on the walls, moving through another corridor to enter a neighboring building. Low moans filter through the thin plaster. Privately run hospitals are aplenty in this area, facilities filled with unhygienic practices and dirty tools, though they still receive a constant stream of patients because they charge far less than the proper places in Er. Half of these private facilities are surely body-trafficking schemes. Still… if a body goes missing here and there, no one cares enough to find out why. Certainly not the palace, no matter what August does.
He turns the corner. The atmosphere shifts immediately, cigarette smoke permeating the low ceilings in such thickness that the dim bulbs can hardly cut through. San is a city of darkness. It is nighttime now, but even when the sun rises, the buildings are so densely packed that the streets remain shrouded in shadow. He counts the doors as he passes:One, two, three…
He knocks on the third, his small fist easily fitting between the metal bars of the exterior door. When the second wooden door opens inward, there is a man who towers above him twice over, looking down his nose with a huff of air.
“We don’t have scraps—”
August jumps again. It is instantaneous from the outside, he knows, as fast as that clap of light, but it alwaysfeelsslow, like wading through a brick wall. The closer the jump, the thinner the wall; from the farthest away, at the absolute ten-foot limit, it always feels like forging through a mile of solid stone. Those who have gotten themselves lost between bodies are snagged here, condemned to wander about this incorporeal space forever.
When he opens his eyes, he’s staring at the little girl again, her bright-orange eyes wide and confused. Not everyone in Talin can jump, and even among those with the gene for it, many have such weak abilities that they don’trisk it, in case they attempt to invade a body and lose the fight for control. But at any point, gene or no gene, a body holding a single person’s qi can be invaded, especially by someone like August. The girl figures out quickly what must have happened.
“Move along,” August instructs, closing the inner door to the gambling den. The people inside saw the flash of light, aware that their bouncer is now occupied. Thankfully, August is expected.
“Your Highness!”
Though the den-keeper who runs up to him has a different face from the last time August was here, he knows it’s the same person. Bodies can be switched, but the man’s pale purple eyes remain the same.
“Have you found her?” August asks.
“Right in time, you’re right in time,” the man gushes, ignoring his question. “Come with me, please, Prince August.”
August follows, careful with his steps. This body is large, muscular. He doesn’t want to go too fast, or he might tip himself off-kilter and stumble. He closes his fists together and frowns, circling around the card dealings and mahjong tables with barely enough room to maneuver between them. His shoe crunches down on what could be a needle filled with heroin. A woman at one of the tables reaches out to touch his jacket, with no aim except to stroke its fine leather exterior.
“Right through here. The pictures should have finished developing by now.”
The man holds open the door, and August walks through, looking around in the red light. Thin drying lines crisscross at his eye level, filled with dangling photographs in various shades. The man reaches up to unclip one. His fingers tremble as he lets the line spring back, cupping the photograph in his palms. Before he can extend the offering to August, however, he hesitates, eyes pinned on the picture.
“Something wrong?”
“No. No, nothing at all.” The man shakes his head, erasing any appearance of doubt. “We scoured the records to their very roots. Not one database was left unturned. This is her, Your Highness. I promise. Your trust and sponsorship are appreciated.”
August lifts an eyebrow. It is hard to do in this body. He gestures for the photograph instead, and the man hurries to pass it over. The entire darkroom seems to hold its breath. The vents stutter to a halt.
“Well,” August says, “good job.”
Though the light overhead runs only in one shade, coloring the photograph the wrong hue and washing out the subject’s eyes, there is no doubt. The woman in the photograph is stepping off the stoop of a building—her nose and mouth covered with a mask, her hands gloved in leather, her body angled away in movement—but August would recognize her anywhere. She is not the sort to abandon her body, even under such circumstances. She would instead flaunt what she managed to keep, living in this city for five long years right under his nose.
