Page 28 of Immortal Longings
“We have plenty more in Yingu and Dacia. We can increase quotas in Cirea and start confiscations in Pashe. There is no excuse for insurgency.”
The palace guards begin to move. They don’t wait for August to look up and nod. August is here as a mere figurehead—they know that. The councilmembers won’t care what he has to say, and the armies across Talin will not entertain him for a minute until Kasa’s throne is his. No power can contradict the king’s, no matter how shiny the crown prince title may be.
“Hey.” Leida’s call jolts August to attention. He feels the first flickers of heat on his face. The torches are being lit. “Hey!”
Leida halts before him. The flecks of blue glitter at her eyes shimmer in the daylight. The bright, bright daylight, unclogged by factory smoke and brothel glow, which somehow makes everything feel so muchworse, revealing every facet of his fellow human, every flaw and distinction that the shadows of San-Er would hide.
“What?” August asks tiredly.
“What is this? Why are—”
The moment she starts forward, August snags her by the arm. He glances down to make sure the cellular phone has disconnected and finds that King Kasa hung up as soon as he finished speaking. He didn’t even stick around to oversee how his command was being implemented.
“Instructions from the palace.” August’s voice is dull, emotionless. It has to be, because the guards are still listening. “We must punish insurrectionists against the throne, and when this village is razed, we will use the barren land to build a security base and oversee business regarding the wall.”
Leida is quiet. She lets August keep his grip on her arm and says nothing, expression steeled for her guards, but her eyes are ablaze, reflecting the flames that will soon burn the village to ash. Within minutes, there is screaming. Store roofs cave in and street lanterns crumble to the ground. The sounds waft past the yamen and into their ears, burrow into their head and take root in the very deepest crevasses of their memory. August and Leida stare ahead, letting the palace guard fulfill its duty.
“Thank you,” August says quietly.
“For?” Leida responds.
“Not making a fuss. That could have gone badly.”
Leida’s eyes shift to him. Her dark blue is vivid, edging into purple by the light of the inferno before them. It’s almost too hot to remain where they stand.
“The mayor didn’t say much,” she says. “Only that they couldn’t afford their taxes anymore.”
“I suppose that is enough reason.”
“Indeed. A reason that unfolds into myriads more.” Leida turns around. As soon as she has her back to the flames, the heat suddenly feels unbearable to August, as if they had shared the burden before and now he is left to endure alone. “But that is nothing to the palace, so I suppose it is nothing to us.”
Those inside the city walls are cockroaches, but those outside the city walls aren’t even living creatures, merely parts of the landscape that the palace canmow over and reshape as it wishes. This is the kingdom of Talin, after all, and the king is the great hand chosen by the divine gods. The gods never choose wrong, and the gods place the crown on its wearer.
August finally turns around too, his fists clenched hard. He takes in the screams. All those who are trapped inside the burning buildings face imminent, painful death; all the rest who are displaced will starve to death in a few weeks or months. Those slaughtered today have it the easiest.
“Yes, it is nothing to us,” August replies. “Long live King Kasa, may his reign go on for ten thousand years.”
He walks back to his horse. It will be a long ride to return to San-Er before nightfall.
CHAPTER9
Chami and Yilas have drawn Calla a rough map. Though she insisted she could memorize the route, it was too hard to explain with words how to get to Big Well Street as efficiently as possible, and her two former attendants brought out the pens instead, sketching the streets and running a thick red marker where she needed to go.
Big Well Street—unnecessarily long, perpetually busy, and crowded with establishments one atop the other—lies on San’s side of the Rubi Waterway, but in these recent few years, access has been blocked off on either end by wooden slats and crisscrossed pipes meant to keep the palace guard out. Sometimes they still barge in for inspection, but it would be plain exhausting to keep at it when the people inside rebuild the barriers every time they’re torn down. For regular folks trying to visit, the best course is to enter Er first, then take one of the bridges back into San, which drops smack-bang into the middle of Big Well Street.
Calla smooths out the map, glancing quickly at the markings before shechooses a bridge into Er. Sheshouldbe more aware of how these city routes run, but it’s hard to feel comfortable spending leisurely time out and about when she’s a criminal who’s supposed to be dead. Even when she was princess, she never spent long walking these alleys by herself. She knew the major buildings, the financial districts, and the meat market districts, could even label the places where most of the crime was and where the palace guard went the most often. But that was not the same. That didn’t have the smell under her nose and the jolt in her boots as her feet strike against the muddy ground, coming off the bridge and into Er, where the shift between the two cities is tangible.
Calla pauses at the head of an alley. The shiver that dances down her neck is immediate. From where she stands, a thin shaft of sunlight from the day’s last setting rays pierces her eyes directly. There is always less noise in Er. Which isn’t to say it is a peaceful haven, only that the street hawkers are replaced with businessmen, the prostitutes at the corners with schoolteachers trying to grade essays while they walk. The alleys are paved, not quite wide enough to qualify for a road like those in the provinces, but enough that Er’s residents will ride around on bicycles instead of skirting trash bags every moment as the people of San do.
Calla looks up, bringing a hand over her eyes. The sun disappears and drops Er into dusk. She’s always been good at sensing aberrations. Now, her every nerve tells her that she is being watched. Her qi is stirring—better at hearing than her ears, better at feeling than any part of her skin. When one of the electric boxes on the wall bursts with a sudden spark, she draws her sword, dropping into a combative stance just before a blur of motion comes hurtling from the end of the alley.
An uncomfortable prickle strikes her chest, then a fit of nausea. Calla almost gasps. She hasn’t felt this sensation in years. It fades as quickly as it came, but she has no doubt that someone just tried to invade her.
They have failed. They will always fail.
Calla is ready. That blur of motion comes closer, shoulder pitched down, not a single feature visible in the falling darkness. It doesn’t matter: as soon as they are near enough, Calla kicks a foot onto the alley wall and somersaults, avoiding their hit and moving to land behind them. She doesn’t crane her head to see; she only guesses. Her sword goes straight down her attacker’s back—through the neck, then through the spine—before she has fully landed upon the ground yet.
Her boots thud heavily into the mud. She tugs her sword free. The attacker drops.
