Page 31 of Immortal Longings
With a quick motion, Calla closes the book.
“What if you put a knife in my back before the final battle?” she asks, recovering before he can note the pause in conversation.
“Why would I?” Anton retorts. “I’ve seen your numbers too. I’ve been holding on to your wristband long past the time it was supposed to deactivate. You have some sort of advantage, and I want in. Can I open this door now? Are you going to skewer me?”
“Eventually, yes,” Calla mutters. Just as she is adjusting the table so that it looks untouched, the door opens, and Anton Makusa steps in. The light of the living room streams in too, making him appear larger than life when he stands under its glow.
“I wasn’t wrong, was I?” Anton says. “You have an advantage in the games. What is it? A revolution plot? A foreign-funded conspiracy?”
Calla does not answer. Instead, she says: “Okay. I’ll team up with you.” Her gaze darts to the book again. “On my terms.”
Anton throws something in her direction. Calla’s hand lurches out and snatches her wristband from the air.
“What are your terms?”
He receives only a theatric air-kiss in response. Calla snaps her wristband back on, then sheathes her sword. She knows she should be careful, but he won’t attack her now. Not after all that.
“I’ll drop by when I know.” She skirts by him, heading for the exit. “Stay out of my way in the meantime.”
Anton lets her leave. Perhaps he’s taken by surprise, perhaps not. Calla could be making a mistake for not taking the chance to kill him. If he changes his tune and so much as breathes a word toward the palace, then the twin cities will know Er’s criminal princess is alive, and they will come after her.
Calla bites her nail, hurrying out of the building. Her boot lands in a puddle; she swerves quickly to avoid running into an elderly woman hauling a bucket on her shoulder, filled to the brim with water from one of the public taps. She won’t deny that it would be useful to double her kills and speed up the timeline, bring herself closer and closer to the moment she can take King Kasa’s head off. But doing so requires trusting Anton Makusa and having faith that he’ll keep his mouth shut about her identity. The only thing she’s banking on is that he must hate King Kasa as much as she does.
Because the girl in that photograph was Otta Avia, Prince August’s half sister.
Anton’s former beloved, who is as good as dead now, all because of King Kasa.
Pampi clocks out at nine on the dot, leaving the security room with her bag looped over her shoulder and a folder clutched to her chest. Her heels click down the palace tiles, then echo loudly into the night when she exits through a side entrance. Before long, her steps are drowned by the marketplace’s roar.
Her route through San is familiar. She does not go home. She straps her wristband back onto her body, winds through the alleys, and reaches the Hollow Temple.
“You are entirely too confident for someone so new, you know that?” avoice greets when she comes through the doors. It’s after hours at the temple, the hall empty except for a single figure at the front. She approaches him, her pencil skirt keeping her movements small.
“I gather you’ve never had someone so new do so much,” Pampi replies easily. She throws the file onto the pew. Its papers skid out: maps scribbled with pencil markings, tracing the players across the city. “How are we progressing? Good?”
Woya doesn’t answer her immediately. He stares at the papers and makes a noise beneath his breath. The Hollow Temple bristles around them, one of many beating points around the city that make up the network of the Crescent Societies. Each temple functions on its own, led by one cleric. Though Woya holds power within the walls of the Hollow Temple, the Crescents forgo hierarchy any higher than that, choosing to keep their factions working in tandem instead. Different temples manage business and recruit members in different territories of San-Er; if they start doubling up on any streets, members meet to trade information and decide who will take what.
Violence is saved for outsiders. Once a Crescent is sworn in, they regard other Crescents as family.
“Depends on what you mean,” Woya finally says. “The killings? They’re successful. Passing them off as the efforts of Sican intruders? Eh, could be better. Destabilizing King Kasa’s regime and throwing San-Er into anarchy?” He looks up, orange eyes narrowing. “The rest of the temple don’t quite see how it will succeed when we’re up against the whole guard and then some.”
Pampi smiles. Sometimes she feels a thousand years old, like an ancient god who has been sleeping in wait, ready for her moment to come. Her mother called it narcissism, but who’s the one still around? The temple responds to her, whispered to her and urged her to become its leader as soon as she stepped in. She brings a knowledge that no one has seen before—at least not here, and it’s here that they want it most. The darkest crevasses of San-Er, where the currency mostin demand is ownership over yourself. Life is meaningless if you can be shut down at any point, consciousness kicked away because a stronger individual has invaded.
“Someone taught me a most extraordinary thing the other day,” Pampi says.
Woya lifts an eyebrow. Half of it has been shaved off, the other half dyed white. “Oh?”
Talin believed in gods once. But San-Er worships technology and productivity in their modern age, so household shrines have become mere aesthetics, and temples alone perform the twin cities’ reverence. The Crescent Societies believe that jumping is a gift one cannot take for granted. That the gods gave them this ability and the gods play favorites, listening to the commands of some and ignoring the commands of others. Those who make the right prayers can gain better control, might even perform miracles when it comes to jumping.
Pampi knows how to pray. Under her collar, there are two parallel lines of dried blood, drawn thickly across her chest.
The blood isn’t hers. Praying isn’t enough. Now she knows how to sacrifice too.
“Would you like to see?”
Pampi throws her hand out. With the motion, Woya goes flying, his back thudding against the temple wall, the impact so hard that it snaps every stick of incense planted nearby. The figurines and the paintings of deities all shudder too, as if they have recognized one of their own among them.
Her qi pounds through her bloodstream. She can feel it: each speck of her inner spirit, merging with her body, merging with the physical world. This is how it is supposed to be. This is the power she always should have had.
