Page 53 of Immortal Longings
“Otta was never on one side,” August returns. “She did whatever she pleased for whoever pleased her most. She should never have seen—” August breaks off with a frustrated noise. He doesn’t speak again until he has found his composure. “It is better if you don’t know.”
“Why are you making that decision for me?”
August shakes his head. “She can procure evidence that I have always been trying to uproot the king,” he says. “What more do you need? If I point you to see what she saw too, then it is one more burden you must bear.”
The window shudders, impacted by someone slamming a door inside the neighboring apartment complex. There are always palace guards in droves watching these nearby residences, making sure there aren’t any troublemakers climbing the walls and lunging for the palace. They would be whipped for even attempting it.
Galipei pushes away from the wall. He doesn’t look pleased, but he won’t complain. “Nothing of yours is ever a burden,” he says. He turns on his heel, waving over his shoulder. “I’m off. Page me if you need me.”
August stares after him, eyes narrowed. When he catches his own reflection in the window glass, he’s convinced he sees a stranger, though this is his birth body.
I know you, under any circumstance.
“Do you?” August asks the now-empty corridor.
Be careful coming around now people weird I can get my own lunch its okay love you
Yilas leans on her hand, her elbow resting upon the desk. The diner remains closed after yesterday’s scare, so she clicks through her pager messages in the back office, filtering through her brother’s last few.
“I’m going to check in on Matiyu.”
Chami looks up, her nail filing coming to a halt. Her birth body is upstairs, tucked in bed, a bandage over its neck while the skin knits together. Damaged vessels heal on their own, but it is a slow, arduous task. It relies on the presence of its base qi, rather than the swirling, active qi of an occupant, where the stronger they are, the faster they can urge their own wounds to close. Chami could jump into her birth body early and go around wearinga bloody bandage to speed up the process, but since she has a spare body to mooch around in anyway, it’s better to let hers heal on its own and avoid unnecessary exertion.
“Hasn’t he warned you to do the exact opposite?” she asks.
Yilas is already on her feet, searching for her keys. “Yes, but…” She finds them under a stack of papers. “I want to get a few of those pendants the Crescent Societies sell. The ones they say protect against jumping.”
“Yilas.” Chami reaches out, gingerly stopping Yilas in her path. She doesn’t close her fingers all the way down when she catches Yilas’s wrist, as if she’s afraid of tightening her unfamiliar grip too much. “It’s okay, love. We’re going to be okay.”
“I know,” Yilas says, and it is not entirely a lie. But she doesn’t just want to be okay; she wants to keep Chami safe. And that is a mighty big ask in San-Er, so she can only try for a smile before shaking Chami’s grip loose and heading out the door.
Though the news stations have declared there to be rebels in San-Er, the streets remain raucous with activity. The same crowds flock around the gambling dens, the same elderly pull their chairs out to smoke outside a corner shop.
Aren’t you scared?Yilas wants to ask. There have never been infiltrators past the wall before. Perhaps there’s something assuring about the numbers game of the twin cities. The odds say that today is not the day you will die, that San-Er has far too many people to make you the target of an attack. Perhaps that’s why the crowds of San don’t stay indoors even when the games are at their height. Blood doesn’t spill only for entertainment; it spills in factory accidents and robberies and random waves of plague. If they live in fear, then they might never emerge.
Yilas lets out a deep breath, but it doesn’t ease the twisting pain in herstomach. A drop of dirty water falls from the air conditioners above, and she wipes it off her neck.
The Hollow Temple is busier today, to the point that the front doors are left wide-open. Yilas flicks at a piece of the chipping red paint as she steps in.
She’s met immediately with noise.
“You’re not finding the right ones! I’m sure of it!”
“And so? How many times do we keep trying?”
Yilas eyes the two arguing men, then turns away. A fight might break out any second, and when they pull the chains attached to their belts, Yilas doesn’t want to be nearby.
But she doesn’t see Matiyu either. As cautiously as she can, Yilas wanders about the temple, trying to blend in with the rapid activity. There must be some event underway. Or perhaps a new goal for the team in this territory, Crescent Society members preparing to send reinforcements onto the streets.
Eventually, Yilas wanders to the back of the temple after finding his room empty too. He wouldn’t be at their parents’ cramped apartment during these hours. His job is to stay in the temple, in this Crescent Society sector’s home base, and run their inventory. The only place left to check is the storage room Matiyu took her to last time.
Yilas shoulders open the door, already calling out, “Matiyu? You really made me look up and down—”
But this room, too, is empty and dark. From the door, she can see an array of boxes left hazardously in the middle of the room, papers scattered on top. Yilas gropes around for a light switch, and when the room is bathed in an off-putting yellow, she inches in. What was it that Matiyu was so curious about last time? Something about wrong numbers…
Yilas picks up the papers. These aren’t the same storage logs. These are printed maps—all time-stamped in the corner—looking like second-by-second screenshots from the palace’s surveillance.
It’s their log of the games and the movement of each player.
