Page 29 of Immortal Longings
But… her blade comes out clean.
Calla blinks, uncomprehending. The prone figure on the floor is no longer moving. She waits, wary in the event of a fake-out. Almost a minute passes before Calla inches toward the body, daring to investigate. Her breath held, she grabs a fistful of clothing and turns the attacker over until their face is no longer pressed to the ground.
“What the fuck?”
Their eyes are blank: no irises, no color. This is an empty vessel.
Calla rests her hands on her knees. How is that possible? She didn’t see any light. There was no one around for the attacker to jump into. August’s warning about agents from Sica flashes in her head, but the thought is so preposterous she can’t even begin entertaining it. Have Sicans developed a new way ofjumping? Into bodies that aren’t within sight? Without their qi flashing visibly?
Shakily, she can only bustle back a few steps to pick up the map she dropped and hurry away, leaving the bloodless vessel in the alley. Someone will find it and take it, she’s sure. There is very little that can leave Calla stunned, but seeing an empty vessel—occupied with qi while they were lunging at her seconds ago but void of it when she was sticking a sword through their neck—is high on her list of unfathomable sights.
“Compartmentalize,” Calla orders herself. She scans the walls, squinting to read the directional street markings. She can hear the Rubi Waterway gettingfainter, so she’s going the wrong way. She turns and follows the sound back to the bridges. “Focus on the matter at hand.”
Really, she isn’t sure what sort of matter entails a random attack from a possible Sican agent. There are far too many people in San-Er for it to be a coincidence that they came after her. Were they hunting a player of the games at random? Or were they hunting Princess Calla Tuoleimi? She knows there are certain groups in San-Er that are convinced she’s alive, but those rumors surely have not traveled past Talin’s borders.
Calla makes it to the bridge, fingers tracing the dusty side barriers. She weaves in and out of the groups congregated on the thin stone structure, ignoring the dumpling stalls and the purse sellers with their wares laid out on a big red rug. As soon as she steps onto the main street, she knows she has arrived at the right place. A clump of middle-aged men squat outside one of the doors, so much cigarette smoke around them that it makes a visible gray cloud. While they shout at one another in conversation, she circles around them and ducks into Snowfall, Big Well Street’s primary brothel.
Snowfall.Named for the blinding white that blankets the provinces when the seasons turn cold. San-Er has not seen snow in centuries, which makes the concept all the more exotic.
It’s pandemonium inside, pumping with low bass music. Blue and neon-pink lights flood the walls at random intervals, then drop into complete darkness for a flash of a second. Calla nudges her sword behind herself, keeping the sheath tucked under her coat. She has already spotted the staircase that goes up into the rest of the building, but she doesn’t follow it. The moment anyone narcs and Anton Makusa runs, she will lose him. She was a princess once, after all—she knows how to read people, can see that the bar attendants and dancers started eyeing her the moment she walked in. None of them will talk to her if she asks what they know about Makusa and where he is, but if she acts normal, they’ll brush her off as merely another strange customer and let her do as she wishes.Then maybe she can poke her nose around Makusa’s apartment to gather more information. She only needs to make sure she’s in the clear first.
Calla looks down at her arm. Even if she still had her wristband, it wouldn’t indicate another player’s presence unless it was triggered by a location ping. Without it, there’s no way of knowing which face Anton Makusa wears. It’s the fun of King Kasa’s games, the reason why civilians are glued so thoroughly to their television screens every night, why some of them will crane their necks and gape at a player in the flesh despite the danger of hovering near an active fight scene. When players can jump at any moment, one cannot easily stalk opponents and cut them down one by one. There’s only chance and following the wristbands.
The analogue clock on the wall is creeping near seven in the evening. Calla holds her knuckles to her mouth, pressing hard as she thinks. At this point in the games, the palace isn’t trying to rush their progress yet; they’ll do one ping daily, two maximum, and always during waking hours while their surveillance room is well staffed. Everyone’s wristband must have gone off once already today, but it’s not late enough to mark off the possibility of another and not early enough to retire. By all logic, Anton Makusa shouldn’t be at home. Either he would be somewhere around San-Er or…
Calla’s gaze snags on a private table in the corner. A man sits with his scribbling pad, his fingers splayed in front of him as his mouth moves, talking to himself. Where others in the brothel have their eyes pinned to the writhing bodies dancing onstage, the man is concentrated on his work, pausing on occasion only to stare into the distance, like there is something in the smoke that no one else can see.
…or Anton Makusa would behere, near enough to his residence that he can rest once the time passes for a second ping, yet still occupying a public space in case the ping does come.
Calla reaches inside her coat, tearing at her own shirt while she watches theman. A waitress sets a drink down before him, and he thanks her with an old familiarity. The wad of fabric in Calla’s hands rips easily.
“Can I borrow this?”
When the same waitress passes Calla, she has no time to respond before Calla is plucking the serrated steak knife off her dirty tray. The waitress raises her brow, bemused, but does not protest. She continues into the kitchen; Calla quickly wipes the blade clean, then hides it within her wad of fabric.
Her pulse surges to a steady thud, keeping in accompaniment with the bass-heavy thump of Snowfall’s music. She strolls toward the private corner table. In her hand, she holds the steak knife carefully, making it appear as if she’s clutching nothing but a handkerchief.
Calla climbs into his lap with a smile. When the man’s gaze snaps up, a swoop of dark hair falls into his eyes. Black eyes, reflecting back the neon flashing around them. He’s quick to return her grin, hands coming around her hips.
Then she leans in, lips against his ear, and presses the tip of the knife into his throat.
“Hello, Makusa,” she whispers. She feels the serrated edge pierce skin. “I want my wristband back.”
Beneath her, Anton Makusa freezes, his expression turning stricken. Blood begins to trickle into his collarbone, staining his white shirt.
“Okay,” he says. She has to strain to hear him over the music. “It’s in my pocket. You’ll have to ease up an inch.”
Calla does not ease up. She only flips her hair over her shoulder, shifting her weight to her left side.
“Slowly.”
“I’m going slow,” Anton insists, putting his hand in his pocket. He pauses. In that split second, Calla knows instantly he’s about to try something.
“Don’t you—” She shoves half an inch of the knife into his throat; he tugs a collection of objects out of his pocket and throws it across the room. By the timeCalla hisses a nasty insult, a flash of light has blinded her. She whirls around. The light ends in the body of another man across the room, who swoops for the fallen objects and runs up the stairs.
“Hold this to the wound,” Calla says to the man who startles awake beneath her. She tugs the steak knife out and shoves the wad of fabric to his throat. His eyes are jade green now, blinking back shock as Calla launches off him and books it up the stairs, narrowly avoiding collision with a waitress.
On the second floor, Calla pauses, listening for the direction of Anton’s footsteps. She has no desire to walk blindly into a trap, so she draws her sword, closing in on the third floor by following sound instead of movement. There’s no room for maneuvering here, only the thinnest stairwell with overturned filing cabinets and half-broken shelves shoved into the corners. The paint on the walls has chipped so severely that the floor is dusted with flecks.
