Page 48 of Immortal Longings
“What is that?” Anton shouts.
Calla lurches to her feet. “It’s the flood siren. San-Er is flooding.”
CHAPTER14
It’s not even the right season. The last time Calla heard this siren, she was still living in the Palace of Heavens. The Rubi Waterway had risen past its banks and sent a flash flood rippling five feet high. It wrought havoc for two weeks, her parents unwilling to handle the chaos. Civilians died, businesses closed, fresh food stalls went under because they couldn’t move anything from building to building and it was impossible to carry crates up fourteen flights of steps for the rooftop routes.
“I need to go,” Calla declares, pivoting fast for the couch in the living room and picking up her sword. It makes no sense, but she won’t take the chance. Chami and Yilas’s diner is on the ground level, and floods from the waterway come quick. Much as she would like her former attendants to stay safe, she is most concerned about keeping an eye on Chami, because if Chami needs to get to the hospital, then Calla’s false identity starts to crumble.
“Fifty-Seven, wait,” Anton calls after her. “There’s something shifty about this. It’s not the right month for tides to be rising. It could be a ruse—”
“I know.” Calla secures her sword onto her belt. “I just need to check on something. I’ll find you later.”
Then she’s gone, slipping through his front door and climbing up instead of down. With the siren whining, the ground of San-Er will be crowded with civilians trying to get their business in order, transporting what cannot be transported if the streets are soon to be flooded for days on end. Calla sticks close to the edge of the stairs, trying not to brush shoulders with the masses surging down, grimacing when she passes a man in scrubs reeking with the smell of blood. They’re all yelling at one another, drowned out by the wails of the siren, but Calla catches their confusion, snippets of doubt and their hypotheses that it could be the games drawing its players out for slaughter. It would be a nonsensical plan. Every soul in San-Er flocking down to the ground would only make it harder to find the players. And yet, Calla cannot imagine why else the alarm would be going off.
She emerges onto the rooftop, slapping her hands over her ears. The siren noises are coming from speakers installed alongside the television antennas atop each building. They are relentless, echoing off one another, sound waves bouncing back and forth. Calla has to grit her teeth hard when she breaks into a steady jog, finding a rhythm as she crosses the rooftops and jumps the gaps across buildings. She would have expected more movement here, but there are only pigeons and debris keeping her company.
“Hey!” Calla yells when she spots a child, but she cannot hear herself past the sirens. The child only keeps playing. When Calla glances down, squinting at the ground, she sees no water anyway, only a sea of heads pushing in movement. She swallows her warning, shaking her head.
She’s nearing the diner. Instead of risking the considerable jump to cross onto the next rooftop, Calla takes the door down. Once she’s back in an enclosed stairwell, she finally releases her clamped palms from her ears.
“I’m going to be pissed if this is a ruse,” Calla mutters, taking the stairs three at a time. “But I’m going to be pissed if it isn’t too.”
She winds through the residence floors, then clutches her nose at the factory floors. Even with the sirens blaring on, some people don’t care to move. They continue swinging their noodles out of raw dough, distributing such a thick layer of flour that Calla tracks white footsteps down two more levels.
She emerges from the building’s side door at last, finally glimpsing the diner up ahead. Chami and Yilas are already standing outside, nervously in conversation.
“Yilas!” Calla bellows. She steps around three men carrying a caged pig among them. On the ground, the sirens are fainter to her ear, muffled by the buildings.
The two turn at her call, relief flashing when they sight her in the crowd. Calla pushes closer, closer.
Then, as soon as she steps into the open space outside the diner, someone pulls her hair and sends her lurching back into the throng of people.
Calla barely finishes her gasp of surprise before she’s throwing weight onto her shoulder, rolling to avoid hitting the ground wrong. A knife strikes the gravel, a hairsbreadth from her ear, and her eyes bulge, latching on to the meaty hand around its blade. Calla is fast to recover, launching herself at the attacker—
Only then she’s thrown back by some invisible hand, a fist smacking her sternum and pushing all the air out of her. Calla lands hard on her side, gasping. Her whole chest prickles. For a very long second, she cannot move, not because she’s hurt to the point of being out of commission, but because her mind is reeling with disbelief. She wasn’t eventouched—how did that happen?
There’s a sudden scream that sounds a lot like Chami. Calla scrambles up at the sound, but she’s too late. Chami is lunging forward to help, and the attacker has sighted her.
“Hey, wait!”
The attacker pulls the blade up and slashes Chami’s throat.
“Jump!” Yilas screams.
A flash of light. Chami drops—or her body does, a gaping wound in its throat but no red to be seen. She left before any of her qi leaked, her body becoming an empty vessel. Calla shudders with a breath of relief, still half kneeling on the gravel, her palms cutting into the stones. Everyone else on the street is giving her a wide berth. No one stops to help or stare too long, in case they’re caught in the scrimmage.
“Are you okay?” It’s her attacker’s low voice, but Chami is asking the question. Chami extends her new, thick hand, and Calla takes it, getting to her feet.
“Let’s get inside,” she says in lieu of a reply. Yilas is visibly shaken, but she says nothing as she hooks her arms around Chami’s birth body. Calla grabs the legs. They file into the emptied diner, climbing over the turnstiles, and set Chami’s body onto one of the tables.
“Oh dear,” Chami says. In the attacker’s body, she ducks to avoid hitting her head on one of the dangling overhead lights, then examines the wound. “Let me stitch this up. I have some alcohol in the back.”
“Hold on.” Calla is frantically trying to think. “Are you wearing a wristband?”
Chami looks at the new body she’s occupying. It’s masculine, so she pats around the waist gingerly, a grimace on her face.
“I don’t see one.”
