Page 87 of Immortal Longings
Calla rushes forward to block the hammer from swinging down on him. The player appeared out of nowhere, leaping off the second-floor balcony that juts out above the shop. With a vehement push, she deflects the hit, the blade ofher sword whistling through the air when she brings the weapon close to her chest again. A breath in; Anton is getting into stance again. She throws a glance back, and with a single nod, he darts left, knives going up as Calla ducks low, rushing for the other player’s legs. She cannot remember the other numbers that are left. Number Thirty-Three? Number Fifteen?
The hammer comes down, and Calla allows the hit to land, catching her hard in the shoulder so that Anton has an opening to push a knife into the player’s back. The player grunts, folding down where the wound was made. Calla’s entire right arm has gone numb, but it’s easy to transfer her sword into her left hand, easy to make a cut—albeit clumsier than usual—and fold the player at the knee by opening a gash in his thigh.
“Throat,” Calla wheezes. “The throat.”
Anton cuts the man’s throat. Blood spurts wide, dotting his face and decorating Calla’s neck like abstract art. The player gives his last exhale, pitching onto his side. Calla releases her breath too.
“That was close,” Anton remarks. “They’re getting too fast.”
“We’re almost at the end,” Calla replies tiredly, closing her eyes to rest. They sting terribly, as if they had dried out completely in the span of that fight. “It makes sense that the best players have made it to this point.”
“How did he last so long with a hammer? How do you kill with—augh!”
Calla’s eyes fly open at Anton’s sudden muffled shout. She blinks to clear her eyes, right in time to catch someone hauling Anton off, a cloth clamped over his mouth and an arm around his middle.
“Anton!”
A hard thud lands at the back of her own head. And without any chance to fight, Calla crashes to the ground, her forehead smacking concrete.
Her eyelids flutter open slowly. They’re as heavy as steel, heavier than if something had sealed them shut.
Calla coughs. She manages to turn onto her side, one of her hands snapping forward and splashing into a dirty puddle. The other stays splayed underneath her, gripping the concrete. She is exactly where she fell, or perhaps two feet to the left. Some passerby probably kicked her out of the way when she was blocking the path.
Her head is ringing.
Anton.Where is Anton?
Calla scrambles upright, her lungs burning with effort. She releases another cough, and then she cannot stop, as if all the weight in her chest is trying to make its way out. She tries to recall what she saw in that flash of a second before Anton was grabbed. Someone tall, clothed well. A thick jacket, purchased with good coin.
A palace hire. It has to be.
She turns out of the alley and onto a minutely wider street. A man with a flour sack over his shoulder shuffles aside when she pushes by, then almost misses his next step when he turns to look at her. It takes Calla a second to attribute his reaction to the blood she has dripping off her body. Her collar is soaked. As are her fingers, stained in red up to her wrists. How long was she knocked out for? Surely no more than half an hour, since the metallic stickiness has not yet dried. Surely not long enough for Anton to be in serious trouble.
Her fear, in honesty, is not that he’s in trouble. Her fear is that they did not take him to kill him, but to save him. To keep him alive until the other players are eliminated, so that Calla has no option but to fight him in the arena, so that Calla cannot yank him by the sleeve and hide him, store him somewhere safe while she rips King Kasa apart.
“I know this is your doing, August,” Calla mutters under her breath. Shedraws her sword despite the crowded streets, making her way toward the palace. “This is your doing, and you will answer for it.”
The civilians of San-Er notice her and start to scramble away. She is a sight: she looks exactly as she does on the reels. Now that the games are winding down and so few players are left, there’s no purpose to being subtle anymore, no purpose slinking around the cities in fear of an encounter. Everyone should see her. Everyone should shrink out of her way and out of her path.
Calla’s eyes lock on the dental shop to her left. She pauses quickly, then tries to play off the moment as if she’s eyeing the dentures in the window display. It isn’t the dentures that caught her attention. It is the flash that came off the reflection.
Calla ducks fast. The throwing star embeds into the window instead of her head, fracturing the glass. In seconds, another joins it, and Calla whirls around, her heart thudding at her throat. Her sword is already drawn. She merely needs to lift it while she searches the startled crowd.
Where is the attack coming from? Calla’s grip tightens on her sword. She isn’t sure if there are three players left or four. If it’s three, then they’re closing in on the very end of the games.
Instead of searching for the combatant player in the crowd and taking the risk, she turns on her heel and starts to run in the other direction.
The throwing stars follow her immediately, one skimming her arm, one slicing along her boot, and another barely missing her square in the back as she swings around a corner and flattens against the wall. For a perilous moment, she can’t see anything, dropped into darkness under a drove of drying laundry. Then her eyes adjust to the alley light, and Calla inches her head slowly around the corner again.
This time, she doesn’t have to search for her combatant. A woman steps into view in the middle of the road, waiting to be sighted. She smiles and gives a small wave.
“What the fuck?” Calla mutters beneath her breath.
The woman doesn’t move.
Slowly, Calla inches out from the alley. “What do you want?” she calls over.
The woman doesn’t say anything. She waves again, but this time with her other arm, revealing her wristband, which shines with12on the digital screen. Streams of people flow around her on the street because of her inertness, but she doesn’t notice. They grumble and shuffle; they exclaim,Hey, can you not block the path?but the woman only stares at Calla, and when Calla takes another step forward, she sees the woman’s eyes.
