Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

It takes another week for the games to reach thirty players remaining, and that achievement is only because Calla and Anton start to hunt their fellow contestants down. Though the two are good at making eliminations, San-Er lives and breathes by the million, and a game of eighty-eight is merely a blip in the hustle and bustle.

“They’re on the floor above,” Calla reports. August has started to feed her locations through her pager. They are unlike the official game pings, which use approximate distances while she runs like a headless chicken. Instead, he has implemented a code in the surveillance room that, when Calla is in the vicinity, sends her a script of text, reporting exactly where the other player stands.

Anton briefly rests his hand on the wall, leaving a red mark upon the white paint. They’re in Er’s financial district, and so the floors of this building are more proper than the ones they usually tear through. Both their daily pings have gone off already, but to no success. The players slipped away.

“I didn’t think Prince August would make it so easy for us, Fifty-Seven.”

Calla shoots him a sidelong glare. “Would you prefer to do this the traditional way?”

“Oh, no, don’t misunderstand me.” He tosses one of his knives. It swings a perfect full rotation in the air before landing back in his grip, ready for battle. “I’m shocked that the games can be manipulated so thoroughly, is all.”

There’s a rumble past the wall to their right. A sudden bang! in the stairwell they just exited. They only came to the fifth floor because the pager reported this as a player’s last location, but it’s empty, unless the office workers in their glass cubicles count.

Er’s financial district is usually orderly, refusing to mimic the rest of the twin cities in clumping a motley of businesses and factories and shops together. Calla had briefly eyed the directory on the ground floor before they came up. Half of this building is owned by an obscure private academy, the other half divided into offices for one of the major banks.

When Calla holds a hand out to Anton and listens, the stairwell quiets again. Like someone barged in and then right back out.

“Wait,” she says suddenly. “Do you think—”

“There’s an active fight here,” Anton concludes at the same time. “A second player. Do we—”

Calla is already nodding, turning over her shoulder in search for the other exit. There are two main stairwells. One runs down the center of the building cleanly, and the other loops around the exterior.

“I’ll go around. Let’s block them in.”

She’s running before Anton can grunt his assent, pulling her sword and shouldering through the door. The groggy day greets her, not bright enough to qualify for sunshine in Er, but sufficient glaring gray to light her way as she passes the classrooms facing this side of the building. The kids inside stand at the sight of her. In eagerness, they flock from their desks to the windows, waving happily, but Calla forges on, taking the upcoming steps three at a time.

When she slips back into the building, there’s a player doing her very best to slice a schoolteacher in half, her long ponytail swinging in sync with her cuts.

The students here have scrambled for cover, and it isn’t until the schoolteacher strikes back with a quick fist that Calla realizes this is in fact another player, the wristband hidden under the cuff of their pressed white sleeve. The sight is… unexpected. The king’s games tend to draw in riffraff and troublemakers at the end of their line, those who have no other option except to risk their lives for riches. For someone with a respectable living to throw their name into something as vicious as the games… what can the motivation be? Not enough pay? The adrenaline rush? It can’t be worth this: a blade in the gut in front of twenty of your own students, splattering the front-most row with blood.

A flash of light blinds the hallway in absolute white. Calla is charging forward despite her stinging eyes.

Anton is doing the same from the other stairwell.

Before the player can pull her sword from the schoolteacher, Anton comes within range and presses his knives to her neck. In one fast motion, he has cut a cross into her, deep enough that she drops without a lost beat. While the player with the ponytail is eliminated, the light has taken the schoolteacher elsewhere, and by the time Anton searches the packed corridor—filled with teenagers dressed in uniform, red ties dangling at their necks—he has already lost track of which body the teacher could have dived into.

But just because he wasn’t paying attention does not mean Calla wasn’t. And as he heaves, trying to catch his breath, he watches Calla slam one of the boys down, foot on his chest.

“Fifty-Seven,” Anton exclaims suddenly, a hand outstretching. He wants to tell her, We don’t need to kill him, or perhaps, Let him go. But he cannot. The games end with only one victor. Collateral damage in every direction is how they have always been played. It is only that a part of him prefers to lie if it will spare him from feeling awful, but a greater part of him knows these lies are useless. He can’t bring himself to tell one now.

“Will you take this boy down with you?” Calla asks quietly.

“He’s innocent,” the schoolteacher says with the boy’s tinny voice. “Let us live.”

Anton has stopped bracing for a new attack. He is watching Calla instead, her sword pressed to the boy’s neck. If she looked angry, maybe it would have made for a more fitting picture. Fury for the kingdom, for the games, clouding her moral compass and obscuring her sight. But there is none of that.

Only the levelheaded princess who killed her parents with that same steady stare.

“How foolish,” Calla whispers.

When she feels her next breath burn her throat, she brings the sword down, and the boy’s head comes off, his life and his schoolteacher’s ended at once. One way or another, there would have been a second life taken along the line.

The other students gasp, hands flying to their mouths. Calla can’t help the bitterness roiling in her stomach. Shouldn’t they be used to this by now? Or is this part of Er more sheltered than the rest? Do they rise every morning with breakfast laid out for them, no hunger and a big, comfortable bed?

She knows it’s unfair to think this way. But it’s hard to push back resentment at those in the twin cities who have never feared for their lives, who have no idea how the rest of Talin suffers.

When Calla turns to go, Anton follows her silently. Out of her periphery, she can see that his eyes are pinned on her intently. She wonders what he’s looking for. Guilt? Delight? Perhaps she should feel guilty, if only to prove that deep inside, she is good and redeemable. But each time she swings her sword, the feeling that sits heavy in her rib cage is not guilt. It is a jarring sensation that tells her this is wicked, but wickedness is tolerable. Good kingdoms don’t need good soldiers. A good soldier dies on the battlefield and lets the people cry for him. Good kingdoms need loyal soldiers, terrible ones. Calla is killing people to save them, and before San-Er put its wall up, when Talin fought its war with Sica, it was the same. Lives thrown into the fire, sacrificed so that millions more at home could carry on safely.

Calla swivels around, stopping on a landing in the stairwell. Anton halts too, blocked from walking any farther. She searches his face. He stares back, waiting.

But Calla says nothing.

“Is something the matter?” he asks eventually.

There’s blood on his jaw. Calla reaches out to swipe it away, then pauses, her red fingers inches from his face. She would be no help. She would only make it worse.

“We need to rinse off,” Calla decides. “There’s a public standpipe directly outside. Come on.”

Her voice is gravelly. They both pretend not to make note of it. She inclines her head at the last floor of the stairwell, and down she walks, Anton close on her heels like some long, lingering shadow.

They push out into a thin alley and the ground-level murkiness of Er. As soon as the door slams shut after them, it is like the building has been cordoned off. Calla imagines a line being drawn in her memories, roping it off for a day when San-Er is no longer at war with itself.

Anton reaches out suddenly to snag her elbow, and Calla jumps, her hand darting for her sword. If he has chosen now to attack her—

“Wait,” he hisses. His eyes are trained ahead.

A rustle sounds in the alley, from the little nook where the standpipe is. Calla searches the nook, its one small bulb working overtime to illuminate the whole area.

“I don’t see anything,” Calla whispers.

Nothing stirs. There are dozens of hose pipes hanging down the wall, tangled on the floor like a nest of rubbery snakes. Most likely, the noise was just one of them detaching from the bunch and falling to the ground. The pipes are connected to the food factories nearby, the singular stop for workers to come by when they need their tanks replenished.

When a few seconds pass and the scene remains still, Anton shakes his head. “Looks like we’re clear. Maybe I’m being paranoid.”

“Not at all.” Calla strides forward and pulls at the faucet, letting the water pour out onto her feet. She cups the water into her hands and washes at her arms, getting the blood off her elbows. The red that is stained into her white shirt will remain. “There have been deaths across San-Er targeting players. The newsreels aren’t broadcasting it. But if you pay attention to the numbers, you’ve probably noticed too.”

As Calla splashes water onto her neck, Anton draws near, sticking his hand under the running stream.

“Four.” There is no hesitation. He has already been counting. “There are four eliminations that aren’t attributed to another player. I thought perhaps they had deactivated their wristbands.”

Calla steps away from the faucet, shaking her hands dry. “The work of Sican agents, if you believe Prince August.”

Anton rolls his eyes. That strikes Calla’s interest—the contempt flashing quick as a whip across his expression.

“I was attacked earlier in the games,” Calla continues, leaning up against the standpipe. Her gaze is fixed on Anton while he tries to work a clot of blood out of his hair, waiting for another moment of that repulsion to cross his face. Something about it thrills her, to see his usual insolence falter. “Someone came at me from behind, but as soon as I shoved my sword through their body, it dropped as if it were just an empty vessel. No blood, no qi.”

Anton smooths the water out of his hair, slicking dark strands back from his forehead.

“So they jumped?” he asks.

“No.” Calla folds her arms. “There was no light.”

A beat passes. Anton remains quiet, trying to gauge if Calla is being serious.

“And you think it’s a Sican skill?” he asks eventually. He turns the faucet off. “Lightless jumping?”

“I’m not sure what I think.” When she straightens up again, the sheath of her sword bounces against her knee. Calla unhooks it, letting her body rest without the sword’s weight bearing on her hip. “All I know is, I’ve never seen it before. If August wants to blame it on foreign intruders, I suppose that’s a possibility.”

Anton, however, seems unconvinced. “I’ve heard rumors that we might be able to do it too, if you’re quick enough.”

Perhaps he can train for that one day, but Calla has not jumped in fifteen years. The palace already thought jumping was the behavior of commoners who didn’t have valuable bodies to protect; royalty were warned even more significantly against the act. The stakes were too high for their vessels. She has never been as tricky as August is, flitting from body to body so that he isn’t recognized leaving the palace. She can hardly remember how it goes, how easy it is for those born strong with the ability. Jumping speed depends on how near the target body is, but no matter how slow or fast it feels , the flash of light is always the same from the outside.

“It could be a matter of technique,” Anton is still saying. “We have learned to do it in a way that gives off light. A visible sign of our qi moving. Perhaps the Sicans have learned something else.”

“Perhaps they don’t have qi.”

Anton clicks his tongue. “Everyone has qi.”

Like the wind of the world and the salt of the sea. Qi is what gives life in the womb, the difference between a vessel and a body. It is what takes life away when it dissipates in old age.

“I think it would explain a lot,” Calla says anyway, sticking with her outrageous claim. “Maybe in the years we’ve been cut off from them, the Sicans have started evolving into something else.”

“Do you”—Anton crouches, submerging one of his knives into a puddle and shaking the blood from the blade—“have any basis to be saying this, or are you merely stringing together nonsense?”

Calla steps her foot forward quickly, pinning the blade down before Anton can pick it back up. Instead of fighting her for his weapon, he closes his hand around her ankle, squeezing hard.

“Careful with my feelings, Makusa,” she says wryly. “I don’t like being accused of nonsense.”

She pretends not to notice the increasing pressure on her ankle. Anton pretends not to be gripping so hard he could snap her bones with just one extra twinge.

He smiles languidly. “Are you playing games with me, Princess?”

“Maybe I am.” She peers out from the nook. No one is around. No threats. “Would you like that?”

“I like where this is going. Keep talking.”

Calla mirrors his smile. With a swift yank, she tugs her leg free from his grasp and loops her sword back onto her belt, the metallic sound grating at her ears.

“I think we’re done for the day. Same time tomorrow?”

She’s walking off before Anton has the chance to respond.

Although the Weisannas are merely a part of the larger palace guard, they often feel like a unit of their own, pushed into major assignments and sent out on patrol at double the frequency. Galipei knows each and every one of them: his distant cousins and second aunts and thrice-removed uncles. So long as they have the Weisanna eyes, their life has been charted from birth. Their kingdom needs them. San-Er needs them. With such a power, one cannot shirk their duties.

Galipei ducks into the pharmacy, pushing at the plastic curtain draped over the doorway. The air-conditioning rushes out, and he drops the curtain into place again before he’s yelled at for letting the cold escape.

At the counter, there’s a woman in dark glasses, rushing around her cabinets. Jars of herbal medicine from the provinces are organized side by side with boxes bearing complex labels from the factories in San. When Galipei was younger, he was afraid of the yellow roots in the corner, floating in clear liquid. He used to say they looked like brains, reaching with their stems and ready to invade their victims.

Then he would get a solid thump on the head with a rolled-up newspaper, and he would laugh and laugh, asking to be thumped again because it was funny.

The woman at the counter takes off her glasses as Galipei approaches, crinkling the lines around her silver eyes.

“Hello, Aunt,” Galipei says softly. “Have you eaten?”

A Weisanna can leave the palace guard if they wish. But it is the most shameful decision to make, an unforgivable crime as far as the rest of San-Er is concerned.

“Ah, an old woman like me doesn’t get hungry often anyway.” She pulls open a drawer behind the counter. “What will it be today? Muscle pain? Headache? You need more rest, less running around. What would your parents say if they were still around? Can’t start a family if you’re bone-tired all the time.”

Galipei can’t hold back his smile. Though it was the palace who raised him—fed him, clothed him, put him through the academy and supplied extra lessons to train him into the guard he would become—it was his aunt who loved him. She was ostracized when she quit, but that doesn’t matter to Galipei, no matter how much his other cousins whisper about his visits.

“It’s not for me,” Galipei says. His smile drops. He looks around, ensuring that there are no other customers browsing the single shelf in the store. There’s one surveillance camera propped up near the clock on the wall, but San-Er’s security does not have sound. Nevertheless, he lowers his volume as he leans in.

“Do you have cinnabar?”

His aunt’s brow furrows. “For what? Are you trying to create an immortality elixir?”

Galipei shakes his head. “Why is that your first thought? Maybe the palace wants to carve lacquerware and needs decorative powder.”

Slowly, his aunt starts to rummage through her lower shelves. Her face is still in a grimace, mostly because Galipei didn’t actually answer her original question. Cinnabar, a mineral that Talin mines from its borderlands, comes into San-Er in moderate amounts to be used in the factories for its vermillion-red color.

It’s also highly toxic.

“I have it in powder form,” his aunt says carefully. Every Weisanna goes through the same training units; they possess the same knowledge from the palace. If Galipei has come looking for a toxic substance, there’s little else he might be using it for.

“You keep in mind”—his aunt isn’t looking at him as she packs it up, screwing the lid tight and placing it carefully into a paper bag, but he feels the sharpness of her words nonetheless—“you can always leave the palace. It’s not so bad out here.”

“I can’t,” Galipei replies. The idea is unfathomable to him. “They need me.”

“Your crown prince needs you, you mean” is her reply. With a shake of her head, his aunt passes him the bag. The top has been folded over multiple times, as if she still wants to prevent him from accessing the mineral despite being the one to give it to him. “He is more poisonous than all the cinnabar in the world combined.”

“He’s not—”

The plastic at the door rustles, bringing in another customer. Galipei swallows his words, keeping his face angled away so that he’s not recognized. His aunt, too, puts her dark glasses back on and waves him off.

“Use caution, my boy,” she warns. “That’s all I have to say.”

Dismissed, Galipei nods and leaves the pharmacy, the paper bag clutched tightly in his hands.