Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

King Kasa is always airbrushed when he comes on television. A serene expression, bushy eyebrows low and relaxed, beard smooth and laid flat. The background is hazy with light, as is the foreground, though perhaps that could be blamed on the digital alterations the communication rooms are making as the palace broadcast feeds out. Calla can’t guess which room the king stands in as he makes his prerecorded speech. She supposes that is the point.

“Even during prosperous times, there will be enemies at our borders,” King Kasa begins.

“Prosperous?” Calla echoes immediately, her tone dripping with derision. She strikes a match and lights the cigarette dangling between her teeth. “In what world?”

“It is why we have a wall, why we make the distinction between the city and the rest of Talin. The city is the center of innovation. The city is where everyone desires to be.”

“Cit ies ,” Calla corrects the screen, dropping the blackened match and taking a drag of the lit cigarette between her fingers. “We’re twin cities, you son of a—”

“As you have heard, there are rebels in San-Er. This is true. They seek to bring down the regime, but you must rest assured that the palace guard is hunting down the perpetrators of such flimsy nonsense. We have already apprehended one of the rebels responsible.”

A lie. It has to be, because the palace hasn’t even determined how these alleged rebels got in.

“What we must do is live bravely in the face of their cowardice. We must show strength in the face of hardship.”

Calla cannot hold back the exclamation that fills her living room.

“What the fuck are you on about?”

She gets no answer. Sensing her rage, Mao Mao pads over and rubs up against her ankle. Her pant cuff is folded up: her poor attempt at hemming away the blood-soaked fabric. The rest of her clothes aren’t quite dirty enough to warrant a change, but blood at her ankle isn’t exactly pleasant either.

The television screen seems to brighten. Sharpening in preparation for whatever announcement is coming as King Kasa clears his throat and stares directly into the camera.

“The games shall speed up, in celebration of the regime and in defiance of those trying take us down. It is time to come together and resist disruption. Long live the reign of San-Er.”

The broadcast goes dark. Seconds later, it switches back to the anchors in the newsroom.

Calla leans into the couch, dangling her cigarette over the armrest and bringing her left hand up to look at the wristband. A shaft of light cuts along her bare skin like a second bracelet, the afternoon rays barely pushing through the window. Both she and Anton had their wristbands go off twice separately today, so they decided to part early and rest. But now, what exactly did the palace mean by speeding up the games ?

Her wristband starts to tremble.

Calla scrambles to her feet. “Oooh no no no—” She grabs her sword. Slings a jacket over her shoulder. In the distance, she hears footsteps thundering into the building. The clock on the mantel puts the hour at late afternoon. She’s being ambushed, with no way to know what’s coming, who’s coming, how many are currently heading her way. Battle in this apartment or the hallways would be claustrophobic—she has to get out of here.

“Mao Mao,” she hisses. “Go hide!” Her cat sprints off, noting her rush. There’s plenty of pet food stacked in the corner of her bedroom, and there are holes in the walls where Mao Mao can stay tucked all day. Soon as the fur bundle disappears, Calla shoves her arms into the jacket and runs for her bathroom. Her wristband is still humming against her skin, though the screen displays nothing. She skids into the laundry unit, shoves the window open, and climbs out in one fast swoop.

Fuck King Kasa. Fuck him to all eternity. Calla winces when her ankle lands hard in the alley outside, hardly taking a moment to gather her bearings before she is sprinting, burrowing deep into San. Three streets later, she stops and leans against a shop wall, trying to catch her breath.

The wristband has stopped trembling.

The city carries on: its beeping machines and its sagging wires, its winding streets and its slamming doors.

Calla straightens up, smoothing her hair back. She got away this time, but she can’t return to her apartment. The player will stake it out, waiting to add a kill to their list. From here on out, she must move where the games take her.

“ Fuck ,” she says once more, with feeling. Calla starts her trek deeper into the city.

By chance or by luck, Anton does not catch the king’s announcement. He’s boxed into the corner of a hospital room, sweating under his layers. The air-conditioning unit has been kicked right out of the window, the broken latches snagged on the sill. There are five beds, laid side by side, separated by curtains. Two beds over, a family loudly discusses transfer options, no longer willing to pay for the space.

Anton runs the washcloth along Otta’s arm. “I don’t know why I bother,” he says under his breath, so the people on the other side of the curtain won’t hear him. “I don’t know what you would say if you were around to see yourself reduced to this.”

His hand stops, the cloth paused by her wrist. Otta’s appearance has changed little in these years. She’s aging, as is only natural for a body occupied with qi, but not in the way that others do. It’s as if her body is playing catch-up with the rest of the world, always a step behind, continually forgetting that it remains alive and must continue to function. It would have been easier if the body had died. If Otta’s qi had been snuffed out entirely, then the gods would have made a decision on Anton’s behalf to take her away. Instead, she is locked inside something that was halfway saved, caught between life and death. Day after day, Anton must actively choose to keep her stuck in this in-between, because if he gives up on her now, then her death is on his hands.

“Give me a sign if you can hear me,” Anton says, as he does every time he visits, for months, for years. “Just something, Otta. Anything.”

There’s nothing. There has always been nothing, from the moment she fell sick to this very second as the clock on the wall ticks past six. Anton picks up her hand and holds it, but the action is done out of reflex, not warmth. Seven years have passed, and by this point, he remembers the Otta in front of him more than the Otta who was alive, who pushed him to climb the palace turrets and throw eggs at their classroom windows.

In truth, he hadn’t known Otta for long before they were caught trying to run. If asked what their favorite memory together is, he wouldn’t know what to point at. Evenings spent hiding in various palace rooms, maybe, trying to keep quiet with the guards patrolling the hallways outside. But even that was always tinged with a franticness, with him wondering if Otta was going to get bored and wander off if he wasn’t interesting enough.

“Why do you always do that?” he had asked once.

Otta jolted in that private sitting room, her black eyes snapping to him. It was always a little strange looking at her directly, the Avia eyes so similar to Anton’s own. They certainly weren’t related. The elite bloodlines were well-documented, every bastard child logged no matter how quietly they slipped in.

“What do you mean?” Otta returned innocently.

“You’re always peering around. See—you’re doing it right now. It’s like you’re expecting someone to pop out from behind and scare you.”

In truth, that was the generous interpretation. No matter if they were in a room alone or surrounded by the palace crowd, Otta’s attention was flitting about eagerly. Anton had chosen his phrasing with care so that Otta wouldn’t take it as an attack, but it wasn’t only that she would peer around—she wanted to be watched, as if every word she delivered to him was also conducted for a hidden audience just on the other side of the curtain.

Otta leaned forward, her chin propped in her palm.

“I’m only cautious,” she whispered, like the two of them were engaged in conspiracy. “How else would we survive a place like this?”

Sometimes Anton got the feeling that palace nobles made themselves out to be more important than they really were. That every conflict was contrived and artificial, only a matter of who upset who and who said the wrong thing to who, and no one living within these gilded walls knew a single thing about what real danger was.

But he couldn’t say that to Otta. She made a blood sport out of surviving the palace, and she claimed to do it for their sake. While she reached for him and whispered, You’re the only thing that makes it worth it, promise me we’ll stay together, promise me, promise me— there was nothing he could say except I promise. I promise.

Whether he knew the true Otta Avia or not, they belonged to each other. He has spent these years in exile desperately aware that she is all he has left, every waking moment spent chasing the next method of covering a hospital bill from months prior. The end of the line is approaching. The debt piles too high to touch. Anton knows that either he wins the king’s games and takes the prize, or he loses himself and Otta at once. He won’t accept any other alternative. A promise is a promise, and he won’t ever abandon her.

Anton sets Otta’s hand down, then stops short. Her fingertips are tinged purple.

“I need a doctor,” he demands immediately, surging to his feet and smacking the plastic curtain aside. A nurse stands by the table, pouring from a large metal thermos.

“Did you say something?” the nurse asks absently, his eyes flicking over.

“Yes,” Anton replies. Impatience rises in his throat. All the hospitals in San-Er are like this. Overworked and overpacked, underpaid and understaffed. The people who run shifts are either short-tempered or entirely apathetic. He supposes it is self-preservation more than anything. Each day, they must throw out more lives than they save, not by any will of their own, but because there are not enough resources or operation spaces.

But still, in that moment, the only person around to blame is the nurse.

“This patient needs tending to.”

The nurse walks close, frowning. “I don’t see anything wrong.”

“So fetch a doctor— hey , where are you going?”

Something in the hallway has started screeching. Without any sympathy, the nurse is already hurrying away, holding a hand up. “Press the call button if there’s an emergency,” he calls over his shoulder. As soon as he exits the room, it plunges deeper into noise, the conversation two beds over turning heated, and Anton resists the urge to punch through the curtain, hitting whatever he can just to feel better.

When Anton looks at Otta again, there’s a thin layer of sweat on her top lip. He takes the washcloth and gingerly pats it off. Something is going on. The doctors say that as long as Otta has her vitals observed, as long as she is cared for, she won’t deteriorate. The yaisu can be continually combatted. She cannot improve, but she cannot die either.

So why does she look like she is weakening?

There’s a sudden rustle at the curtain, and Anton looks up with a start. The shadow of a child moves across the other unit, but it’s gone just as fast. Anton waits another second. Nothing. He sighs.

There are no nurses or doctors around to remind him of his bills when he draws the curtain back and exits the room. He turns into the corridor outside. An itch at his chin irritates him, and when he touches it, he feels grit and dried blood and the prickle of facial hair trying to grow in. He’s exhausted; when was the last time he took a shower? There’s still so much red stained at his collar, perhaps day old, perhaps even older. Any time not spent in the games is spent around the fringes of the casinos and cybercafes, either moving money around or figuring out his accounts.

“Watch out, watch out!”

A gurney comes rushing down the corridor, pushed by a woman dressed like a regular civilian. Anton steps out of the way, pressing up against the chipping green wall paint. The cool-toned lightbulb flickers overhead. He wonders if a civilian has merely taken matters into her own hands or if she’s a doctor who hasn’t changed yet. The front desk can hardly keep track of its own patients, never mind its personnel. The only thing they can seem to keep track of is payment.

With a loud clatter of its wheels, the gurney disappears around the corner. Anton continues walking, hands in his pockets, eyeing the people he passes. The time has come for a swap. He can feel a discomfort in his chest—a reaction that always comes when familiarity sets in for a particular body, when a face grows too comfortable and the limbs become too easy to move. He has to stay on his toes. It’s the only way San-Er won’t bowl him over when he’s not watching.

By the corner, there’s a young man waiting with a cellular phone pressed to his ear. The device is a peculiar sight, rare around San because such technology is limited to the bankers and accountants in the financial districts. He must be rich. Either the son of a councilmember or someone capable enough to have made it out on his own after graduating from one of the three major academies in San-Er. It usually isn’t worth getting people like them caught in the games.

Anton does it anyway. He trips in front of the man, knives and pager and coins clattering out from his jacket, wristband loosening from his arm. And when the young man kindly crouches down to help Anton pick up his belongings, Anton jumps.

“—she expects you at nine , don’t forget. Your mother is—”

Anton removes the cellphone from his ear, making a guess as to which button cuts off the grouchy voice. The body he just vacated is blinking, red-orange eyes bugged wide in an attempt to recollect how he ended up at the hospital, but Anton feigns ignorance, and merely offers a half smile before scooping up the knives and shaking them into this new body’s fancy suit sleeve. He feels refreshed. Alert. At some point, he—his qi, his spirit, his essence—will need sleep, but as long as he keeps jumping, he can push it off, like a wound sealed over with tape instead of new skin.

Anton secures his wristband into place again. With new vigor, he pushes through the hospital’s front doors, merging into the rest of the busy building.

August flips a coin, then catches it smoothly in his hand. The bar bustles around him, each seat filled with regulars. Snake Station is a hole-in-the-wall—or three holes in three walls, to be precise—that involves picking through a series of obscure passageways before reaching the infamous locale. Palace guards frequent these booths often, coming in when they’re on break and even when they aren’t.

The bartender puts a drink in front of August. Wearing a stranger’s body, August nods, tossing the coin forward. Tonight, he gets to the bottom of this mystery. No more talk of foreign intruders. No more lies about rural invaders. Something about this has always felt off to him, but he cannot put his finger on what it is. Something feels… orchestrated. Murky, improbable motives. Logic failing to follow through.

Calla reported in this morning. She was attacked yesterday by someone who likely intended to make her another victim of the yaisu sickness.

There was no light when he jumped. There was nobody nearby when he disappeared from the body. How is that possible, August? Since when could Sicans change the rules like that?

Except that’s the problem—he doesn’t think impossible things can be explained away by blaming what is foreign. There is more to it.

“You hear anything about this?”

The two palace guards sitting around the bar startle at August’s voice, but quickly follow his finger to the small screen propped in the corner. The muted news broadcast is talking about the deaths again, showing a grainy picture of one of the dead players doing the Sican salute. August was allowed to release only the blurriest photograph so the people of San-Er could see this was the work of an amateur, someone who didn’t really know what the Sican salute looked like. The newscasters on screen hurry to assure that it is false, intended to sow discord in San-Er. That part, at least, he does believe: this is not the work of real Sicans. He just cannot fathom it being the rural Talinese either.

“We know about as much as you do,” the palace guard replies. He doesn’t look suspicious in the slightest, and if he has noticed August’s pitch-black eyes, there is no indication. August presents in every other way as a regular concerned civilian.

“I’m surprised it’s being blamed on outside intruders.”

“Oh?” August says.

The second palace guard nods. “The wall has been infallible this long for a reason. It’s an excellent system. We watch every section. If anyone climbed in, we would know. ”

August agrees. Which is why he has been hopping bars all night, talking to every palace guard he can find. Because that leaves one more option.

An inside job.

He hasn’t decided yet what that would mean. A security breach? Perhaps a whole watchtower is turning a blind eye, or someone in the ranks is opening the doors to the outside. But that still leaves major gaps, like how one might procure identity numbers and evade surveillance cameras.

August jumps. He slams into a body across the bar, and the flash is swallowed up quickly, merely another strange blip ongoing in San despite being the herald of illegal activity. The palace guards here are mostly off the clock; they have no desire to police jumping. Despite that, they’re still easily spotted by their uniforms, swathed in black, so August slides into a booth opposite another guard in his new body.

This guard doesn’t look up when he arrives.

“Not interested in the news?”

“Mind your business,” the guard retorts.

August tilts his head. “Don’t you think it’s your civic duty to apologize for rural intruders in San-Er? How can you wear your uniform so proudly? How are you to represent the throne of Talin?”

The guard looks up now. With a delayed beat, August realizes he recognizes him, or at least the greenish blue of his eyes. This is one of Leida’s closest men, responsible for filling in when she is outside the palace walls or otherwise off-duty.

“What are you so mouthy for, huh?” the guard—Vaire, that’s his name—demands.

August waits a beat. “Why so defensive? Are you the one who let in the intruders?”

Vaire lunges, left hand clenching around August’s collar. He hauls him close, spittle frothing at the mouth. His other fist is already coming up, in a trajectory to land upon August’s jaw, but then Vaire’s arm halts like it has met an invisible barrier. The sight is almost comical.

“Your Highness,” Vaire says quickly. Ah, so he has noticed the eyes. “I apologize profusely.”

“Oh, no need,” August replies. “I was being irritating, after all.” He shakes off Vaire’s grip, and Vaire snatches both hands back at once. August stands, lips pursed in absent thought. “See to it that you report to your shift nice and early tomorrow.”

He can feel Vaire staring after him as he walks out of the bar. As soon as the guard identified August, he clammed up, so there’s no use trying to ask anything else. Nevertheless—why the adverse reaction when asked about the wall? Vaire is not usually inclined toward violence. He’s levelheaded and calm, as all palace guards must be when they are selected for duty.

Outside the building, August pauses, turning over his shoulder. He watches the final door swing. His gaze moves up, going to the second floor where a club pulses, the third where a laundromat rumbles on, the fourth floor where a noodle shop is operating at high capacity.

He hasn’t quite figured it out yet. But he’s starting to get his suspicions.