Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

Smoke dances from Calla’s lips in little gray circles, perfect shapes fading into the air while she dusts the kitchen with ash. There are already three finished cigarette stubs littered on the floor, embers burning the ceramic tiles. Calla, meanwhile, sits upon the table, one muddy boot propped on a chair, the other dangling freely.

The door opens. When Anton walks into his apartment, he doesn’t look surprised to see her. Of course, she can only assume that it’s Anton, dressed like some councilmember’s assistant, hair combed back with gel and fancy cuff links glimmering in the low light.

Calla taps her cigarette. More loose ash joins the mess on the floor, and she wonders if he will notice. If it’ll piss him off, or if he hardly cares, just another blot added to the apartment.

“Where were you?” Calla demands.

Anton raises an eyebrow. He walks closer, his steps sluggish, like he doesn’t have the energy to remain upright for another second. His eyes, however, give him away. That jet-black stare is wary and calculating, operating at peak alertness.

“Do I report to you now, Fifty-Seven?” Anton replies.

“Do you report to anyone?” If he’s wearing a new body since she saw him earlier, he has been somewhere public. Doing what? Seeing who? Is the new face to avoid recognition, or was he simply bored of the old one? The impulsion to know what he has been up to tugs at her hands; if he won’t give an answer willingly, she will carve open his chest and pluck it from him.

Anton stops before the table. “I’m not in the mood to fight with you.”

“Fight with me?” Calla echoes. A petulant laugh lodges at the entrance of her throat. She holds it in with the barest self-restraint. “Oh, so sorry to disrupt your schedule.”

Anton slams his hands to either side of her. The sudden motion doesn’t startle her. Sullenly, Calla traces her gaze along the line of his suit, its fabric so smooth that she can see exactly where he has hidden his crescent knives.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

“You didn’t see the announcement?” she returns. “The games are being sped up. Pings at random. One might go off at any second, and then your apartment will be as unsafe as mine.”

By Anton’s expression, he did not know. She watches him blink once, twice…

“And you still showed up here?”

“How else was I supposed to find you?”

Anton says nothing in response. Calla thins her lips. They are only firing question after question at each other, with no answer on either side.

Something terrible sparks in her temper.

“You can just say it outright.” When she flicks her cigarette ash onto the tablecloth, she can pinpoint the exact moment she has overstepped her bounds. “If we’re done and you’re breaking our alliance.”

Anton plucks the cigarette from her fingers. She expects him to throw it away. Instead, he takes a drag, then blows the smoke right into her face. In a flash, Calla’s hand springs to his neck, fingers braced around his throat and ready to squeeze. She doesn’t, though—not yet. She waits for him to pick the fight so she can start firing her accusations, but she knows that the person she really wants to tell off is herself. She’s become accustomed to having Anton Makusa around. Isn’t that why it bothers her when she can’t find him at a perilous time? A certain reliance has creeped in. She may not need him nearby, but she wants him nearby. It’s the first thing she has wanted in years other than King Kasa’s demise.

“What are you talking about?” Anton says. His free hand comes up just as quickly, gripping her wrist to control her grasp on his throat. “Are you trying to frighten me, Fifty-Seven?”

“You should be frightened,” she returns, scowling.

“Should I?” Anton’s voice is low and derisive. He slides his hand up over hers, but instead of prying her fingers off, he holds them there. “Why are you looking at me like that, then?”

Calla freezes. The words settle in her stomach as pits, the seeds of something parasitic trying to take root and keep her company. Her grip doesn’t seem like a threat anymore: it is only pressed against soft skin and hard tendons, feeling the hollows of his neck move with every word he speaks.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Don’t act the fool. It doesn’t suit you.” Anton takes a step closer and inclines his head down. Before Calla can stop him, his lips brush the curve of her ear. “There’s no need to threaten me. If you wanted my attention, you have it now.”

A sharp whine comes from Calla’s belt. The unexpected sound jars her enough that she releases her grip on Anton’s throat and shoves him away. He lurches back without protest, his expression unchanged.

“Don’t get it twisted,” Calla spits, unclipping her pager. It’s from Chami.

Emergency. Call the diner.

A bolt of panic runs up her spine. She meets Anton’s gaze again with a wholly new ferocity.

“Where’s your nearest telephone?”

Anton follows Calla out, his heart thudding against his ribs. He has long learned how to hide it, to school his features in any body so they show only what he wishes to show. Otta was the master at these lessons. She didn’t tolerate sentimentality; she hardened tender things until they were shimmering stones.

Now he hears his pulse in his ear, the breakneck thrum going and going as he watches Calla pick up the telephone receiver. A bartender from the front—Ruen—comes by and squeezes through the brothel’s thin walkways, eyeing Calla at the phone and then eyeing Anton, failing to recognize him. As soon as he disappears, Anton walks to the other side of the telephone and leans right onto the box, making sure Calla knows he can hear every word of the conversation, even if he isn’t really listening.

Adrenaline , he reasons with himself. This reaction to Calla is a primal response, something that works off association. She reminds him of Otta, and not in a good way. She gets under his skin, even more than Otta did, because Otta squirmed and burrowed just to see if she could, but Calla will set her claws deep and then claim that she didn’t mean to. She could have anything in the world if she only tried.

“When did this happen?” she’s saying into the phone. Her fingers grip the cord, twisting the line tight enough that the tip of her thumb is turning white. When her eyes flick up, catching Anton’s stare, it’s almost like she doesn’t even see him there.

He should know better than to be drawn to her. The palace has already left him scarred. It let Otta stand mighty and unstoppable, then took her away with a grinning leer. He’s turned on his heel and thrown himself as far as he can get from its mockery, and still he cannot escape, sent a new test in the form of Calla Tuoleimi, the last living princess of Er. She stains his mind in vivid color, bright and burning and dangerous.

He’s always liked dangerous things.

He hates that he knows better. That dangerous things are bound to leave a demolished path in their wake. And still, he tries to hold them anyway.

“Don’t panic, just don’t panic,” Calla says into the receiver, pinching the bridge of her nose. She mouths a violent expletive, which Anton catches but the phone does not. “When was the last time you saw her?”

Before Anton can guess what comes over the line, there’s a tap on his shoulder, and he turns around to find Ruen, a tray balanced in his other hand.

“Are you—”

“It’s me,” Anton confirms before Ruen can finish. “Any mail come recently?”

Ruen frowns, holding up a warning finger. “Stop swapping so often. I almost kicked you out.” The bartender reaches into his back pocket and digs something out. Envelopes. Ratty-looking ones that might have arrived a while ago, but Anton is the worst at checking for them, and everyone downstairs has begun passing them around for safekeeping.

“Pay your bills,” Ruen warns. He swerves around Calla at the phone. “You’re way too behind.”

“Are you opening my mail?” Anton calls after him.

“I don’t have to! The sheer volume tells me enough!”

Ruen disappears around the corner. Calla slams the receiver down. As she fumes, Anton shoves the envelopes into his pocket without even looking at them.

“What’s wrong?” he asks casually.

Her head jerks up. There’s a pause—a prolonged second of hesitation—before she answers. “A friend of mine is missing. She went to the Hollow Temple.”

Yearly in San-Er, there are more profiles of people missing than people found. Bodies vanish; souls get wiped out.

“So a Crescent Society abduction,” Anton guesses.

Calla is quiet, chewing on her lip and resting against the wall. She looks like she’s posing for a royal sculpture, if those artworks were forged in steel instead of gold.

“All right.” She straightens up suddenly, dusting her hands off. “Come on, Makusa.”

She starts to walk, striding at a brisk pace through the brothel. With a start, Anton rushes to follow, stepping left and right around her as her speed hastens.

“Am I coming with you?”

Calla shoots him a sharp look. “We’re allied, are we not?” She ducks out through the door, barely pausing to prevent it from slamming into Anton, but he is fast, so he’s soon back alongside her.

“We are,” Anton replies. He watches her pause on the street. She lifts her chin, seeming to be deciding which way to go, and in the midst of it, a strand of hair blows into her face, sticking to her mouth. Anton almost reaches out to help, but Calla is already brushing it aside.

“Why’d you ask, then?” she says. A ghost of a smile crinkles her eyes. “Of course you’re coming.”

Ruen picks up the telephone. He dials the number slowly, making sure he does not miss a digit, lest he is punished for the delay.

The line connects. He clears his throat.

“She’s on her way.”