Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

There are reports of trouble in Eigi, the nearest province outside San’s wall, and so August is sent out with ten palace guards to run reconnaissance. The councilmember who oversees this territory—who holds rank over the two or three generals commanding the battalion of soldiers in each province—has neither reported to the palace nor answered communication in twenty-four hours. Ever since the Makusa family was massacred by a guerrilla group in Kelitu Province years ago, any silence from councilmembers is to be taken seriously. And since King Kasa won’t leave the palace, it’s up to August to be his eyes and ears.

They already hit one bump in the road before they could leave San-Er. A film crew tried following them past the wall when the guards were raising the gates, sticking too close to the royal procession for comfort. The lesser television networks always grow desperate during the games. Without contacts in the palace, they can’t get good surveillance footage fast enough; then without new and interesting observations about the reels, no one wants to watch their programming. They begin entertaining bizarre ideas like producing documentaries about rural Talin, thinking it’ll somehow boost their viewership by showing something entirely outside the games. Leida was forced to shoo the crew away, warning that another infraction near the wall would be met with legal consequences. Casual travel in and out of San-Er is, after all, forbidden. Once someone becomes a citizen of the twin cities by birth or by lottery, there they remain, unless they are granted a formal departure permit. King Kasa is too afraid of what might happen if people are allowed free travel. Frequent movement on the border could allow rural occupants to slip into San-Er illegally, and San-Er cannot possibly strain its resources to care for illegal city residents.

Even though it was San-Er’s throne that swallowed them and their lands into the kingdom’s borders in the first place. Even though San-Er can put its citizen taxes on them just fine.

August breathes deep, taking in the fresh air as they travel through Eigi Province. His riding skills are terribly neglected, as are the city horses. They’re seldom taken out for exercise, housed in small stables along the wall for the rare occasion that San-Er’s forces need to leave the perimeter. When he is king, he will care for them. He will pave glorious roads throughout the provinces, funnel money outward to advance infrastructure. They will build transport, too, to get around—every type of advanced vehicle that the provinces currently use in prototypical form—and civilians inside the wall will come and go as they please, with the whole kingdom available to their every whim.

People will be happy. No one will say otherwise.

“Look at this.” King Kasa was watching the reels this morning. Hands clasped behind his back, letting the servants tailor his collar while he stood before a screen that stretched to take up half the entertainment hall. There’s something about the decoration in Kasa’s wing of the palace that has always bothered August, and last year, he finally figured out why. Kasa persistently installs new technology without first getting rid of what lies underneath. Television screens hang side by side with wood carvings; speakers jut out from expensive bamboo screens that aren’t produced anymore because their construction requires raw materials from Gaiyu Province. The other wings in the Palace of Union have modernized with the decades, have taken down most of their scroll paintings in favor of wires. Kasa’s personal quarters have not.

“What am I looking at?” August replied politely. He had only entered the entertainment hall to receive his task. Even with time of the essence out in Eigi, King Kasa had not dismissed him immediately. He kept his adopted son waiting so he could point at the screen, showing a woman sinking to her knees as she screamed at someone out of the camera’s view.

“What a pitiful sight,” Kasa remarked. “She really ought to get up.”

As if hearing his command, the woman on the screen hurried back onto her feet with renewed energy. Her wristband flashed on her arm. She disappeared from view just as another player entered the camera’s frame, grinning like a maniac.

“They seem to be enjoying themselves,” August said dryly.

King Kasa nodded in agreement. “Of course they are,” he said. “I offer them more than they could dare imagine possessing. I am this kingdom’s greatest benefactor.”

Eigi stretches wide in front of August now, endless fields and open grounds sprawling until they hit the horizon. King Kasa tells the truth: he is the greatest benefactor of this kingdom. It is not the vast holdings in the royal vault that matter most, but the continued generation of such wealth, and who is the one holding this all together, clutching onto these provinces so that everything funnels in the direction of the palace? The games, at their core, are Kasa’s way of telling his subjects to know their place. No matter what, everything in Talin flows back to him. There is nothing that can compete with his wealth, but stay in line, and he might just break off a piece and offer it generously. A gift; a consolation prize.

August tugs on his horse’s reins, pulling their procession to a stop.

A stout building comes into view. They have arrived.

He waves at the guards to stop beating on the palace drums, eyeing the province’s capital yamen. For people coming out of San-Er, the building is a sight that takes some getting used to. It serves as the administrative entrance into the village, rising one mere story with a wide roof that curls up at the edges to prevent rain from collecting. One entranceway opens into the courtyard, where all four sides are surrounded by the yamen, and beyond that, another exit at the back leads into the village. Some of the temples in San-Er still look like this, but they’re buried in the shadows of the high-rises around them, washing out the rustic stone walls and intricate wooden detailing.

Keeping his distance, August climbs off his horse, then passes the reins to Galipei. Leida, meanwhile, maneuvers her horse from the back of the guard, approaching August’s side.

“I told you that we would be fine today, didn’t I?” He brushes off his jacket. “You didn’t have to leave your post.”

“I have a whole team of very capable stand-ins,” Leida replies, swinging her leg off the saddle and hitting the ground hard. “San-Er won’t fall without me for one day. You, however, are another matter.”

Galipei makes a noise of protest on August’s behalf. August pretends not to hear Leida. The yamen looks empty, its open structure void of activity. This is where the village’s bureaucratic business is conducted, where the mayor should emerge for formalities as soon as the palace drums draw near.

August waits. He eyes the yamen walls.

And then, movement.

A man stumbles out from the yamen, his arm looped tightly around the neck of another. It takes August a moment to recognize the captive as the province’s councilmember and another to realize that the unnatural quiet was the preparation for an ambush. Now a small group of rural civilians filters out from the yamen, wielding torches and branches.

It’s the best they can do for weapons. The palace guards do not stir; they look upon the scene evenly. August exchanges a glance with Leida, and Leida nods.

“Stay where you are.” The mayor—the man who is clutching the councilmember—takes a deep breath. There’s fabric tied around the lower half of his face, and August can’t tell if this is a small attempt at concealing his identity or the makeshift methods of civilians bracing against plague when they don’t have proper masks.

The mayor continues: “We have demands of the palace—”

But he doesn’t have the chance to finish speaking. August jumps in easily, taking the briefest second to adjust. Galipei moves to catch his birth body; the palace guards surge forward at once without instruction.

“Go on,” August says, releasing the councilmember from his arms.

The councilmember hurries forward. The palace guards swallow him up, then fan out. In seconds, the rural group forming the ambush from the yamen is disarmed and on their knees. It’s almost too easy. Dissent is useless. August knows they hate the palace, but he’s aggrieved about how stupid their plans are nonetheless. He can’t blame them, because they don’t know that he is already trying to depose the current king, but what’s the point of taking more hours out of his day for these disorganized, futile attempts?

Leida holds out his cellular phone. August returns to his birth body and takes it, freeing her hands in time to grab the mayor when he blinks back into consciousness. She hauls the mayor off to the side before he can run, spitting a series of rote interrogative questions. The wind has picked up. The sensation is so unusual that it almost stings when a particularly strong gust blows against August’s left.

He dials the palace.

“A poorly thought-out hostage situation,” he reports when King Kasa answers. “We’ll return within the day.”

A beat of silence. Then it draws out, and August pauses, wondering what he’s said wrong. Are they in trouble? His eyes raise in search of Galipei. Escape routes don’t come easy in the provinces. Open space doesn’t allow for disappearances, only full battles.

“This was in Eigi Province, yes?” King Kasa finally replies. “How is Mugo faring?”

“He’s fine.” August casts a look at the councilmember. Mugo hardly looks ruffled. “And yes. Our nearest province.”

Another beat of silence. August has started to sweat.

“How big is its capital? About a thousand inhabitants in the village, from what I remember.”

Small villages freckle each province, gathering rural populations together for commerce and trade. A provincial capital is usually no larger than the others, but the presence of its yamen designates it the base of administration within the province. Past the open archway, August can peer right through the courtyard and the back gate to see rough dirt streets and small shop fronts. The people idling on the other side of the yamen pay no heed to the scene unfolding outside the village walls.

“Yes,” August replies. “I would be inclined to agree.”

“Put me on speaker, please, August. I’d like to address the palace guard directly.”

August does as he is told. Leida has moved off into the distance, and he wishes she would come back, just so she could have some sway on whatever King Kasa is about to instruct. But she is still interrogating the mayor, looming over him while he kneels, and the palace guards huddle closer, blocking her from August’s view. All ten surround him: not large enough to create a unit, but enough to act as a functioning force for the palace. Enough to cause whispers through Talin tomorrow, when the rural dwellers wonder what brought the royal guard out to Eigi.

King Kasa’s voice crackles through the phone.

“As sworn defenders of San-Er, there is no mercy for resistance. One wall is no longer enough. We need further protection.”

August feels a stone sinking slowly into his stomach.

“Burn Eigi’s capital down,” King Kasa continues, and suddenly the stone turns leaden, plummeting to the very bottom at high speed. “Turn it to ash. If its people air their grievances with threats, then we shall simply take the breath from their lungs.”

August turns off speakerphone and returns the device to his ear, but the palace guards have already heard every word. They cannot deny the command or pretend it was never heard.

“Your Majesty,” August hisses. “This is San-Er’s center for rice imports. It would be a loss—”

“We have plenty more in Yingu and Dacia. We can increase quotas in Cirea and start confiscations in Pashe. There is no excuse for insurgency.”

The palace guards begin to move. They don’t wait for August to look up and nod. August is here as a mere figurehead—they know that. The councilmembers won’t care what he has to say, and the armies across Talin will not entertain him for a minute until Kasa’s throne is his. No power can contradict the king’s, no matter how shiny the crown prince title may be.

“Hey.” Leida’s call jolts August to attention. He feels the first flickers of heat on his face. The torches are being lit. “Hey!”

Leida halts before him. The flecks of blue glitter at her eyes shimmer in the daylight. The bright, bright daylight, unclogged by factory smoke and brothel glow, which somehow makes everything feel so much worse , revealing every facet of his fellow human, every flaw and distinction that the shadows of San-Er would hide.

“What?” August asks tiredly.

“What is this? Why are—”

The moment she starts forward, August snags her by the arm. He glances down to make sure the cellular phone has disconnected and finds that King Kasa hung up as soon as he finished speaking. He didn’t even stick around to oversee how his command was being implemented.

“Instructions from the palace.” August’s voice is dull, emotionless. It has to be, because the guards are still listening. “We must punish insurrectionists against the throne, and when this village is razed, we will use the barren land to build a security base and oversee business regarding the wall.”

Leida is quiet. She lets August keep his grip on her arm and says nothing, expression steeled for her guards, but her eyes are ablaze, reflecting the flames that will soon burn the village to ash. Within minutes, there is screaming. Store roofs cave in and street lanterns crumble to the ground. The sounds waft past the yamen and into their ears, burrow into their head and take root in the very deepest crevasses of their memory. August and Leida stare ahead, letting the palace guard fulfill its duty.

“Thank you,” August says quietly.

“For?” Leida responds.

“Not making a fuss. That could have gone badly.”

Leida’s eyes shift to him. Her dark blue is vivid, edging into purple by the light of the inferno before them. It’s almost too hot to remain where they stand.

“The mayor didn’t say much,” she says. “Only that they couldn’t afford their taxes anymore.”

“I suppose that is enough reason.”

“Indeed. A reason that unfolds into myriads more.” Leida turns around. As soon as she has her back to the flames, the heat suddenly feels unbearable to August, as if they had shared the burden before and now he is left to endure alone. “But that is nothing to the palace, so I suppose it is nothing to us.”

Those inside the city walls are cockroaches, but those outside the city walls aren’t even living creatures, merely parts of the landscape that the palace can mow over and reshape as it wishes. This is the kingdom of Talin, after all, and the king is the great hand chosen by the divine gods. The gods never choose wrong, and the gods place the crown on its wearer.

August finally turns around too, his fists clenched hard. He takes in the screams. All those who are trapped inside the burning buildings face imminent, painful death; all the rest who are displaced will starve to death in a few weeks or months. Those slaughtered today have it the easiest.

“Yes, it is nothing to us,” August replies. “Long live King Kasa, may his reign go on for ten thousand years.”

He walks back to his horse. It will be a long ride to return to San-Er before nightfall.