Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

Galipei doesn’t follow lockdown protocol. He hears that August has been sighted in the east wing, speaking with Otta. In that moment, he makes up his mind to leave him be. He puts on a long jacket in his rooms. Leaves his pager behind so that Seiqi can’t annoy him any more than he’s already annoyed. When he passes the guards watching the west exit, he nods, and they let him through.

A light mist of rain falls from the skies. Dreary afternoon hours. It’s the time of day when no one has much energy for anything, and across the twin cities, activity draws to a lull. Night will breathe a second wind onto the day, push everything into motion again once the moon rises over the horizon. Until then, most of San-Er is only buffering with lackluster effort.

Not Galipei, though. He pats down his trousers, checking that he has his weapons. No one will stop him from going off to do his own thing, but it is rather frowned upon to be away from his charge for so long. Probably no one is stopping him because Galipei is usually the one frowning if other guards don’t put in enough hours.

Nothing has made sense lately. He knows as well as anyone that August is prone to disappearing periodically, jumping across the cities to complete a task himself. But Galipei was always in the loop—always the one covering for him so that the rest of the guard thought August was resting peacefully in his rooms.

Galipei has never been on the other side of that before.

You only want his attention, the most vicious part of him whispers. You’re bitter that the rest of the kingdom needs him too.

No, he fights back. It’s not only that. The dismissals. The distraction. The new dye . August has been shedding every part of himself, and Galipei is flummoxed trying to parse the logic behind it. It took seeing the jet-black hair to be certain that this isn’t merely his imagination.

That night years ago, when August asked for help the first time he bleached his hair, he was more upset than Galipei had ever seen him.

“What’s wrong?” Galipei demanded. “Did something happen?”

“Nothing more than an ordinary day in the wondrous Palace of Earth,” August replied wryly. It had been a few months since Galipei had been assigned to him. On the other side of the capital, the Palace of Heavens hadn’t fallen either, which meant King Kasa hadn’t yet gone off the rails with security. He was happy to provide when August requested a study of his own, up in the palace’s highest turret. Galipei thought it was because the prince wanted the view; August would tell him soon after that he wanted the isolation, away from visiting nobles or aristocrats begging a favor. That study was his reprieve from the world, and only those who really needed to seek him out would climb that high.

Galipei remembers taking the brush from August and crouching down to help. There was a mirror hanging on the wall—it’s since come down after Leida nudged it too hard two years ago and put a chip in the corner—and Galipei watched August’s expression slowly ease while he spread the dye.

“This lightener is good quality,” Galipei remarked. “Barely leaves a smell.”

“Only the best,” August replied quietly. “Or else it wouldn’t be permitted in the palace.”

Already, Galipei knew he was putting together a picture of August Shenzhi. The crown’s heir hated the palace with a volatile energy, yet he couldn’t separate himself from it. To stray too far would be to lose the power it gave him, and to get too close meant sacrificing the grand ideas he had in his head about change. The Prince August of back then had wanted to wield the throne in his way, and according to his beliefs. It would be vastly different from the way Kasa managed it.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” Galipei asked when August finally emerged from the bathroom.

“The paperwork has started.” August dragged a hand through his wet, rinsed hair. “For the legal adoption.”

The color had set in perfectly, an even application down to his roots. Blond suited him. The rest of his face was so sharp that this softened the edges and added a new air of pleasantry.

“That’s… that’s good,” Galipei said, startled. “Right?”

“Depends who you ask,” August replied. “But it is a necessary step, so that’s all that matters.”

Then he offered a sardonic smile to end the conversation and Galipei shut up in an instant, the same way that mortal sacrifices stilled in the presence of their gods, a second prior to being consumed.

San-Er prickles when Galipei trips on the front stoop of a building, then stomps his boot hard into the entryway to gather his bearings. He’s almost there. The Hollow Temple is on Loyan Back Street. It can be accessed only through a rear door in this low-rise because the temple is enclosed on all four sides by other buildings, tucked away like the cities’ secret.

August has dyed his hair back to its original color. August won’t go up to his study, as though he’s forgotten about its existence. And when it comes to the kingdom, August may be putting through the reforms he lined up on his desk, but he does it with such a heavy hand that one would think he’s stamping things into action without reading a thing or listening to any of his advisors. The grumbles have already started about August being more vain than his adoptive father, more concerned about palace drama than the people’s well-being, and there is no world in which that would be true, much less one where August would let that show to the public.

There have been too many missteps within such a short period of time. Too many items on the agenda that August has forgotten about, and at the end of the day, August is too smart to screw up like this.

Galipei’s surroundings grow muffled the moment he leaves the sixth-floor marketplace and passes through a small door at the end. The stairwell echoes with dripping water. Something is squeaking on the second-floor landing while he descends. When he passes by, a family of rats burst out of the corner and chase each other down to the ground level ahead of him.

Galipei grimaces. At last, he steps out from the building. If anyone is going to make a fuss about his presence, it will be now. No other way to come in and out, unless he were to tear a hole through the mesh grille above the temple.

It’s quiet. The grille creaks with the wind, bogged down by years of trash falling from the surrounding windows. He waits, observing a few Crescent Society members in conversation around the perimeter of the building. The Hollow Temple is the nearest place of worship to the palace. They come few and far between in the twin cities—it is not that San-Er has entirely abandoned its old gods, but the few devoted perform their piety in private. Kitchen shrines and small incense sticks stuck into hallway pots. Dried flowers taped to front doors and joss paper burned on the rooftops.

Truthfully, though, the temples do not serve those believers. The temples are the last remnants of San-Er’s early years, continuing into the present only because the Crescent Societies have taken over the facade of religiosity for their operations.

Galipei steps into the Hollow Temple, nudging the heavy door aside. The vermillion paint chips off and sticks to the pads of his fingers. All sense of warmth drains from him as he walks down the pews, his breath appearing in clouds with each huff. He proceeds forward. Kneels before the statues erected at the front.

He recognizes none of them—by his parents’ generation, the schools stopped teaching their names—but their watchful eyes are all-surrounding. The pantheon wants to fill the space of worship that Galipei has carved out inside himself. They’re aware of what has changed. They know his ears are open to their whispers, seeking a new answer in the emptiness left behind.

When August asked for Otta to die, he seemed worried that she would wake up. Galipei can’t comprehend it. Otta has woken indeed, fine, but no one has woken from the yaisu sickness before. In what world should he have assumed it was a possibility? Why did August consider it possible?

Galipei hears the approach of footsteps. These looming deities have shaken him. Their ten-foot, larger-than-life sneers; their frozen arms pulled back, ready to plunge their swords into an enemy.

Have I disappointed him? he asks the gods.

“Outsiders aren’t welcome at the Hollow Temple.”

A part of him wonders if he deserves to be shut out, if he’s been lacking on the fronts where August needs strength. Another part is certain that something lurks beneath the surface here, some surprise attack gearing up unwatched. Otta has woken. August is acting different. Two impossible matters tend to be related, do they not?

“I’m not here for trouble,” Galipei says slowly. “I only wanted to pray.”

“Sure. That’s why you sent a message ahead asking to speak to the eldest occupant of the temple.”

Galipei shifts on his knees. He turns slightly, running a courtesy glance over the temple elder standing to his side. The elder has a slight hunch in his back, his white beard running cleanly down his chin. He has dark eyes: near-black, Galipei thinks at first, but then the old man faces him, and he discerns that it is a shade of deep green, swallowed up by the red temple lights.

“It’s rather empty in here,” Galipei remarks, gesturing around them.

“Numbers are down,” the elder replies evenly. “Palace arrests. Palace executions. You know how it is.”

“Ah.”

August hasn’t had time to deal with the Crescent Society members arrested after Leida was hauled in. Those stacks were left in his study, because Galipei wanted to discuss them.

“Might I ask, then,” the elder says, “whether I may aid your prayer?”

“No need. I only sought a space. There aren’t any shrines in the palace.”

“Plenty of havoc in the palace these days.” He must have heard about Otta Avia and her miraculous recovery. “It cannot be difficult to smuggle a shrine through those doors if you have become devout.”

Galipei has considered this matter deeply. He has had no epiphanies, except that he does not know enough.

“There may be too much smuggled into the palace already.” The old gods stare down at him. They are apathetic to the desperation in his voice when he asks, “When might cinnabar heal instead of kill?”

If the elder reports him for asking this question, the palace guard could easily put together the crime committed at Northeast Hospital. Fortunately for Galipei, the Crescent Societies have no speck of loyalty to the palace, no desire in the slightest to protect the kingdom without reward.

“It can’t,” the elder replies. “It is poisonous.”

“Humor me,” Galipei presses. “Your walls and doors are painted with cinnabar. The stories speak of it as the crystal for immortality. Why?”

The elder scoffs. He laces his hands behind his back, then turns to go. “Here I was, thinking this might be something worth my time. Those are legends, boy. There are gods and there are mortals; there exists little in between. Cinnabar has no function other than coloring some pretty lacquerware.”

Galipei shoots to his feet. He moves with the aggression of someone looking for a fight, and the temple murmurs a complaint.

“No,” he snaps. The elder halts in his path, between the pews on either side. “We can switch bodies at will, and the best explanation for it is genetics . Stories don’t come out of nowhere.”

“This kingdom hides more of its past than you could ever imagine.” Though the elder remains facing the other direction, his voice is a low rumble through the entire space, each word enunciated without room for mistake. “There have been human soldiers who can change their features without jumping. Human aristocrats who’ve torn off their own limbs in sacrifice, hoping to match their qi to the crown. There was even once a human queen who sacrificed droves of her own people, hoping to achieve reincarnation.”

The elder must take Galipei for some fool, spouting off folktales that province farmers have made up to scare their children out of trusting strangers. Galipei lifts his gaze. He meets the eyes of a figure painted onto the ceiling, one much smaller than the rest, an archaic Talinese character written on its forehead.

You weren’t assigned to me until after Otta was gone, so I don’t expect you to understand. Kill her.

“I ask if there has ever been a past where cinnabar was used to heal some-one’s qi.”

The elder starts to walk again.

As you wish.

Galipei didn’t go to his aunt for cinnabar without reason. He could have used anything. Otta Avia was comatose in a hospital room that had neither cameras nor medical personnel who cared enough to monitor the visitors coming in and out. It could have been a pillow over her face until she stopped breathing. Any one of the drugs that circulated through San-Er injected directly into her bloodstream to stop her heart. It didn’t have to be a toxic powder. He got cinnabar only because August had asked him to. Only after August had summoned him to his study later that day to apologize— he shouldn’t order Galipei around, he knew they were closer than that, the pressure was getting to him.

Cinnabar, August had declared, swiveling suddenly from the window overlooking the coliseum. A peaceful yet slow method. The hospital won’t notice. If someone investigates, they won’t think to look for those signs.

“You asked, actually, when cinnabar might heal instead of kill.” The old man disappears from the main hall of the temple, but his words echo tenfold from the hallway. “There’s a simple answer. When a god is involved, of course.”