Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19

For two days on the road, they encounter only peace and quiet through Talin’s provinces.

Calla keeps her ears perked for chatter from the locals. She expects to hear gossip about travel surges beginning. Underground efforts to gather their best adventurers together and head for the borderlands. But the rural dwellers are much better at keeping mum than she expected, because Calla barely hears a peep. The silence can’t be because the provinces have absolutely no interest in intercepting the crown. Perhaps the Dovetail’s influence is widespread out here, and the people are doing their part not to ruin their plans.

Calla wipes sweat off her temple. Their surroundings have started to change from the flat fields of Eigi to the copses of trees farther north. They must be somewhere in the dead center of Leysa now, clattering through a dense forest along the Apian Routes. Though Calla rides near the third carriage and hovers safely at the middle of the delegation, she’s not paying as much attention as she should. They’re going so slowly—it’ll likely be another week before they get to the borderlands, and that’s already generous. In a week under her command, she would have reached Rincun by now. She did , in fact, last time she checked.

Her left ear thrums. Calla winces, her shoulder lifting to press against her eardrum. In these two days, her qi has mostly behaved too. She doesn’t know what triggers the outbursts, but there may be more to come given she hasn’t washed the sigil off her chest. She can feel its presence starkly. Not because she’s a little dirty—though she is. The sensation is more akin to a light pulsation, just beneath the skin.

“Highness, a little to the left, please.”

Calla grimaces, pulling her horse into alignment at the guard’s prompt. Underfoot, the gravel has turned rough and sharp. It’s been quite some time since the route was built—before the war, most definitely—yet the stones haven’t worn down. She throws a look over her shoulder, catching the guard’s eye.

“Pan, is it?”

Pan nods. He seems pleased that Calla remembers his name.

She gestures to the carriage beside her. “Not to toss blame, but this keeps gravitating closer and closer to me. What’s going on? Where did we hire these drivers?”

The third carriage driver frowns atop his horse, clearly offended, but he doesn’t say anything.

“It’s not his fault, Highness,” Pan replies. “There are probably eight people piled in there. The carriage is overloaded.”

That doesn’t seem right. Most of the guards are riding in accompaniment, so it is only councilmembers and staff within the carriages. With only eight councilmembers and roughly double the amount of attendants to aid their travel, surely there would be better distribution than that.

As Calla counts the vehicles, Pan must notice where her thoughts are going.

“Oh, the last carriage is empty,” he tacks on. “King August’s orders.”

That last carriage would most certainly not be left empty for a journey like this. What did Anton bring with him?

“You’re leaning again.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Calla grumbles, steering her horse to walk straight.

They ride onward. Overhead, the spindly ends of the tree branches wave in tune to their procession of hooves and wheels. Leysa’s trees will stay green all year round. Just as San-Er hardly gets too cold—only wet and sweaty—Leysa is always slightly humid, bringing little change between seasons.

Calla remembers the first time she saw the forests. That earliest carriage ride from Rincun into San-Er, she forced herself to clamp down on her awe, craning her neck up and up and up to follow the claws stretching for the clouds.

Rincun doesn’t grow many trees.

Midday turns to afternoon. The skies thicken with quiet gusts of an easterly wind. Along the Apian Routes, there are pockets where the two sides of trees will crowd so closely they block out the daylight, and other pockets where the trees only grow short and straight, letting in plenty of the skies.

Calla feels the disturbance in the forest before she sees anything.

A chill skates along her shoulders. She’s irritated for a moment, suspecting that her qi is acting up again. She gives her left ear a harsh tug. The sting eases the prickle. Then the chill comes again, and her chest pulses hard.

She has no idea what incites her to do what she does next. Instinct tells her to put her index finger on the sharp edge of the saddle and press hard until she draws blood. When the trees rustle again, she hears it ten times as loudly. When the gravel path tremors underfoot, Calla pulls her horse to a sudden stop, listening.

There’s a turn coming ahead. The forest will rise in elevation, and Leysa’s fork of the Apian Routes pivots left on an acute angle to reach Talin’s main river.

“Your Highness,” Pan calls behind her. “Why have you—”

Calla leaps off her horse. “Get ahold of him,” she shouts, gesturing to the reins she abandoned. “Halt! Everybody else, halt, right now !”

Her command echoes through the forest with explosive force. She sprints along the line of guards and carriages, hurrying for the front of the delegation line where the Weisannas leading the movement turn to look at her, concerned. Galipei is among them, directing his horse around quickly. By then Calla has already hurtled past him, skidding to a stop.

“Give me a crossbow.”

The instruction doesn’t leave room for argument. Though Galipei looks hesitant, he reaches into the weapons bag hanging off his horse and throws a crossbow at her, then the accompanying bolts. Calla catches the bow with one hand, secures the bag of bolts with the other. Before she’s scarcely steadied her grip, she’s loading the crossbow, aiming forward, and breathing out.

“Princess!”

Anton’s voice. August’s voice. She’s left a smear of blood on the crossbow. Though she registers movement behind her—carriage doors opening and councilmembers wanting to see what is happening—she doesn’t waste effort asking them to return. She puts every iota of focus she has on watching… watching…

Calla fires. Just as she pulls the trigger, she adjusts her aim, pointing higher than she needs.

The delegation, together, watches the bolt soar through the air. It fires straight while the road starts to bend; it hurtles into the trees right as a breeze blows in from the east, but because Calla has adjusted for the interruption, it pierces perfectly into the camouflaged man perched on a tree branch.

He cries out. Falls to the ground. So, too, does the veil he was holding in place, and when the large swath of camouflage drops, it reveals the people waiting in the forest, clutching swords.

Calla shoots forward without waiting for the guards, drawing her own sword from her belt. She trusts herself more than she trusts anyone here, and given that she ruined this surprise attack, there’s only a brief moment when their opponents will be in disarray before they organize into a new formation. The Weisannas are yelling for the palace guards to take position. For the councilmembers to get back inside. Calla catches “ Your Majesty, you cannot be out here. ”

It must twist Anton up to have to feign incompetence. The Palace of Earth did not train August Shenzhi in the same way the Palace of Heavens trained Calla, so August shouldn’t know his way around a sword. Maybe that’s why Kasa was the one who survived longer, the one smart enough to shut himself away after the mess the other palace made.

Calla slashes hard, charging into the offense. With barely any time to swing momentum into her arm, Calla cuts down one man. Ducks a woman’s attack, parries for two clangs before she sees an opening, and plunges her sword through the woman’s ribs. There couldn’t have been more than twenty hiding in the trees. A small number have rushed out onto the road, while others pivoted and used the trees to go around, but it’ll be harder to attack the delegation with the palace guards at the ready. If Calla hadn’t caught the veil, then they might have broken in from the sides. Now all they have is brute force, but the numbers are on the palace’s side.

Calla hauls her sword out of the woman. Blood arcs from the motion, falls like a sheet of rain onto her shoes. Though the woman coughs out a viscous spatter too, darkening her deep-green garb, she speaks nothing before she falls. No threat, no battle cry. Nothing to indicate what they’re attacking for or where they came from.

Nothing to indicate whether this is the Dovetail, as Calla has been waiting for. But why here ?

“Shit,” Calla mutters.

A collision of metal draws her attention into the trees. The guards have joined the fray. Calla moves rapidly, plunging through the gaps of the forest and wincing against the sharp lower branches scratching her face. Beyond the scream of battle and the in-out panting of her breath, it’s the unfamiliar thicket underfoot that rustles loudest. Her maneuvers do not change from the way she navigates San-Er, despite how substantially different the environments are. The cities swap bark for steel, dig up earth and let buildings put down roots instead, but Talin is a kingdom made up of labyrinths all the same. Here, Calla slams herself through a narrow space between trees, and just as she emerges into a small clearing, she barges in on a fighter getting the upper hand over a Weisanna. The guard hits the ground, fight finished. His opponent has enough momentum that he swings at Calla in the same exhale.

“Who are you?” Calla demands. “Who sent you?”

The man raises his sword. He doesn’t spit curses or launch into a rallying cry. He plunges downward; when Calla dodges, he’s quick to slash left to right, moving with untrained technique but fiercely strong conviction.

In another life, maybe Calla would have joined this group. The girl she was, rather—the one who’s been lost, a name vanished into the wind. If she’d survived Rincun, she might have wanted more, might have traveled the kingdom to thank the gods for keeping her alive, plotting an attack on the capital to set the scene for Talin’s liberation.

But in this life, Calla Tuoleimi is sick of messes in her way when she’s trying to clean up a bigger one. For the grander survival of each small village dotting the kingdom, she will throw sacrifices onto the pyre. She was willing to kill eighty-seven civilians in the cities. She looked Leida Miliu in the eye before gutting her. Twenty nameless fighters in the forest is nothing. The heavens will understand their mission being cut short.

Calla ducks. She feels the sword meet her hair, taking off a lock that didn’t move as fast as the rest of her. The metals thuds against a thin trunk; her dark hairs flutter into the twigs and sodden leaves. Before the man can tug his weapon from the bark, Calla returns the blow.

She hears metal scrape flesh. The man throws out an elbow, interrupting Calla’s sword, but it’s too late. An inch is a mile on an artery. Skin splits open; blood spurts in an instant. Before Calla can step back, slick liquid gets in her eyes, trickles down her throat as thickly as sludge. Though she swipes at her face and pulls away fast to break the close proximity, it takes a terrifying few seconds to clear her sight, to swallow down the pungent taste.

Palace training never covered this about battle. They taught her patterns of attack, pointed out technical calculations and logical flaws, but she learned desperation on her own. After the Palace of Heavens fell, the council deliberated for months before confirming it was Calla Tuoleimi who committed the massacre. An intruder, surely, half of the nobility argued. The princess on the surveillance footage fought with reckless abandon, and they didn’t remember teaching that. They didn’t remember giving her anger.

She knows this is what makes her good. She also knows this is what the palace tries to beat out of its generals, because desperation is fast, but it’s also blinding.

A whisper, at her side. Calla brings her sword up, but someone else has blocked the attack for her. There are two new fighters on scene—when the second rears around to swing, Calla goes low, opting for a brute-force stab to push him off-balance.

“Calla, give me room.”

Irritation prickles in her chest. Instead of making room, she changes her attack. Her opponent is still fighting despite his critical wound. She swerves to his other side and pushes him right in Anton’s way, just as Anton incapacitates the first. He has a split second to flash a look of disbelief her way. Then he cuts down the second man too.

“What was that ?” Anton demands. His voice booms through the trees. While their immediate surroundings have cleared, the sound of conflict rings loud at the tree line.

“What are you doing?” Calla fires back. She swivels around. Continues scanning the forest for movement. “You’re going to get caught.”

Anton Makusa has found himself a sword, likely filched from one of the Weisannas. It’s a bizarre sight: August’s level expression paired with the splatter of Anton’s battle lust. Anyone looking upon him in this moment would know that he is an invader.

“I came here to help you .” Anton swings his sword. “The Palace of Earth taught the basics, Princess.”

That is how Anton Makusa learned to fight. But August Shenzhi did not go through the same teachings. August Shenzhi is a golden vase of the palace, protected by Galipei instead of his own glistening skin.

“You—” Calla’s attention swivels to the right. There’s a phantom click a few paces away. A hunched figure behind a bush, pointing something silver directly at them.

She shoves in front of Anton and throws her hand out. In that moment Calla isn’t thinking of a command. She barely knows what she’s trying to do, but she remembers her fight during the flash flood alarms, the way the brute of a man hadn’t touched her, yet struck her hard enough to send her flying. She remembers the Hollow Temple and Pampi Magnes moving the world around her by mere gesture.

The air heaves. Just as a projectile flies from the attacker’s weapon, it shoots backward instead, a flame engulfing the trees.

Heat flares hot and fast. When the smoke clears, Calla’s throat closes tight, matching the vacuum in her chest.

“What the fuck?” Anton breathes. “That was gunpowder. It could have killed you.”

A whisper hums at the base of her skull, splits to snake down the two sides of her arms, jolts at the rough surface of her elbows. It wants to wake up. It wants to wreak its full power.

“Get back.”

Anton stares at her, unmoving. He can sense it. The air warps around her, refracting and shivering as it does above an open flame. Heavens, the pain, the pain —

“Calla,” he says.

Calla gasps for breath, propping her palm against a tree for balance. Their surroundings suction with the impression of the atmosphere disappearing, and though it returns near instantly, the branches shudder to recover. Anton isn’t as fortunate to experience a mere shudder. Without anything to root him in place, he skids back and collides with a thin tree trunk. He stills for a moment. The air clears.

And Anton lunges forward, swinging his sword at her.

“Hey!” Calla bellows. She barely manages to deflect the hit. “What are you— fuck —”

“Do that again.”

“Stop it,” she hisses, blocking his next strike. The reverberation travels to her very bones.

Anton gears up to swing again. When he wipes a splatter of blood off his cheek, it smears, running a dark line from the corner of his eye to his mouth. “Fight me off.”

Fuck. Calla swings messily to counter his sword. She has never wanted any of this. She would have rather buried herself in the rocks of the sea than choose their current predicament. But it’s impossible to start backtracking when she’s already a thousand miles deep into dirty work. Just as it is impossible for her and Anton to stop antagonizing one another when they have each other’s blood and guts spread in buckets between them. She keeps fighting him, but she’s only here to keep him safe. She possesses such hatred for the crown and the way its fingers stretch from the electric wires in San-Er to the plain soil in Rincun, so why is she here when he doesn’t even want her?

“You’re out of your”—she narrowly avoids an overarm slash—“ mind .”

“Let me see, Calla. Show me how you’re doing this.”

Her chest racks with new pain. A physical tearing sensation, like scissors slicing through the stem of her lungs. Her fingers spasm. Fine. Fine.

Calla drops her sword. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Anton echoes in threat. They make a picture of stark contrast when he lifts his sword steadily. Raises it high, over his head, creating what should be a perfect arc down. “Pick up. Your weapon.”

She went wrong long before she started on this crusade, from the first moment she decided to blame someone for Rincun, from that decision to enter the palace and take revenge into her own hands one day. If she wanted proper revenge, she should have prayed to the gods and asked for Talin to be incinerated off the map.

Anton lunges for the swing.

There’s nothing more to do. He is angry. He is looking for an excuse to strike. And so Calla braces with her arm over her head. All she can think to use in her last line of defense is a carnal, mortal body.

A heavy thud strikes the ground.

Seconds pass. The fight continues in the distance. The opinionated hiss of the wind and the curious thorny branches are their only spectators.

Slowly, Calla peels her eyes open. Lowers her arm.

“It seems unfair, doesn’t it?”

She doesn’t look like she’s been cut. As far as she can tell, each part of her remains intact, each beat of her rapid heart pulsing when it needs to.

“What does?” she asks. Her voice comes in a rasp.

“You killed me. You killed me, and yet I can’t seem to strike you without feeling the wound as my own.” He takes a step toward her. Without a doubt, Anton Makusa has stopped fighting, because as furious as his expression is, there are tears in his eyes. “Tell me this is some part of your work. Tell me you communed with the old gods and did this to me. What strength have you acquired that I lack?”

Calla shakes her head. The pain eases from her chest. The horrible thrumming fades from her ears.

“Is that what you think?” she returns. “The arena was the worst crime I have ever committed. I would have answered for it with my life. I still can.”

She almost misses it: a flash of movement, incoming from the tree line. Deep green that blends with the forest instead of city-alley black, which means it is an attacker instead of reinforcements, heading right for them.

Two thoughts flash in her mind.

One, Anton won’t turn around in time. Two, if she doesn’t stop the attacker, it ends here—the palace collapses, and Talin…

But before her very eyes, the man freezes . His limbs lock, and Calla blinks in sheer incomprehension as he starts to fall, knees unmoving when anybody else’s instinct would be to lunge forward and catch himself.

A blade flies from the left. It lands in his throat, as smooth as shearing through dough, and embeds to the hilt. The man collapses. As soon as Calla’s gaze swivels wide in search of the culprit, she makes direct eye contact with Otta Avia, who is standing between two stout trees, one hand holding back her long sleeve and the other still in the air from making the throw. Otta offers a smile.

Anton turns around, following Calla’s line of sight. The battle has reached its last dregs, guards fanning deep into the trees and examining the premises. By the time Anton spots Otta too, the palace guards arrive in the vicinity, asking Otta to please return to the carriage. Galipei emerges among them, performing a fast inventory.

Calla charges forward.

“ You ,” she snarls, pointing at Otta. She gets a few strides in before Galipei blocks her path. Calla tries to circle around. In response, Galipei grabs her properly, making a valiant effort to rein her back.

“Calla, this is unnecessary—”

“You did this.” Calla has no proof. She’s aware that she makes her accusation without proof, but she would much prefer to gather evidence after she’s gotten her hands around Otta’s slim white neck—

“I saved August,” Otta calls from the trees. “ You were about to let him die.”

“I saw him coming. I had it handled!” Calla returns.

“Enough! Enough!” Galipei bellows. “Your Majesty, are you all right?”

One of the Weisannas picks up the sword Anton was using, shaking it free from the thistle. Another retrieves Calla’s, then turns a questioning look her way. The forest is unnaturally quiet while they wait for his answer.

“I’m all right,” Anton says plainly. Any tortured expression of his has disappeared. There’s no sign of Anton Makusa.

The others in the clearing may not see it, but Galipei stiffens. He is still holding Calla steady; she senses the muscles in his arms prepare in defense, almost as though he didn’t hear what he wanted to.

Galipei is suspicious. Of course he is. It was only going to be a matter of time until Galipei caught on that something was off, but what about that answer prompted the realization?

“You fought,” the Weisanna holding Anton’s sword says.

Anton’s gaze flickers to Calla. “Princess Calla did most of the work. I hope I offered help.”

“That’s what we’re here for, Majesty.” Galipei, succeeding in redirecting the confrontation, releases Calla. He gestures rapidly at the other guards, and they go to lead Otta away, plucking her from the scene before Calla can lunge again.

Galipei doesn’t glance at Calla when he takes her sword from one of the other Weisannas. He doesn’t meet her eyes when he passes it back to her.

“In the future,” he says, still speaking to his king, “there is no need for you to get involved.”

Calla takes the sword.

“Understood,” Anton says.

“All right. Let’s return.”

Galipei prompts Anton away from the clearing, returning to the delegation. Wind blows through the branches, and Calla feels a cool drop of liquid move along her arm. It’s only when she looks that she sees the tear on her jacket and the first prickle of pain begins to smart on her upper arm. She grimaces, grabbing the cuff of her sleeve, and finds blood pooling inside her sleeve, dripping to her wrist. Someone cut her. She didn’t even notice the sting.

Calla stands where she is. At this point, almost everyone has trudged out of the trees. A guard makes another summons, calling for her to move along.

Everything moved so fast. The attacker, running in. Otta from a distance, throwing that knife. Otta from a distance, using her qi to stop the man in his steps and render him entirely immobile.

Calla’s teeth are gritted so hard that her jaw hurts.

“ Bitch ,” she manages under her breath.