Chapter 29

CHAPTER 29

August thought he heard the old gods once.

He would never have admitted to it. If he did, the palace would have deemed him insane long before he could climb its ranks. But he knows he wasn’t mistaken, even if he can’t entirely explain how it happened.

He was fourteen, and his father was dying. Annic Avia didn’t offer August much as far as his lot in life went, but he taught August how to fold paper birds and took him to the city burial rooms every year, where he spent time going room to room with August, showing him which panels belonged to their ancestors. In San-Er, the respected dead are not buried; their ashes are placed into trays, and the trays slotted into the wall drawers, labeled with a two-inch panel for their name. August used to read each one with utmost care, looking closely at the color it had been engraved with. Very rarely did anything else represent a family in a city with this many people, and so their descendants printed the dead’s names in the color of their eyes, for one small piece of unique remembrance in a sea of metal drawers.

The Avias are an old family, his father said on his deathbed. Though we may not be special, we have history. That’s something you must preserve. Take care of your mother and your sister.

Later that year, Otta would get the yaisu sickness, and his mother would jump to her death by sneaking up to the top of the wall. Those two matters were not related. His mother was Annic’s second wife and couldn’t give less of a fuck about Otta, whose mother had passed in childbirth. Though he visited the two of them too, he mourned only his father regularly.

The new moon hid him slinking through the city when he went to pay his respects on the first day of every month, bringing fruit for gifts. He was nothing but a wraith, unknown by all and unknown most to himself. The kingdom owed him little, but he wanted more. August made sure his father got two drawers instead of one, purchasing both slots so the panel was larger than the rest. Still, each time he cleaned his father’s grave, the black ink seemed terribly ordinary compared with the other names. Black eyes were supposed to be a mark of nobility, commonly found in the palace. To August, that spoke of insignificance. He could easily be replaced by the next lonely boy in the north wing. Written with the same pens, if he swapped his school essays with those on the desk next to him, no teacher would be able to tell the difference.

“I would like to know,” he whispered aloud one night, polishing the drawers and helping the panels nearby with a coat of shine too, “whether there is more for me.”

Hardly anyone knew who August was when Carneli Avia married King Kasa. Though the ceremony was extravagant, nobody cared about the scrawny eight-year-old nephew who entered nobility by proxy. In the years that passed, he charmed nobles and made sure he was well-liked among the most elite crowd. It wasn’t enough. It didn’t get him close enough to what he desired.

“I want to know what more there could be.”

It was not a musing he expected to be answered. He was hardly awake at the late hour, so the echo that sounded could have been written off to his imagination. Only the flickering lights told him this wasn’t an auditory hallucination, the shrines of every deity nearby pulsing red. He turned, and he heard King, king, king whispered directly from the heavens, and August made up his mind.

When he gave Aunt Carneli the cup of tea, it was supposed to damage her organs. Enough to rid the possibility of heirs, so that August could begin plotting one day. He didn’t expect her to take ill.

He didn’t expect her to die shortly thereafter.

Matters, however, worked out for him, as they tend to do. August likes to think the god of luck is particularly fond of him, and even if he can’t imagine the old gods existing as entities that walk the earth like province dwellers believe, he does know their essence remains in the kingdom. A wind blows; a die is cast. Events fall into place, and August Shenzhi is king.

Too bad he’s only lived a few hours of it thus far.

They ride into Actia Province after nightfall. It has gotten horrendously cold, and Galipei keeps glancing over from his horse, watching August urge forward faster and faster on his own. The guards have repeatedly asked August to please get into a carriage, but he refuses, preferring to ride. There’s far more sitting room now, after the councilmembers were given the opportunity to return to San-Er. The ones who left will bring the announcement into the cities that Anton Makusa and Calla Tuoleimi are criminals conspiring against the throne, having plotted from the coronation onward.

Not every councilmember wanted to return, though. They’ve heard about the Crescent Society attacks. The unrest, building and building in San-Er.

“We must slow,” Galipei calls. “We’re approaching sand.”

August nods his silent approval. As soon as they have reduced to a speed that allows it, Galipei nudges his horse closer. The other guards lag behind. They are free to speak.

“August, one moment,” Galipei says. “Do you recall—”

“No,” August interrupts. Unfairly, unrighteously, he cannot understand how Galipei didn’t see he had been invaded for weeks… if not as his guard, then surely as someone who knows him, who should be his closest confidant.

From an early age, there was nothing August resented more than being overlooked. He spent too many nights alone as a child, sitting in the corner of the factory his father owned and wondering why he felt no more real than one of the rubber machines running in a row. A piece could break down, and it would not matter, because dozens more on the work floor would replace it in an instant. August couldn’t bear an environment like that. He much preferred the palace afterward. He loved getting to speak with the nobility in the meeting rooms, his words rippling beyond the four walls and into written law.

August Shenzhi needs the kingdom to care about what he is doing. He needs the kingdom to know that he loves it deeply, tragically, profoundly. In return, their devotion will be real and lasting. For as long as they bear witness to the wonders he offers and think of him as their great burden bearer, he can grow larger than life. He can be their very representation of the heavens, taking mortal form.

The trouble with keeping Galipei around is that August tempts himself into believing he might have it both ways. That Galipei might truly see him, and he may receive total devotion anyway. It doesn’t work like that. It shouldn’t. Galipei was assigned to him. At the end of it all, none of it is real, and he ought to remember that.

“Don’t take that tone with me,” Galipei chides. “I knew something was wrong.”

“And yet,” August says, “we were all the way in Laho Province before something brought me back by chance.”

“By chance? You underestimate me.”

Anger tentatively releases its tight grip around August’s spine. He hears a note in Galipei’s tone. He knows what Galipei is implying.

“You saw the letter in the study.”

The Dovetail appeared on August’s radar when the palace guards raided the Crescent Societies after Leida’s treason and found communication in and out of the capital. Though the Dovetail and the Crescent Societies are both revolutionary groups, they disagree on one major facet: the Crescent Societies want to abolish the monarchy and let the gods rule; the Dovetail only want to eliminate bureaucracy—get rid of the council, the generals, the soldiers—and let the gods channel through the monarch on the throne.

And August knew he had an opportunity to work with.

“I didn’t find the letter until we were about to leave San-Er.” Galipei pauses. “I got in contact on your behalf to resume communication.”

August, maintaining his stride with his hands steady on the reins, casts a glance at Galipei and finds Galipei already watching him. His guard doesn’t seem too upset that August didn’t say anything about his plan. Eventually, he would have needed to—there’s very little that Galipei doesn’t see, and even less that August intentionally wants to keep from him. The pieces fell into place mere days before August was crowned. Between meddling in the games and making the necessary appearances in the palace to ease suspicion, he didn’t even have time to take his meals. Galipei must know he would have been told the moment the coronation occurred.

If Anton Makusa hadn’t behaved like the pest he is.

August tamps down that flare of rage as soon as it erupts. There will be time for that later.

“You did a fine job,” he says. “The council won’t survive this.”

Actia’s sand dunes blow fiercely with the wind. The harshness scratches at August’s eyes, though he refuses to hunch down and protect his face.

“August.”

Galipei’s brow is furrowed when August looks over again. Whatever he is to say, he hesitates, and after a few seconds pass, August prompts:

“Go on.”

His permission takes effect instantly. Galipei breaks his restraint.

“It didn’t make sense at first, but I understand. You wanted Otta to wake. You knew that cinnabar would trigger it.”

This was the one matter that August hoped Galipei wouldn’t decipher. The rest he will tell when the time comes. The rest he has reason and endless defense for, no matter who needs to die. Yet it is saving his half sister that troubles him the most, because he doesn’t believe in the gods, but it is impossible to explain why he figured there might be a chance this gamble would work unless the gods were real.

“It was a guess,” August says evenly. “She was practically dead already. Either it killed her or it resurrected her.”

The closer they crept to Kasa’s execution, the more and more it weighed on August that his biggest threat thereafter was the council. He didn’t have a true claim to the royal bloodline and the throne, as the gossiping aristocrats particularly liked to mention. It would take only one conniving councilmember to put the crown on someone else’s head and insist that the heavens had claimed them too, thus starting a debate about who deserved to be the ruler. August already knew the crown wasn’t real. He couldn’t risk anyone using the loophole to claim the heavens’ acceptance, yet he didn’t have another way to distinguish himself either, save for the crown’s will. He didn’t have royal blood. Kasa’s adoption was the only item that gave him any right to rule, and after Kasa was dead, what stopped the council from coming after that little fact the moment they were upset with him?

“August,” Galipei says, and his voice is distant, faint. “Why did it work? What do you know?”

Many years ago, August and Leida Miliu had a scheme to leave San-Er and recover the true divine crown from a lost palace deep within the borderlands. It was rumored to have the power to raze cities and change sea tides, read minds and order armies. With it, they could launch a coup against King Kasa by force. Wage war against Talin from the north and work their way down until they liberated the capital.

The problem was that they needed Anton Makusa to join them, because the provinces were difficult to travel, and the borderlands even harder to navigate. If they wanted to survive, they needed to jump. Without Anton’s skill set, their plan was the flimsy make-believe of children. Then Otta found out, and she didn’t want him to go. Otta, in fact, was where Leida had learned about the crown, given how often Leida was spying, convinced that there was something off about that girl. His half sister had always been a bit peculiar. Though August warned Leida not to mind her, she continued downloading camera footage to keep an eye on Otta, until the day Otta noticed Leida lurking and snuck into Leida’s bedroom to do her own snooping.

“I’ll tell! I’ll tell! I swear I will!” Otta had rushed to confront August in his quarters. No matter how much he tried to quiet her, she was incensed at what she had found: a half-written proposal, not yet finished but addressed to Anton. Leida had composed a letter to prevent anyone in the palace from overhearing a treasonous conversation, and still, a treasonous discovery had been made.

“What do you want, Otta?” August had spat. “An invitation too? This is bigger than your stupid fling—”

“You can’t have him,” Otta returned. “And you can’t have this .” She flapped the torn paper in her hand. “If Leida read that book closely, you’d see the crown is cursed. Do you think it is as easy as a mere retrieval? You need sacrifice. Enormous sacrifice—”

“I am willing,” August interrupted. “I know what I’m trying to achieve. It’s for the good of the kingdom.”

Otta flung open the curtain beside her. The sunlight that streamed through his window that day was so harsh it hurt his eyes, rare for San-Er.

“Look at you, pretending to be good. You’re worse for San than Kasa ever could be. You’ll put us in cages and call us your loyal subjects.”

There was no point arguing with Otta. August was aware of the ultimatum she was issuing him: take Anton away from her, and she would tattle. The next time he snuck into her rooms, hoping to steal the source that Leida had been reading from, he found the book in Otta’s fireplace, burned to a charred remnant.

“I always wondered why someone as shrewd as my sister would be obtuse enough to believe jumping repeatedly into Weisannas would be a good idea,” August says in the present. “She wasn’t trying to escape that day—she was trying to perform a ritual, and it failed. Her qi got stuck, and that brought on the yaisu sickness. Cinnabar is a cleansing element of qi.”

Galipei must know this explanation doesn’t make sense. He watches the path ahead warily, his knuckles white on his horse’s reins. He must know that there was more that pushed August’s hands, but Galipei Weisanna does not ask further.

“Now she’s awake,” Galipei mutters, “and going after your crown.”

“That’s exactly why we woke her up.” The desert is leveling out. They have entered Actia proper, and they must hurry. “She’s going to lead us to it.”