Chapter 30

CHAPTER 30

They arrive in the capital of Actia Province after two days of nonstop riding, and Anton is close to passing out. He won’t admit it if asked—and he’s denied it each time Calla has asked throughout the ride—but it has started to show. When he gets off the horse, he holds still for a few moments, gathering his composure.

Calla eyes him suspiciously. Although her efforts are focused on tying the horse down outside the village stables, her face is pale too, not entirely a trick of the moonlight that rises slowly over the horizon. They need water. Food. Riding any farther without pause isn’t sustainable.

The sand under their feet stirs. A southerly wind blows with the faint smell of ash, and Anton shudders at the same time that Calla does. They both feel it: every minute they spend inactive is time afforded for August to catch up.

“If anyone inquires,” Calla says, “we’re travelers heading for the borderlands after the rumors about the divine crown. I doubt we’re the only ones taking refuge in Actia tonight.”

Anton stretches his neck, then his arms side to side. There’s a muscle strain at the left of his back, and he can’t get it out no matter how much he throws his limbs around. “Otta’s grand declaration was a week ago. Most travelers south of Actia would have passed through already.”

“We’re particularly slow travelers, along for the thrill rather than the appeal of acquiring treasure for the black market. No one’s going to interrogate us too closely.”

She decides it, and that is that. It’s not like Anton has the energy to debate her anyway. By fortuity, they happen to be aligned now, but it’s the days before the Juedou all over again. Anton is on the run to survive, still plotting a way to hit August while they proceed; Calla is clearly concerned about stopping Otta. They cannot press too hard on why they have decided to join together and continue onward as a unit, lest it give way and reveal what lies beneath.

Calla tilts her head toward the yamen, then gestures for him to turn his face down too when they begin to walk. It’s late, so there are unlikely to be people working there, but a yamen always functions double as the gate into the village, and two palace soldiers are stationed on either side of the entrance. The soldiers let them pass without trouble, not bothering to call a greeting. Perhaps the warning hasn’t been put out; perhaps August didn’t spread the word that Princess Calla Tuoleimi and Anton Makusa were wanted, for fear it would incite trouble in the provinces.

The sand jostles with their steps before it fades to grass inside the yamen. Much as Anton tries to keep his gaze forward, his wandering eye automatically latches on to the doors on his left that lead deeper into the building. Someone’s silhouette moves behind one of the papered panels. The mayor of Actia must be busy these days keeping a handle on affairs. He will be preparing for the royal delegation that is soon to pass through, assuming it wasn’t entirely wiped out in Laho.

Somehow, Anton doubts that August will be that easy to kill—certainly not by a bunch of cult worshippers, even ones with tricks of qi at their disposal.

“Whoa.”

Calla’s soft exclamation comes the moment they step out the yamen’s other side. The village unfolds before them, soft lantern light hanging from the shop sides and velvet shadows coating the space the orange glow doesn’t touch. Stalls line the street, as do throngs of villagers flocking to the activity. Unless Actia is hiding a secret funnel of finances that Talin doesn’t know about, this must be a special festival, its vendors hauling out food items and windup toys and incense sticks for sale. A kite cut to resemble a short, round man flies off one of the stalls, waving with the wind.

Somehow, they hadn’t seen it from outside the yamen.

“A rendering of a god, I’d gather,” Anton remarks, gesturing to the kite man.

Calla says nothing. Whatever she’s thinking, she only strides forward, making an ambiguous noise. Anton’s limbs are stone when he goes to follow. He makes an effort not to ram into people’s shoulders in the crowd, but the street is narrow. At Calla’s side, his birth body is considerably taller than her, tall enough to give the impression of looming. He has to resist the urge to fold his arms over his chest and slouch, the schoolboy urge to be flippant in the very manner he’s walking. His birth body has never been comfortable for him—not by self-consciousness, but because it’s too wholly his, and anything of his in full view of others is privy to being ruined. Anything an opponent can home in on is at risk of attack.

“Did you hear that?” Calla says under her breath. Her hand jerks to the side. When she pulls it back, she’s stolen two sticks of roasted taro.

“What a delinquent,” Anton says, but he takes one of the sticks.

“Listen.”

They pause, as though there’s something to inspect at the next stall selling joss paper, but Anton quickly determines which conversation Calla wants him to tune into.

“ —said he hasn’t heard from him since then. I know there aren’t exactly phone lines in there, but it doesn’t bode well. ”

“ I wouldn’t worry too much. They went in knowing it would require a search. It’s not like he has a map. ”

“ Yes, but he wasn’t going to throw his life away for it. He said if he couldn’t find it in two days, he would come back. It’s been a week. ”

They’re speaking about the crown. With Actia located this close to the borderlands, there must be plenty of civilians who took the chance to trek into the mountains and take a look around.

Foolish of anyone to think they’d be able to stumble onto a centuries-old object in the borderlands in two days. Anton exchanges a judgmental glance with Calla. Nonetheless, goose bumps rise on his arms.

“Come on,” Calla says.

As soon as she makes the command, though, Anton halts in his step, disrupting the flow of the festivalgoers. He isn’t being difficult on purpose. He’s just noticed that his breath is coming out opaque.

“Shit. What’s going on?”

Calla stops short too, her eyes turning wide. The province goes cold—suddenly and without warning, as though an air-conditioning unit has been switched onto the maximum setting from the heavens. Some of the festivalgoers nearby shudder, mumbling in confusion. Actia isn’t known for this sort of weather. The winters may be brisk in the desert, but not with such abrupt drops.

“In Rincun,” Calla says, “it happened like this as well.”

“The cold?”

Calla sucks in her cheeks, biting on them inside her mouth while she considers their surroundings. Her lips burn crimson red. Dehydration, most likely. Anton shouldn’t fixate on the picture, but he does.

“The cold,” she confirms. “And then we found an entire barracks of dead soldiers. Let’s get inside.”

They identify a tavern by the banner waving outside, and Calla ducks in first, her long hair swinging from the movement. Anton glances over his shoulder, checking their surroundings closely, before following her. At the bar, Calla is already speaking to the woman behind the counter, passing over cash.

“I didn’t realize you were carrying any.”

“Only enough to pay for room six upstairs,” Calla mutters, propping her elbows against the bar. She taps her finger on the stone surface; Anton follows the direction of her subtle pointing and registers the man sitting at the end of the counter seats. He’s the only lone figure present. The rest are families or groups, getting in a late meal. A thin set of uneven stairs goes to the lodgings upstairs. When one of the barkeeps ascends with a tray of food in his hands, the staircase groans like an instrument being played underfoot.

One possible threat, but quick exits in their favor.

“There you are, dearest.” The first barkeep sets down two glasses of water in front of them. She pauses a moment, wiping the spilled drops, then says to Calla, “You look familiar.”

“Thank you. I get that a lot.”

The barkeep goes to clean another part of the tavern. Calla pushes the other glass nearer to Anton. He finishes the water in three gulps. Riding north through Laho meant the air was only getting drier and drier. Though he and Calla traded off on steering the horse forward, there wasn’t any rest to be found in between.

“We need to talk about Otta.”

“We’ll find it before she does,” Anton assures, but he should have known Calla couldn’t be taken for a fool, because just as quickly, she replies:

“That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it.” She summons the barkeep for more water. After the woman pours another glass and turns away, Calla reaches into her pocket, retrieves a piece of paper, and slaps it upon the stone counter.

Anton takes in the map slowly. Come alone, it says at the top, marked by a black X deep in the middle of the borderlands.

“This has nothing to do with my personal distaste for Otta Avia. Too many strange events have happened on this delegation, starting with why she took us out here claiming she wanted the crown for you, and why the Dovetail were targeting the delegation on August’s behalf this entire time. They may be working together, Anton. If we’re turning adversary against August, we have to prepare to counter Otta too.”

Anton sighs. Of all times to have this conversation, it has to be now, when his head is pounding and his stomach is growling. Nonetheless, he’s too worn to be sniping at Calla when she’s the closest thing he has to an ally, so he’ll entertain it.

“If you’re asking whether I think they plotted together before she fell sick, I don’t know,” he says. “I couldn’t tell you why Otta does anything she does, except that I turned down her offer to rule through me like some puppet king while we were in Lankil, and that’s the last time I spoke to her.”

Calla’s expression turns thoughtful. She downs another glass of water. If she’s trying to make sense of what sort of relationship Anton had with Otta, the truth is that he’s never really understood it either. Otta always treated the world like it was play-pretend, like nothing she did had consequence and people’s views toward her were record tapes she could rewind at will. Maybe she never actually wanted to run away with him: as much as she bemoaned the palace, she built her very sense of identity off how well she maneuvered it, and when the day came that they enacted their plan to raid the vault, perhaps there was some other ploy in progress he hadn’t been privy to. Perhaps if they had been successful, Otta would have left him for dead and used the money she’d reaped.

“It must feel terrible,” Calla states matter-of-factly. “You spent all this time keeping her alive as someone to hold on to, and you didn’t actually know who you were holding on to. You didn’t have a clue she could use qi that way. You were none the wiser that she alone possessed the location to some mythical object capable of uprooting the entire kingdom.”

Anton sets his water glass down. “Room six, was it?”

He’s walking toward the stairs before Calla can reply. He hears her tut, and seconds later, her footsteps are clattering after him.

“Did that make you upset ?”

“I didn’t say anything.” The tavern trills alongside his climb. After one sharp turn and one almost-wrong pivot, Anton walks into the room labeled with a 6 . A small gas lamp in the corner burns to provide dim light. There’s no lock. One of them is going to have to keep watch.

“You didn’t have to say anything. You just stomped away like a petulant toddler.”

Calla comes in after him and closes the door. Maybe he’s going delirious, but he doubts he can find sleep despite his exhaustion. He wants to run the rest of the distance to the borderlands. Climb onto the top of the highest mountain and take a leap—see if that’ll make Otta come back and claim to care about him, or if it’ll prove that he was truly nothing more than a resting perch.

Seven years. He should have pulled her plug and sent himself into the incinerator alongside her corpse, saved them this trouble later on.

“It’s not your fault.”

Anton stops. His jacket is half-off, yanked in a fit of annoyance. “I beg your pardon?”

“This. Everything.” Calla seems uncomfortable—which is certainly a first for Anton to witness. She scratches the inside of her wrist. “Some people spend their whole lives pretending to be someone they’re not in pursuit of achieving a goal. It says everything about her machinations and nothing about you.”

Anton can’t help it: he laughs. “Thank you, Calla. Because I really needed you to try to make me feel better.”

“You’ve always held her in such high esteem, so yes, I did figure you needed it.”

Calla plunks herself down on the bed pallet capriciously. She doesn’t look like she’s going to shed any layers to prepare for rest, so Anton throws his jacket to the floor, then undoes the buttons on his shirt. Surely she won’t mind.

“Oh, please.” He throws the shirt to the floor too. He has no idea who put that on him, or when. Probably years ago, given how the hem is unraveling. “You killed me. You, of anyone, can’t speak to what I need.”

“Untrue.” Calla unclasps her sword. Tosses it beside the pallet. “I killed you, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t care for you. I would have given up everything for the possibility of what we had—everything but one task. It’s not my fault we were put in a position where I ended up having to choose.”

It’s hardly an apology. It’s hardly even spoken with repentance. Yet when Anton stays quiet, considering her words, he resolves that it is perhaps his saving grace in this kingdom. Before him is the only person he knows won’t lie to him.

Anton crouches. Calla tilts her head, staring back in a way that makes the hairs at the back of his neck lift. Her eyes flit, but it’s too quick to track.

“And now?” he asks. “With the choice done?”

Cold seeps into the tavern. It isn’t as severe as when they stood outside, but the chill has pried its fingers through the window, under the glass.

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

He’s acting without thinking. Delirium, most certainly, he insists. His hand reaches forward, takes Calla’s chin, and tilts her face to the lamp in the corner. Her yellow eyes flare back at him, as though he’s placed precious gold in direct sunlight.

“I’m warning you,” Calla says dully. “I will not be your replacement merely because you cannot have your first love.”

“Was that love?” Anton counters. “Is this?”

He thinks about the palace and its orderly sitting rooms, its silver candelabras. The twin cities, always tied to one another, the final battleground for a kingdom that barely won its war.

“If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

Anton’s grip tightens. “You’re here because there’s a crown waiting at the end of it.”

“I have no use for that crown.”

“You were fighting to control it in the arena. After Kasa was dead, you got to decide who came next.”

Calla closes her eyes. “No. I was willing to let go of everything after Kasa was dead,” she says, and her volume fizzles to a whisper. “But you wouldn’t leave Otta. You remained tethered. Then you had to go and jump into August, and look at what has unfolded since. What other reason do I have , Anton? I’ve followed you across the kingdom because I can’t let you go a second time.”

There’s no venom in her words, yet each one lands with its own blistering wound. He swallows past a lump in his throat. The lamp flickers.

“Tell me, Calla,” Anton says. “Tell me how I could have survived if I hadn’t taken August in that moment.”

Her palm lifts. She sets it gently atop his hand, weaving their fingers together. It worms a sensation through muscle, down his chest. It burrows into his heart, an infection taking hostage of his blood.

“Maybe,” Calla murmurs, “neither of us should have survived.”

He has no desire to rein himself in. Anton leans forward, and he’s almost surprised when Calla doesn’t push him away, when their lips make contact and she exhales into it, letting two seconds, three seconds, four pass before her hand pushes into his hair and she holds him closer.

His birth body has been awake since he jumped and burst out of that carriage, but it is only now it remembers being fully a part of the world. It is only now, when Calla’s hand skates along his neck, down his chest, around his torso, leaving a trail of chills in its wake, that he knows what he has missed in these years occupying somebody else.

Anton pulls back a fraction. Calla lets him. She stares at him with those eyes, and he’s no better than a believer hypnotized by the heavens.

“Is this a death warrant?” He curls a finger around a strand of her hair. It slithers like water, glides like silk. “Mutually signed, mutually enacted?”

“I’m glad you’ve realized.” Calla’s breath catches when his finger moves to her lower lip. She recovers, says, “You know what you’re getting into. You know who I am.”

“I know.”

Her tongue takes him easily when he slides his finger into her mouth. A shiver seizes his spine, and though the room is getting colder, colder, he has never been warmer in any body. Every inch of his skin is ablaze.

He’s tired of fighting her. No matter the warning signs that scream he is to be electrocuted if he grabs the live wire, he’s willing to embrace his hubris in the belief that he will be different, that intent alone is enough to alter his course from every other mortal that has dared ask for too much. Anton breathes out, setting his forehead into the crook of Calla’s neck, and he’s safe in that moment, spitting at the feet of the gods. He pushes Calla onto her back and presses her arms over her head, and when she lets him, when she’s compliant and amenable, he signs away any chance of emerging from this unmarked.

“Don’t forget,” Calla says, so softly that Anton strains to hear her. “We leave before dawn.”

He almost laughs. “Are you trying to say you need rest?”

Calla frowns. Her hips shift, and Anton barely stops himself from wheezing aloud. One of her hands slinks free, traces down his stomach, along his waistband.

“Calla.”

“Yes?” Her tone lilts. It’s not a true call for response, not any request for further clarification. There’s one demand: Say it back .

“Yes. You—”

Whatever he intended his next words to be, they are lost to an inhale when she tugs on his zipper.

“No lock on the door,” she whispers into his ear. “If you’re going to kill me, make it quiet and hide the body before the tavern calls the soldiers.”

“I’ll make it plenty quiet.” His cock is so hard that it borders on the point of pain. Calla is doing it on purpose, her hand drawing out each second lowering the zip. He only bears it halfway before he releases her other arm to do it himself. “But I don’t promise quick.”

“A shame.” She turns her gaze to the door, appearing to ignore him while he tugs her pants down and leaves them around her knees. “We’re going to get caught, and I’ve hardly known you like this—”

He slides in. Their gasps merge, Calla’s eyes snapping back to him, the guise of coyness flaring into hunger.

“Don’t worry.” She smells like flawless metal. Feels like a weapon made of flesh and blood under his hands, something that will call him to battle over and over until it has his life in sacrifice. “You’ll know me plenty well by the end of this.”

His mouth lands on everything it can, her mouth, her neck, her chest. There’s something about the act that relieves him of these last few days in stillness, these last few days spent waiting for something to strike during their silent journey. She strengthens him as a preliminary battle drill would, marking out the offensive capabilities between them. He can feel Calla winding up when her legs fight to straighten beneath him, and Anton smooths his hands along her hair, holds her in place when she moans into his mouth and seizes up for a long while.

“There we are,” he whispers.

She exhales. Arches against him, her fingers gripping into his arms on either side.

“Though you may think otherwise,” she mumbles, “you are my anchor in this world. I’m sorry I tossed you adrift. I thought I was burying us instead.”

The words do something odd to him. Anton breathes in, his face nudged against hers, and when he finishes, he can feel the whole world pulsating as a possibility between them, the kingdom and the wide seas beyond.

“You have me now,” he says plainly.