Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

Calla hauls Leida all the way to her rooms and slams the door closed before any of the panic in the hallways can catch up to them. Her cat greets her upon entrance, but when he sniffs Leida too, he flees into the bathroom.

“I don’t know what you think you’re achieving by yanking me around like this,” Leida remarks. She tries to extricate herself the moment Calla grabs her arm, but Calla is stronger. Leida grunts, throwing her body weight into her. They’re in close quarters—it isn’t easy to put up a good defense. Instead of finding a way to hit back, Calla only grits her teeth, putting her whole focus into the grip she has on Leida’s left arm. If she lets go, Leida will flee in an instant, and this will be for naught.

“Let go .” Leida’s shoulder clips her across the chin. The moment Calla flinches, Leida seems to realize that Calla’s other hand has been working on freeing something behind her: the heavy curtain, and the cord in the middle that keeps the fabric bundled. Leida tugs her arm hard, but it is too late. The curtain bursts loose, its cord secured in Calla’s hand. As a last resort, Leida kicks out to take Calla’s knee from underneath her, but Calla has already braced low. In this body, Leida is shorter than she’s used to, and she doesn’t put as much swing behind the attack. Calla pushes the cord around a pipe running up the wall, a thin tube stemming from the anchored radiator. Before Leida can throw herself free, Calla has her left wrist tied with the cord, then her right.

“Heavens,” Calla grumbles, finally lurching back to catch her breath.

When Leida tries to move now, her arms stay welded to the pipe. Her blue eyes are bright, almost feverish.

“Were the prisons not enough of an indignity?” Leida demands. “Did you have to trap me to a”—she looks back—“a cold radiator?”

“Oh, did you want me to turn it on?”

Leida scoffs. “You can’t, anyway. Heat systems in the palace switched to electric a decade ago.”

Most of San-Er outside the palace still uses radiators. There are always a few apartment fires each year from faulty pipes and overheating.

“You must have observed the palace systems closely in your time as captain of the guard,” Calla muses. She crosses her arms over her chest, hiding the reddened scratches from their struggle. “After they made me a royal advisor, I happened upon a file in the surveillance room that detailed your mother’s work too. Lots of changes. Also lots of suggestions that went ignored.”

Leida yanks against the curtain cord again. It doesn’t budge. Calla has tied the knot tight enough that she herself couldn’t undo it.

“Is that a surprise?” Leida says shortly. “No one in this palace cares about what is good.”

Calla claimed to want the greater good once. In Anton’s kitchen, when he asked why she was playing in the king’s games, it seemed as fitting an answer as any. She wanted to get rid of everyone who had caused her suffering; she wanted dead bodies made of the nobles who ruled this kingdom, who couldn’t have cared less that she was fated to sleep starving by the roadside as an abandoned child. Of course she was doing good.

“And you do?” Calla asks. “You, who have caused multiple massacres as a byproduct of poorly executed plans.”

The thing is, if King Kasa had been the most decent man in the kingdom who’d made one mistake by burning her village, Calla would have lifted her sword regardless. It’s not a lie to say she’s invested in good, but she supposes that can’t be the whole, unblemished truth either. If revenge brought guaranteed destruction upon Talin, she might still have continued onward.

“As I’ve told the council,” Leida says, “I have already confessed to everything I am guilty of.”

Calla expected Leida to counter the accusation. To say that she hadn’t intended for people to die. Leida gave an anarchist sect the knowledge to siphon power. Plotted a conspiracy to crumble the monarchy from the inside. It’s not that Calla disapproves: she’s almost sad that Leida ran laps around San-Er thinking she could remain virtuous while others wouldn’t hesitate to cut a line right through to reap their own gains. Leida Miliu had the right idea, but she can only be as good as her most crooked byproduct.

Calla kicks a foot at the radiator. Gray paint flakes off, dusting her shoe.

“The council is convinced that you’re responsible for the attacks in the provinces,” Calla says plainly. “They will execute you and hope that will solve their headache, just as locking you up seemed to stop the Crescent Society killings in San-Er.”

Leida’s mouth opens, but before she can say anything, Calla cuts in:

“No need to argue. I know that you have nothing to do with these province deaths. The timing doesn’t make any sense. The Dovetail would’ve acted when you started working with the Crescent Societies, not after you got caught.”

Another scoff. Leida leans back, her shoulder blades hitting the pipe. “I’m so very grateful you believe me, Your Highness. Why am I here, then?”

In her memories, Calla returns to the arena. She breathes deep, her heart tears in two, and she slides the knife out of her sleeve. She exhales, the sky shatters, and Anton dies before her, his vessel turning gray in that pool of blood.

And then he resurrects, clutching her hand in the body of her cousin, his eyes furious.

“Where did you learn those techniques?”

Leida frowns. “Excuse me?”

“You weren’t born with the knowledge,” Calla continues, “and I doubt it was fancy guesswork. You learned it somewhere, then passed it on to the Crescent Society members. People in the provinces learned it somewhere, and someone among them is using it to perform attacks on royal soldiers. That seems correct to you, doesn’t it?”

Now Leida goes quiet. She doesn’t know exactly what Calla is seeking, but she’s smart enough to be apprehensive. By the time Calla has thrown a clear trap before her, there must be a dozen littered in every other direction, blown like winged seeds on each word. It is how the palace engages in combat. It is what Calla learned between physical training with war generals and relentless target practice, because speaking well is half the push toward winning a battle, regardless of how many legions she possesses.

Leida stays silent.

“I keep thinking…” Calla drops to a crouch, her leather jacket rustling. She needs to push harder; if Leida won’t step into a trap, Calla is more than happy to offer a shove. “Maybe it’s family tradition. The provinces don’t have many resources. No books, no files, no digital databases. Knowledge is going to pass through stories, from mother to child.” She pauses and drags her finger along the carpet threads, drawing lines. Three, like the sigil that the children in Rincun etched when the barracks turned cold. “The palace has plenty of resources, but it’s hard to go digging without someone noticing. It’s only in the privacy of your own quarters that your mother taught you how to carve people’s hearts out—”

Leida jerks forward. The cord yanks her back, her head knocking hard against the pipe in recoil.

“Don’t you speak about my mother.”

“I’m not insulting her.” Calla stretches out her neck, and her hair trails off her shoulder, unraveling like a cape around her. “If she’s the one who taught you, it was quite an accomplishment.”

Leida tries to pull against the cord again. “She had nothing to do with this.” Again. Her wrists are red. “She died for this kingdom. She gave up her life for Talin, and still no one realizes her sacrifice.”

Calla believes it.

“Then who, Leida?” Calla asks. “Who taught you?”

She doesn’t need to add her silent follow-up, but it is heard nonetheless. Her hunger soaks into the air between them. It was there when she realized how easily Leida had jumped into the body of a guard standing on the other side of the meeting table. It was there when she watched the chaos that erupted in a few short seconds when there was no burst of light, when everything their kingdom knew was upended as those present merely imagined what Leida might be capable of doing.

Who taught you, Leida? How do I learn it too?

“Forget it, Your Highness,” Leida says. “Put me back in my cell.”

“If you want to do good, let me help.”

Leida chokes out a short laugh. Despite the sound, her expression is furious.

“ You , help me to do good? Do you take me for a schoolchild? You are a Tuoleimi. You are one of the two bloodlines whose foot has been heavy on the neck of this kingdom for centuries.”

“And hasn’t that puzzled San-Er for years now?” Calla fires back. “I was next in line for Talin’s second throne, and I destroyed it.”

“You are no better than the others just because you didn’t like your parents—”

“Jump into me, Leida,” Calla interrupts. “I know you’re thinking about it.”

Leida stills, her arms easing lax. She must suspect a trick. The room is dark despite the hour, the curtains draped across most of the alcove window. It allows for no signal of day or night, allows in no wind or pitter-patter of rain. The in-out of their breaths is the only way to track the passing time. The faint creaking of the floorboards down the hall is the sole confirmation that the rest of the palace continues moving.

A brush of nausea crosses Calla’s chest. It twists her throat. Sours her tongue. Then, it’s gone. She watches Leida play through a myriad of expressions, unable to settle on what exactly has just happened. Eventually, she makes the undeniable conclusion. Eventually, after another attempt, Leida goes tense.

“You’re…” She trails off.

“Exactly,” Calla says. “I’m already in. I’m your best chance.”

In a past lifetime, Bibi had quite a lot of people doing her bidding.

She’s learned how to keep herself alive in this one. Not by choice, truth be told. She would have preferred an easier option, a life that could be described as comfortable even if it doesn’t quite reach opulent, but when the inns in Laho have doors that open as easily when locked as unlocked, she’s gotten good at behaving like a roach. If an intruder isn’t looking too closely, they will rarely notice the occupant under the bed while they scavenge the valuables left on the table.

Bibi picks at the skin on her bottom lip. The city whispers have been abuzz since she entered. With King Kasa gone, San-Er’s denizens are not shy about running their mouths on the streets, chattering about how the palace had a traitor some few weeks ago—the captain of the guard drawing up a plot to kill civilians and blame it on the foreign Sicans past the borderlands. No one in San-Er, nor in most of the provinces, has met a Sican, but they all know to fear them. The war took its toll on the kingdom, funneled most of their people into a tight corner and cut the heads off their resource bases. Despite Talin’s victory, those who remember their great-grandparents still recall the haunted eyes, the refusal to speak a word about the past they had endured.

Leida Miliu’s plan could have gone far. Crumble the monarchy. Stir enough dissent among the masses to cause lasting protest too great to be immediately crushed by Weisannas.

Then the cities’ attention turned to Calla Tuoleimi and Anton Makusa in the arena, and the people had more important bets to make.

Bibi trails along the outside of the coliseum, her grip tightening on her shopping bag. She’ll need to pick up some utensils. The marketplace is crowded today because the palace is hosting a gala. Not that anyone outside the palace is invited to attend, so she can’t fathom why people are craning their necks like that, but city folk will do strange things in proximity to wealth.

“ You there! ”

She turns over her shoulder. Palace guards. Two of them: one alert, the other bored.

“Yes?”

“Identity number?”

Bibi frowns. She peers into her shopping bag. All that’s of value inside is her apartment key—she’s rented one of those rare units that still use a lock rather than an identity number pad. Makes things a lot easier, given that she doesn’t have an identity number.

“I’m only doing my shopping,” Bibi says. “Surely this doesn’t require being checked?”

“We’re under instructions to log everyone around the palace. Please cooperate.”

The guard speaking has dark-orange eyes, the shade of sunset after a storm in the provinces, when the clouds clear just in time for nightfall. His companion is a Weisanna, though his eyes are drooping enough in boredom that Bibi requires a subtle double take to confirm the presence of silver.

“All right, all right.” She makes a show out of rummaging through her bag. “I’m new here. I was drawn through the lottery last year and just emigrated from Laho, so forgive me for not knowing the full number yet.”

It helps that her accent is strong. Provincial, even if the people in San-Er can’t tell the difference between rural dwellers north and south of the Jinzi River.

“Oh no,” she says. “I don’t think I have my card.”

The guards exchange a look. “We’re going to have to take you in until we can verify your identity.”

Bibi sighs. She slides one palm along her bag handle, gauging its circumference. “Really? Is that necessary?”

“It’s only protocol.”

“Come on,” Bibi pleads. “There aren’t cameras on this alley, anyway.”

“Yes, but—” The guard pauses. Frowns. “How do you know that?”

Bibi swings the handle of the bag around the neck of the Weisanna in a sudden lurch. She has her hands tight around the ends, squeezing hard, and ducks when his arms flail out, trying to loosen her hold. The other guard is taken aback for a second, then he’s scrambling for his pager, a weapon, any idea of what the fuck they’re usually supposed to do when a civilian is stupid enough to attack an elite guard of the palace.

It takes a decent amount of time to strangle someone, but it also takes a decent amount of strength to hold them down for it. Maybe the other guard knows he will lose this fight if he engages. Instead of pulling his baton, he simply turns on his heel and runs out of the alley.

Bibi finally feels the Weisanna fall slack. She grunts, letting him collapse to the ground before closing her eyes, tapping into her surroundings. Her lungs seize. Blots appear before her vision: moving qi there, and there, and there—

She jumps, stumbling the first few steps when she takes over the orange-eyed guard’s body. His legs are still in motion, running at high speed, before her qi seizes control entirely and she grinds to a halt, her hand bracing against the brick wall. The coliseum rumbles behind her. She rests her hands upon her knees, letting her frantic heart still.

The guard’s uniform is unfamiliar on her skin. Rough and bunched at the elbows. She goes to scratch her arms, and then she’s sobbing in loud gulps, trying to expunge the hot pellet that sits in her lungs.

Bibi cries every time she kills someone. It’s not that she feels bad. She would cry just the same after she ran a lap around a farm in Laho or raced the neighborhood kids to climb the tallest tree in the sparse grove. The tears feel like a release after such exertion, confirmation that her body is capable of strong, strenuous matters.

She wipes her tears off her face, the scruff of facial hair scratching her palms. She’s got to go back for her birth body. It’ll be safe in her new apartment while she wears this guard. Then she’ll check in, report that this little roach they’ve plucked out of the provinces is good at her job.

Step one is causing fear. Paranoia. The sneaking suspicion that something will come skittering over the palace’s bare feet the moment they stop for a rest.

The next step is infestation.