Page 60 of Immortal Longings
Athunktravels along the wall. Calla pauses, listening. She presses her ear to the moldy lines and trails her hands across the surface, moving with the bumps and holes.
“I think,” Calla says slowly, “that sound is coming from beneath us.”
Anton presses his ear to the wall too. Thethunkcomes again, echoing all through the temple.
“It’s—”
A round of voices enters the next hallway, fast approaching.
Calla spits, “Quickly,” and they tear through the narrow aisle, going and going until,wait—her eyes snag on the outline of a door. She kicks. A staircase leading down. Without pause, she hauls Anton by his sleeve, and they descend three steps at a time, emerging in a basement area.
Calla’s vision adjusts. First, it’s thebodieson the floor that capture her notice. Then, sitting on a folding chair by another door that feeds deeper into the basement level is—
“Eno?” Calla and Anton say at once.
Eno jumps to his feet. Anton swerves, shooting a questioning look at Calla. “How doyouknow him?” he asks. “I didn’t think you would be acquainted with Snowfall’s clientele.”
“Pull up his sleeve,” Calla says, marching toward the bodies.
By a quick count, there are near thirty, collapsed in a large pile, some splayed on top of others. The first one she turns over is a stranger. When she tugs up an eyelid, she finds color in the iris still, and she can hear their quiet, smothered breath struggling in and out. Not dead. Merely unconscious.
Anton, as instructed, strides toward Eno and holds up his arm. The wristband comes into view. “You’re a player?”
“I saved his sorry ass from being cut in half.” Calla turns over a second body. Another stranger. She lifts an eyelid and, when she sees a washed-out bronze, keeps moving.
“What are youdoing?” Anton hisses at the boy. “And when did you join the Crescent Societies?”
“I’m new!” Eno whines, trying to writhe out of Anton’s grip. “You think debt is easy to pay? I need every chance.”
Shuffling to the next body in the pile, Calla quickly rummages through her own pockets, fingers locking around a mask that lies at the bottom with her coins and pins. There’s no telling what could be floating around the air with so many bodies, so she puts it on, just in case. Whatisthis place? The Crescent Societies traffic occupied bodies, sure. They kidnap people and sell them off to bidders, but she always thought they made quick work of the trade-off. They picked a target, rushed into their place of employment with brute force, and brought the body in front of the client for jumping. Rarely did the victim need to be knocked out. If the Crescent Societies latched on to you as a target, you were already dead.
Calla puts her finger under the nose of another body, just to be certain. They’re breathing. Certainly breathing. But the one under it…
A chill sweeps from her neck to her toes, sweat breaking under her thick jacket. By the wall, Anton continues to lecture Eno, paying no heed to what Calla is doing, so he doesn’t see her blanche, fingers reaching out to prod thedead body. This is no trafficking scheme. A trafficking scheme wouldn’t go killing its assets.
Anton’s and Eno’s voices drown out. Calla’s fingers feel ice-cold when she turns the body over, exposing the ring of blood staining its chest. Its gray face stares at the ceiling, dulled dark-yellow eyes unblinking and beady. Under this light, Calla could almost mistake the color for her own. She shivers, reaching for the corpse’s shirt collar, and peels it back slowly, holding her breath beneath her mask.
The wound, if one could even call it that, is in fact a hole, carved through the chest and bones cut clean, an empty space where a heart ought to be.
A strangled noise escapes before Calla can help it, her throat sour with disgust. Her own heart is thudding hard against her ribs when she shoots to her feet and searches through the rest of the bodies, a prayer starting on her tongue. She has no faith in the old gods, no inclination to believe that any such nonsense would work in a place like San-Er, but still she finds herself muttering and muttering as she pushes through shoulders and legs, some cold and some warm.
She doesn’t understand. Even if Society business called for trafficked vessels to be stored at this temple, why tangle them up with dead ones? Why carve the hearts out of those vessels at all?
Calla goes still. She sees a familiar lock of dyed red hair. At once, she surges forward, her pulse racing so fast she could vomit. She turns Yilas over.
Yilas’s chest rises and falls with life, qi humming in her veins.
Thank the heavens—
“Yilas.” Calla gives her a rough shake. “Yilas, get the fuck up.”
Groggily, Yilas starts to stir, struggling to pry her eyes open as if they’ve been glued together. The same jade green. The same Yilas.
“Calla?” she murmurs.
“Shh,” Calla hisses immediately, throwing a glance at Eno. The boy is still arguing with Anton and hasn’t heard them. “Can you get up?”
“I—yeah, I think so. Where are we?” Yilas struggles into a sitting position, then teeters immediately, her face visibly paling even in the horrible red light. Calla mutters a curse, her arm shooting out to catch Yilas before her former attendant can smash her temple against the floor. With every iota of strength, Calla hauls Yilas to her feet, holding her weight with a firm grip under her shoulders.
