Page 67 of Immortal Longings
Her fists curl; her lungs grow tight. Anton comes back on-screen, and this time he looks directly at the surveillance camera, tugging his mask off and flashing a grin. Now that they’re nearing the final players, San-Er will have started making bets. Life savings and personal assets drawn up at the casinos, because why should the victor of the games get all the fun when it comes to monetary reward? Those who can identify the final victor with as much confidence as they’re willing to wager shall have their reaping too. Anton will be leading the bets. He radiates with promise, with… power.
That is what this pull to Anton Makusa is, Calla tells herself. The kitchen rustles around her—water pipes settling and rats darting between the dry walls—and she can’t stop watching him on these reels, tearing through the darkness of San-Er with his coat billowing behind him. Sheer power. An uncompromising, unwavering power that she is drawn to, that she has been drawn to since the beginning, when he convinced her it would be beneficial to work together. And now she feels like there are thorns growing under her skin because she’s losing grasp on her own power while Anton whirls about like a rival prince, someone who could sweep into the throne room and do exactly what Calla has been preparing to do for five years.
I hate you, she thinks without hesitation. Seconds later, her mind catches up, stutters, provides:Wait, I don’t mean it, and then the hatred only grows. She hates him for his strength, which doesn’t make sense, not when she agreed to team up because she wanted to make use of it, but that’s the only way to justify the heat burning up her throat, to explain why watching him fight prickles at her neck and flushes her face.
“I hate you,” Calla says aloud.
These games allow only one victor. His death is fated by her hands, or her death in his. Calla doesn’t want to die. So this hatred will make her killing blow come easier.
“Calla?”
The kitchen floods with sudden light, and Calla flinches, throwing a hand over her eyes. It takes her a few seconds of rapid blinking, adjusting to the overhead bulbs, and only then does she lower her arm, rising from the cold kitchen tiles. Yilas is standing at the doorway, one hand on her hip and the other on the light switch.
“What are you doing, kneeling in the dark?”
“Praying,” Calla answers easily. Half a lie, half a jest. Half a truth, wholly out of character.
Yilas raises an eyebrow. Her eyes swivel toward what sits before Calla: the screen running into commercial. “To the television?”
Calla is looking at the television, but she does not see it. She stands in the kitchen, but she does not feel it, the ceramic floor under her bare feet and the grimy counter beneath her fingers fading into the abstract.
“To the television,” Calla confirms lightly, “and the gods inside.”
CHAPTER21
It was player number two, Calla had reported over the telephone.They called her Pampi, and she was Crescent Society. The leader of the Hollow Temple now, in fact.
A small drizzle of evening rain leaks onto the street level, adding to the puddles that collect on uneven ground. August picks his way through, pulling a hat low over his hair. There was no time to find a new body today. He’s out and about in his own face, fingers flexing every minute to adjust his rings. San whispers for his attention—a toy seller hawking from the corner, a prostitute trailing her fingers across his chest when he passes by—but he ignores it in favor of the temple ahead, observing the Crescent Society members bustling outward.
She did something unbelievable,Calla had continued.Used her qi to strike people without touching them.A pause.Another man did the same the day of the flood sirens. The one who jumped without light.
August could hardly believe it. This was so much information at once that he needed to backtrack.Are you sure it was qi?
I could feel it. Don’t ask me how, because I don’t know. But there are piles of dead bodies below their temple that have something to do with it.
There had been another pause over the telephone.One more thing. Yilas—you remember Yilas? Before she was knocked out, she found a set of printouts at the back of the Hollow Temple. She said that they looked like screen captures of surveillance from the games. From inside the palace.
Calla’s voice had faded out then, too tired to keep going, and August had released the line, letting her rest. It didn’t sound like she thought much of the Crescent Societies and their use of qi past these anomalies, but the gears in August’s head were turning. His first move was to check the records kept of the games, searching for a list of every player who had been drawn. Right at the top, under number two, was Pampi Magnes, followed by a series of numbers that made up her identification serial.
But when August plugged that number into San-Er’s system, it gave nothing. A ghost. The only matching record was anemployeein the palace surveillance room, which explained Calla’s warning about the Hollow Temple having access to the players’ locations. August had pulled up security footage and employee data to confirm that it was the same woman, except she didn’texist,so how had she enrolled in the gamesandfound work inside the palace?
An inside job.
August walks into the Hollow Temple. His head is still whirring. This temple is experimenting with qi, letting them move people without being touched. It lets them jump without light. Without seeing a new body first. It gives them the ability they need to be flitting about the twin cities, killing players of the games and summoning the yaisu sickness without being caught on the surveillance cameras.
He has always suspected that this was not foreign intrusion, but internal anarchy, coming right from the group that has always wanted the palace to fall. Now he has only one question.
August comes to a stop in the main hall. No one stopped him from entering, and no one asks now what he’s doing here. Someone, though, is watching. When he looks around, he spots a woman with red eyes, seated by one of the shrines and smiling at him.
If the Crescent Societies are attempting to sow anarchy in San-Er, how did they get the proper access—into the games, into the palace—to do so?
August doesn’t walk up to Pampi Magnes. He turns on his heel and chooses a random path deeper into the temple. From his periphery, he sees the woman frown, as if she expected August to confront her. She’s dressed nicely and doesn’t appear to be carrying any visible injuries, which means she’s probably changed bodies since she encountered Calla. No one who goes up against Calla walks away without some sort of bleeding or bruising.
August ventures along the temple’s corridors, pressing deeper and deeper, until he comes across a small nook where a shrine of a single deity is propped in the corner, illuminated by a semicircle of candles. There is no other light here, only the glow of false worship.
“Your Highness.”
Pampi has followed him, of course.
