Page 40 of Immortal Longings
Calla shoots him a sidelong glare. “Would you prefer to do this the traditional way?”
“Oh, no, don’t misunderstand me.” He tosses one of his knives. It swings a perfect full rotation in the air before landing back in his grip, ready for battle. “I’m shocked that the games can be manipulated so thoroughly, is all.”
There’s a rumble past the wall to their right. A suddenbang!in the stairwell they just exited. They only came to the fifth floor because the pager reported this as a player’s last location, but it’s empty, unless the office workers in their glass cubicles count.
Er’s financial district is usually orderly, refusing to mimic the rest of the twin cities in clumping a motley of businesses and factories and shops together. Calla had briefly eyed the directory on the ground floor before they came up. Half of this building is owned by an obscure private academy, the other half divided into offices for one of the major banks.
When Calla holds a hand out to Anton and listens, the stairwell quiets again. Like someone barged in and then right back out.
“Wait,” she says suddenly. “Do you think—”
“There’s an active fight here,” Anton concludes at the same time. “A second player. Do we—”
Calla is already nodding, turning over her shoulder in search for the other exit. There are two main stairwells. One runs down the center of the building cleanly, and the other loops around the exterior.
“I’ll go around. Let’s block them in.”
She’s running before Anton can grunt his assent, pulling her sword and shouldering through the door. The groggy day greets her, not bright enough to qualify for sunshine in Er, but sufficient glaring gray to light her way as she passes the classrooms facing this side of the building. The kids inside stand at the sight of her. In eagerness, they flock from their desks to the windows, waving happily, but Calla forges on, taking the upcoming steps three at a time.
When she slips back into the building, there’s a player doing her very best to slice a schoolteacher in half, her long ponytail swinging in sync with her cuts.
The students here have scrambled for cover, and it isn’t until the schoolteacher strikes back with a quick fist that Calla realizes this is in fact another player, the wristband hidden under the cuff of their pressed white sleeve. The sight is… unexpected. The king’s games tend to draw in riffraff and troublemakers at the end of their line, those who have no other option except to risk their lives for riches. For someone with a respectable living to throw their name into something as vicious as the games… what can the motivation be? Not enough pay? The adrenaline rush? It can’t be worth this: a blade in the gut in front of twenty of your own students, splattering the front-most row with blood.
A flash of light blinds the hallway in absolute white. Calla is charging forward despite her stinging eyes.
Anton is doing the same from the other stairwell.
Before the player can pull her sword from the schoolteacher, Anton comes within range and presses his knives to her neck. In one fast motion, he has cut a cross into her, deep enough that she drops without a lost beat. While the player with the ponytail is eliminated, the light has taken the schoolteacher elsewhere, and by the time Anton searches the packed corridor—filled with teenagers dressed in uniform, red ties dangling at their necks—he has already lost track of which body the teacher could have dived into.
But just because he wasn’t paying attention does not mean Calla wasn’t. And as he heaves, trying to catch his breath, he watches Calla slam one of the boys down, foot on his chest.
“Fifty-Seven,” Anton exclaims suddenly, a hand outstretching. He wants to tell her,We don’t need to kill him,or perhaps,Let him go.But he cannot. The games end with only one victor. Collateral damage in every direction is how they have always been played. It is only that a part of him prefers to lie if it willspare him from feeling awful, but a greater part of him knows these lies are useless. He can’t bring himself to tell one now.
“Will you take this boy down with you?” Calla asks quietly.
“He’s innocent,” the schoolteacher says with the boy’s tinny voice. “Let us live.”
Anton has stopped bracing for a new attack. He is watching Calla instead, her sword pressed to the boy’s neck. If she looked angry, maybe it would have made for a more fitting picture. Fury for the kingdom, for the games, clouding her moral compass and obscuring her sight. But there is none of that.
Only the levelheaded princess who killed her parents with that same steady stare.
“How foolish,” Calla whispers.
When she feels her next breath burn her throat, she brings the sword down, and the boy’s head comes off, his life and his schoolteacher’s ended at once. One way or another, there would have been a second life taken along the line.
The other students gasp, hands flying to their mouths. Calla can’t help the bitterness roiling in her stomach. Shouldn’t they be used to this by now? Or is this part of Er more sheltered than the rest? Do they rise every morning with breakfast laid out for them, no hunger and a big, comfortable bed?
She knows it’s unfair to think this way. But it’s hard to push back resentment at those in the twin cities who have never feared for their lives, who have no idea how the rest of Talin suffers.
When Calla turns to go, Anton follows her silently. Out of her periphery, she can see that his eyes are pinned on her intently. She wonders what he’s looking for. Guilt? Delight? Perhaps sheshouldfeel guilty, if only to prove that deep inside, she is good and redeemable. But each time she swings her sword, the feeling that sits heavy in her rib cage is not guilt. It is a jarring sensation that tells her this is wicked, but wickedness is tolerable. Good kingdoms don’t need good soldiers. A good soldier dies on the battlefield and lets the people cry for him.Good kingdoms need loyal soldiers, terrible ones. Calla is killing people to save them, and before San-Er put its wall up, when Talin fought its war with Sica, it was the same. Lives thrown into the fire, sacrificed so that millions more at home could carry on safely.
Calla swivels around, stopping on a landing in the stairwell. Anton halts too, blocked from walking any farther. She searches his face. He stares back, waiting.
But Calla says nothing.
“Is something the matter?” he asks eventually.
There’s blood on his jaw. Calla reaches out to swipe it away, then pauses, her red fingers inches from his face. She would be no help. She would only make it worse.
