Page 9 of Eyes of Kings

Yes, that seems to be a common thread among recent events. Anton scans the image. “Where is this?”

“Pashe.” She points to the ground. “Do you see that?”

Anton reaches over her shoulder to tap the keyboard himself, zooming in rapidly. A wide gravel path runs toward the yamen—it’s a nicer section of the Apian Routes. With the rain, there is minor flooding to either side of the path.

Anton stares where Bibi’s finger is. It could be that he already knows exactly what he’s looking at, but his mind resists the conclusion. Markings on the path, not by wagon, not by horseshoe…

“It looks like a sigil,” Bibi remarks, rotating the view they have on the footage, and Anton’s stomach drops.

He bolts to his feet. “Get an answer from your cleric as soon as possible. If the fear is backlash from other Crescents, we can keep it covert.”

Anton’s moving for the door before he’s finished speaking. Bibi calls after him, taken aback, but Anton doesn’t slow. It’s a sigil he recognizes, because it is the only one he knows. A left dot. A long and slanting curve, with the dot above. A dot to the right. It’s the sigil that Calla showed him, after she got it from Leida.

And after Leida got it from Otta.

This is a message. Otta Avia is at August’s base.

CHAPTER 4

As far as Yilas is concerned, her life hasn’t much changed since San-Er was overrun.

The Magnolia Diner is still getting the same customers. In the mornings, it’s students from Er before their cramped schools go into session. Then the elderly during the daytime, coming through the turnstile with their checkerboards and knitting patterns. Yilas and Chami make most of their profit from that cohort because they like to keep the tea hot, a new pot ordered before the previous is finished. Even before the rain started, San-Er’s afternoons always drew longer than what felt natural, with such little sunlight to signal the day’s end.

By night, the booths scramble into a predictable, eclectic collection of patrons in the area who want a quick meal. Yilas often looks away before she can catch the exchange of cash—then a bag of powder—between two men seated back-to-back at different tables. She hasn’t spotted anyone making a trade in the diner these recent few days, though. Without palace guards, the Crescent Societies can do it openly.

“The red ones,” Yilas calls, catching sight of Chami’s error ahead. “We have the yellow ones already.”

Chami jolts. She does a good job of hiding her surprise, but Yilas has known her girlfriend for too long to miss the gesture.

“Oops,” Chami says. She’s quick to pivot, reaching for the red bell peppers. “I was thinking of the onions we need.”

They don’t need more onions, actually. Onions are a part of the bulk shipments they get brought to their door for the diner, and though their supplier has missed the latest delivery due to “increasing tensions in the provinces,” there’s such ample supply each month that Yilas always filches from the crates for their personal kitchen upstairs too.

“Are you okay?” Yilas asks, for perhaps the eighth time today. “I can handle the shopping if you want to rest.”

Chami shakes her head. “I’m okay. Another mild headache.”

Perhaps Yilas’s life has not changed significantly since the palace collapsed, but the very air in the twin cities has shifted, starting with the incessant rain. It falls and it falls, drawing complaints from every patron who must wade through surging gutters to enter the Magnolia Diner. San-Er has enough overhead coverage—enough buildings, enough density, enough protruding laundry lines and ceiling tarpaulins—that the downpour doesn’t hit the street level, but its humidity sticks to everything and its overflow runs against the walls, the buildings, the pipes nonstop. Yilas makes an effort to ignore it, but Chami has not been faring as well. Each time the rain strengthens, Chami winces. When she thinks Yilas isn’t watching, she kneads her temples, trying to soothe her headache.

“Did we need sweet potato?” Chami asks, diverting the topic. She picks up the vegetable, frowning when the top end appears entirely soft. “Never mind.”

“Let’s pay for the peppers and try the next stall,” Yilas suggests. The shopkeeper is lurking behind her, but she doesn’t bother lowering her voice. If he’s putting out rotting produce, he should know that his customers aren’t happy about it.

They go to the shop next door. It’s busy. Yilas squeezes between two short old ladies, and picks up a sweet potato for Chami’s approval. Chami nods enthusiastically.

“Better pick a few quickly,” this shopkeeper bellows. “I don’t have another shipment coming.”

“Why not?” Yilas asks.

Chami shoots her a quick look.

“Must be the rain, right?” Chami supplies to soften the question.

“The rain doesn’t help,” the shopkeeper says. He rests his thick arms on his legs. The wooden stool underneath him is barely wide enough to keep him balanced. “But sweet potatoes grow in Yingu Province and Councilmember Bethilia is dead, so there’s no one to communicate with when the suppliers go dark.”

“Yet!”

The interjection echoes from across the alley, belonging to a shopkeeper in the empty store facing them. A teenage boy, skinnier than a stoat stretching on its hind legs.