Page 111 of Eyes of Kings

She’s been drugged.

It slows the blood in her veins to a crawl, forces time to alternate between leaden ebbs or rushing waves. Calla lolls against the bars of her cell. She tries screaming, but there is no response. She has been here before. She only ever seems to cycle back through, each time in the same state, each time hollow from loss.

The difference is that Anton is not coming back. There is no reversing the death knell; there are no more rolls of the die. Each round has been played, each part of the board explored. Calla has slid all the way back down to zero.

She slumps onto the floor. A foul smell emanates from the corner, a gift left by the last prisoner held captive. The cells are all empty now. They keep no guards nearby. As the night passes and drifts into morning, Calla catches conversation floating from the palace, then from San. The small window at the top of the cell opens into a thin, dark alley. It is not meant for passage, barely wider than a handspan, but it carries enough air flow that Calla parses full sentences, the twin cities waking and learning what has occurred.

She hears the talk from the Weisannas too. The plan is to parade her during August’s second coronation. A ceremony to shame her in tandem with his triumphs. She is the vanquished, the defeated, and August will notput on that crown until he can look her in the eye and let the kingdom interpret the picture: he has been accepted by the heavens instead, even if Calla attempted her coup and tried to claim otherwise. He worries little about her threat, because she has nothing more to try. She will not jump. Once again, Calla is stuck in the same trap that bound her before this war. All she has left is the weight of her name. She has the myth of her body, clinging thickly to her every step. Even if given the option to trade for heavenly power, she wouldn’t, because what sort of life is that? Another pawn of the kingdom, rolling on and on and on with no say in its affairs. Another warlord, playing pretend until the day a challenger rolls in and holds her down, taking her head and ending her reign.

August has nothing to be worried about.

“Calla.”

She looks around groggily. One of her ears is blocked, humming with persistent warble, but she recognizes that voice. It isn’t the Weisannas yet. She hadn’t heard the door open.

“Chami?” she whispers. “Is that you?”

“I’m up here.”

Calla clambers to her feet. She squints, pressing against the wall of the cell and trying to peer out the window. She sees nothing but shadow.

“I don’t have much time,” Chami says. “I snuck into the east wing. I’m directly three floors above.”

“Chami, please go before you get in trouble.” Calla’s every word is effortful, dragged from her throat, pulled from the pit of her stomach. “I don’t have the crown. I don’t have anything. He won.”

Chami sighs. “I thought you’d say that.”

For whatever reason, that remark—so flippant and glib—makes Calla laugh.

“Have I become so predictable?”

“You are incredibly resistant to living a small, safe life,” Chami returns. “I figured you would not want us plotting to break you out.”

“No,” Calla says. “No, I wouldn’t.”

If she stays, there will be stories passed down by every inhabitant in San-Er. In exchange for making an example out of her, August can’t change the record as his forefathers did. He can’t wipe away her work to explain why there were dead Tuoleimis in the Palace of Heavens, how the Palace of Earth lost its last blood Shenzhi. The years will pass, and the reels will alter her part, forget Anton, write out the Crescent Societies and the rebels in the provinces, but they can’t erase Calla Tuoleimi. August cannot continue as though their war were a brief intermission in the kingdom’s usual rhythm.

“Then take this.”

An object thumps down from the third floor, landing right in front of Calla’s barred window. She squints. When that doesn’t offer any information as to what the thin, long object is, Calla reaches for it, sticking her fingers out between the bars. She snags onto one end and maneuvers it closer. Then, with two fingers, she pulls it through the bars. The weapon drops into her palm.

“There is one bullet,” Chami says.

Calla, despite logic, despite the infinitesimal chance that this is worth something, tucks the weapon into her sleeve. It is light. Easy to hide.

“Thank you,” she whispers. “You and Yilas have both cared for me so tremendously. I hope in our next life I will be born as your food to eat.”

A beat passes. “Please don’t get reborn as my cauliflower.”

“Who said anything about cauliflower? I was thinking an ox.”

Chami snorts. Calla squeezes her eyes shut. She presses her forehead hard into the wall, and swallows her sentimentality.

“You need to go, Chami. Before you’re caught.”

“Yes. I will.”

But there is still no sound of her leaving. She sits, three floors above, incompanionship with Calla below. Enough of a moment passes that Calla can’t help herself, and she says, “Chami?”