Page 52 of Eyes of Kings

“Forgive me,” Otta trills. “There have been so many names to remember since I entered this new world.”

August’s eyes swivel quickly to the councilmembers. They can hear her. As can all the guards who are inching toward the scene, preparing for a fight.Watch it, he wants to warn Otta, but then the woman scoffs.

“I didn’t like you much in your last life either.”

The woman shoves Otta from the other end of the path. Despite Otta’s bravado, all that confidence built off the battle they won at the base, she goes flying. Otta gasps, landing on her back with a bone-shattering sound. She rolls herself over and recovers within seconds of the hit, unlike the prone Weisannas, but she is visibly pale.

August’s attention snaps back to the woman. She continues forward. His throat dries while merely watching her.

“That was a warning to prove I can answer to my threats. I am the god of abundant soil. I have taken over Pashe and won the people’s approval, and now you are encroaching on my territory. Take your leave or pay the price otherwise.”

The camp falls silent. August takes a step toward her. She must sense it instantly, because her steely-gray eyes whip to him.

“For a hundred years, we have had to live as pathetic mortals,” she says, and it’s to August, each word aimed in his direction. “Your palace erased our existence. The people were made afraid to worship. We could not prove ourselves while heavenly qi was sucked dry from the world, and so we took on lives incongruent to our very being.” The woman lifts her arms. Across the camp, the soil trembles: lightly, initially, as though there is an earthquake underfoot, before entire sectors detach and shoot up. August rears to his left, narrowly missing a chunk that would have taken off his arm.

“Wait,” August says.

“There is an army in Pashe undermycommand,” Councilmember Naov shouts, striding forward in interruption, “and you will—”

“SILENCE!”

The god maneuvers a shard of earth. It flattens Councilmember Naov where he stands. August jolts—his body reacts in fright before his mind has comprehended the quickness of the kill. Crimson blood spreads in the grass with slow, languid expansion.

August has killed countless people himself. He has cut throats, thrown bodies off buildings.

Never has he thought topulverizesomeone, nor with such ease. The god lowers her hand. Otta gets back on her feet.

“Otta, wait,” August calls, and his voice feels horribly faraway even to his own ear. “Otta.Don’t—”

His sister seizes the qi floating along the path, taking over a section of thegod’s weapons. She turns the shards of earth, pivoting their sharp ends to be facing the god instead, but quicker than she can launch them, the god is reverting them with a smile on her face, hardly bothering to raise her hand.

Otta fires forth what she can manage. Under normal circumstances, the attack would have been debilitating. It would have ripped through her opponent. At the very least, it would have broken a few bones, tossed a victim back by several fields.

Instead, the soil scatters before any of it can meet its target, showering at the god’s feet in an orderly line.

“In kindness, I offered a warning,” the god says, “but I must defend my land now.”

“Wait!” August shouts. It is here that he finally runs toward the battle. He cedes his dignity as the would-be king, relinquishes the sort of behavior he’s spent his whole life perfecting in an effort to appear superior among other nobles. When he reaches Otta, he skids onto his knees beside her, his arms splayed.

“I beg you: don’t,” he says. “I have a proposal. Please, wait.”

Slowly, the god looks down over her nose at him, her brow arching.

“Is that right?”

“I apologize for this… confusion,” August says. “Forgive us. We got started on the wrong foot.”

“August—”

August shoots Otta a dangerous glare, commanding that she stay quiet. He turns back to the god.

“How are we to address you?”

“Gods do not have names,” she says plainly. “But this mortal form came named Seefin. You may address me as such.”

“Seefin, thank you.” He ignores Otta’s scoff. “We can come to an agreement. My camp was not aware that we were intruding by setting up in Pashe.” Councilmember Naov is dead, in any case, so he’s lost the advantage of operating ina province where they might have had an army at their disposal. “I recognize your claim on the province. But Talin is struggling to hold itself up as a kingdom while Calla Tuoleimi occupies the capital. Spare us. When she is defeated and I return to San-Er, Pashe is yours.”

Otta does not like the proposal at all. She starts to rise, wanting to argue with August directly, and August, though he has never attempted this before, draws on the excess qi in the air. The pool of blood from Naov is growing larger and larger; August scoops from it, flicks it Otta’s way. He didn’t mean to do much. He has not enacted a sigil, has not concentrated his qi to achieve anything more than a light tap on her forehead. But Otta understands the warning. The way their father used to flick her temple if she was misbehaving, her last spoiled demand of the palace staff going too far.