Page 69 of Eyes of Kings

“I don’t think he’s lying,” she says quietly. “Besides, the Crescents are holding San-Er at peak strength. August will not risk invasion until they are weak.”

Calla does not have an invading army. But she does have a defense force. Like it or not, whether the Crescents actually want to help her at this time, they are holding the capital for her.

When Anton turns to face her, she takes a deep breath.Stop, she urges herself, but it’s too late—power rushes her lungs. Her bones, her blood. A Crescent yells out by the wall, and Calla decides she needs this. She will stop afterward, but while they’re making their exit, they need to move forcefully if they are going to escape obstruction.

“Calla,” Anton says, “I’m not sure if I can go back to Kelitu.”

The qi block is forming. Calla feels it in the air. They have to move.

“I need you to remember what we escaped.” Calla puts one hand on his leg, the other to the saddle. She props her foot into the stirrup too, but she doesn’t lift herself yet. “August had us bound and surrounded by his forces. The threat ofexile at best, our deaths at worst. We took the only path out, but we’re still on it for as long as Otta Avia keeps revising the roadmap. We’re notclearyet, Anton.”

The divine crown is supposed to be the most powerful weapon on earth. Had Calla been given a realm of mortals to rule thereafter, this would be an easy war.

But they’re playing with gods.

“Venus will need five days to reach Rincun,” she goes on, “and August has his work cut out for him while he continues to aim for the north. From Kelitu, we can cross the Jinzi River and travel through Ediso. We don’t add any more time than we would if we went straight to Actia. We’re still abiding by our campaign.”

Calla risks another glance at the Crescents. Her voice drops to a whisper.

“Galipei is smarter than August gives him credit for. He always has been. Why do you think he offeredthis, first and foremost? He knows we need something good before clashing in Actia. He knows that our battle with August is all for nought if we’re weaker than Otta. Going to Kelitu is unavoidable.”

Anton grimaces. For several moments, he is quiet.

Then he says, “Do you want to ride first, or shall I?”

“You,” Calla says, and she closes her eyes to concentrate, knowing that she has won him over. “I’ll open up a path.”

For the first time since she put on the crown, she exhibits patience, she lets herself feel everything. She waits until she can sense each body around the wall. The rushing rain collecting in the gullies beside the buildings. The whizz of electricity running to power the fans, the televisions, the light bulbs. Everything of their world possesses qi. From the smallest speck of dirt to a living, breathing person.

Callapulls. It starts as a rumble underfoot. The field quivers, its yellow grass shriveling into itself. The metal latches of the gate vibrate, trying to hold on to its hinges.

A heinous noise erupts around the wall. It wrenches from the soil. Seizedafloat so that it levitates a considerable distance in the air. The Crescents shout to back up. Grab weapons. Get ready for the possibility of incoming attack. Calla’s eyes snap open; she tears a fissure in the wall for their exit. The bricks change ahead, its shuffle lost while the Crescents are distracted. It is her last spurt of effort. Calla releases her hold, her crown searing hot. There’s an explosivethudas the wall drops back down.

“Go, Anton,” she hisses, climbing on behind him. “Go!”

CHAPTER 32

A long time ago, Chami shared a small loft in the heart of Er with three roommates.

She didn’t have much, but she had citizenship in the twin cities. That was something she’d chosen well when she made that initial jump, finally at her wit’s end with the delirium that had spread through the heavens. Try as she might to remember her thought process at the time, she can’t find those threads anymore. It has been washed away by the heaviness of mortality, each new year eating up another memory she might have once possessed.

What she remembers is her satisfaction when she came to and registered the grumble of a factory kicking into gear beside her. An enormous plume of steam, wafting into the alleyway, warming her hands and her feet and her back while she leaned against a bicycle. There were more streets back then. More breathing room to run around the capital, making deliveries on wheels and traveling to see friends who lived at the far end of San. Fewer roadblocks that had been installed by rebel groups who were avoiding palace guards; fewer illegal businesses who were making every effort to survive a tyrant king, poisoning the waterway running along their back door.

She’d felt good about the body she’d picked. Something to call hers. That first merge was the trickiest. Their qi didn’t work as mortals’ did. They would meld into the body and take over entirely, so they had to choose well. Those pinkeyes would follow her everywhere thereafter. The pantheon together declared the only way to survive was to shed their heavenly qi and adopt the barest wisp of mortal qi instead, to be happy with that life and count their blessings that they hadn’t faded away immediately like some weaker members of the pantheon.

Chami kept a small mirror above her bed in the loft, taped to the ceiling. Every morning, she looked into her reflection and reminded herself what she was living for. She was the godling of kindness. She was needed in this world. It didn’t matter if she no longer had blessings to offer or qi to blow into the cold, brisk air. Each time she stepped out in the morning and closed the door behind her with a thud, it was an extravagant thing just to walk along the footpath, to touch the street signs she passed. She indulged in buns filled with red soybeans and she laughed with the children playing outside their parents’ shopfronts.

That got harder over the years. When the loft grew too expensive to rent, even among four people. When the family she’d intruded on lost their medicine shop to a fire, and the identity she’d invaded couldn’t find work. For some time, Chami flitted meaninglessly through the twin cities. She watched the wall grow higher and the palace guards multiply. The royals changed, their kings dying one after the other, and those she came to call family passed, too, as time crept on. Chami had never made an active effort to hide why she did not age, but nobody remarked on it either. A small mercy, a remaining symptom of her godhood, that her appearance would always escape notice to the mortal eye, that they would see what they wanted to see.

Eventually, Chami was left utterly alone in San-Er. She saw a sign that the palace was hiring. She passed the interviews to become an attendant. She was given lodging inside the Palace of Heavens, and she enjoyed the space that she had carved out for herself, the new life that she was able to live.

But she would always miss her first loft. She often found herself staring at the ceiling of her room in the palace—its tall pillars raising the slats high,unreachable unless she stacked one stepladder onto another—wishing that there might be some way to justify putting up a mirror without a Weisanna asking her if she was out of her mind. She feared that one day, she would open her eyes and lose her mind indeed, forgetting who she was.

Chami stirs awake, and she can’t feel her qi again. For that brief moment before she registers her surroundings, she is relieved. It was a dream. The earthen plane has not been flooded with heavenly qi once more.

Then she sees Yilas. Her big green eyes, watery because she refuses to let her tears fall, and Chami stifles a sharp breath. She remembers the destruction at the wall. The building teetering, seconds from collapsing on Yilas, who couldn’t have run if she tried, because the god of wealth was under Galipei Weisanna’s control, and he was tearing apart the twin cities and everyone in his path.

“You’re awake,” Yilas says softly. “Are you comfortable?”