Page 70 of Eyes of Kings

Chami tries to sit up. She recognizes the palace infirmary. It is empty. The windows show the dark night outside.

“I’m okay,” she rasps. “Are… you okay?”

Yilas nods. “You saved me.” She looks down. “And you could have told me.”

But Chami could not put into words the shock she felt waking that morning. Gulping in air and registering the new qi swirling in her chest. She thought she was dying. A heart attack, perhaps, her mortal body crumbling after the decades it spent in unnatural form. It wasn’t until she threw herself off the bed, landing on the floorboards with her bare knees, that she accidentally grazed her skin and opened blood in her scratches. The balance in her body leveled out. She understood then what this was: her old levels without her old senses. Raw power, able to be retrieved with a thought, but no control, no ability to direct feeling and emotion and kindness into people, because she was trapped in a mortal body, and she was stillmortal.

Chami, slowly, reaches out her hand. She sets it on Yilas’s arm.

“Would you have believed me?”

“Of course,” Yilas says without hesitation. “I would believe you if you told me you secretly possessed three heads. I would follow you to the edge of the kingdom and throw myself into the sea if only you asked. I love you. Your pain is mine.”

Oh. Chami swallows hard. She had imagined this secret going unseen forever. She would live a long and happy life with Yilas in the dark even upon old age, because no one had yet called to attention her unchanging face, so why wouldn’t she get away with it this time?

Yet Yilas weaves her hand through hers now, interlacing their fingers. In that gesture, they share everything unspoken: Chami’s apologies for the life she has not been able to admit to, that she is forgetting year by year, and Yilas’s willingness to spend the rest of hers trying to pick each piece out of the wind.

“What has happened?” Chami asks warily. She gestures around the room. Both to indicate their presence at the palace, and the absence in the air. The qi that she can no longer control.

Yilas shakes her head. “I’m not entirely sure. I heard a ruckus outside when I went to fetch water. No one can jump in San-Er anymore. The Crescent Societies have enacted a series of sigils at the wall to stop the heretics.” Yilas stops, catching herself. Guilt colors her cheeks. “I mean—”

“You don’t have to correct yourself,” Chami says softly. “Several generations have passed since any of us saw the heavens. The term feels accurate now.”

The kingdom is drastically different from the one that Chami visited from the heavens. How can she call herself a god again merely because she can wield bursts of qi? She cannot influence kindness anymore. She cannot slink invisible into a room and press her forehead against a dying matriarch, bringing a blessing to her final moments.

“Matiyu is checking out of the hospital and coming to the palace to help us,” Yilas says. “He’s friends with the cleric who’s watching the north entrance—I’d rather him escort us out of the palace than risk getting stopped.We can stay put at his apartment in Er until this blows over and Calla gets back.”

Chami blinks. “Matiyu was in the hospital?”

“Broken elbow. Someone shoved him with qi. He will recover, don’t worry.”

But Chami is still confused. “Where’s Calla?”

“She’s off waging a war with my brother.”

The intrusion comes from the door, and Chami jolts, squinting in the dim lighting. It’s the girl from the internet cafe, the rebel who wanted to contact Calla. Bibi. Or, as the cities have been whispering now: Buira Makusa.

“I floated, briefly, the idea that she should wait until you woke up,” Bibi says. “You would make a fine soldier against her opponents.”

Chami stiffens.

“She declined, obviously. Didn’t think you’d like that very much. What were you doing by the wall anyway?”

“None of your business.” Chami allows the slightest bit of indignation to color her voice—it doesn’t come naturally to her, like choosing the larger piece of cake or picking up a coin on the ground—but Yilas always says she wants Chami to stand up for herself.

Yilas gives her a look, though. The infirmary grows tense, and Chami sighs.

“Nothing illicit,” she answers. “An old friend said she was coming to San-Er, and I wanted to greet her so that she wasn’t left to fend for herself. It was bad timing. She won’t want to come in now, anyway, with qi blocked.”

Bibi makes a noise under her breath. She steps into the infirmary properly, and Calla’s cat is following her, circling her ankles with each step. It seems Bibi does not believe Chami’s story… which Chami can’t do anything about, because it is the truth. She flits her eyes to Yilas, pleading innocence, and Yilas nods, indicating that she believes her, at least.

“What did you need, anyway?” Yilas asks Bibi, visibly prickling. “You’re supposed to be watching the Weisanna.”

Bibi reaches down to pick up Mao Mao. He curls in her arms, his face resting against the crook of her shoulder.

“I am,” she says brightly. “I’m connected to the camera feed. And anyway, the prisoners that the Crescent Societies brought in are being freed, so I’m giving that whole corridor some space.”

“The prisoners shouldn’t be freed.”