Page 72 of Eyes of Kings

“It’s better to stay inside and keep the door locked,” she says. “Let’s hope there’s no use for firearms.”

CHAPTER 33

Three days pass uneventfully. Calla and Anton ride without stopping. They trade horses at village posts. They trade shifts. When Calla holds the reins, Anton sleeps against her. When Anton holds the reins, Calla attempts sleep against him.

Gray daylight hangs steadily over the fields of Daol Province, and Calla passes the reins over again.

“Did you see that?” Anton asks, clambering back onto the horse. She had lost her focus and veered them directly into a pothole earlier, which prompted Anton to demand a swap. Since entering Daol Province, the rain has lessened significantly overhead. Calla would think it has stopped falling entirely if it weren’t for the occasional droplets landing on her forehead, trailing a path down her cheek.

“See what?” Calla returns, her vision blurring. She’s exhausted. She’s annoyed that they’re still en route. They have chosen to trace the hem of the kingdom, taking the beaches of Eigi, then the eastern seaboard of Cirea. It’s the best way to avoid August’s scouts on the Apian Routes, and the best way to avoid trouble from rural dwellers while the crown flashes on Calla’s head.

“Over there. On the house.”

Calla squints, blinking to focus. Anton is pointing across a lush field. She succeeds in following his gaze eventually: a two-story brown structure of brick and earth, its thatched roof loose on its left side. It would have been a normal sight as faras architecture in the provinces went, if it weren’t for the yellow flag flying on the roof.

“Is that a sigil?” she asks.

“Looks like it.” Anton pauses. “It’s not…”

“I don’t recognize it either,” Calla says before he can finish. After all, the extent of their knowledge starts and stops with the sigils Otta Avia had been flinging everywhere. It’s not as though Calla possesses any additional insight of this bygone era, which suddenly everyone in this kingdom seems to understand except her. Different sigils for different families, used as calling cards when praying to patron gods. Different sigils for each god—as many sigils as there are gods in the pantheon, and the pantheon wasendless.

Calla climbs astride the saddle too, indicating that they should keep moving. Anton rides at a trot while he gets his bearings, so they pass a hamlet at relatively slow speed. There are rural dwellers working along the road, loading sacks onto their wagons or dragging out the mulch for their fields. Calla reaches for the hood over her head, holding on tightly. Just as they’re taking a left, staying on the main road of their westward journey, Calla catches a marking on the front end of a villager’s wagon.

The same sigil.

Anton picks up speed, and Calla tightens her grip on him with her other arm. The traveling routes through Talin’s provinces are straightforward by design. The palace wanted councilmembers visiting their designated territories at regular intervals, and the palace could not allow them and their delegations to get lost. There were factors they couldn’t control. Insurgent attacks. Wild animals. But they could pretty up the parts of the kingdom that their nobility passed through. The yamen buildings with security cameras. The wide roads amenable to carriages.

“Is that another one?”

Calla almost doesn’t catch Anton’s question. His words are flung apart with the wind, and she leans forward as far as she can without sending them off-balance.

“I don’t see it.”

“We passed it already. I’m starting to think this is unique to Daol.”

They keep riding. The rain stays sparse. Her body grows tense, then tenser as their journey progresses. Calla doesn’t realize she’s waiting to find the sigil again until she sights it once more, this time right on Daol’s yamen wall. Painted on the exterior, stretching to cover the entire surface.

Anton tugs on the reins, drawing them to a halt outside the yamen. It is only trees and forests for the foreseeable horizon past this village. Their horse is tired. Time to trade again.

“I’ll step into the village,” Anton says. “I’m probably carrying enough coins to buy a new horse if there’s any fuss.”

But Calla cannot pull her eyes away from the sigil. On theyamenwall. What could that be except a declaration to challengers who come by?

“Anton,” Calla says. “I think Daol has been taken over already.”

Anton frowns. A flash of alarm darkens his eyes. Calla can see it clearly, because there is no light to intrude with the color.

“Impossible,” he says. “We didn’t pass any camps.”

“No, not August’s takeover.” Calla pulls her cloak tighter, lowering the hood as far as it’ll go. “Whoever this sigil is in reference to.”

This is a collective effort. This is worship.

“Stay here,” Anton decides. “I’m stepping in.”

Calla nods once. The villagers are unlikely to recognize Anton for anyone other than a regular province traveler, especially with his appearance after days on the road. While Anton steps into the yamen, Calla leads their horse toward a hitching post outside the building. Only Daol’s east side is coastal, but the province as a whole smells like sea salt—like white, coarse sand that has been slowly encroaching into the fields and farms.

How did it go so wrong?They were supposed to have snuffed out Augustin Eigi. The Crescent Societies were supposed to have occupied themselves in San-Er while Calla expanded into the provinces and moved her base there, taking power away from the cult in the capital. She shouldn’t be making a stop in Kelitu because they’re struggling to gain an upper hand over Otta Avia. She shouldn’t be seeking a sigil that Anton’s father possessed, because he was a Dovetail sympathizer providing them with power, because he was waging a coup before he was killed, because he wasthe king of the heavens—