“You should have let me die,” Calla says.
Anton rolls his eyes, pushing the glass into her hands. “And lose your help? That would be incredibly foolish.” He rises from his chair, stretching upright. There’s little space for him to move around, but still he pivots and starts to pace the length of his bedroom, rolling his neck left and right. “You’ve been out for almost a day. We’re down to fifteen players, maybe less since the last reels played when I was watching from a barbershop window. I took your wristband and ran around with it each time it went off.”
Anton digs into his pocket and, finding her wristband, tosses it back to her, the silver buckle landing with a heavy plop beside her hand. Calla peers at the screen. Nothing looks different. Anton could have smashed it up, pulled the chip out. He could have done anything in those hours she was gone to the world.
He could have let her die.
Calla struggles upright, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and setting the glass back down. Meanwhile, Anton returns to his chair, his lips thinning.
“I hope you recognize,” he says when she remains silent, “that you were being really fucking stupid at the temple.”
Her eyes snap up. She blinks once, her fingers twisting into the sheets. She can’t say anything to defend herself. She knows this. She watches him, and every little detail she has ever let slip unfurls between them, one after the other, culminating to here, to now, to her with a gouge in her chest because she refused to jump when she easily could have.
Anton draws closer. His hand lifts, brushing along her face, fingers burying into her hair. It’s not the same soft gesture as when she was asleep. He is not trying to soothe her; he is holding her in place to get a good look, like an investor putting his prize up to the light.
“You’re a wild, terrifying thing, do you know that?” he asks, a tremor in his voice.
“Have you worked it out?” Calla asks in return.
It is unbelievable enough to be beyond comprehension. Something that no one could have guessed before the Er massacre and no one considered after, though they speculated about every other possibility.
All except this one.
Anton lets out a long breath.
“This is Calla Tuoleimi’s body,” he whispers, “but you’re not Calla, are you?”
The girl hasn’t eaten in days.
The village has depleted its resources, and the crops have withered for the season. She hears the grown-ups whispering about how there’s something wrong with the soil, but she doesn’t know what that means. She only knows that there’s a gnawing in her body. That she is sotiredall the time, and no amount of playing with the sticks and twigs under the browning trees can solve the problem.
When the invaders come, she’s one of the first to sight them. The riders on their horses, swords strapped to their belts. A battalion carrying torches, setting fire to the houses, letting the flames engulf every shop front, eat up each wooden pulley cart before anyone can think to escape.
The girl screams. She screams and screams, but no one hears her. Not until the flames have consumed everything, not until the village is surrounded by those declaring themselves agents of the palace, acting on behalf of the kingdom of Talin.Worry no longer, they declare,because everyone here is now a citizen of Talin, and they will be under the protection of two mighty kings.
The ash doesn’t settle for days. The ash clogs up the girl’s lungs, until she can’t even feel hunger anymore, because she has only burning pain crawling up her esophagus. If anyone asks, she can’t say whether she’s lost her parents, siblings, friends. Whether it was the palace invasion that took them or if they were already gone. Her memory is too hazy, her mind too young. All she remembers is before and after.
The girl is sleeping outside a small shop the night she hears of the royal family visiting soon. Her legs are scabbed over with bug bites, clothes fraying so terribly that the hems have turned into loose string. The shop’s owners come out to empty their buckets of water, dumping on the step without checking to see if there are vagrants first. The girl scrambles away in time to avoid being splattered, but the owners are engrossed in conversation anyway.
“Er’s royal family,” they say. “They want to bring us offerings, accept us into their rule.”
They scoff, but they will not look a gift horse in the mouth. When the shop doors slam closed after them, the girl doesn’t think much of it either, because when would an offering ever arrive for her; when has anything ever been for her?
The next time she hears about the royal family, they have arrived in the village. They have traveled for weeks by carriage to get here, the very outerboundaries of what is now the edge of Talin. The villagers still think of themselves as another part of the borderlands, as the nearest center one can stop in before the land blends with the rough mountains in the distance. If they voice it aloud, though, the soldiers will draw their swords, so they keep their mouths shut. They stay silent and discreetly turn their heads to the mountains any time they are asked about their allegiance.
Gifts flow through the crowd. Food and shoes and jewels. The people cheer, and it’s hard to say how much of it is pretend and how many are genuinely won over by so little when they had nothing to begin with.
The girl doesn’t join the crowds. She stands by a field one street away, prodding at a muddy puddle with a stick. That’s how she hears the rustle nearby. That’s how she is alone, with no other eyes to bear witness, when another girl joins her, well-dressed and prim in her steps, squinting at the puddle.
A princess,she thinks immediately.
“What are you looking for?” the princess asks. She’s wearing such beautiful items. Pink silk for her sleeves, trailing almost to the ground. A golden bodice, bright under the sun. The circular headpiece wrapped around her hair is studded with so many gems that it twinkles with every minute movement. “That’s a deep puddle. Be careful you don’t fall in.”
The girl doesn’t know how to reply. Even the princess’s speech is something different: each word enunciated in a way that this village has never heard before. The burning in her stomach has returned. Frantic and angry and inflamed. Bread is not enough. Small offerings once in a lifetime when they can bother making the trip out into the borderlands is not enough.
She wants more. She needs more.
The girl looks up.
