I stood by the liquid mercury shores of a decomposing sea. The sky was yellow with infection-green stripes, and I think it was disintegrating, but too slowly to notice.

  Why did I stick around, anyway? That couldn’t be a good idea.

  “Nothing’s wrong.” The skinny asshole was standing at my right. I didn’t want to agree with him, but I couldn’t argue with him either.

  If only he’d go away.

  “You can make him go away,” Vanth said. He stood at my left.

  “Did you just arrive?” I asked.

  “Doesn't matter,” he said. “This is your dream.”

  “Hey, shut up!” the skinny asshole said.

  “A dream?” Once I said that, I knew it was true. Everything disappeared—the diseased shore, the skinny asshole, and Vanth. But then, it’s not like that was the real Vanth. I’d just dreamed him up.

  I could wake myself up, too.

  It was just as easy. Everything was still dark, but I could feel my body around me—it weighted me down as if a mitema was sleeping on my back. Honestly, I wished I could’ve stayed asleep.

  Somebody kicked me! “Why couldn’t you stay asleep!”

  I jumped to my knees. “Why couldn’t you leave me alone, is the real question!”

  For a moment, all I could do was gasp and try to catch my breath. I’d gone to sleep on my underwear and that’s how I’d been taken out of my hotel room, with the bedsheet still wrapped around me. That was the only part of my surroundings I recognized, though.

  Let’s start with the closest area. I was on a guadua boat, bigger than the raft we’d taken and a bit fancier—it had a sail, billowing with a magical wind. That was the only kind that could do the job, ‘cause we were sailing down another part of the underground river.

  You’d think an underground cave is just like any other, and you wouldn’t be entirely wrong, but I’d spend more time than I cared to in the depths of Tipilej-tepuy—enough to know underground caves come in different sizes, at least. This one was wider than the st one, with a higher ceiling—I think we were closer to the surface, too, though the atmosphere was still nauseatingly custrophobic and I didn’t feel like focusing on it in the slightest. Other than that, yeah, not much to look at.

  Only my raftmates. They weren’t new to me, or you for that matter: as you’ve already figured out, they were the Rainbow Snakes. Nina was sitting across me, absently looking at the stactites—or are those stagmites?—coming from the roof. Amankay was curled up by her side, one arm slung around her cane. The skinny asshole sat by the prow, gring at me with his usual charm; he was of course the one who’d kicked me. Evaldo Moreira and his wife Sara sat on my side of the boat. On the aft, that woman called T’ika, with a rush of magic all around her—she was casting the wind spell that propelled us forward. And next to her, a middle-aged woman that looked familiar, but I couldn’t put a name to her. All I could tell at the time is that she didn’t dress like an I?í and, for that matter, didn’t look much like them.

  “Did you forget the kid somewhere?” I asked.

  “I’m gonna kick you again,” said the skinny asshole. Though his name was Willka and I might as well use it.

  “álvaro,” Amankay said, “is staying in New Tomenedra. He did his part, so there’s no reason for him to come along. He’s too young.”

  “As if you weren’t running around with Nina at his age,” Moreira said.

  “That was different,” Amankay said primly. “I had nowhere left to go. He does.”

  “Enough about him.” It wasn’t cold, but I wrapped myself up on the bedsheet anyway. “What about the part about you kidnapping me?”

  “Yeah, what about that?” asked the unknown woman.

  I didn’t bother answering, ‘cause I’d just remembered I owned a pocket watch, and it should still be on my pocket. Luckily, a brief moment of perusing my surroundings revealed they had brought my clothes along, and even folded them neatly by my side. Not that I was going to waste any thankfulness on them.

  My watch, too, was untouched. According to it, it was eleven and twenty; my heart jumped into my throat. Underground, it was impossible to tell if it was almost midnight or almost noon.

  “Is it night or day?” I asked.

  “Night,” Moreira said.

  I slumped against the side of the boat. “Thank heavens! There’s still time to catch my aircraft.”

  Vanth hadn’t found me yet—why, I didn’t know. I still wore his neckce, so I had to believe he could show up at any moment. The snake bracelet, too, flicked its tongue in the air, still curled up around my arm—I think it was a bit intimidated to see so many strangers all of a sudden.

  It wasn’t surprising that the Rainbow Snakes hadn’t thought of robbing me. Whatever motivated them wasn’t anything as low as the acquisition of valuables, even ones as obscenely valuable as my bracelet.

  Nina said they were pilgrims. I had no reason to believe that was a lie.

  I sat up and started dressing again—it’d be helpful to be ready to go when Vanth came for me.

  “Are we going to the pce where Heruj-tepuy used to be?” I asked.

  “Oh, so you remembered,” Nina said.

  “I did ask you to come along. I didn’t ask you to take me out of bed in the middle of the night, and absolutely didn’t ask to be put under a spell so I wouldn’t wake up. By the way, you better not have harmed the Sabrewing.”

  “So what?” Willka asked.

  “If you harmed him, you’ve gotta find someone else to protect me on the way to Vorsa.” I ced up one boot, then the other. “It’s only fair.” I could tell Willka wanted to keep arguing, so I didn’t even look at him. “You’re the Rainbow Snakes, are you?”

  “You ask too many questions,” Nina said.

  “That’s what my grandmas always said.”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “My grandmas also got me thinking by myself so I wouldn’t be such a pain. Anyway, I think you’re not different from them in any meaningful way, so you’re the Rainbow Snakes even if you say you’re not.”

  “You mean,” said Nina, “perception determines reality over essence.”

  I honestly wasn’t sure if she was taking the piss or what.

  “Yeah. And right now I perceive you kidnapped me and I don’t like it.”

  “Nothing personal,” Amankay said. “We simply don’t have enough time to waste in pointless arguments.”

  “Well, why didn’t you tell this guy here?” I nodded my head in Willka’s direction.

  The unknown woman chuckled. Not bad! I was making an ally. Or something like that. I don’t know if she turned around and I got a better look at her or what, but that’s when I finally recognized her: she was the head healer. Guess she looked different with her hair down.

  “You were at the clinic, weren’t you? I never learned your name.”

  “Cocona Pasos.”

  “If you can chat,” T’ika said, “you can keep the boat moving.”

  “But your wind spells are way better than mine,” Cocona said.

  “You can row, I don’t mind.”

  I was starting to see why Nina didn’t give a fuck.

  “You didn’t get real stupid all of a sudden and decide to kidnap the Megarchon’s great-grandson, right?” I asked.

  “Shouldn’t that worry you?” Willka asked. Pretty sure he wished I was worried, too. “We’re not exactly on her side.”

  “Neither is he, dumbass,” T’ika said. I was starting to like her, too.

  “And how do you know?”

  “Because he didn’t use her proper title, dumbass.”

  “That’s ‘cause he can tell it’s a bad idea to show the Megarchon any respect in front of us, dumbass.”

  Unfortunately, I had to admit Willka was right. Awful feeling!

  “You both shut up,” Amankay said. “Let Nina handle this.”

  Right ahead of us was a stone pier. It looked older than the stone carvings on the mountainside. Centuries older.

  “No way the Empire built all this,” I said.

  “As you can tell,” Nina said, “it’s all mostly natural. The I?í people first explored these passages millennia ago. They hid here for a long time while the Osotona Kingdom encroached itself in the jungle—harvesting timber and cacao and silver. But they found the caves too, and started expanding on them. They carved this pier out of raw stone. And they went up, too, all the way to the upper pteau of Tipilej-tepuy. They built a city there.”

  “She only gets like this when she’s talking about the past,” Amankay said.

  “Then,” Nina went on, pretending she hadn’t heard, “the Khachimik Empire conquered the Osotona Kingdom and razed that city to the ground, so that not even its name survived. Then they expanded the passages further, building ptforms like the one you used today, and the Holy City P’incu on the st one’s foundations.”

  “And then,” I said, “the Protectorate razed the Holy City P’incu to the ground and built High Tomenedra on top. Does it ever stop?”

  My answer would’ve been “no”, but even as I said those words, I realized High Tomenedra hadn’t been razed to the ground. It’d been renamed. Whether it was enough, or even whether it made any real difference, I supposed, it was too early to tell.

  “For us,” Sara announced, “it stops right here.”

  The wind slowed until the sail hung still and the boat bumped gently against the pier. Sara jumped out first, I guess on account of being the biggest Snake, and Moreira followed close behind, I guess on account of husbandly solidarity. As both of them tied the boat to a petrified-looking stump, Willka tried to drag me into the pier, but I dodged him and jumped out of the boat before he could touch me.

  “I hope,” Amankay said, “you’re not pnning on going anywhere. We’re short on time and you moreso.”

  Casually, as if it didn’t mean anything, I closed a fist around my locket. It felt warm to the touch.

  We all piled up into another ptform. This one looked even older and slightly rusty; its chains screeched armingly as we moved up. I tried my best not to look afraid.

  I really shouldn’t be afraid. It was a matter of time before Vanth found me. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t come yet. He would. And I couldn’t believe the Snakes would welcome his presence, so the best thing I could do, I figured, was distracting them so Vanth would take them by surprise.

  “Why did you bring me along, anyway?” I asked. “I can’t believe it’s just ‘cause I asked.”

  “It’s because you’re the Megarchon’s great-grandson,” Nina said.

  That felt like a kick to the throat. Though, if I had given it any thought, I would’ve reached that conclusion. On my own, I just didn’t have anything remarkable going on.

  I sighed. “It’s never ‘cause of my fascinating personality.”

  Willka gred at me, but I pretended he wasn’t there. We didn’t have much time to argue, anyway, ‘cause we reached our destination. Instead of going all the way to the top, we stopped about a third of the way up, where there was a recess on the wall. On the recess was a door, barred on this side. It opened to the outside.

  Insects buzzed and frogs croaked us their welcome, so loud we could’ve barely held a conversation. You could tell we’d reached the jungle, ‘cause the air felt like entering the bathroom after someone had a hot shower. You could even smell the pnts—not any of them in particur, just the sheer overwhelming mass of them threatening to flood all over you. Vegetation’s good and all, but I don’t think you should be allowed to have so much of it in a single pce.

  I blinked in the near darkness. The moons were out, undisturbed by clouds, but I could barely see three steps ahead of me. All I could make out was a stark wall of bck reaching several floors high—the jungle itself. If the Snakes wanted to go in there, they were welcome to do it alone. I was about to tell them as much, when—

  “Sara, barrier,” Nina said. She spoke so softly and calmly that at first I didn’t realize anything unexpected had happened. Though you’ve gotta remember I was still very sleep-deprived.

  Sara grabbed my shoulder and yanked me inside a barrier spell with all the others. I didn’t need to ask what was the deal; my locket had warmed up again.

  “Vanth!” I said.

  Someone cast a light spell and sent it ahead of us. And sure enough, Vanth was there, sitting on his motorcycle like something erupted out of the pit of darkness.

  “Hello, beautiful.” My heart was racing. “The rest of you have something that’s mine.”

  “Come and get him,” Nina said.

  Vanth dismounted and crossed the few steps separating him from us. I guess he seemed indifferent to someone who didn’t know him, but I’d gotten used to him enough to notice the determination on his firm strides. He gave the barrier spell a single, brief look, and shattered it with an angry stomp.

  “Hey!” Sara seemed to have taken the shattering as a personal offense. Me, I took that chance to slip away and fall right into Vanth’s arms.

  He caught me up, swinging me around so that he stood between the Snakes and me. I only wished I had three or four more arms to cling to him with. Maybe a few tentacles.

  “You’ve got the wrong man,” Vanth said, “and now I’m mad.”

  Nina took a step forward. “Didn’t he tell you? He wanted to come along.”

  “Not like this, I’ll wager.”

  “How much does he know, anyway?”

  The little hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

  “I only figured it out a moment ago,” Vanth said. “It’s your fault, for not proving your identity.”

  Wait. What?

  “I had other things to do,” Nina said.

  “Then prove your identity now. Or are you still busy?” He spoke in a frankly poisonous tone—for Vanth standards.

  I couldn’t see Nina very well, but she didn’t seem to like the idea of having to prove Vanth anything. She gave an exasperated sigh, hands on her hips.

  “Very well. I was a third-rank acolyte in the Temple of Westering Rays in the Holy City of P’uncu that once was and now is no more.” She spoke at a clipped pace, as if reciting a story she didn’t find very interesting anymore. “That woman you call the Megarchon murdered me and razed my city to the ground. I met Ada Umbra when the Holy City’s rubble still covered the ground; I would not cross to the Underworld and she could not make me. She asked what could make me move on, and when I told her, she said she could provide this. And so she cursed her own descendants to help me do it.”

  Despite the warm damp night, a chill ran through me, like when you walk past cremating grounds by midnight.

  “In exchange, I showed her where to find some valuables the Protectorate’s soldiers missed. Ada Umbra took with her that snake bracelet the young man is now wearing. It will prevent its rightful owner from bleeding out, and it’s of no use to thieves. Still mad?”

  “Yes,” Vanth said. “But that’s not important. I’m here to fulfill my part of the deal. If you’ve changed your mind, tell me now so I can disengage forever.”

  “Can’t you tell I haven’t changed my mind? I want you to help me murder the Megarchon.”

  I hugged Vanth tighter, as if I feared someone was going to come and tear me away from him. He cradled the back of my head, running his fingers through my hair.

  broccolifloret