T’ika stared at Nina, too, gaping in disbelief.

  “We can’t let him reach the Megarchon!” she said. “It’s better for all of us if he dies now!”

  “I know we don’t kill civilians,” Nina said.

  Next thing any of us knew, a thin bright thread shed out from Nina’s hand, wrapped itself around T’ika’s neck, and squeezed through flesh and bone, neatly decapitating her. The head dropped on the damp grass with a low thud; the body topped in the opposite direction. Since the bright thread was made of fire, the wound was instantly cauterized, shedding no blood.

  I breathed out.

  Willka slumped in Vanth’s grip. Vanth shoved him aside and came to me. I was so tired, all I could do was let him support me. He leaned my head on his shoulder, standing between the Snakes and me. I peered at them from behind Vanth’s damp curls.

  Sara went to the corpse and crouched next to it, straightening it up and pcing the head where it used to be. “She was all right, most of the time. People will do fucked up shit though.”

  I wasn’t going to disagree with that epitaph.

  Nina looked at me. “Just so you know, we have three ironcd rules here. Avoid killing unless strictly necessary, never target anybody who isn’t in the Megarchon’s direct employment, and mind the colteral damage. Break them and face the consequences.”

  I wondered how did the dead guard with a dog’s head feature into this, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer.

  “Don’t you regret not hearing what she wanted to tell you?” I asked instead.

  “Do you?” she asked back.

  I didn’t flinch, but only ‘cause I was holding on to Vanth. I didn’t expect Nina would figure out what I felt so quickly. And I didn’t like it.

  “Well, yes.” At this point, I might as well be honest. “If someone’s so keen on murdering me, I want to know why.”

  “And what would’ve you done if she didn’t want to answer?”

  I couldn’t answer. It’s not as if Nina could read minds or anything, but I suspected she’d see through a half-assed lie. Something had shifted a moment ago. She found me a lot more interesting, but also, that meant she was scrutinizing me way closer.

  “Yeah, I guess nothing,” I said. “But she wanted to tell you!”

  Nina looked into the distance, across the barren Imperiumite field, as if she could see something the rest of us couldn’t.

  “She went behind my back instead of telling me why you’re supposedly such a menace. Therefore, she didn’t have compelling evidence on her side.”

  “That makes sense. I still wanted to hear her side of the story, though.”

  Nina scratched the side of her nose. “I’ve heard many sides of many stories, and whatever went through her head wasn’t worth hearing. In my opinion. What matters, however, is that she personally believed you shouldn’t be allowed to remain alive. That fact can be more enlightening than the attending circumstances.”

  She looked right at Vanth and me, and for once, she showed interest. A part of me wanted to run away and hide like a wild cavy.

  “Much like Aldo was our insider with Cassel, T’ika was our insider in court,” she said.

  “I assume,” Vanth said, “she dealt with courtesans mainly. They do court’s dirty work, so they’re always in need of someone to do their dirty work in turn.”

  “That’s right,” Nina said. “So you see she had plenty of opportunities to hear all sorts of unfounded rumors. It wasn’t her duty to sift truth from lies; just to let me know what everyone else did and thought. And she failed at it.”

  I thought of T’ika sending little paper pnes flying all the way from Vorsa to High Tomenedra, or wherever Nina was. It was oddly cute.

  “True,” Vanth said. “However, I wish I could’ve asked her if she’d talked to one Sabrina Nieto. Now I must waste time making sure Nieto didn’t hear about Azul from an unreted source.”

  “Who is this Nieto?” I asked. If I hadn’t been so exhausted I would’ve realized Vanth hadn’t had much time to tell me everything he’d found out. I thought he was keeping things from me.

  “That’s not my problem,” Nina said. Vanth gred at her, but she showed no reaction. “Look, I’m not interested in making y’all follow my own sense of morality. That’s not why we have rules, or why I’m so insistent in following them through. In a mission like ours, it’s extremely easy to get carried away, and once you do, it’s almost impossible to stop. Especially when you think your actions are justified.” She gnced at Willka, who pretended not to pay her any attention. “It will eat us from the inside.”

  Right then, I started to understand the whole thing with the dog head. From the beginning, something had bothered me about it, beyond how gruesome it was. It’s the kinda thing you do in a fit of anger, and that scared me, just like it scared the sawmill woman. When someone starts doing those things, you don’t know what else they’ll do. Where will they stop.

  But then, I’d suspected it was a gesture meant to draw Cassel away from Vorsa. Something so shocking and memorable the governor wouldn’t be able to keep it under wraps, ‘cause people were bound to talk and talk about it. And Nina’s rules pointed toward me being right. She wasn’t the kind of person who ever let anybody act in a fit of anger, or fear, or greed. That stuff wasn’t to be tolerated. Every movement was to be decided in cold calcution.

  That was a lot scarier than somebody who shed out like a cornered gleamwolf. That was someone who might have a chance at killing the Megarchon.

  “If you want to kill that necromancer,” Nina said, “it’s also not my business. The rules don’t protect anybody who strikes at you first. However, you should make sure not to get carried away. Ever.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded. Nina seemed to accept this as an answer from both Vanth and me.

  “So we’re really letting them in?” Willka asked.

  “Yes.” That single word dropped from Nina’s lips like a colpsing mountain.

  Willka switched his weight from one foot to the other. He was smart enough to hate the idea of arguing with Nina’s pronouncement, but the idea of keeping his mouth shut seemed to cause him physical pain.

  In the end, arguing won out.

  “So we’re working with white people now?”

  “People?” Vanth asked.

  Willka swiveled around to stare at us—no, at me. “That one’s a white man’s child and a white man’s lover. You know he’s gonna turn his back on us at the first chance.”

  “You’re half right,” I said. “Must be a first.”

  Cocona chuckled, so soft I barely heard her.

  “Now, Willka,” Sara said in the tone of someone who has gently warned a friend off many times.

  “Don’t ‘now’ me this time. I’m sorry for whatever happened to him, but he’s still the Megarchon’s great-grandson.”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I yelled.

  “Sooner or ter he’s going to decide it’s better to be safe, and what it takes to be safe is being on the Megarchon’s side. I mean,” he looked around, “none of us would be here if we had a choice. Not even the other white guy.”

  “That’s not true,” Nina said.

  I didn’t have the best view of Willka’s face, but it looked like he’d just realized he’d screwed up. Though Nina sounded just as uninterested as usual.

  “I made my choice to be here.” She seemed to be addressing Willka, but it was me she looked at. “Hatred is more reliable than despair, see?”

  That hit me as if I’d been hit over my head with a rock. I was thankful I hadn’t let go of Vanth.

  I hadn’t been mistaken. Nina understood me on a level I didn’t really want to understand myself.

  In that particur moment, I didn’t want to be there either.

  “Was it worth killing Tacuni to let him in?” Willka asked. I was so tired, it took me a moment to realize that was T’ika’s surname.

  “Far as I know,” Cocona said, “he didn’t try to kill no children.”

  “Well, maybe he did,” Willka said. “The other one did. Nina said so.”

  “Mamani has far better potential as a court insider than T’ika ever did,” Nina said.

  Willka huffed. He looked like a bratty teenager about to run off compining about his mother—he was maybe a couple of years younger than me, though.

  “Fine,” he said. “If he turns out to be untrustworthy—“

  “He won’t.”

  “Let that be the st of this argument,” Cocona said. She looked into her bag and tossed me a water bottle.

  “Thanks.” I hadn’t noticed how thirsty I was until I held the bottle in my hand. After drinking a few gulps, I offered it to Vanth, but he shook his head.

  Willka had gone to sulk a couple dozen steps away. Nina was gazing wistfully at the Imperiumite under the moonslight. Amankay seemed to be listening to something distant. Cocona smiled at me and then searched in his bag. I think she wasn't so much looking for something, as letting me know the conversation was over. Sara and Moreira had sat on their bags, pretty far from the corpse, shoulder against shoulder, as if they couldn’t bear to be apart for too long. Well, they’d just met after what seemed to be a long separation. Moreira still wore that rumpled suit—he sure stood out from the others.

  Moreira lifted his eyes and met mine.

  I grinned. “Hey, you were right. Your wife is really beautiful.”

  He looked like he was about to smile, but frowned at the st moment. “Yeah. Don’t you have a lover? Standing right there?”

  I grinned bigger. “Yeah, but I can’t help appreciating beautiful men.”

  Sara held Moreira closer. “Well, I’m not a man. I’m a seer.”

  “Oh, sorry. Forget what I said.”

  Sara ughed. “I don’t mind as long as you’re not a dick about it. ”

  “I’d thought the Empire had gotten rid of seers,” Vanth said.

  “As far as I know it’s just me. But that fits me better than anything else.”

  Vanth nodded appreciatively. He’d perked up. Don’t think the others noticed—I was simply becoming aware of Vanth’s quirks.

  I was too buzzy to fall asleep any time soon, so I might as well make a couple more questions, seeing how Vanth found this interesting.

  “The Empire got rid of an entire gender?”

  “Yeah, sort of. All seers were part of the same—order, I guess you could call it. They were too close to Omeduran royalty so the Empire outwed them. So you couldn’t call yourself a seer without associating yourself with this order that wasn’t supposed to exist anymore.”

  “I see. That sounds excessive to me, but I’m not an emperor. Can you see anything special, anyway? No offense, but I don’t think so.”

  “You’re nosy as all hells,” Moreira said.

  “I don’t see anything special, but the skill itself was always pretty unusual. Even in the kingdom’s heyday, most seers didn’t have it.”

  “But Amankay has that skill, doesn’t she?”

  “Yeah,” Sara said. “Dictating people’s genders on the basis of whatever skills they have is too weird, though.”

  “Invasive,” Vanth said.

  “That’s a good word for it.”

  “Sure it’s invasive,” I said, “but I don’t see what’s the problem. It’s not as if you’re a real order. No offense.”

  “Maybe we want to be an order someday. Who’s gonna stop us?”

  Only a few hours earlier, I would’ve answered “the Megarchon”. However, it was becoming clear that even she didn’t have the st word every time.

  That scared me. I didn’t want to admit it, but it felt as if all sorts of scary things could happen without that woman to put a limit to them.

  Anyway, I didn’t feel safe admitting that limiting the Megarchon’s power made me nervous—not in that company.

  “You’re right,” I said. I’d forgotten Sara’s st comment—you’ve gotta remember I was tired and stressed—but agreeing felt like the best path. “By the way, do you need any help with handling the body?”

  Sara and Moreira gnced at T’ika’s corpse, but gnced away just as fast.

  “I don’t think so,” Sara said.

  That probably wasn’t the right thing to say. But then, it also felt wrong not to say anything about her. Look, it was the first time I’d tried to kill someone who was killed right after that! How was I supposed to know what to say? “Sorry” felt too awkward, and besides, I wasn’t really sorry and I didn’t even want to pretend I was.

  “So, that’s it?” I asked.

  “What’s it?” Sara asked.

  “Yeah,” Nina said. “Go find out what’s happening with the Imperium. We’ll contact you.”

  Vanth took my hand and led me to his abandoned motorcycle. I had just enough time to toss the empty water bottle at the married couple.

  “You can’t kidnap people and then get rid of them so abruptly,” I compined. If anybody other than Vanth was listening, I don’t think they cared.

  He didn’t say anything either, just reached into a small bag hanging from the handle and held out a brown paper packet that smelled too delicious not to be—

  “Food!” I snatched it away so fast I was already tearing the paper when he still had an empty palm out. “You wonderful man!”

  “Cats love anybody who feeds them.” I let that one pass unremarked. “I hope you’re not allergic to tuna.”

  I chewed and swallowed energetically. “Well, how would I know? That’s rich people shit. I don’t mean it’s bad, it’s really tasty. By the way, you’re taking the cat thing too far. Tuna’s so expensive.”

  “Slow down before you upset your stomach. And those sandwiches were meant for me. Berganza was so happy for a moment, before he realized I was bringing someone else food.”

  “Working for you sounds awful.” I licked some tuna from my upper lip. Too te, it occurred to me that wasn’t a nice thing to tell someone who just fed you, even if it’s most likely true.

  “It seems to be very frustrating.”

  “Though bringing me your snack was a lovely thought. I do appreciate it. And I also wanted to talk to you where Sergeant Vargas isn’t listening. We do have time to do that, right?”

  Vanth squinted at his pocket watch in the moonslight. “About six hours. If your flight doesn’t leave early, which is always possible. I’d rather make it quick.”

  “Yeah, well, I'm not going anywhere so soon after eating. That’s gonna upset my stomach for good.”

  “You know I’m not above dragging you back, do you.”

  “I’m making it quick. But I know three hours should be enough. Sergeant Vargas and me went all the way up the Emperor’s Path and through the city. I wasn’t timing it but that’s more or less how long it took, and that was with the streets full of carriages.”

  Vanth looked at his motorcycle with what, in that gloom, seemed to be parental pride. “Menthe can do far better times than a standard guard vehicle.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about. What I really want to know is: why didn’t you tell me we met in Vorsa?”

  broccolifloret