“I’m too hungry for this shit,” I said. Unfortunately, I couldn’t keep ignoring my stomach after I said that. You know how it is. Every time I’m hungry, I can’t stop thinking about being hungry and making it worse, though I know it doesn’t help. So frustrating.

  “Oh, fine,” Willka said.

  Suddenly, I felt full, as if I’d just had the big meal I’d been longing for. Of course it wasn’t real—somebody had tampered with my mind!

  I jumped to my feet. “What the fuck did you do?”

  Sara and T’ika took a couple of steps closer. Not really threatening me—yet.

  “I wasn’t going to do anything to him,” I said. “He did something to me.”

  “I made it so that you’re not hungry anymore,” Willka said. “Why aren’t you grateful?”

  Vanth stood by my side. “Because this spell of yours is quite disturbing.”

  “Yeah!” I said.

  “Oh, so you don’t think I’m trustworthy enough? You, a Lemarezin?”

  I flinched. “I’m not a Lemarezin, asshole. Name’s Mamani and you know it.”

  Willka crossed his arms. “So, you can prove you deserve our trust, right? Seeing how you like evidence and all.”

  “You can’t have a private conversation anywhere!” I said.

  “No,” Moreira said, “he’s right. I mean, Mamani did lie to me. He cimed he was with y’all and he wasn’t.”

  “And you fell for it?” Amankay asked. I felt a tiny bit thankful to her.

  “He said he knew my sister!” Moreira gred accusingly at her, not that Amankay would be able to see him.

  “Yeah, some assholes threw a bottle at me and Mamani chased them away.”

  “It’s so kind of you to remember that,” I said. Never take any possible allies for granted, is what I say.

  “Yeah,” T’ika said, “but he’s still the Megarchon’s great-grandson.”

  “It’s not as if I had a say on it!”

  I looked from one Snake to the other. Sara and Cocona looked undecided. Nina showed no reaction, and that was honestly the most worrying part of it—I’d assumed she wanted me on her side, but now she was waiting to see what I did next, and I didn’t know why.

  “Didn’t you just say I should find out what’s happening with the Imperium?” It wasn’t wise to shout at someone like Nina, but I was running on very little sleep and food and I’d had a terribly demanding day, so I pretty much did just that. “I can’t do it if you don’t trust me!”

  “So you really can find out what’s going on?” Willka asked.

  Tired and hungry and all, I could tell that this question concealed a trap. I tried not to rush into it.

  “I’m not making any promises. If nobody else knows, not even the Megarchon, then it’s not likely I’m going to figure it out on my own.”

  “But you can get close enough, right?”

  Ah, that was the trap!

  “Yes,” I hurried to say, “and if I couldn’t, then I wouldn’t be helpful to you. So maybe don’t start throwing baseless accusations to the only one who can help you!”

  “If you can be trusted,” Willka said, “then you can tell us why you wanted to kill the Megarchon, right? I mean, seeing how you didn’t make that up on the spot to make us trust you.”

  “That’s what you believe?” I was practically shouting on his face. “That’s what you believe?”

  “Then what should I believe?”

  Vanth stood behind me, wrapping his arms around my shoulders, gently leading me to lean on him. Bit by bit, I became less tense.

  “You don’t owe them any answers,” he said.

  That might be true, but the reality of it was that, if I didn’t give the Snakes a reason to trust me, I’d lose my chance.

  “If you don’t trust me,” I said, “then I might tell the Megarchon about you.”

  “Go on,” Willka said, “try it. That is, if we let you leave.”

  “If you try to harm him in any way,” Vanth said, “I won’t help you.”

  “You’ve been cursed to help Nina.”

  “Curses can be lifted, you ignorant. And since you haven’t made an oath of fealty to the Megarchon, I’m not bound to respect your life. I can tear you limb from limb with my own hands.”

  Finally, Willka flinched too. Good, good!

  “You’re bluffing,” he said.

  “The only people here who haven’t sworn an oath to the Megarchon are you and Nina.”

  Willka chewed his lower lip. It was clear he’d rather tear his own limbs off than concede anything to Vanth or me.

  “That’s correct,” Sara said, more cheerfully than the situation deserved. “Can we move on now?”

  “I want my question answered,” Willka grumbled.

  I grabbed Vanth’s hand, and he squeezed mine back. He knew, I’m pretty sure, what I was going to do. If I was going to answer the question—and I didn’t really have another way out—I had to do it in a single decisive stroke. Before I lost my nerve.

  “Because she raped me st time I went to Vorsa, all right? That’s why I want to kill the Megarchon!”

  I’d never said that out loud. It wasn’t such a big deal, not really, but I was left panting as if I’d just ran up six floors of stairs. Vanth cradled me in his arms. All I could hear was his calm, steady breath in my ear, and it soothed me.

  Willka was left gaping at me as if I’d spped him. Not gonna lie, shutting him up made me feel a bit better.

  “Look.” Nina didn’t exactly sound apologetic, just earnest. “I let Willka needle you because I thought it wouldn’t go wrong. That was a mistake. I believe you.”

  Earnest was fine. With the leader on my side, I guessed, the others wouldn’t argue any more. Willka chewed on his lower lip again; I think he wasn’t convinced of my reliability, but he also didn’t know how to question it without being way too much of an asshole even for his standards.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Wait, no. It’s not fine. But you really don’t have to say you’re sorry. That’s not going to help. Just move on.”

  Maybe it was me, but the night seemed to have gotten colder. Hopefully the storm wouldn’t come earlier.

  “Let’s move on,” Cocona said. She sounded almost as exhausted as me. Guess it’s not surprising the healer of the group had had a difficult day.

  “Mamani, come along,” Nina said.

  I caught up with her. Vanth followed close behind, next to Amankay. He was easy to keep track of, since he was still walking his motorcycle. I listened to Vanth and looked at the consteltions slowly, slowly drifting above. The Monkey’s Tail pointed at the Shepherd. Back at home, we found our way out of the hills following the Glypto’s foreleg. The Toucan hovered over the pce I’d be going tomorrow—no, make that in a moment.

  What I wanted was something to distract me from the churning feeling in my stomach, and I didn’t get that. I felt a bit like throwing up. I wanted to scream at Letheia and at the Snakes and at myself—maybe especially at myself.

  why did you let it happen?

  Vanth was the only one I didn’t want to scream at, and I was too tired to even bother finding that weird.

  “As far as the Megarchon wants to admit,” Nina said, “the Holy City never existed.”

  I almost told her to shut up—not that I thought she’d do it. But at the st moment I decided it was better to listen at someone else’s problems than wallowing on mine.

  “But High Tomenedra was built on top of its foundations,” she went on.

  “So that’s why you freed the city.”

  “I saw Heruj-tepuy’s destruction, you know. But I think the fall of the Holy City was worse, in a way. It wasn’t over in a moment. Not a horror to be remembered through the ages—just a very commonpce horror. All we could tell at the time was that Heruj-tepuy wasn’t there anymore. The Protectorate’s history makes it seem as if everybody instantly surrendered to the Megarchon with little argument, but of course it wasn’t like that. Establishing the Protectorate took most of the remaining time in Letheia I’s life. Well, that’s another story.”

  Again, I got the feeling she was retelling something she’d told many times before, and if she skipped something it was ‘cause she didn’t even notice. I could just about understand what she meant, though, so I didn’t say anything.

  “The Imperium didn’t have anything to do with the Holy City’s destruction. The Rellian armies came up the Spiral Way, which you call the Emperor’s Path. By the time they reached our temple, most people there had killed themselves. I think. I hope. I’d ran to one of the rooms where we kept wooden boxes of knotsign, and when the soldiers broke in, I was hugging one of the long heavy boxes and wouldn’t let go. I heard a voice coming from down the corridor, asking what was taking so long, and they answered there’s a child clinging to the box, and the other voice said, well, burn them too. So they did. And you know what’s funny about it?”

  “Nothing?”

  Nina smiled. “That box only held records of our temple’s budget and supplies. I’d ran there because it was familiar—I was only a third-rank acolyte, the lowest. Fifteen years old. I kept track of our cleaning supplies and thought it was a heavy responsibility. That’s what Letheia meant to do anyway, though I don’t know if she had already gotten the idea. It feels too early for it, you know?”

  “Wait, what idea? I’m lost.”

  “Oh, didn’t I mention it? Sorry. I meant she went on to wipe out as much of our nguage as possible. Knotsign wouldn’t be allowed to survive under her notice, no matter how trivial.”

  “But it survived.”

  “The truth is nobody won. Letheia didn’t achieve what she wanted, and at the same time, much was lost.”

  “Sounds like a real waste of time, then.”

  “Yes.”

  She didn’t sound offended in the slightest—if anything, she amiably agreed with me. But I suddenly wanted to change the subject and I didn’t even know why. Right now, I’m thinking all that chatter about Letheia had made me revert to how I behaved when I lived in the Pace of Lights, which is to say, watching the person with power over me like a hawk to make sure she wasn’t displeased or annoyed at any point. It’s not something I did on purpose, though. I wasn’t even aware I did it.

  As I wondered what to say next, Nina opened her hand with the palm up and a fire spell fred up—a green one. The fme cast its strange light upon our faces: a light that didn’t give off any warmth. She closed her fist, dispelling the spell.

  “I know how you do that,” I said. “Copper makes fire green. Can’t remember seeing someone who can do that on their own, though.”

  “I understand fire. Anything it can do, it’ll do it for me.”

  She wasn’t bragging, though I suppose it wouldn’t be unjustified. But she did sound strangely fond, as if fire was an old friend of hers.

  “Can I touch the green fme?” I asked.

  Nina made it appear again, and I poked my finger into it. I’d thought it’d give off a kinda ticklish feeling, but it really didn’t feel like anything. Weird!

  Seeing how Nina was being friendly, though, I might as well take that chance to ask her a question that’d been bothering me for a while.

  “Can you tell me about those carvings on the mountainside?” I asked.

  “What’s with them?”

  “Didn’t Letheia find out they’re a map? Nobody told her?”

  She raised an eyebrow at me. “And who told you?”

  “Uh—I sussed it out. Kinda. I know it’s a map. It shows the tepuys, and the underground river. And I think it must also show a path through the caves, ‘cause that’s how the I?í people knew how to deliver supplies to the strikers. But I couldn’t find the path, myself.”

  Nina ughed. I almost jumped in the air, it was so surprising.

  “Really, now!” She was delighted, and that’s the only reason I didn’t ran away on the spot. “That’s quite a lot to figure out in one day.”

  “How so?”

  “The map was always hiding in pin sight. Even in the Empire’s day. Everybody could tell the carvings show the tepuys, but nobody knew the series of dots and lines around the river depict a path through the underground caves. There’s a code to it, and only the higher-ranked qimayu knew it. I had to decode it on my own. Took me years. I still think I’ve gotten some bits wrong.”

  “And how did the imperials keep the secret?”

  “The Emperor rounded up and executed everyone who so much as knew about the underground caves—this happened several generations before my time. The I?í people could’ve preserved the knowledge, but imperial soldiers kept them away from the caves for so long, they forgot it. Not long ago, Cassel dynamited an opening into a passage by accident.”

  “I see. If he hadn’t done that, I couldn’t have found the caves.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But, if Cassel’s people had explored the caves more thoroughly, they would’ve found how the strikers got their supplies, don’t you think?”

  “Of course. We wouldn’t have framed your lover if we didn’t need a distraction.”

  “Ah.”

  “But really, as long as Cassel was in the city at the right time, the rest was irrelevant. So things turned out fine, as I knew they would.”

  “Why did you want to draw Cassel in?”

  “Did I mention you make way too many questions?”

  “Yes, but I really want to seize this chance while I can.”

  “Very well. First, I wanted to disrupt the power structure in I Tabrul. And second, we’re sponsored by some people interested in wrestling the governorship away from Cassel.”

  “I’m not sure your sponsors will be pleased with the results.”

  “Absolutely not, but that’s not my problem.”

  For some reason, I was thinking of Retana. Obviously, they had nothing to do with this particur mess, and I’m sure Nina had nothing to do with the mess over at I Doronte. It’s just that Retana was also ambitious, and could possibly be maniputed in the same way.

  I pulled my sleeve down. The snake bracelet flickered its tongue. “Good thing I didn’t sell this before we met.”

  The bracelet hid inside my sleeve.

  “That’s not for selling!” Vanth said from behind. “It’s meant to protect you!”

  “It was a joke,” I said. “Mostly.”

  “Look ahead,” Nina said. “That’s what we came to see.”

  There in the distance, the jungle fell back and the path vanished into ft ground. Something was weird about that open ground—the way it reflected moonslight, maybe, felt different from the pins bordering into desert I was familiar with.

  I stopped.

  “It won’t hurt you,” Nina said. “All that’s left there is an unpleasant feeling. It’s quite unpleasant, mind you. The I?í people say birds won’t fly over that spot. Though that could be just a superstition.”

  She wasn’t kidding. Ahead, left, and right of us was a whole lot of nothing. I didn’t need to be told this was the pce where Heruj-tepuy once stood. The earth was pale and chalky—bone white, I thought, and instantly regretted it. It looked dead. It felt dead. Not even weeds grew there anymore.

  Despite my distaste, I kneeled down and slid a finger over the ground. I thought some residue would stick on me, but it didn’t. Guess it felt more like gss than anything else, though it was too opaque for gss. My heart pounded like a racing mitema. It didn’t feel foul like miasma—it didn’t feel like anything. It was kinda worse.

  “What is this stuff?” I asked.

  broccolifloret