broccolifloret

  A night breeze weakly buffeted the curtains. Wooden spoons and skimmers and egg-beaters and dles hung from haphazardly pced pegs on the walls, and the many shelves were crammed full of jars and pots with spices and herbs. I took an apron from the lower cabinet. They were all faded denim with embroidered decorations; this one had some weird flowers and bugs, the work of a younger Sol. Valentino put it on without further ado.

  I took a handful of clean rags from their drawer. “Seeing how you’re so kind, I’ll give you a hand. After all, you don’t know where we put our tableware.”

  Valentino looked intently at the cutlery so that it went into the sink out of its own volition. The sponges soaped themselves up and started scrubbing.

  “That's a really useful spell,” I said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Do you know why Her Magnificence wants to see me?”

  When people don't have time to make up lies, they tend to blurt out the truth. I'd learned that from Grandma Alba, who had an uncanny talent to show up out of nowhere and ask what I was doing up past bedtime.

  “Your Excellency surely must know more than I do.”

  Hey! That’s what Vanth had told me. Not fair to give me the same dodging answer!

  “Not at all. I haven’t talked to Her Magnificence in the st twelve years.” Not nearly long enough. Even tiptoeing around the issue gave me a chill on the back of my neck.

  “I'm sorry. The Order of the Sabrewing isn’t privy to any important decisions. Our main functions are ceremonial. We rarely know more than the average person.”

  “But you must hear things. You know, when you're standing guard looking all dashing.”

  He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “I appreciate fttery, Your Excellency, but it doesn’t have the power to let me know what I don't know.”

  “I wasn't trying to butter you up. I'm simply pointing up a fact. That uniform does look good on you.” It was true, too. Tailored and form-fitting. His vest drew the eye to those arms, but it was also cut just right to show off his ass, and the pants wouldn’t let you miss those thighs either. I could only assume they made guards do a lot of squats too. “Of course I don't mean anything weird. Obviously you're already taken, seeing how you're so dashing.”

  He did chuckle at that. “We have an open thing. That’s personal though.”

  “Correct. Now where were we? Oh, yeah. You were telling me the reason for my summoning?”

  “Fine. Your Excellency must surely have guessed this is reted to the succession.”

  Well, yeah.

  Every tarantu in every hole in the desert knew it. The Megarchon’s power comes from wielding the Imperium. But first they must prove themselves as the rightful sucessor by quickening it, whatever that means. It’s been like that for the past seven centuries and change.

  Except the current Megarchon, Letheia VII Lemarezin, was the st person who’d managed to quicken anything. So she had no real successor. Imagine that! For nearly three quarters of a millennia, your family has held more power than anybody ever did since cavepeople left their caves. And then, all of a sudden, none of your children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren can rise up to the challenge. For the first time in nearly three quarters of a millennia, your power has been truly challenged.

  So fun! So exciting!

  “Yes, but how exactly?” I insisted.

  “All I know is this: Her Magnificence has already made her informal choice. Nobody, regardless of where they stand, has given up hope of finding someone who can quicken the Imperium, but I know Her Magnificence pns to help strengthen her chosen successor’s position in case worst comes to worst.”

  I looked at him over a pile of dishes. “So you know who this informal successor is.”

  “Sure, that’s no secret. It’s Crisaor Lemarezin.” He handed me a tray.

  I looked at my reflection in the burnished steel surface. That name sounded vaguely familiar, but that woman had like forty great-grandchildren. I couldn’t be expected to keep track of them all.

  After Valentino called it a day, I wanted to drag myself to my cot and drop there still clothed and never get up again, but I couldn't do that just yet. I had to talk to my grandmas before the night was through.

  As expected, everyone was listening to the radio. Auntie Estrel was curled up in her spouse’s arms, with her bare feet up on the bench. Was she more upset than she looked like? She was the kind of person who usually fumed and grumbled her way out of an inconvenience. That wouldn’t help this time.

  Our radio was an oldish model, so it hiccuped a bit. ‘Cause it ran on energy spell beads, we only turned it on for the morning and night shows coming from El Meandro. The newscast was saying something about a new invention for detecting maelstr?ms that'd make oceanic travel safer. Somehow, I didn't think the people in our neighboring continents wanted to see more of the Megarchon’s ckeys in their front doors.

  My grandmas noticed me and stood up, so I followed them. Grandma Alba walked with her head low and her hands behind her back, the way she did when she inspected the crops. Something about the way she stuck her neck out reminded me of the turkeys you saw patrolling the dirt paths of Cabaza. Grandma Cielo smoothed a lock of my hair down as she passed me by, the way she’d done since I was a little kid.

  The main building also had a basement, but you could easily miss it, since the trapdoor was covered by a sheepskin rug. Naturally, this was on purpose. We stored a few crates of beer bottles and other non-perishable goods down there in the cool, and also a little box of emergency nureals. We didn’t even need to bring a light along: tiny round mushrooms glowed pale green all over the walls. Inevitably, an earthy scent suffused the air.

  Grandma Cielo always said the wind will carry your words away and you don't know where they’ll end up, but the earth will keep your words close. If that was true, this was the best pce in the world to hold our conversation.

  My grandmas sat on a crate. I remained standing, leaning on the wall.

  “I don't know where to begin,” I said.

  “Anypce is good,” Grandma Cielo said.

  “It's more like anypce is bad.”

  “Then you can begin anypce.”

  I wanted to do this because I felt my grandmas deserved to know. Now that I was standing right in front of them, though, I didn’t know what to do.

  Well, at least Vanth was on my side, as hard as that was to believe. It had to count for something.

  “I’m going to kill that woman,” I said. “It’s not a manner of speaking either. I’m really gonna do it.”

  The words seemed to burn my tongue on their way out. Crazy! Nobody had ever killed a Megarchon. Not an assassin, not a whole army. I was going to get myself murdered.

  “Well,” Grandma Alba said, “do you have a pn or what?”

  That was an unnerving answer, not gonna lie. Especially with the way they looked at me, as if they were expecting this. Except they couldn’t have, ‘cause I kept my pns to myself. And even my grandmas couldn’t read minds.

  “Sort of. I’m going to be living in the Pace of Lights, so I’ll be as close as possible. And Vanth—y’know, the gloomy guy? He made an oath to keep me alive. If that's not enough, then I guess I was fucked anyway.”

  Now they’d figure out Vanth had kissed me. To be fair, you need to exchange bodily fluids to make an oath, so that was actually one of the best options.

  “And he probably don’t like that woman much,” I added. “He just called her ‘the Megarchon’ for no particur reason. Of course he could be trying to bait me into admitting I don’t like her either. But he really did oath himself to me, so I don't think so.”

  “Oh, Azulito!” Grandma Cielo said. “Who knows what that man could want. He can’t be trusted.”

  Much like every other man I’d had. But that’s not something one can admit to one’s grandmas.

  “I agree, but he’s the best I’ve got. And I’m going to High Tomenedra. Who knows, I might find someone who’ll help me. I’ve heard the Rainbow Snakes are there.”

  Even as I spoke, my own words made me feel silly. Sure, the Rainbow Snakes were there, with the dancing vipers.

  You might not have heard of the Rainbow Snakes, though if you lived in Zalmuric during the Protectorate, I’m pretty sure you did. When a guard or a governor or a minister shows up dead and the official expnation sounds really dodgy, when they desist from their usual cruelties for no apparent reason, when a prisoner is freed or unfair ws are quietly dropped, people will say “the Rainbow Snakes did it”. Mind you, nobody has ever seen the Snakes, though a lot of people cim they have a cousin or a neighbor or a vague acquaintance who did. I’d spent several years tracking every story I could find about them, so I’d know.

  “Of course they are,” Grandma Alba said. “Because of the strikes.”

  “That’s right. See, I met this woman in Omedura st week. She had just come from High Tomenedra.”

  When I traveled, I spent a lot of time just hanging out around train stations, where you could hear all sorts of interesting news. This woman had just arrived with a single bag not bigger than my bundle. Usually I let men buy me drinks, but she was so upset, I bought her a couple.

  This is what she told me: the governor of I Tabrul, the province she’d just come from, had spent the st several years working on this big project of his. He ran out of money sooner than expected, borrowed more, got deeper into debt, still wasn’t finished, and the project kept bleeding money.

  Some creditor had started threatening the governor with bringing the matter up to the Megarchon, and this freaked him out, because the Megarchon is liable to answer such poor management with a charge of treason and we all know how that ends up. So the governor reacted the way those types are wont to do: by hiking prices up and demanding more output from every industry keeping the I Tabrul economy chugging along.

  Supplies were scarce and saries got deyed. And then deyed some more. Then someone died, and most of the other workers got fed up. So fed up, they went on a general strike. They took over a huge chunk of the industrial district and entrenched themselves there. Work on the governor’s Big Project stopped entirely. He sicced guards on the strikers, as governors are wont to do.

  Here’s when things get weird.

  This woman, a sawmill worker, was in on the strike. The guards were patrolling the streets with their dogs, so she spent most of the day inside some factory, not even venturing out into the yard. I wondered how they fed themselves—she talked about being crowded and dreaming of a nice long shower, but not of worrying about her next meal. Maybe I should’ve asked. Thing is, she was already jumpy and I didn’t want her to think I was accusing her of making shit up or anything.

  Then this fight broke out in the streets one night. She made it sound like a battle, though of course people exaggerate a lot. Next morning, a dead guard showed up nailed to a post right in front of the governor’s mansion. Their head had been ripped off and a dog head stuck on its pce. Of the other dogs, they found even less. Everyone said the Rainbow Snakes had done it, though as usual nobody had seen shit.

  My informer didn’t wait to hear more. The governor was in the capital, but that made no difference. According to her, it was only a matter of time before he arrived and massacred everyone, so she ran away in the night. Some retives of hers lived west of Omedura. I gave her some nureals for the train and she teared up. It always upsets me when people cry in public.

  Anyway, she wasn’t wrong. It’s just that I couldn’t afford to worry over the incoming massacre. I didn’t know of anybody else willing to make a stand against the Megarchon’s ckeys. Rainbow Snakes or whatever they called themselves, I wanted to talk to them.

  I might even have something to negotiate with.

  The version of the story I told my grandmas was slightly edited for length. Censored, even. Sooner or ter they’d hear the full story, or an even worse version of it, and then they’d probably start worrying even more, but I really couldn’t bring myself to share more details. With any luck, I’d be already safe when they found out.

  Safe in the capital. Ha.

  “Well,” Grandma Alba said, “if that's what you want, there's nothing left to say. We hoped you’d stay safe... but being safe ain't being happy. Sometimes it even ain't being alive. So do what makes sense to you.”

  I swallowed. When I’d imagined how this conversation could go, I always reached a part where my grandmas asked me why I was even doing this, and always stalled there. I’d never found a good way to expin why I couldn’t just stay away from harm.

  But my grandmas seemed to understand it better than myself.

  “It’s not as if that woman summoned you for a good reason,” Grandma Cielo said.

  “So you might as well harm her first,” Grandma Alba said.

  “I'm putting y’all at risk, too,” I said.

  “It’s possible,” Grandma Cielo said. “Whoever takes that woman’s pce might want to avenge her, if only to solidify their position.”

  “But they must reach I Doronte first,” I said. “So far, none of her potential heirs can wield the Imperium. So they’d have to rely on their guards instead. Most importantly, there’d be such chaos, you’ll likely have whole weeks, if not months, to escape safely. But having to leave the farm—”

  “Hey,” Grandma Alba said.

  I looked at both of them.

  “You worry about what you're gonna do,” she said. “And we'll worry about what we're gonna do if the moment comes.”

  It didn't feel like it was enough, but it had to be enough. My grandmas would trust me to live and die as I saw fit. I had to trust them, too.

  “Are you hoping the Snakes kill Blondie?” Grandma Cielo asked. “That would make things easier.”

  “No, I think it'd attract the kind of attention I don't want.”

  Grandma Alba said, “Don't forget we're here for you.”

  I nodded so that she wouldn't press the point, but the st thing I wanted was my family going anywhere near Vorsa. The only way I could breathe easily was if they stayed in the hills, where even the Megarchon couldn't reach them so fast.

  “And have fun,” Grandma Cielo said.

  “Fun?”

  “Well, you don't want to stay cooped up in your room scared shitless all the while, do you? If you don't want to be a pawn, the best you can do is have fun.”

  Those words went back and forth in my mind as I left for the night. I could see the sense in what Grandma Cielo said, but couldn't really apply it to myself. Fun felt like something from another world.

  Maybe I'd soon regret not spending more time with my family, but at the time, I couldn't bring myself to talk to them any longer. This way, too, my grandmas wouldn’t have time to ask me exactly what had happened in those hills before I left. I didn’t want to tell them I’d endangered myself to rescue that ghost, and I wasn't sure if I could think of a convincing lie. Isn’t that selfish? Guess so, but that’s me.

  Then again, my grandmas had admitted it was my own life to endanger. They’d worry about me all the same, of course. You couldn’t change that. But those words lifted a weight off of my soul. Look, when nobody will give you the chances of a minnow in a maelstr?m, even with the King of the Dying Sun sworn to protect you, it’s a relief to know you can die free of guilt.

  Maybe I should’ve lied after all.

  This night felt a bit like those nights when I dreaded going to sleep, after I’d come back from the capital the second time. So I picked a book. It made me nostalgic for the days when I used to hide under the covers, reading adventure books in a light I’d spelled up. I was a kid, so my spells were still iffy, and my light always went out in the most exciting moments.

  In a silver noon there was no need of spell lights, and My First Biology Book didn’t have many exciting moments anyway. Its cover showcased a person’s circutory system and a flower scandalously showing off all its pistils. I had passed it on to my cousins when they were younger, but after Lucero turned out to be good at healing and moved on to study more complex books, I retrieved it for myself.

  It didn’t matter I’d outgrown that book. It’d been made for me. And other children, but especially me. You could tell it was true because the dedication said so: To Azul, my little light and the best of my creations, this lesser creation.

  To make a complicated situation easier to understand, the book said in between colorful illustrations, we’ve narrowed things down to three sexes. If you can become pregnant without using magic, you’re a matricial person. If you can make others pregnant without using magic, you’re a seminal person. If you're neither of those, you're an epicene person. But you can be any gender you want to. For example, I’m a matricial man.

  As I skimmed down the paragraphs, Lucero walked in, took off his pants, and plopped himself up next to me with no further expnation, stretching himself out like a fat fish. He almost never did that anymore, not a big boy like him.

  Without warning, I turned around, trying to bite Lucero’s tummy. “Chomp!”

  Like always, he curled himself up like a big brown pillbug, safely protected from my teeth.

  I returned to my book. “One day I’ll bite you. You’ll see.”

  “Yeah, right.” Lucero stretched himself out on his back again. A moment ter he was asleep.

  Look, I can’t be bmed. It’s weird how he’ll stay all still like that. He don’t even snore. Not that I’m compining about that.