The light outside the cave was pale and flat, the kind of morning that hadn't decided what it wanted to be yet. Iruga squinted into it and fell into step beside Chiyo, whose hair trailed behind him on the ground like something that had given up.

  "How did you bring me into the cave," Iruga said.

  "I warped you," Chiyo said.

  Iruga walked in silence for a moment. "Right," he said, in the tone of a man filing something away to never think about again. "Let's just go back to my place."

  The cave sat at the edge of Smardoh, which was the kind of village that announced itself slowly. First the smell of turned earth and animal, then the low rooftops, then the sounds of people going about the business of keeping themselves fed. Smardoh pressed itself against the foot of Mount Vesuvius like something that had grown there without being planted — a small farming village, unhurried and unglamorous, with fields that rolled out from its edges and cattle that moved across them with the same indifference they had always had.

  The farmer's market at the village entrance was in full morning swing. Stalls, voices, the particular noise of commerce conducted by people who had known each other their whole lives. It was busy enough that Iruga had to navigate rather than walk, and people moved around them and then stopped moving and stared.

  At Chiyo.

  "Why do people look at me like that," Chiyo said, without particular concern.

  "You look like a child," Iruga said, keeping his eyes forward. "You are wearing an oversized coat. And you are walking side by side with the village head's son."

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Chiyo considered this. "That makes sense," he said.

  Kamiki Sagun was in the yard when they arrived, working the hay with the focused efficiency of a man who measured his mornings by what got done in them. He looked up when he heard them and his expression moved through recognition and directly into something less welcoming.

  "I thought you were working!" he said, loud enough that a neighbor two houses over could have heard it clearly. "Why are you out? And who is this kid?"

  Iruga went pale in the way a man goes pale when several things are wrong at once and he has to pick one to address.

  "Something came up," he said. He could feel Chiyo standing beside him, perfectly still. "My friend Gaban — he asked me for help. To watch over his little brother. Gaban's in trouble with the empyrean patrol."

  Kamiki's eyes moved to Chiyo.

  Chiyo looked up at him with an expression of complete calm and said, "Hello, sir. Gaban stole some potatoes at the market. The patrol is looking for him right now."

  Kamiki's face shifted into something between concern and irritation. He looked at Iruga. Iruga nodded slowly, the color returning to his face by degrees.

  "Fine," Kamiki said, and went back to the hay.

  Chiyo waited until they were through the door and then leaned close to Iruga's ear.

  "You scoundrel," he said quietly. "You're lucky I'm in this body. I might give you more than a black eye with that lie."

  Iruga exhaled.

  "Now," Chiyo said, pulling back, "time to get my fucking life essence."

  From the kitchen, Ana's voice came through the doorway, unhurried and warm.

  "You're just in time. Sit down, I've already made lunch."

  Time for a Sagun family meal time.