Farms are rarely ever silent. Even at this hour, soft bleatings drifted out from the sheep pen. Thanks to the silver noon you could see the mitema hens quietly curled up on the floor, grey and brown puffs not much different from giant ichu. We walked past the wheelbarrow Untie Lago still hadn't fixed, lying awkwardly with its missing wheel up. Grandma Alba had grumbled it was gonna turn itself back into a tree. But then, farms are also always busy. And now they'd have one pair of hands less. I suspected that wheelbarrow might as well stay rooted there. Maybe I should've fixed it up while I still could.

Why did I blame myself? It wasn’t as if I'd chosen this.

“What’s the matter with you?” Vanth asked.

Oh, please, please don’t let him be mad before I even had a chance to get on his good side. “Did I offend Your Illustrious Highness?”

He snorted. “No, but I'd be surprised indeed if nothing was wrong with you.”

Speaking from personal experience, aren’t we?

“I surprise many people.” I shrugged, making a point of looking as unconcerned as I could.

Did he really think I'd just start talking to him about my feelings? How weird. Some of my lovers did that with me, but we were only one night's fuck to each other. When you don't have any expectations about getting along or even seeing the other person again, you can unburden yourself freely. Say whatever you really think about your spouse, your job, your family. Anything but the Megarchon and the government. I liked that very much. All I had to do was nod along and offer words and hugs of consolation, and they’d usually feel more generous.

Honestly, I couldn't imagine anybody unburdening themselves to the King of the Dying Sun. Maybe a ghost?

He stood with his hands on his jacket pockets. “I assume you keep the mitemas with the sheep to deter predators. Aren’t the mitemas predators themselves, though?”

“Well, they hatch around sheep so they think they’re the same kind of creature.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah, Grandma Alba says two of those don’t make half a brain. But sheep are the same so they don’t mind. Though mitemas will eat any kind of carcasses—other mitemas, sheep, I guess humans as well—they’ll leave the living ones well alone.”

“Hmm.”

Vanth stood nearly by my side, more like a shadow than his shadow. It took more than a tall person to intimidate me—after all, I’d been short my entire life. But Vanth sure could loom over me in a way that made me want to start shifting my weight from foot to foot.

I knew why, of course. It was the way he’d roughed me up by the hills. A part of me expected he’ll do it again. A part of me wanted him to do it again.

“I thought you were some kind of accomplice to the real necromancer,” he said. “Not a necromancer yourself.”

“Oh. Guess that makes sense.”

“If you’d been them, after all, I would’ve felt compelled to kill you.”

“That how it works?”

“It’s one of the oaths I’ve taken.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” Yeah, that was kind of a dumb thing to say. What is the proper etiquette to answer someone who’s cursed to kill people, though?

He shrugged. “I’ve never been troubled by it.”

Yeah, I should change the conversation. Immediately.

“Anyway,” I said, “we should come in. It’s the only way to have any privacy around here.”

I'd left the window open. No point in keeping a light around in a night like this. Vanth folded himself carefully through the door, eyeing the roof warily in search of any threats to his head, keeping his limbs pressed to his body.

Small as it was, my room held enough stuff to feel crowded, though all of it faded and worn. Unsurprisingly, as most things in there were older than me. A cot just big enough for two—I never brought men there though—and a tiny table. A few large baskets made of woven rushes for storage. A can that had long ago contained oil and now did duty as a wastebasket. On the table, a calabash bowl and a gourd of chicha. Next to the window, a shelf with many interesting shells—picked by Lucero, who still came to sleep in my room from time to time—a few books, and a small basket. That was pretty much it.

Vanth hovered around, leaning down awkwardly. The only place to sit in was the cot, so he dropped himself on a corner of it. After a moment, he stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankles.

I fished a spare bowl out of one of the big baskets. “Isn’t this room great? I have everything I need, absolutely no space wasted.”

Vanth showed no reaction other than haughty boredom, but I suspected he was trying to figure out if I really meant that or if I was just yanking his chain for the hell of it. In truth, it was a bit of both.

“Certainly,” he said completely deadpan. He looked like an invasive plant overgrown after the rainy season.

I was about to pick up that gourd when my bladder suddenly felt heavy as a brick.

“Just give me a second.” I walked calmly to the bathroom, which is to say, the toilet and sink and washing tub behind the curtain. Everything was clean and functioning, thank you, and the curtain was a cheerful yellow.

Grandma Cielo was far too good a healer to have left me with any lingering soreness, but exhaustion had slowly settled in my marrow. Too bad I couldn’t just fall on my cot and pretend everything had been a bad dream.

Vanth was looking at himself on a tiny round mirror, wiping his lipstick off with a paper tissue. “I suppose this excessive dust is typical of the dry season.”

“Well, your contraption also kicks up a lot of dust. And you did allow me to borrow your helmet, which was kind of you.”

As I poured drinks for both of us, Vanth examined me the same way you'd examine a sample under a microscope. Maybe he was worried I'd faint or something. Maybe he felt guilty. Maybe he was still thinking of fucking me. Hopefully it’d be a combination of the last two.

Vanth took both bowls on his hands. His nails were painted black with a silver filigree, surprisingly detailed for something so small and impermanent. A spell swirled into the bowls, chilling our drinks.

I accepted one. “So you know our etiquette.”

“I've been around.” He had a silver earring that matched the swirls of his nail art. What a weird thing to do.

I sat on a corner of my bed and sipped my chicha. So he really did show up when you messed with the Underworld, after all. When the King of the Dying Sun was a distant legend to me, I only briefly wondered how they knew when that happened, much less how they’d travel around so fast. But then, legends are much harder to question than a man awkwardly sitting next to you. We were close enough I breathed in his scent without even trying: leather with a faint hint of metal, as you’d expect, and also something vaguely floral. Probably some expensive cologne I wouldn’t recognize. His jacket was still buttoned all the way up. What I could glimpse of his shirt was black lace, the expensive kind I'd only seen a couple of times before, swirling up his neck like sea foam. Far more impressively, he wore some silver jewellery—at the very least, one necklace and a thin chain around his left wrist—and I could swear it was all bespelled. Spells cast into metal were considerably more complicated and expensive than those wrapped in disposable clay; far more than just a spark to light up a bonfire.

Now that I was sitting down, I saw the kneepatch that'd gotten torn earlier. “Oh, I forgot I had to fix my pants.”

“I can do that for you.”

Well, that was unexpected. What would an aristocrat even know about sewing? He'd probably be terrible at it and I'd have to resew it myself, but I felt curious.

I smiled over the rim of my bowl. “Already trying to make me take off my pants, aren't you.”

“You'd rather keep them on? Very well.”

What a strange conversation I was having. Then again, what a strange man.

“Sure.” I brought the small basket down from its shelf. Vanth propped up my left foot on his lap. It was a nice gesture that he didn’t mind having my dust-caked boot on his pants. Not that he had a right to complain after kneeing me, y’know.

Whatever I was going to say next, I was distracted by the sight of him very, very carefully threading a needle. There's something beautiful about people who are entirely taken up on doing a particular task as it should be done.

“You seem to be running out of thread,” he said.

“I always forget to get more out of storage. I only sew when I have to. It’s not what I’m best at.”

He stuck the needle on the pincushion and started prying the ripped pieces of thread free. “Melibe is your governor, isn’t he.”

I suppose it wasn't surprising he knew that. It probably came up all the time in court. Maybe the governor of Mopome went out of their way to talk about all the timber their province was producing, and then the governor of I Nayel had to mention the diamond mines, and all the while Melibe fumed about his own province’s scarce resources. Or maybe he didn’t care as long as he had a steady stream of easy money, small as it was. Beyond his name, the guy was nothing to me.

“Is that anything to you?” I asked instead.

He lifted his eyes. His cold demeanor hadn't warmed up in the slightest. “Can’t I inquire about it?”

Fuck. I'd better get used to biting my tongue before I reached the capital.

“Sorry, I forget myself.”

“Can’t say I’m surprised.”

At first, I didn’t even know how to apologize. But then I realized it. He was trying to be all understanding and magnanimous about me scraping by while he lived in luxury. Some rich people are like that, for whatever reason. They like to prop up their self-worth with a lot of blather about how unfair it is that they can feast on other people’s—my people’s—hard work and precarious situation. Once I’d gotten that spiel from one of the Delbrians. Have you heard of the Delbrians? They have a steelworks in southern I Doronte, a couple of days from us. If Melibe and his cronies decided our humble farms didn’t provide enough tax revenue to justify their existence, or the steelworks could use more hands, they could easily evict us and send us to work there. Or someplace else that was convenient. And they could do that because we still owed them money from the purchase of this patch of land where we lived, plus a few centuries of interests, and things like a tax on the water that’d been undrinkable for ages. The rules are fair but the game is rigged.

And maybe these guys do feel bad about swimming in the money we earned for them. But they sure as fuck won’t give it up, and they wouldn’t feel so sympathetic if I spat in their faces like they deserved.

I needed the King of the Dying Sun on my side far more than I needed to complain, though.

He tossed the torn thread into the wastebasket, brandished the needle again, and started sewing slowly. I do mean slowly: he made a single stitch in the time even Lucero would make two or three. Well, he might as well be careful, seeing how my thimble didn't fit him. And I'd rather not criticize him right when we’d begun getting along. A spider’s web studded with dewdrops will look just like a net of diamonds, but a single breath will shatter it.

There was something I really needed to ask, though.

“What do you think was the necromancer's target? I mean, they didn't just summon those things—”

He didn't look up from his task this time. “The needleteeth?”

“Yeah. Those things. They weren't summoned just for fun, right?”

“You seem to have made up your mind already.”

“Not until I hear from the expert.”

One of his curls slid free from its tie, falling down his shoulder. I wanted to grab it and wrap the corkscrew around my index, but I still had some self-preservation left.

“I believe they were aiming for you. As I suspect you already did.”

“And why do you believe that?”

“Quite the coincidence that your summons arrived as you were being attacked.”

“They only attacked me ‘cause I tried to protect the ghost, though.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“The ghost told me. She wanted to make sure your good name was cleared.”

Aw. Good ol' ghost. I should light her a candle.

“Of course,” Vanth continued, “you ought to know more than I do. Don't you, Your Excellency?”

The way he pronounced my title, it was clear it meant nothing to him. If I didn’t think the same, I might’ve felt offended.

“Believe it or not, I know almost nothing. I was born in the capital, then came to live here at three. Twelve years ago, I returned to the capital and spent a little under a year there. Then I left for good. Nobody even writes to me. And to be perfectly honest, I barely remember anything from either of my stays. So no, I wouldn’t know any more than Your Illustrious Highness.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You barely remember anything?”

“Yeah. You know when things just blur together for you? That’s what the capital is for me. A salad bowl of big stone houses and floating gardens. Guess the rest wasn’t very memorable.”

I did my best to sound bored, but my pulse was racing again. Could he stop asking about it already? Could he?

“Fair enough. However, you won't deny being related to the Megarchon.”

Now that was interesting. Someone who frequented court would never refer to that woman without her proper title. Certainly not by accident. It’s not good for your health, y’know. This didn’t make him any more trustworthy or anything, but my curiosity was piqued for sure.

I took a long deep breath, willing myself to relax. “It's public knowledge I'm her great-grandson. Almost nobody cares though.”

“Recent events would seem to prove otherwise.” His voice became slightly colder; I didn't even know it was possible. Fine then. Let's not strain the man's patience.

I set my empty bowl on the floor. “So you don't think this location was a coincidence? I suppose it doesn’t sound likely, but city people are always coming to these hills or the Lagoon of Laments—downriver, in the southeast—or even the desert to do their illegal spells. They think this is all empty and nobody ever notices anything.”

“I'm familiar with the type. They never fail to be surprised when I come calling. However, in my expert opinion, I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. But I can't give you any proof unless I find that necromancer.” He clicked his tongue in frustration. “Until I find that necromancer. Are we supposed to believe they escaped so fast? I can assure you, there were no humans other than you anywhere near those hills.”

I resisted the impulse to wiggle my foot on his lap. “So you wanna go after the necromancer?”

“They summoned needleteeth not far from your home. Do you think they didn't know what'd happen?”

“They'd attack my family, wouldn't they.”

“Humans can't hide from needleteeth at a league of distance. This farm is well protected, but your family would’ve been caught unaware, perhaps even asleep.”

“My family.” My voice cracked and broke. “And who knows how many other families around us, until someone stopped them.”