Everyone had gathered at the table. Auntie Estrella was opening a bottle of the beer we got from El Meandro. If you didn’t know my family, you probably wouldn’t have noticed anything out of place. However, I could tell everyone was too quiet. The kids had flocked together in one corner of the table. My grandmas didn’t say anything at all. Even Auntie Estrella wasn’t ranting as much as usual. And of course, the beer and the meat.

Couldn’t they have just pretended it was a regular night? Guess not.

“Hey, Azul!” Untie Lago leaned over the table. “I seem to remember you liked this beer.”

I took a seat. “Dark and slightly fruity, wasn’t it? Yeah, I liked it. Should go well with—baked mutton, is what we’re having?” I switched to Khachimik, talking fast in case Valentino understood some of it. "You shouldn't have bothered. It's not as if our guest has any room to demand a good meal, showing up without warning and all."

“The mutton is already baked though,” Untie Lago said philosophically. “Have a drink.”

I held up a bowl for them to pour in. Of course Valentino wasn't the real reason they'd served up the best meal they could—but it’s not as if they’d asked my opinion either.

Oh, well. Any meal where we got to have meat was a good meal.

Across the table, Valentino raised his own bowl to me. I suspected Auntie Estrella had contrived to make him sit away from her children. It suited me. Seeing how Valentino and me would soon be going on a trip together, we should start getting along.

“Do you like spicy food?” I asked.

“Absolutely. Your Excellency’s grandmas let me try the sauce as they prepared it, to make sure it'd be to my taste. But it was so good, they really shouldn't have worried.”

It was so weird to talk with a well-mannered guard.

I passed him an angry-red bowl of llajwa sauce. “There’s also locoto in the salad, so keep that in mind. They’re those slices of pepper.”

“I assume the butter is homemade too.” He was in fact spreading herb butter on a slice of golden bread.

“Yeah, I churned it. Didn't came out too bad, considering.” So you could argue I did help out with dinner after all. I served him a big baked sweet potato and a couple of nice greasy tortillas, all piping hot. “These are made of kiwicha flour. Did you try it before?”

“Can’t say I did, Your Excellency.”

“We grow the grain ourselves, but grind it in the mill at El Meandro. We pay in produce for the service. That’s how we manage for most things, really.” I gave him several heaped spoonfuls of k’allu. That was the salad: locoto, red onion, tomato, and crumbly sheep cheese, with aromatic herbs. Spicy and refreshing at the same time; so good in the summer. Though there wasn’t much room left in his plate, I made sure to fit a thick juicy slab of mutton as well, careful not to send the pile of k’allu tumbling off.

“This is some really good mutton,” Valentino said. “So tender and perfectly matched with the sweet-and-sour combination of the sweet potato and spicy salad.”

“Why, thanks.” No way he didn’t have much better fare at the capital. His pay couldn't be that bad. Of course I’d choose my family’s cooking over any other—but our sheep were raised for wool and milk, not meat. They're not all that tasty, so we usually just fed the dead ones to the mitemas. Still, mutton was mutton, and my grandmas did make sure to bake it in a slow ember fire till it was just as tender as Valentino claimed.

“So what's going on in the capital?” I asked.

“I'm very busy with my duties, so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to tell Your Excellency anything interesting. I do go to the plays.”

Guarding one of the Lemarezins, maybe? I would not mention those people at our table.

“Hmm. I also go to the plays sometimes, but I don’t think we get the same ones as you. What’s popular over there?”

In the end, we talked about plays a lot. The Department of Decorous Behavior will make sure they're devoid of politically unsafe subjects, so we might as well avail us of their hard work. As things went on like this, dinner was finished and Auntie Estrella brought coffee. She makes the best coffee in our family.

There was something else I wanted to ask Valentino.

“Just wondering, have you met His Illustrious Highness before? I suppose he goes to court.”

Valentino stirred milk in his coffee. That’s how I like it too. Black coffee will burn a hole in my aesophagus. “Actually, he doesn't—I’ve heard the last time was to take up his oaths. Ten years ago, if I’m not mistaken. As I understand it, this is how Their Illustrious Highnesses operate. They will only show themselves when summoned by Their Magnificences. I assume their duties keep them busy enough.”

I nodded along, but suspected he must know something more. The King of the Dying Sun was too big a deal. Ministers and governors could inherit their position from a parent if everything went well, but at any moment, the Megarchon could take it away and hand it to someone else—which goes to explain why they were constantly squabbling and backstabbing each other. But not the King of the Dying Sun. That position was strictly hereditary—the last true aristocrats left in the entire continent, some of the last in the entire world.

And yet, before a King of the Dying Sun was allowed to claim their title, they had to take a number of oaths to limit their power. Most importantly, they couldn’t harm any of the Megarchon’s subjects unless that person reached into the Underworld first. My grandmas thought this was ‘cause the King of the Dying Sun was the only person in the world who could even think of rivaling the Megarchon’s power. One wielded the Imperium, but the other stood at the gates of the Underworld.

I wasn't entirely sure about it, myself.

The first time I heard about the King of the Dying Sun, I was four. One of the mitemas was already dead when I went to open their pen. Grandma Alba found me kneeling next to the birdie's corpse, holding its eye open and peering into it. That was the first time I understood death is a thing that happens to all living beings, and it’d happen to me and to everyone I held dear. But I didn't find that very scary, or even sad. Mostly I was curious. This was before the twins were born, when Auntie Estrella lived in the city and hadn't married Untie Lago yet. It was only my grandmas and me, and I pelted them with questions as they skinned the dead birdie for leather. (Mitema feathers are good stuffing for pillows and cushions. The meat goes to feed their fellow birdies.)

Luckily, my grandmas knew how to explain complicated things to children. Such as that some people become ghosts and others reincarnate, and we don't really know how it works. This was very frustrating to me, who wanted all the answers.

“So you can turn into a tree when you're dead?” I said. “That’s so boring! Who wants to be a tree?”

“I wouldn’t mind being a tree,” Grandma Cielo mused.

“But they’re stuck in the same place all the time.”

“That’s exactly why, sweetie. After you’ve lived a whole life, you’ll cherish the opportunity to just stay planted in the same place for decades.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Well, I don’t wanna be a tree.”

“Maybe you can learn somethin' from it,” Grandma Alba said.

“Maybe I was already a tree. Like in a past life. So now I don’t have anything left to learn.”

“Oh? You’ve learned to stay still for five minutes?” Grandma Cielo said. I ran away from her and around the skinning table.

‘“Anyway,” Grandma Alba said, “there’s so much we don’t know about the Underworld. People who go there don't come back alive. More often they don't go alive to begin with. There’s no point in worrying about those things before they happen.”

“You mean like ghosts? Am I gonna be a ghost?”

“Quiet, child! No you won't. That's for people who can’t rest in peace.”

“That’s me, grandma. You said that.”

“No, I said you won’t let anybody have a moment of peace. That’s different.”

“That means people who did real bad things,” Grandma Cielo explained. “And you’re a good boy. Even if you could be a little bit more like a tree.”

“I don't care if I'm a ghost. Better than being a tree.” Being a child, I naturally said all sorts of outrageous things.

“Then the King of the Dying Sun will take you away,” Grandma Alba said.

“Who’s that?”

“Why, he’s the reason we don’t have all sorts of ghastly things roaming about, making trouble for decent folks. Who wants to be haunted?”

“And he’s a ghost?”

“None of that. He’s a person like you and me. We herd sheep and plant crops, he takes ghosts to the Underworld and stops necromancers from doing harm. The world needs all sorts.”

That “he” my grandmas spoke of wasn’t Vanth, obviously, but his parent. I knew nothing about him. I had a vague idea of reading somewhere Kings of the Dying Sun can retire, but seeing how Vanth had been sworn in pretty damn young, I suspected his predecessor wasn’t with us anymore. Well, not my problem.

“Just wondering,” I said, “wouldn't the papers love to gossip about His Illustrious Highness?”

Valentino frowned at his coffee cup. Pretty sure I managed to hit upon something, but what exactly I had no idea.

“His Illustrious Highness is very reserved.”

“I see.” Well, “reserved” wasn't exactly the word I would've chosen. “Antisocial”, more like it. But rich people don't need good personalities, even the ones who deal mostly with living people.

Valentino set his empty cup on a tray as he stood up. “It's only proper that I wash the dishes, if present company doesn’t mind.”

I sprang to my feet. “Well, if you insist.”

Before he had time to change his mind, I'd put a tray piled up high with tableware on his arms. Auntie Estrella and Untie Lago had the remaining tray ready for me. I steered Valentino toward the kitchen. Hopefully he hadn't been naïve enough to think we wouldn't take advantage of his offer.