A night breeze weakly buffeted the curtains. Wooden spoons and skimmers and egg-beaters and ladles hung from haphazardly placed 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. Last time I talked to Her Magnificence was twelve years ago.” Even tiptoeing around the issue gave me a chill on the back of my neck. Not that Valentino had a right to make prying questions. I just disliked them.

“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 flattery, 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 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 related to the succession.”

Well, yeah.

Every tarantula 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 last 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?”

“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 plans 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. Crisaor Lemarezin.” He handed me a tray.

I looked at my reflection in the burnished steel surface. That name sounded faintly 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 Estrella 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 mäelstroms 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 lackeys 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 Calabaza. 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 as the trapdoor was covered by a sheepskin rug. This was of course by design. We stored a few crates of beer bottles and other non-perishable goods 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 place 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.

“Anyplace is good,” Grandma Cielo said.

“It's more like anyplace is bad.”

“Then you can begin anyplace.”

I wanted to do this ‘cause 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 had come to 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 plan 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 plans to myself. And even my grandmas couldn’t read minds.

“Sort of. I’m going to be living in the Palace 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 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’ve 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 explanation sounds really dodgy, when they desist from their usual cruelties for no apparent reason, when a prisoner is freed or unfair laws are quietly dropped, people will say “the Rainbow Snakes did it”. Mind you, nobody has ever seen the Snakes, though a lot of people claim 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. “‘Cause of the strikes.”

“That’s right. See, I met this woman in Omedura last 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 last 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 him with bringing the matter up to the Megarchon, which freaked the governor out, ‘cause the Megarchon is liable to answer such poor management with a charge of treason and we all know how that ends up. The governor reacted the way they always do: by hiking prices up and demanding more output from every industry keeping the I Tabrul economy chugging along. Supplies were scarce and salaries got delayed. And then delayed 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.

It’s after this point that things got weird.