"Did the moving vehicle agree with you better st night, Your Excellency?" Valentino was shaving as I returned from the toilet.

  I stretched my arms over my head. It was a golden morning, the kind that looked like it glowed with possibilities. "Yeah. I had such a good sleep, I didn't want to get up."

  It's true that I got up te, compared to my usual time. But I suspected it was because my mind needed to rest from wandering into the Underworld.

  I still couldn't believe that'd really happened. I wasn't sure I wanted to believe it. On the other hand, if it had been true, at least that weird creature that tried to eat me hadn't come from my own mind.

  That day we only made one stop before continuing our trip to the east in the same train. We were crossing Avadantul, a province that provided endless shipments of grain and beef and honey and linen to supply the Protectorate.

  This was my st chance to mail anything back home before we reached High Tomenedra, so I sent my family a crate with Retana’s caviar and wine. So fancy! The flowers would be long dead by the time they arrived, so I left them under some bushes to become mulch. The paper, though, went into the crate. When you’re poor you can’t afford to waste anything. Even paper that makes too many crunching noises has an use.

  I went into the ptform to stretch my legs. It was a nice day, though so peaceful it felt like the calm from before the storm. Someone was burning trash in some metal barrels not far from the station, and the air was so still oily grey smoke rose from them in a nearly static column. In the south, though, dark clouds had massed together, ready to march into the pins.

  And then, in the west, clear blue skies above and a strip of yellow-brown below. My home. Valentino came to stand by my side.

  "See anything interesting, Your Excellency?"

  "My family's over there."

  "Oh, of course."

  "I hope they don't miss me."

  "Isn't it comforting, though, to know someone is probably thinking of Your Excellency?"

  That was pretty much what I'd thought during our st morning together. Whether I liked sharing that particur comfort with Valentino or not, I wasn't sure.

  "I see your point," I told him, as if I'd never thought of it before. "It's just that I can't allow myself to fall into nostalgia, you know?"

  He nodded. "Sentimentalism can be dangerous at court."

  Huh.

  "Don't they fire you for admitting that?"

  "Come on, Your Excellency. Everyone is aware court is set up so that everybody—governors, ministers, and the Lemarezins—are constantly at each other's throats. I suppose it wouldn't be seemly to drop the fa?ade of politeness, but a fa?ade is all it is."

  "Well, it's good to know I'm starting on the right foot."

  "Your Excellency is welcome. Would you like to talk to me about your family one st time? That way, Your Excellency can leave the nostalgia safely behind."

  I turned to look at Valentino. He had the same discreetly polite look on his face he seemed to sport most of the time—the one I had started to think of as his on-duty expression.

  "You know, that's a real good idea. Unless you don't wanna hear me get all corny."

  "Your Excellency listened to me, so I might as well do the same."

  "Well, if you don't mind. I wonder if Grandma Alba turned around to ask me something and then remembered I was gone, or if Grandma Cielo forgot I wouldn't be back in the evening and set an extra pte on the table. I sure hope Untie Lago won't have too much trouble with the birdies."

  "The mitemas, Your Excellency? Are they difficult?"

  "Well, they're big and can be pretty headstrong. They could also eat some garbage and get sick. At least they'll clean themselves, with dust baths. I wouldn't like bathing a mitema, and we don't have enough clean water anyway."

  "Chickens also like dust baths, don't they?"

  "I think so. I'm also pretty sure Auntie Estrel forgot I hadn't left without warning and got mad at me before she remembered. I hope the twins won't start fighting now I'm not around, and especially I hope they don't gang up on their brother. I hope Lucero will remember to study. He practices on the animals but those ain't the same as people."

  "The youngest child, Your Excellency?"

  "Yes, the one who wanted to steal your pocket watch."

  Valentino smiled, to let me know he knew it was a joke. "He told me he's studying to be a healer."

  "Yeah, he's reading anatomy books and treatises on sicknesses—he's not much of a reader otherwise, but those he likes. Naturally, he grossed out his sisters taking about symptoms and such at the dining table and Auntie got mad at him. I tried to make him learn some maths or whatever when I could, but he always said he wasn't going to uni ever, so he wouldn't bother."

  He nodded in sympathy. "I assume the twins aren't going either."

  "I really doubt it. I wonder if they'll still be home when I return, though. They're almost old enough to leave for the city. People do that when they come of age. Usually they just get a job and send money home, because that's hard to do in the hills. It's also a good way to meet new people. That's also hard to do in the hills. Dad didn't stop at Omedura though. He kept going and going till he reached Vorsa, and he didn't come back ever again. He only sent me."

  "Wait, he sent Your Excellency to I Doronte all alone?"

  "Oh, I expined that badly. He came along most of the way, but turned around in El Meandro. Of course he wouldn't have sent me all alone. I was only three."

  Valentino looked into the horizon, squinting in the afternoon sun. A cloud was hurrying to cover it, vanguard to the grey armies in the distance. I very much got the feeling that he didn't want to share what he thought about my Dad. Well, as long as he stayed out of my business, I wouldn't say anything either.

  Turning to the east, the Twin Tepuy could be glimpsed in the horizon, wide and ft on the top. An empty space opened between them. They were surrounded by green, not brown-green or yellow-green like the pin surrounding us, but emerald green. Tomorrow the nd would change. Right now though, the ichu tufts and pampas grass had come along with me, a comforting company.

  As expected, evening fell without any signs of our train. I sat quietly next to Valentino until the remaining warmth of the sun faded from the station's brick walls. Then I put my jacket on and went for a walk along the tracks, idly wandering closer and closer to the st stretch of desert. This wasn't the best idea when the lure of the empty infinite grew on me. Sometimes the longing for the open skies and endless sands became almost painful. Well, Valentino wouldn't allow me to get away, anyway. And Vanth's oath probably meant he'd show up before anything could hurt me. He'd even walked into the Underworld because of me.

  That was comforting and also disquieting. Was there a pce in the whole universe where Vanth couldn't reach me? I'd rather not think too much about it.

  Well, at least st night I hadn't dreamed of roses, or anything like that. This was another thing I'd rather not think about, but I couldn't really afford to look away. After all, I didn't know when it'd happen again. And, as much as I didn't want to, I knew it would.

  When I returned from the capital that first time, I had a lot of nightmares. I'd wake up in the middle of the night saying nonsense and scaring the twins. So after a couple of weeks my grandmas took me into the hills to gather healing herbs in the night of the silver noon, and before returning home, they brewed a nightmare-banishing tea for me to drink. Of course, much of the spell's power came from me knowing my grandmas wanted to keep me safe. That made it a very strong spell. Unfortunately, no spell sts forever. I was returning to the capital, and that was probably why this particur spell was losing its power.

  I raised my jacket colr against the night wind. That jacket was slightly big for my size; it had belonged to Grandma Alba's Dad. I never met him, and his jacket showed its age a bit, but it was a really good jacket anyway, lined with sheepskin. The desert cold wouldn't get through it.

  Turning right, I climbed up an elevation of the ground where some cha?ars lifted up their branches to the night. Something about this pce looked familiar, strangely enough. I knew I'd never wandered this way before.

  Didn't those dusty orange outcroppings below me look a lot like the ones from my dream? The ones I'd found when the sniffers chased me. The angle was different, but the shape was familiar.

  Well, maybe I'd seen those outcroppings before, forgotten all about them, and remembered them in my dream. I seemed to be pretty good at forgetting things, anyway.

  But I rarely forgot about my journeys, and I could swear I hadn't been in this particur town of Avadantul before.

  I gnced over my shoulder. The sky had turned darkest blue, just about to sink into night. I wouldn't have been able to see train smoke coming, but I had at least enough time to look around.

  I waved at Valentino so he'd know I wasn't running away, and sat on the ground so I could scoot my way down the outcropping.

  What a wonderful idea. With my luck, I'd get stuck down there. Well, Valentino could float me back up, at least. But then, I'd have to shout at him like an idiot. I distracted myself with those ridiculous thoughts, so I wouldn't change my mind and go back up.

  The ground decided to take the decision away from me by sloping abruptly down. I slipped, thankful for my sturdy work pants.

  From the inside, I had no doubts left. This was the pce I'd dreamed of. When I looked up, the opening between the rocks looked the same. It was good to do this alone, too, so nobody could point out any opening in the ground is pretty much identical to another. The interior was pretty much pitch bck, however. I felt around for a light spell and cracked it open.

  The opening might've been the same, but the cave proper had some notable differences. No steps leading deeper, only a colpsed stone lintel. This had once been a building—ancient stone walls of exquisite masonry sunken into the desert sands. It was enough to make one wistful.

  What's interesting is I wasn't the first person who'd been there recently. A floral scent lingered in the air. So who'd brought it there? I turned my light to the left, where the cave—no, room—opened deeper still. There was a long, narrow passage that ended in a ft stone shelf; behind it rose an entire wall's worth of carvings and the head of a statue, both sinking in the sands.

  I had found a temple. One of the very few temples from the Khachimik Empire to survive the Megarchon's wrath—if you could call this survival. But look, the stone shelf was still covered with ashes and flower petals and a couple of bowls that once had probably held offerings of milk or chicha or water.

  Someone still visited this temple, inaccessible and dangerous as it was. Someone still cared enough to bring gifts to—whose temple was this? I didn't know a lot about Khachimik worship, but the carvings suggested pnt life to me: curling vines, rows of maize. The Earth, then. No wonder the temple was still in use. Earth herself held it in her embrace. It made me a bit emotional to think of people still coming here. What if they hadn't stopped coming in seven hundred years? Or maybe the temple had been thought to be lost, but then someone had found it again. Maybe someone had dreamed about it, like me.

  I held no allegiance toward the Khachimik Empire, or even the Earth, though of course we poured bowls of chicha for her during the harvest festival—if you're a farmer you ignore her at your own risk. Seeing how I'd been invited into her home, however, I felt like making some kind of offering. For the sake of the people stubbornly keeping the faith, too.

  I'd left my bundle by the ptform, so the only things worth anything I had were my spell neckces—and Vanth's gift jewelry, but that was going a bit too far even for a devout follower. Especially when a fire spell would do. I crushed it, making a small flickering fme appear on the altar.

  "Good night, Earth. I hope you're doing fine and that woman's minions leave you alone," I said, because I didn't know how you were supposed to do things in a Khachimik temple. All I knew was the Khachimik empire used to have a whole priestly css raised to perform the rites the proper way, dressed in their best finery. I could never match that. But nobody seemed to objected to my presence there.

  I might as well ask for something. "Bring my family prosperity and good harvests, will you? And all our neighbors. And everyone in Cabaza too."

  I always felt awkward doing this. Realistically, you couldn't pray your way into endless good harvests. If it was so easy, then no harvest would ever fail. My grandmas said it was all about keeping in touch and staying friendly. If you have a good retionship with your neighbors, bad things will still befall you, but you'll weather them better.

  "Your Excellency!" Valentino's call reached me through the wind and stone.

  "Well, I hate to leave so soon, but my train arrived." I bowed before the altar, then hesitated. "I'm going to kill the Megarchon, and I don't think you like her dynasty very much either, so if you could help me it'd be much appreciated. If I survive I'll bring you a better offering." Inspiration struck. "I'll bring you a piece of her own pace to keep as a trophy."

  I could just about see Valentino outside the cave.

  "The train is here! Is Your Excellency all right?"

  "Yes, don't worry. I can run. Help me out, will you?"

  Despite his worries, we were already comfortably settled in our compartment before the train finally left the station.

  "I suppose you're not used to our provincial trains." My underground adventure had left me hungry, so I served us dinner. They were leftovers, but fresh ones from that afternoon. We'd finished our supply from El Meandro.

  In answer, Valentino took out his hankie, wetted it, and wiped my forehead. "Your Excellency, what happened?"

  "Fell down a hole."

  He looked torn between disbelief and a total ck of surprise. As I watched him, the tter won out.

  broccolifloret