broccolifloret

  Next morning the trees had surrounded us. You could look and look into the distance and see only vibrant emerald. We'd entered I Tabrul at some point st night. There were carts pulled by megabeasts, rger and slower and more peaceful than glyptos. They're very strong, but eat way too many pnts, so they're not practical in a nd as arid as I Doronte.

  Right up ahead, the cliff wall of the nearest Twin Tepuy rose sharp like a knife. In the very top, our destination, sprawled the city of High Tomenedra. The train would continue through the valley between the two mountains and from then on to I Lesecani in the southeast.

  I dropped myself on the lower bunk with a yawn. "Guess moving vehicles are disagreeing with me again. Didn't rest too well st night."

  Naturally, I assumed it was Vanth's fault, not that I was ready to share that with Valentino. To my surprise, he nodded knowingly.

  "After traveling straight East for the st day and a half, we now share Great Vorsa's time. Because Your Excellency gets up with the sun, you've had about five hours of sleep."

  "Oh. Well, I can't go back to sleep just yet."

  "At least Your Excellency will sleep in a real bed tonight." Valentino started shaving in his usual mirror-against-the-window way.

  "There's that. Though our journey isn't over yet."

  "Very true. I hope Your Excellency isn't afraid of flying at least."

  "Oh, no. Flying sounds fun." I stood up. "I boarded a pne st time I went to the capital, but mostly forgot about it. Anyway, gonna get us some coffee."

  As Valentino and me had our st cup of train coffee, I thought of Vanth coming to meet me. I wasn't sure how I felt about him showing up in my dreams, but better him than Rizazhiin-Gyaan. At leas Vanth provided clear advantages, as long as he stopped jerking me around by the dick and fucked me.

  He'd looked so happy when I talked about killing that necromancer—come to think about it, this was the second time he'd reacted like that. Well, killing necromancers was his job. No, more than that. His duty.

  That was the problem with me and Vanth. He'd sworn to protect me, but he'd also sworn to protect the Megarchon. And those oaths would csh before long. Conflicting oaths can easily backfire and kill you, which is one of the reasons why you should never swear any without knowing what you're doing.

  The thing is, I'm pretty sure Vanth knew what he did. He might be a weirdo, but nothing about him gave the impression of someone who'd swear an oath lightly. When he'd oathed himself to me, he sure looked like he was taking it very seriously. Of course, if he knew he was oathing himself to the Megarchon's intended murderer, things probably wouldn't have turned out like that.

  There was something else bothering me about this situation. Something I hadn't noticed before, but I should have. As usual, though, the harder I tried to figure out what it was, the more it eluded me.

  We rolled into the station near noon. As I left the compartment, humid air spped me like a warm wet towel. "Oof!"

  Valentino couldn't help smiling. "What's the matter, Your Excellency?"

  "It's too hot."

  "Your Excellency is bothered the heat? Since when?"

  "Hmm. Lemme amend that: it's too humid. Pretty gross, isn't it?"

  "Well, we'll be raising above it soon enough." He pointed at something I'd thought was part of the railway ptform. This turned out to be a shuttle with a solid steel bottom and a guadua railing and roof. Our fellow passengers were entering it in an orderly row. The whole thing was attached to a vertical rail that went all the way up.

  Tepuys are more or less ft on top, more like a rectangle than a triangle. That expins why you can build a city up there, though maybe doesn't expin why you'd want to. Only the mountain right in front of us had a city, though. To make up for it, the one to the right had a giant waterfall spouting from one of its sides, coming to meet the wide muddy river that made its way to I Lesecani across the jungle.

  Valentino followed my eyes. "That's Teferaj-tepuy, Your Excellency. We'll be going up Tipilej-tepuy in brief."

  "Of course, there's nobody in the other one." It was a very silly comment, and it turned out to be wrong too.

  "On the contrary, tourists often attempt to climb the mountain. Apparently they favor standing right on top of the waterfall. See, those towns near the base cater to them."

  "So you've come here before?"

  "Last spring, as it happens."

  That was before the strike, but probably after the situation had started getting out of hand. Valentino didn't have to mention he'd come escorting one of the Lemarezins; that's the only reason why he'd be out in an official assignment. I was curious, but I really doubted asking would reveal anything. The city was popur enough as a touristic destination, and seeing how the government officials had managed to keep the worst of the unrest hidden from the papers, they would've kept it hidden from a visiting retive of the Megarchon as well.

  Better to change the subject to something harmless.

  "Would you happen to know if the shuttle runs on steam like a train, or what?"

  "Anything so rge and complex would most likely run on batteries, like my motorcycle."

  I tightened my bundle. "Guess it's convenient not having a team constantly spelling water into vapor to make it move. Yet it's so much bigger than a motorcycle. How many batteries does it need, would you know? How fast does it run off?" We exchanged a look. Valentino looked more confused than I felt. "Sorry, you wouldn't know. It's a bad habit I have, making too many questions."

  It was also a way to distract myself from all the things that worried me, so I really doubted I'd stop any time soon.

  "Well, I've heard Governor Cassel has worked for years to harness the mountain's energy. Apparently he's had a measure of success?"

  "Ah! I think that's his Big Project. But I heard it had stopped."

  "Perhaps he had enough energy stored, or perhaps he's gone back to the wind. That's the main source of energy in Vorsa, Your Excellency."

  "Oh, I see! Because it's high up in the sky. Yes, High Tomenedra would catch a lot of wind too."

  "Indeed, Your Excellency."

  Something didn't really fit, though. If the winds could power the entire city, why would Cassel search for an alternate source? According to what the sawmill woman had told me, Cassel was running out of money. Maybe keeping this city up and running was more expensive than I thought.

  As I pondered this, I noticed a ramp carved into the mountain wall, rising up in a long diagonal away from us. Apparently it led right to the top.

  "Would you know what's up with that ramp?" I asked.

  "Oh, that's the Emperor's Path! Just as it sounds like, it was built in the days of the Khachimik Empire."

  "Before they invented shuttles and batteries, I guess. Do people still use it?"

  "I don't think so."

  "So is it forbidden to go there?"

  "I wouldn't know. Does Your Excellency want to use it?"

  We exchanged a look. Valentino looked earnest.

  "Well," I said, "obviously I can't force poor Sergeant Vargas to take such a long and difficult path."

  He hoisted his bag higher. "I can refuse any orders if I have reason to believe they'd endanger Your Excellency. This isn't one of them."

  "Well, if you say it's not dangerous, I believe you."

  Valentino smiled. "It might be dangerous for a regur guard. Not for a Sabrewing."

  "Did you go mountain-climbing st time you visited High Tomenedra?"

  "The view from up the Teferaj-tepuy waterfall is truly spectacur, Your Excellency."

  "Maybe you and me will climb it someday, then. For now, let's take the Emperor's Path."

  Before we ventured into the unknown, however, I stopped by the station cafeteria to have a couple of sandwiches and a bottle of chicha morada. A light lunch was necessary to keep our strengths up, but we didn't want to be too full either. I also bought a big packet of chewing gum.

  We didn't ask about the Emperor's Path, just in case it wasn't exactly legal. You may think Valentino, being a guard and all, would have a problem with this, but he answered directly to the Megarchon's blood retives. The Lemarezins are supposed to stand before the w like anybody else, but everybody knows that's bullshit. The Megarchon's the only one who matters. As for the governors and ministers, they're servants with better wardrobes. Of course they disagree, which is why I wanted to avoid making a fuss. But I knew that, if things came down to my opinion against them, they didn't have much to stand on.

  It turned out that the way to the Emperor's Path had been abandoned for a while. Grass and bushes had grown all over it, though that was to be expected with the jungle only a few dozen steps away. Someone had also trampled over the vegetation before us, but I had no way of knowing if that was a human or a megabeast or a couple of stray tapirs. This looked like the kind of pce where monkeys would steal your water bottle if you didn't hold it tight enough.

  Nobody had bothered to block the entrance to the Path, though, so I guess it wasn't exactly illegal. I heard the shuttle was free until your group exceded a certain weight—Valentino's motorcycle would've required me to pay a fee, though now I'm thinking I probably could've gotten away without paying, being a retive of the Megarchon's and all. I really wasn't used to traveling like that. Anyway, that expined why the ramp had been practically abandoned to the jungle. The shuttle fee had to be incredibly steep to make it less practical than hauling cargo up that diagonal ramp.

  Don't think the ramp wasn't impressive on its own, though. Compared to the mountain, it looked narrow, but up close you could see it was wide for a human's size, and also very smooth. We could've fit a dozen motorcycles there. The slope was gentler than it looked from a distance, too. How long had it taken to carve this out of the mountain itself?

  "The Empire's engineering was really something," Valentino said.

  "It sure was." I felt a pang of nostalgia, though that didn't make a lot of sense. The Empire hadn't been all that friendly to my people—friendlier than the Protectorate, most likely, but that really wasn't saying much. Still, they deserved better than having such wonderful craftmanship shoved aside like a rotten reed basket—the workers and engineers, if not the Emperor himself.

  "A sense admiration is inevitable. Hold on tight, Your Excellency."

  "That's also inevitable."

  The sky was very pale and clear, the sun a bzing white coin. A whole cloud of snowy egrets flew over our heads toward the jungle's misty breath. I followed them as they became dust motes and were lost. The trees were so green they almost looked unreal to me, coming right from I Doronte in the middle of the dry season. They sure didn't mind the humidity. Not only were they impossibly green, they'd grown bigger than I expected trees to be capable of. I would've thought they were as tall as a mountain, but the tepuys were there to make sure the vegetation stayed humble.

  To my eyes, the emerald horizon was nothing but wild rainforest. I knew better, however. The Cassels had done their best to fy this nd alive for the past half century. They'd left barren nd, empty mineshafts, and depleted rivers in their wake. So did many other governors before them, ever since Letheia I chopped up Zalmuric in provinces and threw the still-bleeding flesh to those dogs svering after her. Because I Tabrul was so rich—timber, gold, agriculture, rare minerals, the list went on—there was always another dog baying after the st one. Governors of rich provinces fell from grace pretty often, either because one of their competitors managed to trip them, or because they'd fyed too close to the bone and the Megarchon noticed. Most Megarchons didn't like it when their ckeys y waste to the nd for long. Though they also kept electing greedy and corrupt officials, so there isn't much worth praising about their politics.

  We rose high enough my ears popped because of the mounting air pressure, so I yelled at Valentino to stop. When he did so, I gave him a handful of gum and started chewing one. Mango fvored! It's the best way to clear up your pressurized ears.

  Valentino popped a piece of gum into his mouth. "Isn't Your Excellency going to put his jacket on?"

  "Oh, it's really windy. Not stuffy at all. Thanks for reminding me." I'd bundled my jacket up with the rest of my possessions, but I unpacked it. The wind had no chances against it.

  "Didn't Your Excellency notice?"

  "The view distracted me. Isn't it amazing? Do you think we can see Vorsa from the top? It looks like it."

  "Vorsa is too far away. Incredible view, though. One wonders why more people don't come this way. Maybe when motorcycles are more common."

  "Maybe. Y'know, I'm gonna write a letter to my grandmas and tell them not to worry about me, I found the perfect substitute."

  Valentino couldn't help smiling. "I'd be fttered."

  Despite my words, when we reached the corner I held on very tight and closed my eyes, trying to focus on chewing gum. It wouldn't be that bad on the ground, but we were so high up I couldn't help picturing us sailing right past the edge, flying over the jungle like the egrets—and plummeting down like no self-respecting egret would.

  It sounds a lot sillier when you're not there.