Of course, if I asked they wouldn't admit anything was wrong. Not to someone accompanied by a Sabrewing. As long as there was the smallest chance of their words reaching the Megarchon's ears, they'd keep pretending to their dying breath. That's what everybody else would do, after all. It made sense, too, for the clerks and shop owners to keep their heads down, pretend everything was fine, and wait for the storm to pass them by. How many times had that happened before?

  It bothered me that I couldn't find any signs of scarcity, though. With the factories all but stopped, the exports would be much diminished. With less money entering the province, there'd be less imports, too. Obviously, that's what the strikers wanted: only by making Cassel lose money would they twist his arm hard enough to make him improve work conditions, or whatever they wanted. Cassel had sent in the guards and, incredibly, it hadn't worked.

  So what now? Well, it looked like the guards had besieged the strikers in their factories, making sure nobody went in or out. But that was a st resort. And the strikers had besieged the economy. It was absolutely crazy. They couldn't possibly win. And yet, they weren't losing. That was almost as good as a winning streak. Cassel couldn't risk the Megarchon finding out about this. Better to negotiate with lowly workers than to face that woman's wrath.

  Of course, if the Megarchon found out, the factory workers wouldn't get out alive either. They knew what they were doing. In the end, they were more desperate than Cassel, so they'd be the st to back down. I could admire that.

  But even desperate people need food and water.

  I turned around with my hands on my pants pockets. "Aren't you tired of being a pack mitema?"

  Valentino winced. "I was doing fine until Your Excellency compared me to an animal."

  "Sorry, sorry."

  He carried two handfuls of thin cardboard bags printed with the colorful names of shops. I'd never heard of any of them before that day, but they'd looked like they were a big deal.

  "They're not very heavy though, just bulky. And Your Excellency forgets about my particur spell."

  "That's right."

  We'd reached a couple blocks of restaurants and cafés and food stalls right in the middle of the shopping district. There, people sat outdoors at the shade of canvas parasols and palm trees.

  "I'll buy you a shaved ice and we'll call it even. What do you say?"

  He smiled.

  These cartons of shaved ice were a local specialty, it seemed. They came with a generous serving of condensed milk and chopped fresh fruit on top. Banana, maracuja, papaya, pineapple: a bit bitter, just so the sweetness didn't overwhelm you. I went to prop my butt on a low brick wall and ate it fast, before it melted through the cardboard. Not far from us a quartet of bck people in duckling yellow pyed under a gazebo. Their jaunty music entered through my left ear, the cacophony of clopping hooves and steps and chatter through my right one; it wasn't a bad combination. Mambo del Shopping District.

  If you didn't know what was the deal between Valentino and me, you'd think we were lovers. Except I'd never had a day out like this with any of the men who'd fucked me. I didn't took it personally, but it sounded kinda sad.

  "I think that's enough shopping for today," I said. Evening fell slowly, but the shops and shoppers showed no signs of slowing down.

  "Your Excellency doesn't seem to enjoy shopping very much."

  "Well, no. There's so many people." This shaved ice was just sweet enough, and perfectly refreshing after walking for so long through such a rge crowd.

  "Maybe Your Excellency would've enjoyed the shopping district more on the off-season."

  "Maybe." I gnced down at his bags—or rather, my bags. Boxes of scarves and belts and suspenders and handkerchiefs and rolls of ce. Also a tablecloth with matching napkins. I still had four checks and some change left. "We should take all this to our room and have dinner somepce more interesting. Don't you agree?"

  "Inevitably, as I'm paid to agree with Your Excellency."

  I waved at one of those ilimec-drawn carriages painted electric blue, the ones that carry passengers for a fee. By the time we returned to our room, the sky was darkening in earnest. Our undry had been carried away. I took a water bottle and one of the leftover pastries from the coldbox. Traveling with Valentino was nice; he wouldn't think I was weird for saving food for ter. But even if he thought so, I wouldn't care. Throwing perfectly good food away gave me chills.

  "Where should I leave Your Excellency's bags?" Valentino asked.

  "Anywhere, as long as they're not in the way."

  As we talked, the room darkened and the light globe above our heads lit up. Wait, we had our own light globe? Those things are expensive! How much money did the hotel spend so that there'd be at least one in every suite? Imagine if more expensive suites had more than one light globe—actually, that was very much possible.

  My head almost started swirling, so I turned to the coffee table, where the newspaper y abandoned. I picked it up, dropping myself on the couch.

  The front page was unsurprisingly occupied with the Lemarezins: some inanity about this or that great-grandchild of the Megarchon and his potential lovers. Cris Lemarezin? That wasn't just any old great-grandchild, it was that woman's favored heir. Surely there were more important things to report about him than whether he had been seen with Ms Whatshername or Mr Whichever? Didn't this guy show up in the front page with a different lover every week, too? No point in attempting to keep up with that.

  The full article had an ink drawing of Cris: a young white man with great cheekbones and a charmingly tilted pillbox hat. Was he the one who'd made those hats fashionable, then? Could be. I'd met him and many other Lemarezin cousins st time I'd visited the capital. Not that I remembered anybody in particur.

  As we left outside, Upper Tomenedra lit up globe by globe. They had far more light globes than they needed, unless you consider looking pretty a necessity. Which I suppose they did. They wouldn't just hoist them up on poles, but on statues. There were also smaller, colorful globes that hopped from their pces and flew around like fireflies. Valentino and me walked past a handful of children in poofy dresses jumping around trying to grab one of the small ones, with no luck but much persistence.

  The northwestern district looked older and quieter. More peeling paint and graffitti and cracked cobblestones. No big fancy coaches. Promising, if harder to find your way through. Luckily, we found some information buoys. They're the ones under yellow arrow signs. Most cities will have a few. They're spelled to lead you to your chosen destination, bobbing in the air all along—hence their name. It's a rather complicated set of spells for something that looks so simple, but it works. With its help, we found a restaurant with many rickety tables sprawling over the boardwalk. It seemed to be mostly patronized by locals; always a good sign.

  I sat at a chipped table. Another good thing of eateries like this is the first-come-first-serve approach. Forget about reservations. A skinny maybe-teenager with a green apron and a puny mustache came our way. Ah, memories. Not so long ago, I'd waited tables in a pce much like this one. None of those jobs had sted longer than a couple weeks. Felt like something that'd happened in another lifetime.

  We were now back to the good and proper order of things, with me ordering for both of us. Fried pntains with sour cream, capybara steaks with a side of coconut rice, and a beer. The other diners had taken a good curious look at us, decided we were harmless enough, and continued with their loud chatter: about the river flooding as usual during this rain season, and Cassel never fixing the plumbing so that you wouldn't sink in rainwater to the hip in the middle of the street, and someone's sister who was pregnant but wouldn't say who was the other parent, and other familiar things. With a Sabrewing by my side, no way anybody would mention the strike in my hearing distance, never mind the Rainbow Snakes.

  I did pick up a comment about how someone's cousin who'd gone to hunt caimans was stopped when returning to the city and beaten up by the guards—apparently not an usual happening.

  Of course it was always possible that hunting caimans was code for something else, or that the cousin was a known criminal. After our encounter from that afternoon, though, I suspected there was something else going on. If the city was getting fewer supplies through the official channels, how would the strikers manage? That's something I'd wondered ever since I'd talked to the sawmill woman. Had they stockpiled food and water? When would they run out?

  What if someone was smuggling them supplies, though? That would expin why they were still holding out. It'd expin why those guards from earlier had been so hostile—they'd assumed we were part of it. And, by the looks of it, they were at their wits's end.

  I'd expected the capybara steaks would taste good because they're pretty much just huge cavies, and cavies are tasty. I was only half right. Cavies have lean, delicately-fvored meat I really appreciate, but this steak didn't have the same taste. I couldn't identify it, until Valentino said it reminded him of pork. That made sense to me.

  Anyway, the steaks had the perfect bance between crisp and juicy, if a bit salty. But that only meant they went wonderfully with the crunchy sweet pntains and the creamy rice. Good thing I'd ordered a dark, bitter beer to go with it. It was as close to perfection as a meal can get. I might as well leave a hundred-nureal bill and some change for the server.

  "...well, no!" someone said in the table at my back. "In the Megarchon's name, that's not..."

  I'd forgotten people invoke the Megarchon's name in their fake oaths. As we got closer to the capital, that'd be a more common occurrence. I guess it made sense. When we swear allegiance to the Megarchon, we swear it on the Imperium itself. That's why it will kill us when we break that oath. Every member of the Protectorate has sworn it, no matter how far away they live. That's most people in the world.

  Even if it made sense, even if it wasn't a real oath, I still didn't like hearing it.

  "Talk to me, Sergeant Vargas," I said. "I'm about to start missing my family. It's the good food and cozy atmosphere."

  "Today, Your Excellency was attracting attention on purpose, isn't it true?"

  "Yeah." I lowered my voice to a whisper. "That's what I'd agreed with His Illustrious Highness. That I'd do my best to stand out in the city, so that the necromancer would notice me. If we're lucky, they'll strike when we're ready for them."

  And seeing how the necromancer had sent those sniffers after me, our chances weren't bad. But of course I didn't say that part out loud.

  "I've been thinking on how to grab people's attention," I went on, "and it seems to me that if several people see something unusual as they go on with their day, a lot of them will dream of it. You know how you don't remember most of your dreams, but a lot of the stuff you can sort of remember is just random crap from your daily life that stuck with you for some reason? Well, if I show up in a few people's dreams, the necromancer might notice. Then, if I stay in the shopping district, they'll have a good chance of finding me."

  For dessert, we had another shaved ice with condensed milk. This time, because we had proper bowls instead of cartons, I didn't have to worry about eating it too fast and getting brain freeze. Maybe I ate a bit too much. Hopefully the necromancer would leave me alone that night, so that I could get used to the time zone change and wait for them well-rested.

  We didn't find the buoy in our way back, but I wasn't in such a hurry to return to our hotel room, tired or not. This neighborhood seemed to be an endless crowding of wooden houses and yards enclosed by chicken wire fences. I liked the rustling of the palm trees over our heads and the murmuring of the bugs crawling over the light globes, the scents of oil and spices drifting from the windows open to the night breeze. I liked knowing that every person we met sitting on their shadowed porch lived their own life far from mine. Far easier lives than mine. Right? That's what everyone thinks.

  "Would you look at that, Sergeant Vargas." A staircase carved in basaltic rock led up to what looked like some kind of spygss. I trotted up the steps. "We can find our way to the hotel with this."

  "Your Excellency should make sure the spells are working right. It looks fairly old."

  "Yeah, they probably stopped checking these when they made the buoys." Going by what little I could make out of the graffiti in the wall and the bottles littering the floor, we'd stumbled upon the mating grounds of the local teenagers.

  I ran my fingertips over the burnished brass of the spygss. A tingle of magic answered me, stronger than I'd expected. Perhaps I had those teenagers to thank for this maintenance.

  As I searched my pants pocket for a coin, I accidentally found my hankie, the one where the gss shards I'd found were still wrapped up. Good thing I'd thought of bringing it along! This had been one of the necromancer's belongings, right? Those gss shards were nothing more than the remains of something that'd been broken and discarded, so they probably wouldn't do much. However, it wouldn't hurt to give it a try.

  I pried the hankie open inside my pocket and focused my magic on the gss shards. Show me the person who made you and destroyed you. Show me the necromancer.

  "I think it'd be better if you pointed the spygss to the southeast, Your Excellency."

  "Wait just a second." The sky was wonderfully clear that night. The moons didn't overwhelm, but provided more than enough light to see. Ahead of us, the city sprawled out. The industrial district y silent and gloomy. The poorer neighborhoods glowed in the moonslight. All you could hear were insects chirping; you'd think they had taken over the world.

  The spygss turned around on its own, pointing toward one of those darkened neighborhoods. I could make out, just barely, a pale line that looked like dust motes in the sunlight coming to me.

  Incredibly, I'd found the necromancer.

  broccolifloret