"You know that map thing I mentioned? Well, they were saying something about standing around the city with light spells so they could guide this person. And I got distracted because right away they started talking about murdering Governor Cassel, but just now I remembered the rest. They said, if they stood in the right positions, this person would find their way through the Big Project! So you see, they were talking about a map."

  "The Big Project," Cassel repeated.

  Oh, yeah. That wasn't the official name, just a thing I'd made up.

  "Obviously, they meant this building," I went on. "It's a project of yours and it's big."

  "He's lying," Cassel Jr said. I'm pretty sure he'd decided to dislike me on sight, though, so I didn't take it personally. His father was the one who mattered anyway. "He just wants to look innocent."

  "To be sure," Cassel said, "there's much in his story that doesn't add up. But the important points fit."

  It didn’t matter that he didn’t believe everything I said. I was going to keep stalling until my airship was about to leave, and then Cassel would have to let me go. Hopefully I’d be able to send him following a false lead and then sleep ten or twelve hours on a row.

  "Then let the suppression officers have him," Cassel Jr said.

  I struggled to swallow the bile rising on my throat. He meant the greensuits—the Department of Unwarranted Activity Suppression.

  "That's outrageous!" Valentino stepped between Cassel Jr and me. I should've protested just like that, but I couldn't even say a word. Well, a Lemarezin would've allowed their Sabrewing to yell at a lowly governor's son in their stead. Right? "And it will reach Her Magnificence's ears!"

  "We're discussing treason," Cassel Jr said. “A commoner’s comfort isn’t worth worrying about in this situation.”

  I touched Valentino's elbow. "It's fine, Sergeant Vargas. I haven't done anything suspicious."

  If I wanted to convince the others of my foolishness, that was one way to do it. Maybe even too over-the-top. Small children knew that your guilt was completely unreted to your chances of being decred guilty.

  "You know that person's name," Cassel said.

  "Yeah, it's Vanth Umbra." I still had my hand on Valentino's elbow, and I swear he shook ever so slightly. "Pretty recognizable name."

  As I expected, nobody was surprised.

  "There's something Your Excellency should see," Cassel said.

  We all entered the elevator. Well, not all of us: luckily for me, the greensuits and some of the guards couldn't fit in. Unfortunately, I knew they'd follow as soon as possible.

  Cassel Jr turned the elevator lever to the lowest position, one that wasn't even beled. I supposed it was some kind of vault, because what else would you have all the way down there?

  "Do you know," Governor Cassel stared at me as if to make me intentionally uncomfortable, "what makes this building special?"

  I shifted from one foot to the other. "Hmm, it's obviously very beautiful, and I guess it stands out by being unfinished, but somehow I don't think that's what you're talking about, is it?"

  "No, it's not. The Big Project, as you called it, was my mother's idea." He looked ahead, as if he was gazing past the elevator doors into something only he could see. "It should've been her life's work, but she was deyed by imbeciles and intrigantes. So it falls upon me to finish it."

  I looked at him intently, so he'd continue to distract me from my surroundings, but that's all he said.

  That elevator ride felt like it was taking forever, so I checked out my watch. Pretty sure it wasn't my own perception of time. It really was taking longer than you'd expect. Because I was still nervous, I searched my pockets. I still had some chewing gum left, but didn't feel like it.

  We left into a basement with bare walls of raw rock. A tunnel barreled into the distance, pure darkness that looked almost solid; we were so deep down it must've led into the heart of the mountain.

  "How far down are we?" I asked, because I didn't want to think about more uncomfortable things.

  "Far below sea levels," Cassel said.

  "So this is like a mine?"

  He gnced at me, but briefly. "Yes, that's exactly what it is. An energy mine."

  "Oh, so this is what the entire city runs on?" See me showing interest in the Big Project! That wasn't going to make Cassel like me or anything, but maybe the needle would move ever so slightly on my favor. And honestly, I was genuinely curious. As much as I could afford to be, when I worried so much about my own fate.

  He tilted his head at me. "How much do you know about the role of energy in running a city?"

  "Well, it makes spells run longer without requiring you to do anything, and there's so many spells in High Tomenedra. We use spell beads in the Dorontean hills, you know! They're expensive though. An energy mine has got to be cheaper than that, or else it wouldn't be any good."

  "Oh, but the Big Project covers more than just this city." Was that a note of pride in his voice? "We could send batteries to the whole province. We could even develop a better technology to convey energy to any pces that need it, no matter how distant. And we don't need to wait for the wind to blow."

  "But that's amazing!" Again, I didn't have to pretend very hard. "You mean even somepce like my family's farm could get energy for light globes and the radio and everything it needs? That would improve so many lives! Why would anybody try to block that from happening?"

  "Because it'd make them lose money or political influence or both."

  "I see. Do you think that's what that person is after? I mean Umbra, of course."

  "Yes."

  "He's not supposed to have any political influence, though."

  Cassel looked at me like I was an idiot. Admittedly, that was what I'd been aiming for, so I guess I couldn't exactly hold it against him.

  "Not officially, no. But that doesn't stop a man like him. He can't be deposed as easily as a member from one of the Two Chambers. His only possible successor is still a child, and he's adamant in passing his position to a child of his own instead. Such a child is yet to be born. Isn't that convenient? Vanth Umbra would be in his fifties at the very least before he could be made to step down."

  That did make sense. On its own, at least. I really didn't think Vanth was involved in plots like those—of course, I barely knew him.

  I wanted to keep attempting to pry Cassel for info, but the elevator returned with its cargo of greensuits and guards. Without even looking at them, the governor turned around and strode into the dark tunnel. His son followed right behind, stopping only long enough to pick up a light globe from its sconce on the wall and make it float ahead. The rest of us trailed them.

  The tiled floor ended sooner than the shadows had fooled me into expecting. The tunnel had been hollowed out into raw stone. It was narrow enough to make us walk in pairs. I was sleep-deprived and dehydrated and would probably be hungry if I wasn't so nervous, and this entire situation felt to me like something out of the most over-the-top kind of opera, where Cassel would soon reveal himself to be a human sacrificer bent on summoning some monstrosity from the Underworld. He didn't really have the powerful bass that role required, though.

  Soon we entered a cave with an uneven low roof. At first I wondered if it was just me, but no: it was hotter in there. Many tubes lined the walls, rising into the ceiling. Clearly they ended in some other floor. Which one? That was impossible to tell. There was plenty of room left for more tubes. A few more holes had been already drilled. If I listened closely, I could hear the murmur of boiling water coming from below the ground.

  "Oh, they're aeolipiles!" I said. "Like the ones they use to power a steam engine."

  "That's right," Cassel said.

  "And the steam comes from the ground? Are these hot springs?"

  "Not yet, though there's pns for creating some artificial ones. We found a few natural reservoirs of hot water elsewhere in the city, but not enough. So instead of giving up, we created our own. That was my mother's genius, The mountain burns day and night. Why shouldn't we take advantage of it?"

  "Well, because drilling those holes must be incredibly hard."

  Again, Cassel looked at me like I was stupid. "We can't exactly expect holes of the necessary size and depth to be already opened by the time we arrive, can we?"

  "I'm just sayin'. I'm not surprised nobody wants to work for you anymore."

  Before I could do anything, he whirled around and grabbed me by the front of my shirt. Valentino tried to run to us, but three other guards blocked him.

  "It's fine, Sergeant Vargas," I said. I didn't feel fine.

  "You should try it yourself," Cassel muttered through his teeth. "Invest a fortune on a project nobody wants to believe in. Everybody's still reeling from the impact batteries had on the economy, so they don't want to bother with something better. Wind farms don't want anybody else to encroach upon their pyground, and human operators demand perks for becoming obsolete. Every unforeseen dey increases your costs. All your creditors demand payment at the same time. You can't slow down a week, not even a day. You have to push harder."

  I didn't try to smack Cassel's hand away, but it was a struggle. A whole mountain stood over our heads, thousands and thousands of tons of rock and city and jungle. Below, the bzing river a stone's throw away. We stood on a mousehole burrowed into sheer rock. Every one of my breaths felt heavy and hot. I wasn't the one digging my way through, though. Crawling through the weight of the ages. Choking in your sweat and grime.

  "How many people did you kill?" I asked.

  "I didn't kill anybody."

  I was about to say I wasn't accusing him of pushing somebody into a hole on purpose, but then he made me lean into the open one, and I did hold on to his arm with both hands, half wondering if he'd heard my thoughts.

  Magma glowed in response, very deep down. Then it bubbled up and an eye opened in it. Not a human eye, exactly, but something still recognizable as one, like the eyes of bugs and crabs.

  I couldn't have been more chilled if an icy wind had blown out of the hole. I couldn't even move, as if I thought that could prevent the creature from noticing me. It already had, though. As I stared back, another eye opened up, and then another, and another, all of different sizes. All I could do was count them.

  Cassel shoved me on the ground. My hands scraped on the rock as I sat up. That was as far as I could go. At least I wasn't looking into the hole anymore.

  "Governor Cassel!" Valentino warned.

  "What the fuck did you do?" I asked.

  "It wasn't there when we bore those holes. At first, we only found hot rocks. But one day, the magma had come up."

  I got to my feet slowly, wobbling all the way. But I didn't fall. "You shouldn't have done that."

  Cassel tried to grab me again, but I barely dodged him. "Don't try to tell me what I should or shouldn't have done."

  Every one of my breaths felt heavy. This new finding had managed to shake me despite all of my exhaustion.

  That was a god, right there. The living mountain.

  I never expected to see one! Gods didn't walk the world anymore. Not since—

  Since—

  Since Heruj-tepuy had been destroyed.

  I stared at the hole, as if I expected something would crawl out of it.

  "And you thought it would just let you?" I asked.

  "We have safeguards."

  I looked around the room. Sure enough, when I paid attention I could notice a barrier spell's faint thrum surrounding us.

  "This isn't going to stop it."

  "Evidence disagrees."

  I took a deep breath. My heart felt like it was going to run out of my chest. "How long are you going to bet your life on it? Or you just bet other people's lives?"

  This time, I couldn't dodge Cassel fast enough. "There's many barriers, idiot. Dozens of them. All powered with the mountain's own energy. It can't defeat itself."

  "So you need to keep the Big Project running at all times so it won't kill you all," I said.

  Cassel tightened his lips. Magic crackled between us. "Now you know what your lover's trying to do."

  I coughed a couple of times before I could speak. "You shouldn't make assumptions about people."

  He must’ve seen the locket’s chain, because he grabbed the locket next, but instantly dropped it with a hiss of pain as if it'd burned him, and just as fast tried to grab it by the chain. But I'd already wrapped it inside my fist. It felt pleasantly warm.

  "And what is gonna happen if I do?" he asked.

  "You're gonna get it wrong and Her Magnificence won't like it," I said.

  He actually lifted me up, half-crushing my windpipe, over the magma hole. I refused to look down, but the heat coming out of it was bad enough. I swear it felt angry. I dropped Vanth's locket and clung to Cassel's arm with both hands, too scared to kick him in the sor plexus like I wanted to.

  "Governor Cassel!" Valentino said.

  "Her Magnificence doesn't know everything," Cassel said. "Either you're useful to me or I'm getting rid of you. Maybe Vanth Umbra was the one who did it. Maybe you happened to fell in the magma while attempting to sabotage the facilities. I don't care."

  My mind went bnk, no clue of what to say next, no other ideas but—

  help

  Another hand nded on Cassel's arm, yanking both of us back. Cassel stumbled and dropped me, but before I could stand, I was caught in Vanth's arms and pulled up, and I immediately started clinging to him with all my strength.

  broccolifloret