Surely I could think of something to convince him we were on the same side? Something that’d sound perfectly normal and not suspicious to the greensuits?

  What supplies did I have, anyway? Well, my pocket watch, of course—but only a peasant like me would find that a conversation starter. I wasn’t going to let any of these people know about the bracelet Vanth had given me, not even if Moreira really was one of the Rainbow Snakes. The guards hadn’t bothered taking my spell beads—I wish I could say that was stupid of them, but the truth is I wouldn’t be able to do much with them anyway. I had three light spells, two wind spells, five reinforcing spells, and half a dozen fire spells. I also had the needles I’d pocketed in our hotel room. At least nobody knew about those, so they might come in handy at the right time. Not in a conversation though. And I had some pieces of chewing gum.

  I popped one in my mouth and offered Moreira another. “It’s mango-fvored.”

  He accepted it, but just held it in his hand.

  Yeah, let’s cut this short. I didn’t have too much time anyway. “Just wondering, do you have a sister?”

  He startled. With the greensuits watching and all! I could tell he was having a hard time, but that only made my own time harder, too!

  “Sorry, I know that sounds weird. It just happens I got lost in the old industrial district—y’know, with the abandoned factories? Maybe you don’t know. Anyway, I was trying to find the way to my hotel and I found some drunken assholes bothering a blind woman—of course I told them to stop.” It felt weird to talk like the kind of person who naturally expects others to stop whatever they’re doing on their say-so. “She looked a lot like you, that’s what I’m getting at.”

  A lot of times, the truth is pretty silly. If the greensuits were listening in, they probably assumed I was reading too much into a coincidence. Moreira understood, but looked ambivalent at best. Can’t bme him. After all, I was an entirely unknown quantity.

  “I do have a sister,” he said.

  “I was just asking because if that was your sister, she’s out there and she might be in trouble, y’know? All sorts of things could be happening around her and you wouldn’t have a way to find out. That must feel awful.”

  His face lit up with understanding—though to the greensuits, if they were paying attention, it must’ve looked like he simply appreciated my sympathy. And maybe that’s what happened, but maybe not. Vanth would be coming after me soon. I just needed to make sure he could get in.

  “I don’t know if we’re better or worse off,” I went on. “Because nobody can enter the Big Project—oh, wait. You call it the energy center, right?”

  “Big Project is fine.”

  “Yeah. So everyone’s stuck on the other side, even His Illustrious Highness.”

  I swear I could hear the greensuits breathing. That unfinished foyer was such an unpleasant pce to be cooped up in. Overcrowded and so stuffy, but the floor still felt uncomfortably cold under my butt.

  “You’re worried about him, right?” he asked. “He’s your lover.”

  “Well, yeah. That’s why I ended up here.”

  “My wife’s out there, too.” He got a wistful look in his eyes, and I could’ve screamed—I could see literal hours of reminiscence approaching as unstoppably as a desert storm.

  “That’s awful,” I said, mostly to cut him off. “But I’m not sure if I’d rather be out there or inside here. I mean, you get it, right? You know about the governor’s power source. You were down there with me. Did you see it, too?”

  “Well—no. I wasn’t brave enough to look.”

  My foot had fallen asleep, so I changed positions. “Or stupid enough. I think you’re better off that way, honestly. I didn’t even know what I was looking at, and now I keep thinking it’s going to break free any time now. I don’t care how good those barriers are.”

  “My wife could make a better barrier.” For a moment, I feared I was going to lose Moreira. But he gave me a pointed look, and I understood—he got what I was doing! Moreira was trying to obfuscate his words, too. Good, because the greensuits worried me way more than an angry mountain god. I know that’s not a rational reaction.

  “Right,” I said, “but I guess the barrier will stand as long as the mountain itself is pouring energy into it—but that don’t make any sense to me. Does it make sense to you?”

  “I’m not an engineer or anything. All I know is there’s a huge complex two floors below, and it’s built like an aeolipile, or maybe not, what matters is that it’s running nonstop all day and night with all the steam that comes up from a million kilometers under the ground. So no, that don’t make any sense to me.”

  I chuckled, but I didn’t miss that Moreira’s accent had changed just a bit at the end—I didn’t think he’d been born in Vorsa. He didn’t do that on purpose, though. Pretty sure he didn’t even notice.

  Well, I didn’t have any more time. If I waited any longer, everything would be lost anyway. I spat the gum out and pocketed it. But before I let go of it, I made sure to stick my needles on it, pointy bits out. I had something that could be used as a weapon, as long as you didn’t expect too much of it.

  “Well, like that one philosopher said, ‘I’ll clear the way out, you get there now’, y’know?” Of course I didn’t say that fake quote in Rellian. I said it in Khachimik, but in my local dialect, emphasizing my accent and speaking fast so that it’d sound too garbled for the local guards to understand.

  There was a chance the greensuits would understand my words, too, but I couldn’t do anything about that. Soon enough I’d have more than I could handle with two detachments of guards and one of greensuits, anyway!

  I think Moreira agreed—he didn’t seem all that convinced I could deliver on my promise. But then, it’s not as if he seemed to have any pn of his own. So there.

  “Sorry, I don’t get what that means.” He gnced over my head for a split second, though—I was pretty sure he looked at the elevator door, but I refused to turn my head.

  “Well, I can’t transte it right now. Guess I’m too nervous.” My left hand tightened around the ball-o’-needles, and it only shook a little.

  Moreira stood up, stretching as if he was simply bored. I’d be very surprised if his stomach wasn’t churning with nervousness, much like mine. I tried to stand up by myself, but ended up accepting his hand. Once I got to my feet, though, I was reasonably steady.

  It’ll do.

  “Gotta use the toilet,” he said. “Do you?”

  “Not really. I’ll stay here, if you still wanna talk.”

  He absolutely didn’t miss my point—he looked at me with genuine sympathy, even a brief fsh of pain. Guess he thought I couldn’t hope to hold two hundred guards and one hundred greensuits back without self-destroying in the process.

  I absolutely wasn’t trying to self-destroy. All I wanted was to let Moreira reach the elevator, and then the complex downstairs, and do whatever he needed to do so the aeolipile or whatever stopped working long enough so the barrier spells would fall. Even if just for a single moment.

  And yeah, then Vanth could come in, but Tipilej Awki could also get out. The idea made me want to crawl out of my skin, but it was all I had. I was beginning to understand what my grandmas had told me st Wednesday night. If you live afraid of dying, you’ll never get shit done.

  I looked right into Moreira’s eyes. He looked away, nodding. I leaned on the wall.

  The greensuits were focused on me—at least that was my best guess. As I said, those hoods were meant to hide their every emotion.

  “Is your job very boring?” I asked them. “It must pay well, because if not, I don’t know why anybody would do it.”

  Of course they didn’t answer.

  Moreira had almost reached the elevator, so I couldn’t wait any more.

  This is what I did:

  With my right hand, I grabbed all of my spell beads in a single handful, pulling hard enough to tear the strings, and threw them on the floor.

  The greensuits rushed me, but I was ready for them.

  With my left hand, I took the needles out of my pocket and smmed them into the visor of the closest greensuit. Going by their scream and the red stain on the mesh, I’d gotten them right in the eye.

  I lifted my right foot, palmed the utility knife hidden on my boot, and smmed my foot on the spell beads. The impact reverberated all the way to the base of my skull; the spells thrummed around my leg.

  I switched the knife to my right hand and smmed it into what I hoped was the second greensuit’s neck, putting all my weight behind the stab. The bde cut though flesh and sinew, slipping between vertebrae. Snapping the spinal cord. As I pulled the knife out, the greensuit dropped. Dead.

  The other greensuits and guards realized what I was doing—or at least realized I must be stopped, and moved to do exactly that. But I was ready for them.

  The spells I’d released still awaited for my will to shape them. Wind spells first, only two, but I wasn’t too bad at them, so I managed to rise a modest gale. Then fire spells; I wasn’t very good at these, and they had nothing to feed upon, but they did make the wind hot and uncomfortable, like the northwest wind that blows in I Doronte during the dry season. None of these people were used to that kind of wind, and it stopped most of them in their tracks, as they lifted their arms to protect their faces.

  I still had a few reinforcement spells left, and I added them into the mix. Now, reinforcement spells prefer to tch on to solid things and make them even more solid. But I’m really good at them, and it wasn’t hard for me to convince them to pour their strength into the hot wind, and make it blow hotter and stronger.

  Moreira was closing the elevator door behind him. Success! I had to hold on as long as possible. All I had to do was hold on as long as possible! And I was good at holding on.

  Encouraged, the wind raged even harder. The guards and greensuits walked against it, fighting for every step. They were coming closer, but it was such a good feeling! And this wasn’t the time to hold back. If Moreira couldn’t cut the power off, we were fucked. I had nothing left to lose.

  At least that’s what I thought while the wind still roared. The first sign of the turning tide was the knife slipping from my hand; I couldn’t hold on to it, and I wouldn’t have been able to pick it up again. I couldn’t move at all. It was the same backsh I’d gotten earlier that day, but stronger this time. I’d poured too much of myself into those spells.

  The wind stopped, vanishing into nothing the way it’d come from. Every single one of my muscles tightened painfully: my jaw clenched so hard I couldn’t open my mouth, my chest felt almost too heavy to breathe. I fell like a chopped tree, rigidly. The top of my head hit the floor. My left arm ached, and I wasn’t entirely sure if it was because I’d fallen on top of it, or because I was about to have a heart attack, or maybe both. And still my muscles spasmed painfully on my neck and back and calves.

  That’s why you don’t force a spell unless you absolutely can’t help it.

  My eyes watered up. I hated that—it’d look like I was crying, like some stupid baby who couldn’t handle what I’d asked for. It was because I couldn’t blink, of course.

  Several people in white-and-gold uniforms reached me at the same time, flipped me on my back, and held me down as if I could threaten them, or even move at all. If it’d happened to someone else, I might’ve found it funny.

  Cassel stood over me. Guess he’d hidden behind his guards all along, because his hair was only slightly mussed. He gred at me with the most dispassionate contempt you can imagine, as if a stray dog had just peed on his shoe, and I didn’t even care because I felt like I was going to die and I wondered if I was really dying after all and

  help help help

  Something smmed against the front doors. At first I thought it was in my head, as if my wind still echoed there. One of the guards turned around, though. That’s all I could see from my position, and of course I couldn’t move enough to take a better look. Then the doors were smmed even harder, and this time I could hear them burst open, as if my wind had come back from the outside—

  —but this wasn’t a desert wind that’d burst upon us. It was the worst stench, like something that’d died in a dark forgotten pce before any of us was born, and had been rotting out of sight all along. You took a single breath of it and you felt it’d never leave your lungs.

  Miasma, of course.

  And all I could think of was the gates shall open by the hand—

  The guards all turned to face the doors, and I guess the greensuits did too; I’m pretty sure some of them reacted in time. I heard them scream as, I supposed, they got hit with deflected spells. And the stench of abattoir got stronger, but I didn’t care because—

  As the guards left my side, Cassel crouched next to me, a hand about to close around my neck—he had his human barrier and he wasn’t about to let it go, you see.

  But it was at that exact time that the power got cut off. The light globes in the ceiling went dim. And I could feel every barrier around Tipilej Awki snapping like a single strand of hair, and a terrible triumphant joy rising like a wave.

  Cassel wasn’t touching me, but he was close enough I could feel him hesitating. This wasn’t a safe pce for him anymore—especially for him, I guess. He tensed like a small scared animal about to escape.

  I was still next to him, though, and I guess he didn’t need his human barrier anymore now he’d lost the spell ones, ‘cause his hand started closing around my neck once more.

  A huge bck thing smmed against him, and both of them rolled out of my sight. The stench of miasma was so overpowering I couldn’t breathe. Tears streamed down my cheeks; I wanted to cough, to clear my throat, but I couldn’t, and I wondered if I was going to suffocate or choke.

  A few steps at my right, Vanth stood up.

  Cassel didn’t.

  broccolifloret