“Are we drinking to our engagement?” he said.
“And what would you add to our house?”
“A pretty face isn’t enough?”
“You’re not that pretty,” she said.
Liaro laughed. “Now you’re just playing,” he said. “If I didn’t bring Ahkio along to the tea house, I’d never lure over an accomplished woman.”
“Liaro has the truth of it,” Meyna said. “Those militia women in the house this morning surely kept you quite busy.”
“I’d give it all up for you,” Ahkio said, and though his tone was playful, his heart fluttered when he said it, because it was true. He would give up a great deal to marry Meyna and her husbands. More than he’d admit.
“Fetch us a drink,” Meyna said warmly. “We’ll discuss it.”
He grinned and pushed away from the table. Liaro called after him, “Don’t fall for it, Ahkio! She says that to everyone!”
Meyna said something less than complimentary in turn.
Ahkio walked around the side of the house and opened the entrance to the cellar. As he started down, something caught his attention. In the dim light of the flame fly lanterns at the front of the house, he saw someone on the porch.
Ahkio hid his hands in his sleeves. He called to the figure. “Welcome, kin. Food, rest, or company?”
The figure raised its head, and Ahkio’s chest tightened.
It was Nasaka, one of the Oras from the Temple of Oma.
The last time an Ora had come for Ahkio, his parents were murdered, and he was saved from a fiery death by his screaming sister and Nasaka’s glowing willowthorn sword.
Nasaka was a lean whip of a woman, well over fifty, hawk-nosed and gaunt, with a firm mouth and broad jaw. She was his aunt – his dead father’s sister – and people often remarked that she and Ahkio bore a resemblance to one another. The resemblance annoyed him. He’d rather look like some useful farmer.
She wore dark colors. Not temple colors. That meant she had traveled without wanting the locals to recognize her as an Ora. The scholarly magician-priests of the temples weren’t well favored in most clans. They dirtied up Dhai politics. As if Dhai politics weren’t dirty enough.
“Just a smoke, I’m afraid,” Nasaka said. “Come sit with me, Ahkio.”
Ahkio hesitated. Dread knotted his stomach. He heard Meyna’s laughter behind him. He wanted to turn around and pretend he had not seen Nasaka at all.
“Has my sister sent for me?” Ahkio asked. He leaned against the porch rail. He, Rhin, Hadaoh, and Meyna had built the railing the year before, when Mey-Mey had started to walk.
Nasaka pinched her fingers to the end of her pipe. A soft glow lit the end of the pipe. She began to puff. She drew her fingers away, shaking off ash. It was a trick Ahkio was surprised the old woman could manage. She was a sinajista, and Sina had been descendent many years. What little power Sina’s gifted still retained wouldn’t amount to much more than calling up a tiny flame or perhaps removing an uncomplicated ward.
“You certain?” Nasaka said, gesturing with the pipe.
“I don’t smoke,” Ahkio said. “You’re thinking of Kirana. How
is
my sister?”
Nasaka exhaled a long plume of smoke. “Your sister is dying,” she said.
Ahkio was glad for the rail then. “You’re wrong,” Ahkio said. “Kirana is Kai, and Kais don’t die without heirs. I’ve spent all morning teaching that to children.”
“Just because a thing has not yet happened does not mean it can never happen,” Nasaka said. “She is dying. And she has summoned you. There is no one else, Ahkio. You knew this day might come.”
“Kirana isn’t going to die,” Ahkio said. Of the two surviving children of the former Kai, Kirana was the one who could channel the power of the satellites. When Tira was ascendant, she could heal the blind and coax a morning star vine to become a sturdy ship’s rigging. The rest of the time, she excelled at talking down disputes among bitter clan-rivals and managing trade negotiations with the Aaldians and Tordinians to the south.
Ahkio taught ethics to the children of shepherds.
Nasaka exhaled more sweet-smelling smoke. It was a foreign blend of cloves, purple hasaen flowers, and Tordinian tobacco, a spicy, not unpleasant scent that clung to the woman night and day: a smell uniquely Nasaka. It put Ahkio in mind of the temples, and another burning, a long time ago.
“I hoped you would marry,” Nasaka said, “a good strong Osono girl or two. It was why I permitted you to leave the temple.”
“Kirana married, and see how happily that turned out. You never got your heirs from her and what’s-his-name.”
“And look where we are because of that. I have a dying Kai and only her weak, irresponsible brother to tap for the seat.”
“My life is
here
,” Ahkio said. He looked into the dim yard. The moons were rising. “I’ve kept house with Meyna and her husbands–”
“Oh, Meyna this, Meyna that,” Nasaka said, and her tone let Ahkio know the low regard she held for her.
“Don’t speak ill of Meyna in her own house.”
“I need you at the temple tonight,” Nasaka said. “Clan Leader Saurika has someone prepared to take over your classes.”
Ahkio thought about telling her no. He thought about running off into the sheep fields. But telling Nasaka no never ended well. He knew that as well as anyone.
“Is she really dying?”
“I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
“Who did it, Nasaka?”
“It’s some illness.”
“Then call some sensitive tirajista who can still channel Tira in decline, and she’ll fix it. Don’t take me for a fool.”
Nasaka sucked at the end of her pipe. The silence stretched. Then, “Whatever her illness, it can’t be cured. It’s gotten worse, Ahkio. I’m sorry. I don’t know how much time she has, and I want you to sit with her before the end.”
Ahkio pressed his hands to his eyes. Took a deep breath. “Was it Tir’s family?” he asked. “Rhin and Hadaoh’s father?”
“I suggest you pack your things and come with me,” Nasaka said. “If it was, then this house is no longer safe for you.”
Ahkio turned away from her. He went back around the house to where his kin had gathered. He could not still his hands. Politics had caught up with him, years after he thought all those terrible days were dead and burned.
The remains of dinner smeared the bowls and plates. Eating sticks and hunks of half-eaten bread littered the table.
Meyna held Mey-Mey, asleep, in her lap. Hadaoh was relating a story about birthing a lamb. Rhin conferred with one of Ahkio’s students, scribbling something in charcoal on the wooden table.
Liaro grabbed at Ahkio’s hand with his rough, calloused fingers. Ahkio had given him blanket consent some time ago, and the unexpected touch calmed him now. Liaro set his black stare on Ahkio.
“Something tells me that Ora isn’t here to propose marriage,” Liaro said, and from the look on Liaro’s face, on everyone’s faces, Ahkio had done nothing to conceal what he felt.
“How did you–”
“I sent him for wine,” Meyna said. “You were dallying. He saw Ora Nasaka. Is it true?”
“Kirana’s summoned me to the temple.”
Meyna cut a look at the house. He wanted to take her smooth, unblemished hands in his. He wanted her to tell him everything would be all right, and she would propose in the morning, and they would be his family now. Kirana was not dying. He wouldn’t be left all alone.
But all Meyna said was “Be careful.”
Rhin and Hadaoh exchanged a look. “We should speak to Yisaoh,” Rhin said.
Their sister, Yisaoh, had contested Ahkio’s mother for the title of Kai just ten years before. Ahkio had thought Meyna inviting him into their house meant the end of all those bad feelings. He was not his mother. But Meyna’s expression had darkened. As Ahkio stood there rubbing his hands, the mood of the table sobered. Whoever had come for his sister would come for him next, he knew. He knew it and still rebelled against it, because to step back into the temple with Nasaka meant she would try to turn him into everything he hated.
“I want to stop the world right here,” Ahkio said aloud. “Just like this.”
“Too late,” Liaro said, and pushed away from the table.
4
Roh drew himself up outside the painted door of the sanisi’s quarters and raised his hand. Fear flooded him, but he held his ground. He had convinced one of the drudges in the kitchens to send him up with the sanisi’s meal of rice and curried yams. Roh found himself salivating over it during the entire climb to the sixth floor. It was well past dinner, but he’d been too excited to eat.
Now he waited with the cooling yams and rice on a tray, both terrified and hopeful that the sanisi would answer. Finding the sanisi in the foyer had been like discovering some mythical being from a ritual retelling come to life. He didn’t know how long the sanisi would stay, but he wasn’t going to give up the opportunity to learn something from him. Or figure out a way to run off to Saiduan with him.
Roh pushed open the door – there were no locks on doors in Dhai – and called, “I’ve brought-”
He looked at his feet as he entered, careful not to trip over the tapestried carpet. He heard something hiss. For a moment, it sounded like a spitting lily, and he wondered how such a dangerous plant had gotten into the temple.
Then he saw the flash of metal, the flurry of movement.
It was a blade.
Roh threw the tray ahead of him and stepped back. The blade met the tray and sliced it in two. Rice and bits of yam spattered the walls, the rug.
Roh rotated his body and crouched low, making himself a smaller, thinner target. He held out his forearms to take the worst of the onslaught and called on Para for aid. It was like drawing air through his skin, air only he could sense, only he could breathe – and power only another parajista could see. His fists tightened. He held the breath of Para there, just beneath his skin. He concentrated on the Litany of the Palisade to construct a shield of air. The air began to condense around him, grow heavy. A brilliant blue mist swirled around him: a blessing. Para was fickle and didn’t always respond when he called. Even now, the shield he wove came together slowly. Far too slowly.
He heard harsh words in Saiduan and peered through his raised arms. The sanisi stared at him, blade pointed at the floor. Roh let go of his breath, but not Para. His knuckles grazed the solid wall of misty blue air in front of him, formed a moment too late.
“Is there no privacy in this country?” the sanisi said in heavily accented Dhai.
Roh straightened. He let go of the litany. The air around him returned to its regular pressure. His ears popped. The blue breath of Para dissipated.
Roh stared at the mess of rice and broken yam pieces scattered across the room. One half of the tray rested near his foot. The other had settled behind the sanisi. Roh imagined that could have been his head. It was a stupid mistake. He should have known better.
“Sorry,” Roh said. “I’m Rohinmey Tadisa Garika, a student of Ora Dasai’s. Forgot about Saiduan privacy. I meant no offense. We’re very open here.”
The sanisi sheathed his blade.
Roh had not gotten a good look at the sanisi back in the foyer. Now that he was up close, he realized he had made a false assumption. The sanisi was tall, far taller than any Dhai, and dark, with twisted rings of black hair knotted close to his head, though it looked like it had been shorn short not many months back. The ends were ragged. It was the sanisi’s face, though, that made Roh pause. The hair that graced the sanisi’s upper lip and the sides of the cheeks was soft and downy. Roh had seen pictures of Saiduan men, and they all had short but noticeable beards.
“Are you a woman?” Roh asked. He used the Saiduan word for “woman”, worried he might be using the wrong pronoun.
The sanisi narrowed her eyes. “I am a good many things, depending on the day.”
“I didn’t think women could become sanisi. I’ve never seen a picture of one.”
“And I’ve never seen a picture of a fool Dhai boy. Yet here you are.”
Roh squared his shoulders. “I know things.”
“What does a petty pacifist know of the empire?”
“I know enough,” Roh said. “I know that’s not an infused weapon. It’s just metal. Sanisi carry infused willowthorn and bonsa and everpine branches, like ours. If I can see that, Ora Dasai will, too.”
“Perhaps I was not always thus,” the sanisi said. “And your elders see less than you suppose.”
Roh pulled at Para. His skin prickled. But Para rebelled. The power of its breath surged through his body, then sputtered out.
The sanisi laughed, a bitter bark. “You try to bowl me over with your little training exercises and you will know the power of the dark star. I have no qualm with incinerating you, mouth-breather.”
“The dark star? No one can draw on Oma. It hasn’t been in the sky in two thousand years.”
“About due then, isn’t it?”
“Why are you here?”
“You’re not the only one who can see things, boy. If your masters learn of your indiscretion, it could be bad for you.”
“I’d like to be a sanisi,” Roh said. “They don’t teach us how to fight here the way you fight. Para will be descendent soon. I won’t have an advantage unless I can fight. Really fight.”
“Advantage against what? Wandering trees and pitcher plants?”
“I need to change my fate,” Roh said.
The sanisi murmured something in Saiduan about foolish boys and bait for wolves. “Your fate?” she said. “That is easy to see. But I’m not here for you.”
“Who are you here for?”
“The Kai.”
“But
I
could go with you! Are you taking novices or–”
“Your speech is exhausting.”
“I just–”
The sanisi half turned away, then reconsidered. “You’re the boy who was with that scullery girl,” she said.
“Who?”
“That crippled girl.”