text: Taigan sailed into Anjoliaa at the stern of a broad Aaldian ship. She held onto the rigging and leaned out over the sea, inhaling the musky reek of the harbor. After the mess in Dhai, Anjoliaa appeared, on first blush, untouched. But as the ship neared the port, Taigan caught her first whiff of fear. The docks were crowded – not just dock workers and fishmongers and slaves, but citizens of every class, in every state of distress. Men with tattered vestments and calloused hands. Women with muddied robes and frayed hair. Ataisa in their long trousers and tunics coming apart at the knees and elbows. Children who should have been veiled, running about with little more than scarves on their heads. All shared the same hungry faces, and wide, panicked eyes. Taigan supposed that was a good sign, that they still had the energy for panic, but as she peered deeper into the crowds she saw the listless ones packing the dark corners, their eyes glazed over and all hope gone.
  
  They sat with hands outstretched, babies in their arms so dehydrated and malnourished they'd ceased to cry. What remained of her people had come to Anjoliaa to die, pressed against the sea by the Tai Mora. She imagined that when the end came, the sea would turn red with their blood.
  
  Taigan watched the faces of the Aaldian crew. Most Aaldians were dark people, gray or green eyed, with hemp-stained hair coiled into elaborate dreadlocks, and broad, flat faces. She knew them to be a fractious but largely peaceful people, yet as the clawing hands of the desperate Saiduan came for the side of the ship, the captain did not hesitate, but leapt across the deck and gave orders for her crew to beat them back with the mallets at their hips.
  
  Taigan slung her pack over her shoulder and hopped from the stern to the pier. She landed hard. The crowd around her scattered. Hungry children covered their eyes. She still looked the part of the sanisi, even after all this time in exile.
  
  One of the men on the pier offered to sell his youngest child to the Aaldians in payment for passage. Taigan glanced back once, just in time to see the look of disgust on the captain's face.
  
  "We're not slavers or cannibals," the Aaldian said. "We deal cleanly or not at all."
  
  Of course, if he'd offered her a corpse or a pint of blood, she would have considered it a fair trade. Morals were funny things. Moving among so many different people, over so many different times, Taigan could take none of them seriously.
  
  She enjoyed a clear walk up the pier for a few paces until the crowd got used to her, then she had to resort to shoving them out of the way. Hunger and desperation always overcame fear, in the end.
  
  Taigan made her way away from the pier, and the crowd thinned out. She suspected many Saiduan had already fled to neighboring islands, or gone east to the far continents, or south to Hrollief. Every people had its breaking point, and she suspected that the flight of the Patron from Harajan to Anjoliaa had been a clear sign that the time for stubborn national pride was over.
  
  She made her way to a tea house. The insistence on paying customers meant it was less packed than the streets, but the atmosphere was no less fearful. Groups of men and ataisa spoke together in low tones. It was not until she was halfway across the room that she noted she had come in the wrong entrance – the women's entrance had been on her right. Of course, she didn't expect any of them to try pulling off her trousers to combat her claim, at this point. She was whatever she said she was. She expected a good number of the men and ataisa were women dressing the part in an effort to avoid too many questions. She tapped at the front counter until the proprietor came up from the back.
  
  "I'm Taigan," she said.
  
  The proprietor was a plump, heavily bearded man. He looked her up and down once, but didn't challenge her. "Of course. This way, please."
  
  He led her up a twisted set of steps, a long hall, and then up another narrow flight. He knocked.
  
  "Taigan, your Eminence," the man said.
  
  The door opened.
  
  Maralah stood in the narrow frame. She was much thinner. Taigan saw it most in her face, as the rest of her was heavily swathed in several layers of dark robes. She wore blue and violet, not sanisi black. Taigan saw the glowing hilt of her violet weapon sticking up from a slit in the back of her clothing, and her boots were the same. Her hair was newly braided, glossy, as if she'd just had it done.
  
  Taigan stepped toward her, thinking to say something witty about how hard it must be to find a good Anjoliaan hairdresser with the city in disarray.
  
  Maralah put a knife through her gut.
  
  Taigan huffed out a breath. The tea shop proprietor squeaked and ran back down the stairs.
  
  Taigan leaned against the wall, clutching her bleeding stomach. "Was that necess–"
  
  Maralah took Taigan by the collar and hauled her into the room. Taigan instinctively called on Oma and pulled a skein of breath beneath her skin. But even as she prepared a defense, the ward on her back burned, and her hold on Oma vanished. She snarled.
  
  Maralah flung her against the wall. Taigan crumpled, curling in on herself. Maralah stabbed her in the face, through her right cheek. Stabbed her chest. Taigan flung out her arms. Maralah cut her open like a stuck pig. Taigan screamed.
  
  Maralah cut open Taigan's stomach and yanked out her intestines. Even as she did, the wound she'd inflicted in Taigan's face began to hiss and bubble and heal. Maralah sweated and seethed. She hacked and pulled. She cut out Taigan's liver and flung it across the room. She drove her knife into the lying, duplicitous woman's heart, yes, woman, she could see the breasts now that the clothes were ripped and torn and bloodied. Taigan the abomination. Taigan the impossible. Taigan who could not die.
  
  Taigan's intestines began to coil back into her body. Maralah pulled her infused weapon from her back. She cut off Taigan's left leg, then the right. Cut off both arms. Sliced her head in two. She called on Sina and burned the mangled, shredded body to a charred ruin.
  
  She dropped her weapon, then, and sagged to the floor, breathing heavily. She leaned against the large trunk at the end of the bed and watched the seething, blackened ruin pull its fleshy pieces back together. Hunks of charred meat drew together to form the torso. The liver remained on the other side of the room, but the rest of the pieces fused back together and began to reknit themselves, like something from a nightmare. She watched the husk become a human-shaped glob again. The whole meaty mess trembled, then spasmed. Gasped. The spine arched back. Screaming. Screaming. Screaming. Unending.
  
  The char flaked away from the skin, revealing a fresh new layer of a deep russet brown. The body regenerated in a matter of minutes, and came back smooth and hairless as a newborn babe.
  
  The screaming stopped. Taigan stared at the ceiling, huffing deep breaths, and flexing her hands.
  
  Maralah tugged at the ward she'd imbedded in Taigan so long ago, and felt it respond. The ward was intact, then, bound to the flesh firmly. How lucky for them both. Her body felt heavy. She held her weapon loosely, legs splayed, just staring at Taigan, wondering at all the choices that had brought her here.
  
  "Rajavaa is dead," Maralah said.
  
  He had been dead for two days, but this was the first time she had said it aloud. He sat in the bathroom at the end of the hall, the body preserved in salt. She'd thought to preserve him for Taigan, thought if she could resurrect him twice a day she could save the higher functions of his brain. But by the twentieth time she resurrected Rajavaa on this long trip to Anjoliaa, she had brought back only a gibbering shell, a non-person, a sack of meat. Even if Taigan had come a week sooner, she'd only have preserved the body – a breathing vegetable.
  
  "Everyone dies," Taigan said, and laughed. She laughed and laughed until it came out a hacking cough. She turned onto her side and hacked up gobs of blood onto the floor.
  
  "You failed me," Maralah said.
  
  Taigan spit bloody bile. "I've failed a lot of people."
  
  "You were not allowed to fail me."
  
  "Allowed?" Taigan said. "What a vain, power mad woman you are, to believe your desires shape the world."
  
  "Desire is the only thing that shapes the world."
  
  "The gods shape the world. Not you. Not me. Only the gods." Taigan pointed to the sky. "Only the heavens."
  
  "We are the instruments of the gods."
  
  "You believe that?"
  
  "Yes."
  
  "More fool you."
  
  She lifted her weapon. "I will cut you up again."
  
  "You were not the first," Taigan said. She sat up and winced, as if her new skin were still tender. She rested against the wall, breathing heavily. "I expect you won't be the last."
  
  "How old are you, Taigan? How many Patrons have you watched die and ascend? How many empires?"
  
  "What is age, really? Time." Taigan's gaze rolled up to the ceiling. "In my village, when I was very young, we still knew of Oma. Oma was not a myth. Oma was the dark god. The vengeful god. Oma was the god who cursed me."
  
  "How long, Taigan?"
  
  "Hundreds of years, likely," she said. "Give or take."
  
  Maralah stared at her, this hairless freak, this monstrous omajista who had shown up at the Patron's court twenty years before with stories of Oma's rising. Alaar's predecessor had thought her mad. Alaar had not.
  
  "Why did you betray Alaar?"
  
  "Alaar, huh," Taigan snorted. "A weak Patron for a time that needed a strong one. He was not right for what was coming. You know that now, but you didn't then. I did."
  
  "You would have killed him."
  
  "Of course. Just as you did."
  
  "I didn't."
  
  "You allowed him to die. It's the same thing."
  
  They sat for several breaths in silence. Taigan said, "What next?"
  
  Maralah had spent the last month asking herself that very question. She had gone over possibilities again and again, coming up with terrible answers, each more empty than the last.
  
  "There is no hope in Saiduan," she said. "What remained of the army, and the last of the sanisi, were killed in Harajan."
  
  "You took no force with you?"
  
  "I was betrayed."
  
  "Ah."
  
  She grimaced at the way Taigan said it, like it was an inevitability. "Some say what remains of the more powerful families are making bids for Patron. But most are simply fleeing now, like gnats."
  
  "I expected you to fight in Anjoliaa."
  
  She laughed bitterly. "With what? These filthy refugees, throwing roof tiles? There is no army. What little order they have here is orchestrated by the city guard, and they're beyond corrupt. More and more flee each day. Soon the city will run itself, right into the sea."
  
  "If you have no use for me," Taigan said, "release me."
  
  "After all this? No."
  
  "There is hope, still."
  
  "Not here."
  
  "In Dhai."
  
  "With the maggots? I thought you hated them. And where is your little worldbreaker, eh? All the omajistas you promised me."
  
  Taigan shrugged. "You summoned me before I was done."
  
  "You left them in Dhai."
  
  "The Tai Mora offered them a peaceful resolution, before they burned the harbor. How many peaceful offers did they make us?"
  
  "Do they feel that bad about killing themselves?"
  
  "I think they wanted Dhai untouched, in a way they did not with Saiduan. They came here to destroy, but they are going to Dhai to occupy it. The final battle will not be fought in Saiduan. It will be fought in Dhai."
  
  "You want me to release you so you can go back to Dhai? You'll run off to some fishing village, like a coward." Like her. Staying in Anjoliaa meant death, being run through against the sea. She knew it. Taigan knew it. But calling Taigan a coward was easier than calling herself one.
  
  Taigan shrugged. "Do what you will. When you are dead, the ward is released. If you want to die here, that suits me very well, too. I have a lot of patience."
  
  "Why did you fail me?"
  
  "The task you gave me was to find a worldbreaker so we could close the way between the worlds. But we had yet to understand how to do that. I think the Dhai know. We need both to succeed."
  
  "Give up everything and throw our lot in with the Dhai? Is that what you're saying?"
  
  "You do what you like. I ask only that you release me."
  
  "No."
  
  "Very well."
  
  They sat in silence for some time more. Maralah was aware of the murmuring noise from the street, and the steady drip, drip of a leaky pipe somewhere in the guts of the building below her.
  
  She got to her feet. Sheathed her blade. "Get yourself a room." She tossed Taigan a couple of coins. "And new clothes."
  
  Taigan stood, naked, and went to the door. "For the love of the empire, Taigan, put on something." She grabbed one of Rajavaa's robes and threw it to her.
  
  Taigan dutifully pulled it on, staring at Maralah the whole time. She opened the door. Left her in silence.
  
  Maralah wasn't sure how she'd expected to feel, on seeing Taigan, on punishing her for her transgressions. She had won something, surely, by getting her unkillable healer back, but she had no worldbreakers, no Patron, and no army. Just she and Taigan, and Kovaas downstairs, drinking his sorrow from a deep cup. They had all looked to her, and she had failed them again and again. The Tai Mora no doubt knew what she was only now beginning to realize: the Tai Mora had won. Saiduan was dust, like the Dhai before them, and the Talamynni before them, and on and on, back and back for how long, how many cycles?
  
  All she had to choose now was how she wanted to end it.
  
  A knock at the door. The blackest part of the night, when Maralah slept the least. She reached for the long dagger at her bedside.
  
  "Announce yourself."
  
  "Kovaas."
  
  She had no light, but he had brought a lantern with him. She held tightly to her dagger, because the light was blinding, and she thought perhaps he'd come to end it. She saw he had a steaming bowl of something in one hand.
  
  "You'll sleep better if you eat," he said.
  
  "Are you a nursemaid now?"
  
  "It would make for a pleasing change of profession. What are you?"
  
  "Not a War Minister, that's certain." She took the bowl. It was warm, which was nice, because the chill she had seeped into her bones. It was curried rice and fish heads. It smelled divine. "Where did you get this?"
  
  "I have my ways."
  
  "You cooked it yourself?"
  
  "Killing is not all I'm good at."
  
  She broke apart the flatbread tucked into the edge of the bowl and ate with her hands. Her stomach murmured.
  
  "Rumor says the Tai Mora are four, five days out," he said.
  
  "The city's been quieter."
  
  "A few have joined with the local guard, put up defenses. But I suspect those won't last. There's a very vocal group that wants to surrender."
  
  "They've seen what the Tai Mora do to towns that surrender." Well, perhaps they hadn't. But she had. It was no different than what they did to cities that fought. Perhaps the fighters died more quickly.
  
  "And what will you do?" he asked.
  
  "Don't know," she said. "You?"
  
  "You should lead them," he said. "It would be a fine change of profession."
  
  She wiped the bowl clean and stood. She poured water from a pitcher into the basin on her night stand and washed her fingers, considering. "They won't follow a woman."
  
  "You're not a woman. You're the Minister of War."
  
  "I've been around and around this dozens of times."
  
  "Sometimes our stories erase women who lead," he said. "It doesn't mean it never happened, only that we refuse to remember. There are folk stories of–"
  
  "There are folk stories about men who turn into bees," she said. "There are stories of time-traveling dogs and shepherds with wings. They won't follow a woman." She sat back down next to him.
  
  "I did," he said. In the dim light, broad shadows played across his heavily bearded face. The beard made his expression hard to read. Big, bright eyes, broad, generous face. A face she had brought back from death – for loyalty, if nothing else.
  
  "You followed Rajavaa," she said. "Not me."
  
  "I followed you. Not Alaar, not Rajavaa, not Morsaar. You, Maralah."
  
  She pressed her hand to his cheek. He leaned into her touch. "I'm tired of fighting," she said.
  
  "Then let's not fight," he said.
  
  She pressed her lips to his, and he responded in kind. Not urgent or demanding, but gentle. The kindness of the kiss was so unexpected that it lit her up like a torch. When was the last time she had been touched with kindness? They made love in the cool evening like much younger people. She had been past the age at which she concerned herself with pregnancy for some time, but had not been able to take advantage of it. The freedom it gave her was nothing short of miraculous. Kovaas drank her like a thirsty man, as if she was the last woman in the world, and perhaps, tonight, that was what they were – the last two sanisi in Anjoliaa, drunk on the inevitability of death. But not yet, not yet…
  
  After, he lay sprawled beside her, breathing low and soft, and she traced the broad scars on his back and wished they had met under some better circumstance. But Maralah the Minister of War would not have taken another sanisi to bed. The politics of that were too great. She would have relied on celibacy or hungry young men from the villages. Never equals. Never potential rivals. She had not lived this long by acting like a foolish girl. Yet here she was.
  
  She thought of Rajavaa's body in the tub. And Taigan in the room below. She wondered if Taigan had heard them. Taigan, more broken than any of them.
  
  Kovaas rolled over. Caught her hand in his, drew it to his breast. "Will we part tomorrow, then?"
  
  "Or tonight, under cover of dark?"
  
  "They will follow you, Maralah."
  
  "And you?"
  
  "You know my answer."
  
  "Even if I am a woman without title who leads no army and holds no power? You find that interesting?"
  
  "You will always have power. Over an empire, a village, an army, or perhaps just over a man."
  
  "Sentimental," she said, but she wrapped him in her arms, and rested her face on this broad chest, and, for the first time in weeks, considered a future that did not end in death.