text: Kuallina lay an hour distant. Lilia saw the bulk of it against the horizon from her perch on the topmost branches of an abandoned bonsa house. Tasia combed the garden below with Laralyn, looking for forgotten tubers or hidden food stores. The fires of the army still burned north of her at the harbor. The gates themselves must be on fire, not just the town, to burn like that over four days.
  
  Lilia climbed down from the tree, breathing easy and free. Four days chewing raw mahuan had made her feel strong, weightless. For the first time in years she was nearly free of pain. Though her stomach cramped and her stool was bloody, she preferred this slow death to the faster one. She made her way carefully back down the side of the tree house, using a ladder made of trained vines. The nights were still cool, but the vines were flowering. They had passed great swaths of purple and white wildflowers on their long walk to Kuallina. Lilia insisted they stay off the road, which took longer. They had to haul Amelia out of a bladder trap. Laralyn nearly lost an eye to a lashing corpse flower. Her vision had gone misty. Tulana broke out into a rash after stumbling into some toxic flower.
  
  Lilia had no illusions about where they were headed, or what their final fate would be. She knew in her heart – knew it and embraced it. She resolved to save nothing for the way back. There was no way back.
  
  "So what is your grand plan?" Tulana said as Lilia kicked off the ladder.
  
  "We need to get into Kuallina first," Lilia said. "You'll need to help with that." In truth, Lilia had no plan. But no one followed a person without a plan. She needed more than compulsion to inspire these women.
  
  "What do you need us for?" Tulana said. "This country is lost."
  
  Lilia glanced over at Tasia where she clawed at the remains of the garden.
  
  "Come inside," Lilia said, and motioned Tulana into the house. The door was unlocked, like all doors in Dhai. Its inhabitants had left in advance of the army.
  
  "I can't draw on Oma anymore," Lilia said. She made herself look at Tulana as she said it, because to do any less would show weakness, and she had never been weaker than in this moment. Saying it aloud made her mournful again. How much differently would this war have gone if she had not burned out? If Taigan was still here?
  
  "Burned out?" Tulana said. Her lip curled. "Is that so?"
  
  "I don't need a lecture."
  
  "I wasn't going to lecture," Tulana said, and her tone changed. It was she who looked away. "You aren't the first arrogant little girl to destroy herself because she thought she didn't need training."
  
  "You're still bound to me. Your ward is still good. You've seen it."
  
  "Indeed I have," Tulana said. Her face crumpled. She wiped her face with her fists, cleared her throat. "There's a very popular story you dajians tell, about servitude. I've seen you playing at it in Dorinah, breaking your own farm implements so you don't have to work. Burning your own crops. Letting giant floxflass nests devour the puppies you're tending. It's an ugly thing, but I'm told you call it resistance, and it gives you some pleasure. It's a thing I'm coming to understand, this delight in destruction of what one has built."
  
  "No more talking," Lilia said. "Doing."
  
  "And how is it you intend to stop me?"
  
  The air vibrated. For a moment, Lilia thought she could see the red mist forming around Tulana, but no. It was just the memory of it, her mind conjuring a vision to pair with the milky air.
  
  "You really have burned yourself out, haven't you?" Tulana said. Whatever she held, she released. The air pressure normalized. It wasn't as if Tulana could move against her. The ward prevented it. But whatever she spun must have been grim. "You think your little dajian refugees love you? Just wait until they find out you're not a god, just some ugly little girl. I can tell you exactly what happens next. You get stoned to death, or thrown off the top of that hulking fortress."
  
  "You don't know anything about Dhai."
  
  "I know they'll eat you alive – they won't even give you the courtesy to wait until death! – if you don't figure out very quickly how to put together an army and hold a position. You've lost Taigan. I worked with Zezili Hasaria, directing legions of women and Seekers against the outer islands, and even the Saiduan. I've seen war. I know it. You'll lose."
  
  "My intention isn't to have you fight a war on their terms," Lilia said.
  
  Tulana crossed her arms. "What are you proposing?"
  
  "You led the Seekers in war."
  
  "Wait now–"
  
  "When we get to Kuallina, I'll need you to train the Oras who will go with us. I need them trained properly, to fight as units, the way they do in Dorinah."
  
  "You'd put me in charge of thousands of gifted?"
  
  "There aren't that many," Lilia said. "I can get the full count, though."
  
  "How many do you think there are?"
  
  "There are only twenty thousand people in Dhai," Lilia said. "Oras? I don't know, but not more than six or eight hundred."
  
  She saw something sorrowful pass over Tulana's face. "What is it?" Lilia asked.
  
  "That's… we'll lose that many in the first day facing that army coming up from the coast."
  
  "We aren't going to stay and fight," Lilia said. The plan was taking shape in her mind as she spoke.
  
  "What will your Kai think of that?"
  
  "It doesn't matter what he thinks," Lilia said. "They won't be following him. They will follow me."
  
  "I have no reason to–"
  
  Lilia thumbed at the ward.
  
  Tulana's knees buckled. She fell. She curled into a ball on the ground. The reaction was so fast, so potent, Lilia released the ward immediately.
  
  Tulana threw up one of her hands. The air got heavy, but nothing happened to Lilia. The ward was too powerful.
  
  "I could kill you now," Lilia said. Her voice was steady. She placed her hands on the table. Her hands were steady.
  
  Tulana huffed out a long breath. The expression she set on Lilia then made Lilia's stomach turn. She had never seen so much hatred in a person's face.
  
  "Aren't you supposed to fuck each other to work out disagreements?"
  
  "Will you do it, or should I kill you here?"
  
  Tulana grimaced. "Don't expect miracles."
  
  "That's exactly what I expect," Lilia said. "The Dhai will look for a miracle to save them. And I will give them a miracle."
  
  Dawn.
  
  The time of miracles.
  
  Lilia chewed mahuan root. Tulana stood beside her, with Voralyn and Amelia just behind, and Laralyn at the back, holding Tasia's hand. They stood on a slight rise looking out at the broad camp of the Tai Mora army. The army had burned out the wooded area for half a mile in every direction and set their camp right on it. Compared to the vast army Lilia had glimpsed when she crossed to the other side, they were a small force, but by Dhai standards, the rows and rows of tents and cook fires were overwhelming, a pustulous plague of at least a thousand, including support personnel. Lilia and the Seekers had hidden from four scouting parties. The scouts were going house to house, killing everyone within and stealing whatever wasn't bolted down.
  
  "Spectacle," Tulana said.
  
  "People fear spectacles," Lilia said. "Spectacles can be shocking." She remembered the smoke that poured over them as they fled from the harbor. A needless spectacle.
  
  "We have no advantage."
  
  "They want Dhai intact," Lilia said. "The less damage, the better. They may be stealing and killing, but they aren't burning out the houses or the gardens, did you notice? Just the roads, and the harbor gate. It's why they sent smoke after us but not fire. They aren't here to pillage. They're going to make this their home."
  
  Tulana tugged at her coat. "No one will agree to your plan. No one in their right mind would destroy their own country."
  
  "It's just things," Lilia said. "Not people. If we destroy what they came for, we thwart them, don't we?"
  
  "You need some adults to knock sense into you."
  
  "Once we get to the clearing, you need to–"
  
  "I remember," Tulana said. "We'll do it.
  
  "There won't be much time before–"
  
  "This isn't my first tumble, girl," Tulana said. "Trickery won't get you far."
  
  "It only needs to get me past the army," Lilia said.
  
  They had discussed a route around the army, endlessly, but the army was running patrols now, keeping anyone from coming into or going out of the massive protective parajista barriers that had been deployed around the hold. The refugees caught outside the walls of Kuallina but inside the parajista barrier could see eye to eye with the Tai Mora while they slept.
  
  Lilia stepped away from them. She was wrapped in a bubble of Para's breath deployed by Amelia. She walked unchallenged to the edge of the camp, heart pounding. There was no mistaking what she was now. They would know her the moment they saw her.
  
  And they did.
  
  She strode out past the trees, holding a blazing willowthorn weapon aloft, infused by Voralyn while they waited on the rise overlooking the ramp.
  
  "Disperse!" Lilia said, and she could not imagine what she looked like in that moment; some twisted, mad figure, holding a flaming brand. "Disperse or my army will rout you!"
  
  As they had at Liona, the Seekers amplified her voice. It rolled over the camp like some thunderous god's.
  
  Heads looked up from campfires, and peered out from tents. The army scrambled, a hive of angry bees. A horde of them attacked her outright. She held her ground. Did not budge as they swarmed her barrier.
  
  "Get the jistas!" someone yelled.
  
  Infused weapons uncurled from their wrists. The last time Lilia saw a weapon like that, it was hacking up her mother's body.
  
  She strode further into the camp. The huff of air around her pushed away the crowd of soldiers before they could reach her. "Those who stand will meet the wrath of my army," Lilia yelled, and she felt profoundly foolish for a long moment. She sounded like a fool from some dramatic Dorinah opera.
  
  Then came the illusion.
  
  It winked into existence on the other side of Kuallina, a shimmering oval mirror half the size of the fortress, bleeding red light across the whole field. Lilia squinted into it. It was far brighter than she anticipated. The bloody light lit the whole field. It was then that they believed. It was then that they cowered.
  
  How many other worlds were in play, now? She didn't know. They didn't either. She could be anyone, from anywhere, with as much power as she pretended.
  
  But not for long.
  
  "Jistas!"
  
  A buffet of air smashed into her protective shield. She felt it vibrate. How long Laralyn held it… well, the Seekers would not sob if she died terribly in this moment.
  
  The mirror illusion trembled. Red light burst across the field, and inside the face of the mirror was a foreign landscape – a Dorinah one, most likely, considering its maker – and a vast army decked in Dorinah armor and red plumes so realistic that Lilia feared for a long moment it was real, and that the Seekers had tricked her.
  
  But the edges of the illusion shimmered. She knew it for what it was, so she pushed on, weapon raised, yelling at them about the mighty power of her army.
  
  The lines nearest the mirror broke. She saw them turn. She screamed louder, flashing the sword about like it was the thing controlling the vast army about to crush them.
  
  "Regroup!"
  
  She heard it from the same direction as the mirror. "Regroup!"
  
  Flags went up, great red and blue and purple standards waving left, right twice, then three times. The massive army peeled away from Lilia.
  
  She swung her weapon again, flat out at her left side, the signal for the Seekers to advance.
  
  Lilia did not wait to see if the Seekers broke from the trees to follow her, but strode purposefully across the scattered camp.
  
  Every cry of "Jistas!" made her stomach knot, but she went on. They would uncover the ruse any moment. Once the jistas were assembled they would be able to see it and untangle it.
  
  She hurried. Members of the army ran into her barrier, and fell back, shocked. She could see their faces now, faces of every shape and hue. Tall men, broad-shouldered women, scraggly youths, even children and camp followers, their hair braided nearly as intricately as a Dorinah's. Some of the camp followers wore leather chokers, and she wondered if they were slaves, but the army was, no doubt, free. Fighting willingly because not fighting meant dying under a burning star on a doomed world.
  
  Would Lilia have died over there, or would she have fought? In some other world she was camped here among these people, fleeing certain death.
  
  "I would have fought!" she yelled, aloud, and realized that much of what she'd been thinking she'd been spouting out at the people rushing around her.
  
  When she came to the other side of the camp, her throat was sore, and her feet ached. She needed a hunk of mahuan root. She dug about for one in her bag.
  
  The barrier around her shook. She saw a man on the other side hacking at her shield with a great infused blade. Blue light sparked from the weapon. She stared at him from her side of the barrier, fascinated, like watching some deadly animal worry at a cage.
  
  What would she do, when he burst through?
  
  She put the mahuan root into her mouth and chewed slowly while contemplating his efforts. He did not look like the Tai Mora. He was broad and flat-featured, with sallow skin and curly black hair knotted in white ribbons. He looked very hungry. And his eyes…
  
  Lilia stepped forward, to the edge of the barrier, and peered at him. He hacked directly at the barrier in front of her face. She did not flinch.
  
  "Do your worst," she whispered. "I am going to outlast you."
  
  "Jistas!"
  
  A flurry of flags, again.
  
  Now that she was close enough to the barrier around Kuallina, she saw curious Dhai peering at her. She shifted her attention to them.
  
  Another soldier ran by, grabbing the one assaulting her, and they plunged back toward the illusion of the mirror.
  
  Lilia walked right up to the edge of the barrier around Kuallina.
  
  Tulana came up behind her, tall and regal in the afternoon light. "You sold that spectacularly," she said. "I think they feared you more than whatever was going to come out of that mirror."
  
  Lilia did not say that desperation and madness were sisters, that one often led to the other. She just nodded, and called to the people on the other side of the parajista barrier.
  
  "I am Lilia Sona!" she said, and Tulana raised her hand, palm up, and the voice carried. "I've come back from the walls of the harbor with a message for the Kai."
  
  "I can try and force it open," Laralyn said, glancing back the camp. The mirror image was still pouring fake soldiers onto the field, but it would not be much longer before the army realized they were merely illusions.
  
  "Hold," Lilia said. "If we fight them, they'll see us as the enemy."
  
  She almost laughed, and had to cover her mouth. The enemy. What did that mean, anymore?
  
  The parajistas opened a sliver in the barrier and let them through. Someone in there must have vouched for her. Ghrasia, maybe. Lilia stumbled on the other side. Tulana caught her arm, and kept her upright as waves of refugees swarmed forward. Lilia stiffened, suddenly terrified they would tear her apart for losing them the harbor.
  
  "Faith!" they called. "Faith! Faith!"
  
  They raised their hands and their voices. The chant rolled out across the disheveled swarms of people camped all around the hold. As she walked forward, they did not overtake her, but moved out of her way. Children ran to the front.
  
  Tasia came from Laralyn's side and grabbed her hand. She gazed up at her with wide, awestruck eyes. "Are you really Faith Ahya?" she said.
  
  Lilia did not answer. She moved through the crowd until she saw a woman so familiar it brought tears to her eyes. She came up short, thinking she was imagining her.
  
  "Emlee," Lilia said.
  
  The old woman clucked at her and moved toward her from the crowd. She looked terribly frail, but when Lilia took her hand, Emlee's grip was firm and warm. "What have you done out here? What's happened to you?"
  
  "I was trying to save people."
  
  "How can a child do that, when she has not yet saved herself?" Emlee said.
  
  "I didn't think you'd come. I thought you were dead."
  
  "I nearly was. The rest of us followed after you, eventually. Got caught up in the madness at Liona. I'm not much of a healer without my people. And there are plenty of us here now."
  
  "What's been happening?" Lilia asked. For the first time in many weeks, she felt like a child again. It was comforting, looking to the adults for answers.
  
  "They say there's another army coming, from Liona. Not ours."
  
  "How is that possible?"
  
  "Does Gian know you're alive, or Cora?"
  
  Lilia shook her head. "I haven't seen them. Do you know–"
  
  "Inside," Emlee said, and her expression darkened. "Gian went inside at the head of the first wave. She said you were dead. It's been yelled all through camp for days. She has the Catori's ear, now."
  
  Lilia frowned. "I'm sure she'll be pleased to see me."
  
  "I'm sure," Emlee said, and she squeezed Lilia's hand when she said it, but it was not a reassuring grip. It was a knowing one. "You are very deep into this, Lilia," she continued softly. "Where is your sanisi?"
  
  "It's all very complicated," Lilia said. "Will you come inside with me?"
  
  "No, my work is here," Emlee said. "But when the call started I wanted to see… I wanted to make sure it was you. The true one."
  
  Lilia made her way to the gates. The sally port was open, letting supply carts through to feed those scattered outside, but there were eight militia guarding the single entry, ensuring those outside didn't come in.
  
  As she approached, the sea of refugees parting before her, the militia straightened. Gaped.
  
  "Take me to Ghrasia Madah," she said. "I'm Lilia Sona. She will know who I am."
  
  Silence. Confused looks. Finally, the nearest one said, "Ghrasia is not here. Catori Mohrai is in charge of Kuallina."
  
  "Then take me to her. She'll know who I am, too."
  
  "Our orders are–"
  
  "Should I tell these people you won't admit me?" Lilia said. "Should I tell them Oma's most gifted jista is being kept at the gate?" She thought to make a threat to use Oma against them, but with Tulana and the other Seekers behind her, it felt even crueler. Empty words. Empty threats. Without access to Oma, her power rested entirely with the people behind her, and power like that, so difficult to gain, was very easy to lose.
  
  They took her inside, and across the crowded courtyard. The Dhai from the surrounding clans had been given access to the interior of Kuallina. They wore the shorter haircuts and uniform clothing of residents. Lilia felt a needling annoyance at that. She suspected many of the Dhai from the camp had arrived here ahead of the locals, but would not have been permitted past the gates.
  
  She told Tulana and the others to stay in the yard with Tasia, though Tasia begged to go up with her. "You can look for your parents here," Lilia said, and gave Laralyn a long look. Laralyn grimaced, but took the girl's hand and pulled her away. If Tasia's parents survived, they would be here. Lilia was uncertain of the likelihood of that. She had no idea about losses yet.
  
  Two militia escorted her upstairs into the heart of the hold. Kuallina was an old hold, built the same way as the temples. When Lilia put her hands to the walls she could almost feel it breathe.
  
  She had thought Liona felt crowded, stuffed far past capacity, but that was nothing compared to Kuallina. The sheer weight of humanity around her was stifling. She was irritable, claustrophobic, but she could breathe and walk more or less straight, with just a little dragging of her bad leg, and that was something. She pulled the wad of mahuan pulp from her mouth and put it into her pocket. Her head was starting to swim.
  
  They ushered her into a little room, more like a storage closet, and told her to wait. For the first time, Lilia felt some trepidation. Was she a criminal, now? Was this prison?
  
  She paced, walking around the room in a discrete circle, running through her argument again and again.
  
  The door opened thirty minutes later. Mohrai pushed in, mouth firm. "What do you want?" she said. "I thought you were dead at the wall."
  
  "I need to speak to Ghrasia," Lilia said. "If you plan to hold up here, the plan is flawed."
  
  "Ghrasia is dead," Mohrai said. "She died at Liona."
  
  "What?"
  
  "Liona has fallen," Mohrai said. "We have two armies coming directly here. The one from the harbor and the one from Dorinah, the one that breached Liona."
  
  "We can't stay here," Lilia said. "I brought Seekers with me. They are trained in war. We can use them as a diversion to plot a course to the Woodland, but we must destroy everything behind us. If we burn out the stores in Kuallina and the clans, we leave them nothing to live on. If we–"
  
  "The Kai is coming here by Lift. He'll be here within the hour. He'll decide how much of your nonsense is worth listening to. I told him not to send you to the harbor. I told him I–"
  
  "Then I will take the Dhai from the camps," Lilia said, not wanting to argue in this little room. "I will take them west, into the Woodland. The army won't be able to follow us there. They can try to burn us out, but the geography–"
  
  "We won't all become refugees like you," Mohrai said. "This is our home. You wouldn't understand that."
  
  "It's my home too."
  
  "Is it? Are you certain?"
  
  Lilia firmed her jaw. "My plan would have worked," she said. "You were in charge of the harbor, and it fell. It was nothing to do with me. The Oras were untrained. The militia was not ready. And we still don't know why they attacked as soon as they did. Their emissary was still at Oma's Temple. Not even you suspected an attack without warning."
  
  "We'll never know, will we?" Mohrai said. "Ahkio was a fool to send you to the harbor, and we were foolish to listen to you. If we–"
  
  "Don't blame me for this," Lilia said.
  
  Mohrai said, "Things are exceedingly grim here, and you–"
  
  "Catori?" said someone outside the door. "The Kai is here."
  
  "Stay here," Mohrai said, and shut the door.
  
  Lilia leaned against the far wall and slid to the floor. Her fate was in the hands of someone else, again. She did not like these talks. Talking, talking, when what she wanted, what she needed, was to act.
  
  It was more than an hour before someone came for her, and then she suspected they might just feed her, or kick her out. It was a young novice. Lilia recognized her – she was a companion of the Kai.
  
  "I'm Caisa," she said. "The Kai has asked you up."
  
  But they did not go up, they went down to a broad dining room where the Kai stood, his back to the windows – a foolish position, Lilia thought – as well as Mohrai, and half a dozen faces she did not recognize.
  
  "What happened?" the Kai asked.
  
  Lilia told him. Not just their original plan, and what happened at the wall, but how she had escaped, and awed the army into letting her through. What she didn't tell him was that she had burned out. If she told him that, she feared Mohrai would throttle her right on the table. When she was finished, he did not look at her, but the vast map of Dhai on the table.
  
  Into the silence, Mohrai said, "I really think–"
  
  "Give me a moment, Mohrai," he said.
  
  Lilia wanted to clasp and unclasp her hands again, but stilled them. She stood as straight as she could.
  
  "I have a plan for Kuallina," Lilia said.
  
  He barked a laugh. "Do you?"
  
  "I'm not a seer," Lilia said. "I'm a strategist. I didn't anticipate that they would attack us while they had an emissary at Oma's Temple. I thought we could act first. But they thought the same. It was a matter of who moved fastest. We couldn't get the sinajistas to the wall in time to build the warded spells to attach to the boats. We needed more time, and we did not have it."
  
  "You didn't tell me about this plan," he said. "I could have… delayed the emissary."
  
  "Do you trust every person around you?" Lilia said. She did not point fingers at those in the room, but Lilia had already met a lot of travelers, a lot of shadows. If there were none in his inner circle, she would be inordinately surprised. "If any of us sent you word, it could have been intercepted."
  
  "Ghrasia is dead," he said. He voice broke.
  
  "I know," Lilia said.
  
  "And half of Asona. We've lost–"
  
  Lilia raised her voice. "And we'll lose more if we sit here waiting for that second army," she said.
  
  "There are injured," Mohrai said. "Sick people, elders, children. You want to take those all into the Woodland, for your fool plan?"
  
  "They'll die if you keep them here. Do you want to lose everyone here, or just a few?"
  
  "You're a cold person," the Kai said.
  
  "You're not cold enough," she said. "It's why we're here. What happened with the emissary? Why did they attack?"
  
  The Kai raised a hand. "Mohrai, Caisa, the rest of you, leave us for a moment."
  
  "Ahkio," Mohrai said.
  
  "Just… leave us."
  
  Lilia tried to hide her surprise. She'd expected to be thrown in the storage closet, or fed to the army.
  
  But the room cleared out, as he asked. She stood alone with him in the broad room with its streaming light and horrifying view of the burned-out plain and the camping army.
  
  "What are you?" he said. Cold. Keen eyes.
  
  "I told you–"
  
  "What. Are. You?"
  
  "My mother hid me here," she said. "I was very young. I thought it was a dream. She opened a way between my world, the one with the burnt sky, and this one. I've lived here my whole life. They hid hundreds of omajista children here, the resistance. There's a resistance on the other side, though I haven't met many of them. Gian–" but it was the wrong Gian she wanted to tell him about, so she swallowed her words. "The woman who brought me here was one. I went to the other side to find my mother, just before we came here. They were building a great mirror there to keep the way between their world and ours open, and I destroyed it with the help of a Dorinah legionnaire. I killed my own mother there, too, when I did it. It was the only way." Her voice rose. "I killed my own mother, and I'm just like them now. I'm everything Dhai hates. I can see how you look at me, and you should. You should look at me that way. But who better to fight them than me? They took everything from me. They will take everything from you, too, if you let them."
  
  Silence.
  
  She swallowed hard. He turned away from her, and gazed long out the window at the army.
  
  "I agree with you that we'll lose if we fight them," he said. "Not just this war, but the one for who we are in the future, too. If all that's left of us is the fighters, the killers, what kind of society will they build? I don't want to save the strongest, the most ruthless of us. I want to save the smartest, the most compassionate, the very best of us. Do you understand?"
  
  She moved forward to the short end of the table, so she could hear him better. His voice was so low. "If you hold them here, they will all die," Lilia said. "The way we did at the harbor."
  
  "Mohrai will hold the bulk of the militia here," he said, "and most of the Oras. You'll have some novices, and those Dorinahs you brought with you."
  
  "I understand."
  
  "You're going to need a distraction to get past that army."
  
  "I've thought of that," she said.
  
  "Another illusion?"
  
  "No one falls for an illusion twice," she said. "They'll anticipate that now."
  
  "You should go before the second army gets here."
  
  "I can't," Lilia said. "It's better if there's a second army, because it means we'll have someone to invite to dinner."
  
  "What?"
  
  "You're going to invite their leader to dinner," Lilia said, "and tell her that we surrender."