text: Taigan had seen many strange things in his extended life on this strange world, but the great half-severed ark jutting up from what was once the stronghold of Kuallina was among the most impressive in his memory.
  
  He had meant to make his way directly to Oma's Temple, but he had been close enough to Kuallina on his ride up that when the mountain fell from the sky, the tremors took him from his stolen mount. The terrified creature wisely ran in the opposite direction while Taigan found his footing on the newly buckled turf. That slowed him down considerably.
  
  This far inland, he found more Tai Mora soldiers, including many clearly recruited from countries beyond Tai Mora. That made his journey far easier. He murdered a soldier who was about his height and tugged on the ill-fitting uniform. This let him release his glamor, which had increasingly become an annoyance.
  
  While he still got looks along the road, riding the Tai Mora bear outfitted in the red and purple livery of whatever guard or regiment he was supposed to be from, a simple hazing ward made it more difficult for them to recall him. A neat little trick, the hazing ward. They had the added bonus of being nearly impossible to detect by another jista unless they actively sought it out. That scullery girl's mother had been clever to use it.
  
  The mountain intrigued him. The stir of soldiers around the area drew him in. He left his bear corralled with others and took up a perch in a collapsed heap of bonsa trees to oversee the activity.
  
  The double helix of the suns had begun to set. From where he sat, the suns cast the looming shadow of the mountain over his position. The air cooled quickly as the light was drenched from the world. From this vantage he observed that the mountain was an organic ship of some kind, like those sailed by the Aaldians, but fully enclosed, as if meant to travel underwater – or through the air, he supposed, as this one clearly had. He wondered if omajistas had hurled the thing through the rent in the sky. Creating a tear that large and moving an object of that size would have taken a good deal of power and resourcefulness. And clearly not all of the ark had made it intact. The top of it was shorn neatly, as if the gate had closed too soon behind it.
  
  As he observed the comings and goings of the soldiers setting up the perimeter, he saw a tear open in an area designated for such travel just below. It was staked off by itself, the boundary set with red-painted stones warning others not to tread into the space for fear of being suddenly split apart like the ark.
  
  A woman came through; tall and lean, wide in the shoulders, with a long sloping nose and the dead-eyed stare Taigan had always associated with Maralah. Several soldiers hurried to her side once she cleared the stone circle, including a broad-hipped woman in a long red robe that would have marked her an omajista even if Taigan had not seen the subtle play of the satellite's breath around her. Was this a general of some kind, then? Behind her came a young bearded man; Taigan saw the blooming red mist about him, as well. Another omajista. How many did the Tai Mora have? He half-expected them to keep coming through the tear, one after another after another, but it was just the two: the female general and the male omajista.
  
  Taigan followed their progress as they met with a small delegation under a hastily erected tent. The meeting intrigued him. He slipped from his perch as dusk settled, and kept to the edges of the activity.
  
  As the general and the omajistas moved together toward the ark, flanked by half a dozen soldiers, he followed in the shadows, seamlessly inserting himself into the rear of the retinue. His hazing ward would cause their gazes to flit right over him unless he asserted himself.
  
  They stepped through a massive split in the skin of the structure and into a dim underbelly lit with brilliant green phosphorescent lichens. The glow transformed the group into something otherworldly, which was perhaps appropriate.
  
  The group picked their way through corridors scattered with broken glass and some gooey vital fluid leaking from the broken skin of the great craft. The party came upon two omajistas, one who appeared Dhai, another who could have passed for Saiduan. They wore tattered blue robes smeared with the brownish secretion from the walls. One bore a wrap around her head, which Taigan found odd. An injury? Could they not heal themselves?
  
  "Wait until we announce you," the tall, Saiduan-looking one said. Her accent was Dhai.
  
  The other passed directly through the skin of the craft behind them. The skin seemed to thin to admit her, then thicken again as she passed. Very clever. He liked the cleverness of these people. When she returned, they were admitted. Taigan lingered still at the back of the group, wondering how much longer he could keep up the ruse. The dimness helped.
  
  He crept through just as the door began to thicken again behind the Tai Mora group, and kept to the back of the new room, clinging tightly to the shadows. It was dim in here as well; the only light was the phosphorescent flora lining the tops of the walls and a single flame fly lantern at a table in the center of the room. The room itself had, perhaps, once been grand, before the crash.
  
  The table was partially cracked, and the walls here oozing just like those in the hall. Scattered goods – clothing, weapons – lay stacked against trunks that had burst their locks on impact, or in drawers that popped open despite stops that had clearly been designed for shipboard life.
  
  Six more people waited inside, five of them in boiled leather armor shot through with silver, clearly there to protect the sixth at their center. She was a wiry woman, with her left arm held against her chest in a sling. Taigan noted the hands belied her age: strong hands with slender fingers slashed with fine white scars and discoloration that indicated bare-knuckled fighting. Her dark hair was pulled back from a handsome face which Taigan at once found deeply familiar, though it took him a moment to place her. Something to do with a lip curled at Taigan, as if Taigan were more dangerous than she. It was the same look the woman now turned on Kirana; distaste on the lips, but a hint of fear in the eyes.
  
  Ah, of course, how could he have forgotten that sneer?
  
  "I take it you are Gian?" Kirana said, nodding at the sneering woman, whose face smoothed at being so critically considered.
  
  "Chief Commissar Gianlynn Mursia," the woman corrected. "Only my mother and my consorts call me Gian, and you are neither."
  
  "We have come to know you by the moniker."
  
  "And you are Kirana, the tyrant."
  
  "Empress," Kirana said, "if we are using titles. Kai is also an appropriate title. But come now, you and I are not so different that we should be formal. We want the same things, and we have done much to achieve them. Few other worlds have been as successful as ours, not even this one."
  
  "I heard they fell without a fight," Gian said.
  
  Taigan prickled at that. Saiduan had fought them for years, admirably and honorably. And not so honorably, when the fight called for it.
  
  "Those who remain are pacifists," Kirana said. "But you and I are clearly not. We have both achieved much. Your ark is an incredible feat of engineering. I understand your intentions may be similar to mine. To find a home. To begin again."
  
  Gian watched her.
  
  Kirana continued, "I know you are in a sore place. You would not have agreed to see me, otherwise."
  
  "My people won't be slaves."
  
  "Nor will I ask that of you."
  
  "You're a flesh dealer. A tyrant. There is no compromise with flesh dealers and tyrants. You chose to build an army ten years ago, when the worlds began to fail. You chose to murder and destroy. We chose to build an ark. We chose to save what we loved, not murder an entire world. We are nothing alike."
  
  "There are plenty of places on this world for you," Kirana replied. "You don't need to settle here. What I offer is, perhaps… a truce. We are looking to seal the ways between the worlds. Surely you understand that the more worlds that come after us, the more contentious our settlement here will become. Constant war. Strife. Famine. Famine, especially. But you and I, together, pooling our resources – we can close the ways."
  
  "Impossible. No one's done it. Not during any cycle."
  
  "We have the knowledge. I simply need… a few more jistas. Omajistas, especially."
  
  "You cannot buy them! We are not–"
  
  Kirana held up her hand. "I'm not seeking to buy them. I am, truly, offering you the chance to work together. You can be free of us, after. If you will but… tolerate us, as we will tolerate you, for another month, two at the very most, until Para has risen. You will need that time to recover here, anyhow. If we are to be temporary neighbors, we best work together."
  
  "We are not helpless, you understand. If we must defend ourselves, we will."
  
  "I don't doubt that. And I know you by reputation. We have certainly kept an eye on your people, though we were uncertain what this… monstrosity was for. There are more like you, as you know. Aradan, Kalinda, Sovonia, and those are just the leaders of the worlds closest to us, those who will find it easiest to cross over."
  
  "Kalinda failed," Gian said. "Her people cast her out and dissolved into strife. That is one less."
  
  "That still leaves us the two knowns, and a limitless number of unknowns. My people and yours don't need war. We need to settle here. There is still space, for us. But not for many more of our size."
  
  "What do you offer?"
  
  "Peace," Kirana said, spreading her palms, and Taigan sneered at the sight of it. Peace? "But we have a very short time frame in which to achieve it. And I will be bold: it would assist us greatly to have you as an ally and not a foe."
  
  Taigan was taken aback at that. This was the nation that had destroyed the Saiduan. He remembered the fallow fields he had passed on his journey south, the thin faces. He smirked, then, because he knew precisely their position. They had won the battle, but not the war. The world was still poised to eat them, and he was so terribly thrilled at the idea that, after all this time, they would die of starvation that he could barely contain his mirth.
  
  "We can discuss it," Gian said. "We are not tyrants, so I must consult our people."
  
  "I understand. Until then, my omajistas and tirajistas would be pleased to assist with any injuries."
  
  "That won't be necessary."
  
  "As you wish, however, I–"
  
  "Our gifted are not permitted to harm, or to heal, unless they are protecting themselves or another from certain death."
  
  An awkward silence descended.
  
  Taigan could not help it. He snorted.
  
  Gian whipped round and met his look, steeling him with a gaze that said she clearly saw through his ward. Ah, yes, a parajista, likely – not a powerful one, but one did not have to be powerful to see through hazing wards, if one had the gift for it. His curiosity had made him a bit careless.
  
  "Who are you to judge us?" Gian said.
  
  Taigan sketched a little bow. There was some movement among Kirana's retinue. Kirana narrowed her eyes. In the dim, perhaps, his features were not apparent, but he was tall and dark, and he knew only a few of her people this close to her would be foreigners like him. Taigan waited them out. He could bluff as well as this foreign empress. To admit he was an impostor here, among one she wanted to align with, was to admit her own security was faulty. Taigan merely inclined his head.
  
  Kirana exchanged a look with one of her omajistas. "Yours may not be permitted," she said, shifting her attention back to Gian. "Ours can. The offer is open. I'd like to invite you to a meal, the two of us, perhaps." She indicated the mess around them. "Somewhere outside, in the open air. It's a lovely world."
  
  "I'll send word."
  
  Kirana tipped her chin. "Good." She waved her people out with her, and spared another look at Taigan. Taigan could not help the smirk that crept up his face. He would very much like to murder her, but it was true that she was the only one prepared to close the ways between the worlds. He would just have to deal with another Kirana if she failed, and the mere thought exhausted him.
  
  Taigan did not linger, but followed after them, weaving down the corridor until he found a large crack in the hull. He slipped into it, and waited there in the empty corridor. Wait long enough, and they would forget about him, and hardly recognize his face, foreign as it was among these people.
  
  But even as he prepared to leave the great ship, Gian herself blocked his way back into the hall. Two omajistas stood with her, and another he could guess was a sinajista. The omajistas already had threads of Oma's breath woven into elaborate spells.
  
  Taigan instinctively reached for Oma. The power pulsed beneath his skin. The air grew heavy. He pushed out a defensive litany, the Song of the Proud Wall, and began to shape the Song of Sorrow, a devastating spell no one had yet countered.
  
  The omajistas responded; their casts were not ones he recognized. Something of the Song of the Water Spider, perhaps, twisted with the Song of Unmaking, as if they sought to distract him long enough to cut him from Oma's source.
  
  Taigan wove a defense just as they deployed a second round of casts, these utterly alien to him. His defensive shield burst under the onslaught. He was just fast enough to buffer the blow with a counter spell, but the shockwave heaved him across the corridor and into the next room. He smashed against the oozing wall, widening the weeping wound that glugged essential, sticky fluid over him.
  
  The omajistas pursued. Taigan sliced through the hull with a great burst of Oma's breath and leapt out onto the buckled ground. He spun a glamor as he ran, but realized the threads of his own power would give him away to the omajistas. They could see him if he held a spell. He dropped it and darted into the maze of fallen trees, following the descent of the land to the water below.
  
  He shrugged off his armor, retaining only the linen tunic and trousers beneath, and dove into the water. Taigan might not be able to die, but he was not fond of pain, generally, and these omajistas had spells he had never encountered before. It was entirely possible they could cut him off from Oma and torture him endlessly. He had experienced that a great many times, and did not enjoy that either.
  
  Taigan let himself float down the icy river, keeping his legs ahead of him to cushion his encounters with the rocks. After a time, he rolled over and made for the other side of the river. He was numb, but knew from long experience that his body would combat hypothermia with ease.
  
  The air, too, was cold; early spring was a terrible time to take a dip in a river. He gazed upstream to see if he could make out signs of pursuit, but there was nothing. No threaded tendrils of Oma, no shouts, no figures. He called a touch of Oma's breath and warmed his clothes enough to dry them, then struck out further down the riverbed. Paused.
  
  A noise? A breath. Someone, something, very close.
  
  He drew deeply on Oma, preparing for the Song of the Mountain, an offensive spell instead of defensive.
  
  Taigan twisted on his heel and brought up a great ball of Oma's breath over his head.
  
  "Oh!" a slender boy said, shrinking back into the undergrowth.
  
  The boy seemed familiar, even in the dim light; it took Taigan a moment to realize it wasn't a boy, though it had been years and several genders since he had last seen this little ataisa.
  
  Both he and the ataisa had belonged to Maralah, he through binding, Luna as a piece of property won in a game of chance. It seemed absurd to see the ataisa here in Dhai, after all that had happened, as absurd as seeing some version of Gian fall from the sky in an ark. But surely there would be Saiduan refugees in the south, little clusters of holdouts who had succeeded in fleeing before Anjoliaa was taken?
  
  He saw no tendrils of power around the ataisa, and no other figures.
  
  "You are Luna," Taigan said. "Are you alone?"
  
  Ze nodded, shivering. Taigan noted the damp clothes, and how Luna leaned hard on a great branch ze had taken up as a walking stick.
  
  "You're injured."
  
  "I jumped into the river."
  
  "From where?"
  
  "Oma's Temple."
  
  "That is quite a trip from here."
  
  "I followed the river."
  
  "How did they find you, child?" Taigan asked, genuinely curious.
  
  "I fled from Shoratau."
  
  "Ah, yes. Who else? Roh, that child, he escaped as well. How curious."
  
  "How did… Yes, he did. And Kadaan! He was alive, a year… maybe more, ago. He got me out of Anjoliaa."
  
  "And how have you survived here all this time? You were a slave?"
  
  "I could understand how to power the temples, the beasts that can channel the satellites. And close all these–" Luna gestured behind hir, toward the ark "–seams, you know. Their Empress does not like people just falling out of the sky and taking what she thinks is hers."
  
  "How is it done, then? Powering the beasts? I heard from a little bird that you found the book you sought in Saiduan."
  
  Luna took another step back. "Are you working for them? I should go."
  
  "I work for myself and my own purposes, now. I belong to no one. But you? Where will you go? Saiduan is destroyed. The Tai Mora own the world. The knowledge you have is useless without allies."
  
  "I've already told them all they need to know to figure out how to use the temples to focus the power. They don't need me."
  
  "That makes you terribly expendable. That's hardly a mark in your favor."
  
  Luna frowned. "Some days I wanted to destroy them all, did you know? Maybe we should. Maybe that's better. If we keep doing this again and again…" Luna tilted hir head at him. "I'm tired of being afraid. Aren't you?"
  
  "I trained as a sanisi long before you were born," Taigan said. "I was burned up eighteen times in various attempts to kill me. I have been hacked to pieces twenty-seven times. Maimed and mauled and broken and left for dead more than I can count. I know fear, and I know pain. I fear most that I will never die, that this is my punishment, that the gods doomed me to this for some terrible wrong I committed on some other world. Who is to say? But here is what I know, little Luna, little satellite. Without fear we are the humble herbivores lumbering on the plains. We are a flash of light in the sky. Without fear to drive us we never become what we are meant to be."
  
  "What about love?" Luna said.
  
  "What about love, yes," Taigan said. "Love is the fear of dying alone. That's all."
  
  "That isn't true."
  
  Taigan held open his hands, palms up. "If you are going to run, then run into the woods, Luna," he said. "Run and run until you're eaten by some bone tree or trapped inside a bladder plant. Run for fear of what could be. But that is what the herbivores do. Run and run, until mortality catches them. I chase, Luna. I chase, always."
  
  "These temples, these machines," Luna said, "can do more than just close the ways between worlds. They could decide to use it in many ways. They could decide to destroy not only this world, but millions, trillions, an infinite number of others. If I give you that information, or give it to them, then I am complicit. All I gave them was the code, cipher. The other… well, they won't find out what else it does, besides close the ways between the worlds."
  
  "Why not?"
  
  "I tore out the appendix."
  
  "You… what?"
  
  "When they captured me. I knew they would take the book, once they realized what it was."
  
  "Taigan laughed. "Where is the appendix?"
  
  "Gone, thrown into the sea."
  
  "So no one will ever know?"
  
  Luna hesitated. Ze opened hir mouth as if to say something, and thought better of it. Ze shook her head
  
  Taigan wondered if ze told the truth, or obfuscated to make hir case for freedom stronger.
  
  "I'm going to build some other life with the Dhai," Luna said. "With the appendix gone, well, we're as safe as we'll ever be, I guess. They could still figure out how to break the world, I know. But I did what I could to stop it."
  
  "The Dhai? Why those pacifists?"
  
  "There are still free Dhai, in the woods. I've heard that all along the way here. The Woodland Dhai are free. They have a rebel leader, Faith Ahya reborn. They have evaded the Tai Mora all this time. Maybe they can use what I know. Or not. Maybe they could help hide me."
  
  Taigan felt a twist of… what emotion was it? Surely not hope. "Faith Ahya? A little girl in a white dress, her face covered in scars?"
  
  "I don't know. But she is very powerful. She leads the rebel Dhai in the woods. They wear white ribbons, that's what people say. They are going to take back the country."
  
  "If there is some resistance of Dhai," Taigan said, "perhaps they will be interested in what you know. If the temples truly are the source of power, if they find themselves a worldbreaker, well… we could destroy a good many Tai Mora this way."
  
  "You don't want to help the Dhai!"
  
  "No, I came here to kill Tai Mora, and it seems that could be a possibility if we are the ones wresting control of the temples. Do you know where the Dhai are? The Woodland is dangerous."
  
  "I'll manage."
  
  "I have traversed that wood," Taigan said. "I can help you survive it."
  
  "No tricks. A partnership between the two of us."
  
  "There can be no partnership between a sanisi and another."
  
  "Well, there is now. New world, new rules."
  
  Luna was right, of course, and Taigan did not think hir cowed for a moment. Taigan recognized that having a Dhai-looking companion could get him there among the rebel Dhai to see what they were truly composed of. Perhaps he could trade that information for an audience with the Empress. And though Luna may not tell him or Kirana how to close the seams between the worlds, it was entirely possible Luna would tell the Dhai. And if Luna did, Taigan would be listening.
  
  Living as long as he had, had taught him patience. His only concern, as he gazed at the dying light outside, was that though he had patience, the sky did not. The sky was going to keep moving, and he knew that once Oma left them in twenty years, they would be stuck with whatever new neighbors had muscled their way in over the decades. Time was not quite as infinite as it had been. Oma waited for no one. Least of all him.
  
  "I don't believe you," Luna said.
  
  "I can heal your little leg, Luna. I can dry your clothes. We can indeed be partners."
  
  "Why?"
  
  "I always did prefer the underdog. And there is no dog more under-served than you."
  
  Luna glanced at hir leg, and Taigan knew then that he had hir. Taigan smiled broadly. "Let's go see what the Dhai in the woods are up to. I suspect they will be just as eager to murder the Tai Mora as I am, bless their little pacifist hearts."