text: Ahkio was on the wall, cursing what felt like a terrible hangover, when Sina entered the sky. The double satellites hung there for one blazing, fearful moment, then Para winked out. The parajistas on the wall wailed. It was like a knife cut cleanly through the line of them. Tulana was screaming at one of her Seekers, a sinajista. The smoky walls that barred the view of their retreat dissipated, revealing the empty field below where the refugees had been.
  
  "Oma's breath," Ahkio said, and ran down the line to see how far Yisaoh and their retreating forces had gotten. He could not see them from here, but their tracks would be easy to follow.
  
  He had not called any sinajistas from the temple. They were completely defenseless.
  
  Ahkio yelled at the parajistas. "Off the wall! Retreat!"
  
  Tulana barreled toward him. "We hold this wall!"
  
  "With what? We have one sinajista and three hundred militia. That's the last of us."
  
  "Then we die here," Tulana said.
  
  "I said–"
  
  She grabbed him by the collar, shook him. "I don't answer to you. I answer to that little cripple, and I tell you now, I would rather be dead than a slave." She released him, and yelled at her people.
  
  "Voralyn! Fire wall!"
  
  Ahkio bolted down into the hold, and found the leader of the militia, Farosi, coming up the steps. "Is it true?" Farosi said.
  
  "Para's down. We need to retreat."
  
  But Farosi climbed up past him. Ahkio went after him. They stood on the wall together, staring out over the low fire wall that now ringed Kuallina, held there by Tulana's single sinajista.
  
  Farosi placed his hands on the wall, and nodded grimly. "All right," he said.
  
  "We need to retreat," Ahkio said. "They'll bust through that ring in–"
  
  "We'll stay here," Farosi said. "We need to cover you. Get to the Line room, quickly."
  
  "Farosi, you'll die here–"
  
  "Of course," Farosi said. "That was the plan all along, was it not, Kai? We distract so the others may flee. It just so happens we distract a few moments less than we hoped. Come along."
  
  "I can't–"
  
  Farosi called two parajistas over. They were trembling badly, already exhausted and now shaken. "Take the Kai back to Oma's Temple," he said. "There's room in the Line for three."
  
  They did not have to be asked twice.
  
  "Can I take your hand?" Ahkio asked.
  
  Farosi nodded. They clasped wrists.
  
  "I need you to burn it behind you," Ahkio said. "Send a small force south to follow. Burn everything. Every village. Every field. Every orchard."
  
  "I have fifty on the ground. I'll move them as soon as you're out."
  
  Ahkio nodded. The parajistas came behind Ahkio and hurried him over to the Lift room. "Caisa!" Ahkio said. "I can't leave without Caisa!"
  
  But everything was happening very quickly. The tirajista in the Lift room poured the chrysalis components into the divot in the floor, and it bubbled up around them, and off they went, Ahkio and two powerless parajistas, swinging back over the trees, speeding away from Kuallina. "Get Caisa out!" he yelled, but the others were already turning back into the hold to fight.
  
  Ahkio pressed his face to the northward side of the chrysalis, watching as the army came alive outside Kuallina. A wave of fire burst up from the foreign army, a plume twice the height of the wall. It engulfed the fortress. As the wave passed, the Tai Mora army swarmed, like a thousand insects devouring some corpse. For a moment he wondered if Lilia and Mohrai had survived it. He knew Yisaoh would, fool woman. Yisaoh would survive anything.
  
  The Lift passed above the trees, higher and higher, giving him a clear view of the army's assault on the gates of Kuallina while Sina's baleful purple glow illuminated the field. It was the same journey he had taken the year before, tucked inside the Lift with Nasaka, after she had told him his sister lay dying. Now it was not his sister who lay dying. The whole country was burning as he watched on.
  
  "Maybe… the temples…" one of the parajistas said. She met Ahkio's look and stopped speaking. She was young, not much older than him. "Perhaps we can… the temple of Sina, at least…"
  
  "We're retreating," Ahkio said. "Dhai is lost."
  
  She began to cry.
  
  Ahkio could not bring himself to comfort her. He saw Sina's light reflected in her eyes, and he gazed toward Oma's Temple with a heavy sense of dread.
  
  Sina had risen.
  
  Nasaka was a sinajista. One of the most powerful. She would not be happy, and she would have burned her way out of those cells the moment her star entered the sky.
  
  Whatever waited for him at Oma's temple would not be much better than Kuallina.
  
  Four hours later, Ahkio and the parajistas arrived in the Lift room at the Temple of Oma. Ahkio saw no flames above the temple, no burning plateau, nothing to give him any idea of what was happening inside.
  
  There was no one to meet them, so they had to wait for the chrysalis to dissolve on its own, which was maddening. The three of them shouted for another hour before the chrysalis began to lose its integrity. They peeled it away with their fingers, and Ahkio bolted out the door.
  
  "Come with me," he told the younger parajista, Mihina. And to the elder, Sulana, he said, "Round up the sinajistas. They need to know we're retreating and burning the temple behind us."
  
  "The temple?" Sulana said. "Kai–"
  
  "You want to leave it to the Tai Mora?" he said.
  
  She shook her head.
  
  "Then go," he said.
  
  He and Mihina went down the scullery stair. He burst onto the sixth floor where the novices should have been training, but the rooms were oddly empty. Ahkio kept descending, checking halls as he went. His sense of unease intensified.
  
  Ahkio plunged down the steps, finally coming out in the foyer. It was packed, clogged with novices and Oras. Some were crying.
  
  He called at the first he saw, a boy with a pocked complexion. "Where's Meyna?" he asked. "Meyna and the Li Kai?"
  
  The boy burst into tears. "Kai! Kai!" he cried, and the cry went up, and the room seethed like a living thing.
  
  "Where are they?" he yelled.
  
  "She's in the Sanctuary!" someone said, and Ahkio pushed his way through them, jostling the crowd rudely. The doors to the Sanctuary were open. He barreled inside.
  
  There was Nasaka at the center of the room, holding a bowl full of blood.
  
  "Nasaka!" he said.
  
  She looked up. So did the woman who knelt in front of her. Ahkio came up short.
  
  He knew the woman at Nasaka's feet, though he had not seen her since he was a child.
  
  "Etena?" he said.
  
  His aunt rose, a narrow slip of a woman with his mother's broad forehead and pert nose, pulling at the cloak around her shoulders. "Ahkio?" She glanced at Nasaka. "You said he was dead."
  
  "Where is Meyna?" Ahkio said.
  
  Nasaka dumped the blood over Etena's head. Etena gaped, sputtering.
  
  Ahkio ran to the platform, wondering whose blood that was. His child's? Meyna's? "It won't work!" he said. "You think you'll just make a new Kai, you think–"
  
  A blast of heat took Ahkio off his feet. He slammed against the far wall. The crowd screamed around him, and parted like a sea for Nasaka. Ahkio was suddenly sick, and vomited all over the floor. Fire. Why was it always fire?
  
  Nasaka strode past the crowd, pulling her willowthorn sword from the sheath at her side.
  
  "Stop! Nasaka!" Etena came down the steps, one hand held high. How had Nasaka found her after all this time? Even with Meyna's direction, it should have been impossible. Etena had stayed hidden because she didn't want the seat any more than he had.
  
  Ahkio coughed. His eyebrows were singed. He scrambled to his feet and tried to keep his head about him. The memories were pouring back – his mother, the fire, Kirana's arms pulling him to safety in the Dorinah camp…Nasaka's expression now was fearful, not angry. But fear was worse.
  
  Etena caught up to Nasaka and grabbed at her tunic.
  
  Nasaka turned stiffly and ran her through, then set her on fire.
  
  Etena burst into flame, like some horrible specter come to life.
  
  Ahkio screamed, screamed like he had the day in the camps, and for the first time he questioned who had really started the fire that killed his mother. Was it really the Dorinah legionnaires? Or someone with a far more intimate knowledge of what fire could do? Oma's breath, he thought, she made me a puppet from the day I was born.
  
  He ran into the foyer. People screamed and scattered. He slid around the banister and went up the scullery stair, taking the steps two at a time. He had no idea where to go – just away, away, as far and as fast as he could.
  
  He smelled smoke. He was sick again on the stairs.
  
  Ahkio pushed into a door on the fourth floor, hoping he shut it fast enough that Nasaka didn't know what floor he came out on. He looked for a place to hide, and then wondered at the absurdity of that. Hide from her until when? Until some other sinajista dared to face her? Until the Tai Mora came?
  
  He ran down the hall. These were the rooms for the novices and they stretched out across this whole floor of the temple. In a fit of inspiration, Ahkio ducked through the door to the latrine and pressed himself against the wall just inside. There was a bank of four stone seats under which flowed a steady stream of water.
  
  Ahkio ran to the latrine and looked down. He could probably fit. He'd lost weight like everyone else, but even so navigating those dark, filthy tunnels all the way down to the sewer dregs would be dangerous. He turned around and yanked the door open to run again– just as Nasaka strode down the hall. He slammed the door.
  
  Too late. Too late by far.
  
  Ahkio backed up against the wall. He was out of ideas.
  
  He heard Nasaka's footsteps outside.
  
  She opened the door, and came in sword first.
  
  "Why not wait for the Tai Mora to kill me for you?" he asked.
  
  She pointed her sword at him. Her expression – he thought she would look mad, but no, it was the same expression she always wore – grim certainty. Absolute faith.
  
  "Etena," he said. "Why call Etena from the woodlands?"
  
  Nasaka shook her head. "You aren't real," she said.
  
  "What?"
  
  Nasaka swung at him.
  
  Ahkio ducked. He tried to get around her, but she was well-trained, and he was unarmed. The sword caught him in the side, and ripped open a great gash.
  
  He stumbled and grabbed at his side.
  
  She raised her weapon.
  
  Ahkio punched his head into her stomach, ramming her against the wall. She swung again. Caught his arm.
  
  Ahkio hit the floor. Blood gushed from his right arm. Soaked his sleeve.
  
  "Nasaka, please, this is… a mistake…"
  
  "They killed you," she said. "My real son. You're some imposter. Liaro said you were different after you came back from the basements. I can see that now."
  
  "I'm not, Nasaka. I never was. Please." He grabbed her wrist with his left hand, trying to take some control over her weapon. His wounds burned, but fear and adrenaline burned brighter.
  
  She kicked him in the gut and swung.
  
  He rolled away, but not fast enough. The weapon bit into his leg and cut deep. She swung again. He screamed and yanked himself forward. She took off his left leg at the thigh.
  
  Ahkio shrieked. Blood gushed, so much blood he swooned and crumpled on the floor. His vision swam, and ran to black at the edges.
  
  Nasaka appeared above him, holding his leg. She threw it down the latrine.
  
  "Nasaka..." he said. "Mother, please–"
  
  The last thing he saw was the blazing purple light of her weapon swinging for his head.