text: Lilia gripped her walking stick so tightly her hand hurt. This could not be, she thought. Not after all this time, after all the work she had done, after how far she had come, after all the delicate alliances they had maintained. Ahkio the coward, the pacifist, was dead, surely? Meyna herself had seen it, wept over it, thrown things and rent her own garments and then happily taken the title of Catori.
  
  Had Meyna lied?
  
  Lilia just inside the thorn fence at the edge of camp, gnawing at one of her new nails; the quick was already exposed, soft as a dragonfly wing. It had become an unconscious habit gnawing away at pieces of herself while her mind was elsewhere.
  
  A few of her most fervent supporters stood a good way distant, Salifa at the head of them, hand on her weapon. Yisaoh and Meyna had tried to keep everyone away from the two men who had arrived at the fence, but the beribboned heads of Lilia's supporters were visible even from the trees. Lilia worried over them, too, and how they would react to the arrival of this man with Ahkio's face. Namia kept close to Lilia's side, nose raised, sniffing the air.
  
  Lilia admitted that one of the men did look like Ahkio; longer hair, leaner face, his eyes more sunken, and shoulders bowed, but it was more than a mere resemblance. He either really was the Kai, or he was another version of the Kai, seeking to throw them into exactly this kind of turmoil.
  
  She kept to one side, letting Yisaoh and Meyna meet the two men as equals. Yisaoh's face was haggard, shocked, but Meyna only stared at the men fiercely. Lilia tried to place who the sly little man next to Ahkio might be. Liaro? The cousin? That sounded right. An average man, with a long pockmarked face and twisted mouth that made it seem as if he found everything around him either terribly funny or mind-bogglingly complex.
  
  Yisaoh already had the nub of her cigarette out. She did not light it, but sucked on the end, contemplative. "I heard you were dead."
  
  "And I heard you were dead," said the man who shared Kai Ahkio's face. He folded his hands under his armpits. Both men bore bloody scratches on their necks and faces. Brambles clung to their rough-spun clothing. They were sweat-soaked, in need of a wash, with tangled hair and grubby knees. Lilia suspected that having all your limbs sewn back on – or whatever he was going to propose had happened to him – resulted in some rough living.
  
  Meyna followed Ahkio's gesture. "I saw you die," Meyna said. "Ora Nasaka came down covered in your blood. I hid, but I saw your body. It's impossible that you are our Kai. You are someone else."
  
  "I don't remember any of that," Ahkio said. "I'm afraid there's a good deal I don't remember about the final days of Dhai."
  
  The last time Lilia had seen Ahkio was when he told her he refused to go through with her plan to poison the Tai Mora Empress, back at Kuallina before its eventual fall. Yisaoh had drugged him, and they'd gone around him to hold the dinner anyway. They then tried and failed to kill Kirana on their own. The real Ahkio would remember that, but this one didn't even seem to recall his own death.
  
  "You were supposed to secure Oma's temple," Yisaoh said, "after Kuallina fell. That didn't go very well, turns out. We're all a little mad about that, as those temples could have outlasted any seige. You had only to secure them."
  
  "I'm sorry," Ahkio said. "I… have no memory of any of that, either. I've been–"
  
  "He's been very ill," Liaro said. "It's a strange time."
  
  "How did you find us?" Lilia asked.
  
  Liaro glanced over at her, as if noticing her for the first time. He picked at his lip; an old scab. From what? Had Ahkio hit him? "There's much to explain. We understand that. If you will sit with us, offer tea, and–"
  
  "Your hands," Meyna said, holding out her own.
  
  "You really should be offering tea first," Liaro said, wryly.
  
  "I'm not Mohrai," Meyna said. "Perhaps she would have been more welcoming to potential Tai Mora."
  
  "Where is Mohrai?" Ahkio asked, voice a little high and warbling, like a child's.
  
  "Dead," Meyna said, sharply. "But our child is alive, if that concerns you."
  
  "Our… child?"
  
  "Ahkio, you declared little Hasao Li Kai in the Sanctuary of Oma's Temple. We have dozens of witnesses."
  
  "I don't…" Ahkio shook his head. "I'm sorry, there's much I don't remember."
  
  Liaro reached over and squeezed Ahkio's shoulder.
  
  "Your hands," Meyna insisted.
  
  "Meyna," Ahkio said, "I'm still trying to understand the state of things here. Where is Tir? Rhin and Hadaoh? Is Mey-mey–"
  
  "Your hands!"
  
  He held them out.
  
  His hands were covered in old burn scars; twisted, shiny flesh that had never healed properly. Lilia heard that he had gotten the scars trying to pull his mother from a burning shelter in one of the old Dorinah camps for Dhai exiles.
  
  Meyna took his hands in hers and scrutinized them; Yisaoh did the same, bending just over her shoulder, though honestly, Lilia thought, Meyna was the one more likely to notice a difference in the scar patterns. The Kai had lived with her for several years.
  
  Meyna pushed his hands away. "I'm sorry, but… you're dead, Ahkio."
  
  Liaro said, "I found him three months ago, wandering up in the hills above Oma's Temple. He was half-mad, living on moss and tree bark. It's taken this long to get his head straight. He's missing great gaps of time. But it's him, Meyna. I wouldn't have spent all this time trying to find you both, and Mohrai too, if I didn't believe it was him."
  
  "There are all sorts of people wandering around now," Yisaoh said. "There's no way to determine if he's truly our Ahkio, or not."
  
  "That's true of anyone here, then," Liaro said. "By that logic no one should be listening to a word you're saying either."
  
  Ahkio waved his hand. "I remember everything that happened here, yes, in this Dhai, right up until the end of summer, before–" He exchanged a glance with Liaro. "Before what happened at Kuallina. That… I have no memory of anything after that. But the rest of my memory is very clear. I remember Nasaka telling me Kirana had died. I remember Ghrasia… Sai Hofsha, the terrible Tai Mora emissary. And I remember bringing all the clans together, and exiling you, Yisaoh, and you, Meyna. I still stand by that."
  
  "Now we're all stuck in exile together," Yisaoh muttered.
  
  "How did he lose this last year?" Lilia said. "A whole year? That's… I've never heard of that."
  
  "Exactly!" Liaro said. "A Tai Mora would have had a much better story, wouldn't they?"
  
  Lilia's skin prickled. She did not like any of this: not his face, not his stories, not what this could mean for their carefully negotiated alliance and her plan to hit back at the Tai Mora. The Ahkio she knew had been averse to naked conflict of any kind, and Lilia did not like how Meyna looked at him. There was something between them still, even if it was just the memory of what they had.
  
  "Not just Tai Mora," Lilia said, raising her voice. "There are far more worlds in play now. It's going to become easier and easier for all of us to get replaced by impostors. If Meyna saw him dead, this isn't him. But maybe he's not a Tai Mora, either. Maybe he is from some closer world, one even more like ours. He may not even know he's an impostor himself."
  
  "Liaro, speak to us privately," Meyna said.
  
  Liaro crossed the thorn fence. Lilia drew back a step. The stink of him carried, this close; the two men desperately needed a wash. Neither had answered how they found the camp yet, and that disturbed her. A patrol stood a few paces distant; the same patrol that had escorted them here. But they should not even have come this close. The Woodland was a large place, and Lilia had worked hard to disguise their presence here and distract Tai Mora patrols into covering other areas.
  
  Yisaoh and Meyna broke away from Meyna's retinue, and Lilia followed them to the lee of a great bonsa tree. From there they could still see Ahkio, Meyna's people, and Lilia's supporters, but could not be overheard.
  
  Rain still dripped from the giant leaves above. Lilia kept blinking to clear her eyes. Namia circled around to the other side of the tree, where it was drier.
  
  "You're convinced of this?" Yisaoh asked Liaro.
  
  "He's the real Ahkio," Liaro said. "Ask him anything."
  
  "Are you the real Liaro?" Lilia said. "We have no way of verifying who either of you are."
  
  "Are you the real… whoever you are?" Liaro said, lip curled.
  
  Lilia said, "Your tone won't gain you any favor here." Her foot ached, and her mind was already elsewhere. Mohrai dead, and Ahkio suddenly alive. It would upset the power balance here. If she wanted to strike back at the Tai Mora, it needed to be now, before all of this was settled.
  
  "He remembers nothing of Kuallina," Liaro said, ignoring her and turning back to Meyna, "or the events leading up to it. Now, here's the strange part. I'm going to tell you something and it's going to sound mad."
  
  "Madder than you do already?" Yisaoh said, digging into her pocket for another cigarette stub and coming up empty. "This should be entertaining."
  
  "Something happened to Ahkio before Kuallina," Liaro said. "The day he finally locked up Ora Nasaka and booted out Sai Hofsha, he said he did it because he'd come to know the future. He had already seen the day after that one, and whatever he saw drove him to make those two decisions. He had all these outrageous questions that morning, when he came upstairs from the temple basement. Was Ora Nasaka alive? Who was Kai? Did he look the same? Who teaches mathematics? He said he'd gone… back. He went into the belly of Oma's Temple, there among the roots, and pressed his hand to a stone bearing the temple's mark and–"
  
  "And he proved this to you?" Yisaoh said.
  
  "I was there the first time he touched that stone," Liaro said. "The second, he went alone."
  
  "I'm confused," Lilia said. "Did he go back in time the first time he touched the stone?"
  
  "No, he said he met a temple keeper? But the second time, that's when it was different."
  
  "Why would it be different?" Yisaoh asked.
  
  "Because someone sabotaged the stone," Liaro said. "He thinks it may have been Ora Almeysia. Whatever she did, he lost access to this temple keeper, but what the keeper, or the temple, or someone left behind was this… strange ability to leap back a day."
  
  "How many times has it done it?" Lilia asked. "Leapt back?"
  
  "Just the once," Liaro said. "He told me about it, and how inconsequential the day seemed. He wondered why he was given this chance to relive a day that wasn't important. So, I guess he decided to make it important, and that's when he decided to put Ora Nasaka in the gaol and kicked out the Tai Mora emissary, as I said. He would never have done those things if he hadn't been rattled. He's telling the truth. I know it."
  
  Spittle flecked Liaro's lips. The passion and insistence in his voice convinced Lilia that whether or not this really was their Ahkio, Liaro believed Ahkio's story. Stepping back a day in time certainly wasn't the strangest thing she'd seen or heard since Oma came into the sky.
  
  Lilia noted that they were drawing a few onlookers, despite the threat of the tumbleterrors. "Let's take this to the tent," Lilia said. "We are going to draw the tumbleterrors."
  
  They brought Ahkio and Liaro to one of the above-ground tents that had been set up for the funerary feast. Meyna put a standing order on keeping any more onlookers below ground until their next move was sorted. But Lilia knew enough about the life of gossip to suspect that would do little but enflame the rumors no doubt already circling through the chambers below.
  
  Lilia led the questioning, speaking up before the others were ready. The Tai Mora were interested in the temple basements, Caisa had said. But if they had encountered this stone that Ahkio and Liaro talked about, it hadn't appeared in any of Caisa's reports.
  
  "What else can you tell us about the temple basements?" Lilia asked. "The Tai Mora have uncovered a level below the one you speak of. An old room for channeling the power of the satellites. Did you ever access that room?"
  
  "No," Ahkio said. He folded his hands in his lap and stared at Namia. Shifted uncomfortably. He touched his hair once or twice; the matted tangle of it pulled away from his thin, pretty face. "Liaro and I found the stone while investigating something Kirana and my aunt Etena alluded to in some of their writings. When I touched the obelisk… I… went somewhere else."
  
  "Like through the seams between the worlds?" Lilia asked. "The way omajistas do? To another world? The Tai Mora world?"
  
  He shook his head. "This was… different. I went to… some other time. The temple, but not as we knew it. A woman was there, calling herself Keeper Ti-Li."
  
  "A keeper?" Lilia asked. "Not a creature, or a beast, or… she said she was a keeper?"
  
  "Yes. The keepers are not… the temples, I think. The keepers are like… ghosts of people, maybe souls left to watch over the temples. She said she was unstuck in time. Maybe that's why the stone can do what it… did. Ti-Li said the stone had been sabotaged by Ora Almeysia. But I wanted to try and visit her again, to learn more. Back then… I was still hoping to find some way to turn back the Tai Mora, maybe by using the temples."
  
  "What did she tell you about the temples?" Lilia asked.
  
  "She told me the temples were alive, that they are living… transference engines, she called them. She said they were created a very long time ago. Properly controlled, they could be used to harness the power of the satellites."
  
  "Did she say how to control them?" Lilia asked.
  
  "How is this relevant?" Meyna said. "Whatever the Tai Mora are doing in the temples doesn't concern us. We're going to leave Dhai."
  
  "Leave?" Ahkio said.
  
  "A moment, Meyna," Lilia said. "What exactly did this temple keeper tell you?"
  
  Ahkio rubbed his forehead. "It was a long time ago. She… it? She said they created the temples, with living transference engines, to kill something infecting their sky. But they broke it apart instead, and now the pieces travel among all the worlds. She said only the engines could stop it."
  
  "But how?" Lilia pressed.
  
  "She didn't know. All she could tell me was how they broke the worlds, not how to… fix them again."
  
  "Meyna," Lilia said, "Caisa brought us information that–"
  
  Meyna held up a hand. "No more talk of temples. Walking into one of these temples would be suicide at best. The Tai Mora have them warded and guarded. They are teeming with jistas."
  
  "Caisa is still alive?" Ahkio asked. "She was my assistant, for a time."
  
  "She is," Lilia said carefully.
  
  "Please," Ahkio said, "what's happened here since I've been gone? Liaro could only tell me what happened in the valley. There are so few survivors there. So many bodies were burned and buried, like chattel."
  
  "I'll tell you more of that," Meyna said, "once we decide what to do with you."
  
  "There was clearly an Ahkio here for the fall of Kuallina," Lilia said. "If you don't remember any of that, what do you remember? Where did you find yourself? In the Woodland?"
  
  "No. I woke up in the temple. In my own bed, as the Tai Mora took the temple."
  
  "You died when the Tai Mora took the temple," Yisaoh said. "You're telling us that when our Ahkio died, you just… appeared? Woke up in his bed?"
  
  "I know it sounds mad, but so does traveling between worlds, doesn't it? I remember is touching the stone, and then–"
  
  "I've never heard of the temples doing this," Lilia said. She wondered what else they didn't yet know about the temples, if his story was to be believed.
  
  "Lilia, will you leave us?" Meyna asked. "Yisaoh and I have a real history with Ahkio. Let us speak to him alone. Liaro, could you also wait outside?"
  
  Lilia bit her tongue. She hoped Yisaoh would intercede, but Yisaoh only shrugged. "Yes," Yisaoh said, "we will send for you."
  
  Lilia tried to stifle her grimace, and turned quickly so they could not see the shift in her expression.
  
  She limped from the tent and into the clearing outside, and Namia followed. The wood had gone quiet; the tumbleterrors would have scared away most of the sentient flora and fauna. She rubbed her arms.
  
  Liaro stayed near the tent. As Lilia waited, the storm began to clear, and the rain ceased. Namia sprawled beside her in a sudden sunbeam.
  
  Yisaoh finally came out, hands pushed deep into her pockets, and walked over to Lilia. Shook her head.
  
  "What are you going to do?" Lilia said.
  
  "Ahkio can be controlled," Yisaoh said. "Meyna loves the idea of having him beside her. It gives her legitimacy. I could almost wonder if she knew about him, before, if murdering Mohrai was done knowing Ahkio would come back."
  
  "That's… well, I wouldn't put that past her. Couldn't she just… get rid of him?"
  
  "We can't just kill him," Yisaoh said, but there was no judgment in her tone, only a bored resignation. "I couldn't find a lie, when we spoke to him alone in there. He insists he wants nothing from us, to just go back to being a little religious teacher, but you know how people will react to that."
  
  "They'll follow him," Lilia said. "Some will. How many will follow him into some fool scheme? He's not made for these times. He'll lead them to disaster, the same way he led Dhai to disaster."
  
  "No Kai could have stopped this," Yisaoh said. "Not even if our Kirana had lived. There was no way to win this. You can only destroy monsters like that by becoming one, and no Kai was going to do that to the Dhai."
  
  "What about what he said, about the temple?"
  
  "Going back in time?" Yisaoh snorted. "Who knows?"
  
  "The other part. About the temples being transference engines meant to channel the power of the satellites. We intuited that, but he's confirmed it. The Tai Mora are going to harness that power. That's what they're doing in those basements. They are going to figure out how to break the world, and Meyna wants us to just run away."
  
  "Oh, Lilia." Yisaoh sighed. "Always scheming. First you want to murder Tai Mora, then you want to… what? Take over the temples? If you haven't noticed, we can't even feed ourselves."
  
  Lilia gazed at the tent, and Liaro, who squatted outside it, cracking his knuckles. "I want to see what's down there for myself," Lilia said.
  
  "Good luck with that," Yisaoh said.
  
  "I have people in every temple," Lilia said. "Reconnaissance would not be too difficult, or dangerous."
  
  "Are you listening to yourself right now? Hasn't Caisa given you enough diagrams? And it doesn't matter! We're leaving."
  
  "You may be," Lilia said. "I'm not. Not yet." A plan was beginning to form in her mind, one that relied on some of the same logistics as her plan to strike back at the Tai Mora. Infiltrating one of the temples would be a kind of revenge, after all. She considered the sort of damage she could do to them, if she knew more than them, if she took control of one of these transference engines for herself, or sabotaged them.
  
  "I know that look," Yisaoh said. "Whatever you're scheming, don't do it."
  
  "I have a plan."
  
  "Tira's tears. You and your little cultists are going to murder yourselves."
  
  "If we do," Lilia said, "we will be taking a lot of Tai Mora with us. Come on, Namia."
  
  Lilia touched the girl's shoulder, and Namia followed as Lilia headed back to the entrance to their underground warren.
  
  "You and your little cultists can do what you like!" Yisaoh called after her. "You know Meyna will be pleased if you're gone! She's going to hope you all die!"
  
  Lilia did not answer, but glanced down at Namia. "What's the nearest temple, Namia?"
  
  Namia signed, "Tira."
  
  "That's right," Lilia said. "It's been a long time since I visited Tira's Temple. Let's change that."
  
  "Danger," Namia signed.
  
  Lilia pushed her hands away.