text: Lilia sat on the edge of the soft bed in the infirmary, waiting to hear the worst. The temple doctor, Ora Matias, pressed two cool fingers to her chest. He watched her face as she took a deep breath. Halfway through her exhale, she began to cough. She kept coughing for several minutes, even after he gave her a sip of water.
  
  Above, the dome over the infirmary let in the light of the triad of moons. The flame flies in the lanterns filled the darker spaces. The soft organic walls here had been smoothed over in lavender plaster. Lilia found the temple infirmary very soothing. Though most were kind to her in the temple – when they noticed her – it was the Oras in the infirmary who brought her relief from pain and discomfort, whether from her twisted leg or labored breath.
  
  Matias was new to the temple, though, and she had not been in since his appointment. He was an agreeable enough person with plump, ink stained fingers and a habit of smoothing over his eyebrows.
  
  "It's a very mild case of asthma," Matias said, "as I'm sure you know. A girl with lungs like yours should be a seamstress or a typesetter, not a laborer. I always wanted to be a typesetter, you know."
  
  "Then why are you a doctor?"
  
  "Well. Talent cannot be wasted. Tirajistas must serve Dhai. It's not a terrible profession, and it still impresses my mothers."
  
  "I know I don't look very strong," Lilia said. "But I like the exercise. My leg's worse when I don't use it."
  
  "I can't argue with that," he said, "But be careful. Let's give you something to ease the constriction. Have you been given wax wraith before?"
  
  "Ora Shotai always gave me mahuan."
  
  "Let's go with what you know works, then." He went to the vast wall of medicinal jars at the far end of the room. "You've been like this all day?"
  
  "The scullery master sent me here after bed check. I was coughing so much it bothered the other drudges."
  
  "Ora Matias!"
  
  Lilia heard fear in the cry. She was on her feet even before the woman entered. It was Ohanni, the temple's dancing teacher. She carried a limp form in her slender arms. The body was lax, like a doll. But it was the blood that made Lilia's stomach seethe.
  
  The body was covered in blood. Soaked in it. One arm hung free. Drops of blood collected at the ends of the fingers, spattered the floor.
  
  Matias stood frozen at the wall of medicinal jars, mouth agape.
  
  Ohanni carried the body into the room. Behind her were two novices. Their aprons were rusty with blood.
  
  It was only then that Lilia realized the body was Roh's.
  
  She choked on a cry. Adrenaline flooded her. She watched the infirmary as if from a great height.
  
  Ohanni set Roh onto Lilia's bed. A blooming tear ran across his gut; she saw the wet glistening of his intestines beneath bloody clothing and torn skin. More rents in his clothing indicated numerous wounds. Blood pumped profusely from one of them.
  
  "Ora Matias?" Ohanni called, but Matias was still standing, shocked, by the shelves.
  
  Lilia tugged off Roh's apron. "Help me get his tunic," she told Ohanni. She was surprised at how calm she felt. His blood smeared across her own scarred wrists, and a terrible thought bubbled up from a long time ago – we are wasting so much blood.
  
  Ohanni helped with the tunic, her breath rapid, fine beads of sweat bathing her face. Lilia wondered how long Ohanni had carried him. She was not a large woman.
  
  "Press here," Lilia said. She put Ohanni's hands onto Roh's thigh. "Press hard. To the bone."
  
  Ohanni did. The flow of blood eased from the worst of the wounds. Lilia wadded up Roh's novice apron and pressed it against the major wound itself. Blood and death. A hungry thorn fence. She remembered bleeding out into a shallow dish, to protect her village from harm.
  
  Matias joined them at Roh's side. He wiped at his eyebrows. "Oma," he said. "This injury is too much. Tira is descendent. I can't fix this."
  
  Lilia gritted her teeth. She had seen worse, hadn't she? With her mother's patients long ago. She knew the major arteries in the body. She had learned basic anatomy with everyone else in the temple. But closing a wound as bad as Roh's was beyond her.
  
  "Please, Matias," Ohanni said. "You must try. This violence… someone did this to him. It's not as if he tumbled off the stage during some grand jete."
  
  "I'm sorry, Ora Ohanni. He's dying."
  
  Ohanni made as if to draw her hand away from Roh's thigh.
  
  "Don't!" Lilia said. "He will bleed out."
  
  "There are no tirajistas with the skill to fix this," Ohanni said. "Ora Almeysia is the most sensitive, but she doesn't specialize in matters of the body. Can you ease his pain?" she asked Matias.
  
  "He is nearly gone," Matias said. He pressed his hands to Roh's wrist. "There is nothing to ease."
  
  "Try!" Lilia said. "Won't you try?"
  
  "Child, I'm sorry," Matias said.
  
  Ohanni drew her hands away.
  
  "No," Lilia said. She pressed her hands there instead, hard. "Close the artery. Stop the bleeding."
  
  "He has lost more blood than I can replace," Matias said. "Even if I could find every source of damage –"
  
  "Is this him?"
  
  Nasaka's voice. She strode in ahead of a young man, handsome, with scars on his hands. Lilia had not seen him before.
  
  "I'm sorry, Ora Nasaka," Matias said. "He's lost too much blood."
  
  "Sina's breath," Nasaka muttered. She came up next to Matias. She wore a willowthorn sword. "This boy can't die, Matias."
  
  "The blood –"
  
  "I don't care about the blood. He cannot die. Wash your hands. Are you a doctor or a soap maker?"
  
  Matias hurried to the stone sink at the center of the room.
  
  Roh's breathing was almost imperceptible. Matias was right. Lilia knew that, but she pressed hard anyway, though her hands ached and her chest still burned. She coughed and coughed.
  
  Matias pulled the apron away from the wound He carried sinew, needle, and a delicate knife.
  
  "I cannot see for all the blood. Mop this up," he told Lilia.
  
  She grabbed a cotton towel as he widened the wound to find the nicked artery. Blood dripped from the towel down her fingers, to her elbow, to the floor. Lilia didn't notice the arrival of others in the room until sometime later, when their voices became loud and angry.
  
  "This is not his fate," Dasai said, arguing with Nasaka. "Call another surgeon. He's the one child in a hundred for whom the seers saw a peaceful fate. We cannot lose this boy."
  
  "There is not a tirajista in the world powerful enough to turn this," Nasaka said.
  
  "Not a tirajista," said the tall, dark man in the doorway. It was the sanisi Lilia had seen in the foyer, Taigan.
  
  "He's gone, I'm sorry," Matias said. His face was covered in sweat. He was spattered with blood.
  
  Roh's face was slack.
  
  Lilia's fear and terror finally bubbled up from the dark place she had hidden it. Her throat closed. She coughed harder; her head swam, and her vision was going dim. Blood covered her arms to the elbows. With enough blood, all things were possible.
  
  She pointed to the sanisi. "Are you a blood witch?" she said. "A blood witch can save him. My mother could save him."
  
  The others, the Oras, looked confused. She suspected they thought her mad. But she knew the look on the sanisi's face. Wonder. Recognition.
  
  "Save him," Lilia said.
  
  "There's a price," Taigan said.
  
  "He's dead," Matias said.
  
  "No," Lilia said.
  
  "A beat or two of his heart remains," Taigan said. "I can save him. But I have a price."
  
  "I will pay it," Dasai said.
  
  "Let's not be irrational – " Nasaka said.
  
  "We will pay your price," Dasai said. "This boy has an important fate. Remake him."
  
  "I expect he does," Taigan said. "You have seers. You know what's coming, don't you? Your little dance upstairs was less than convincing."
  
  Nasaka and Dasai exchanged a look. Nasaka said, "We know that our seers do not see peaceful futures for this generation of children. But this boy has a peaceful fate. He should not die this way."
  
  The sanisi pointed at Lilia. "You are the price. Give her to me and you can keep the boy."
  
  All gazes turned to Lilia. She pushed herself away from Roh's body, gasping for air. She could hardly breathe, hardly thin. He knew what a blood which was. He knew what she was.
  
  "Our people are not for sale," Nasaka snapped. "We are not chattel. Save the boy because it is right. There need not be a price."
  
  "That is my price," the sanisi said. "The boy for the girl."
  
  Lilia stared at her bloody hands. Then Roh. She remembered watching her mother's body crumple. Too small to stop it. Too powerless to do anything at all.
  
  "We won't," Nasaka said. "Find another way."
  
  Lilia said, "Do it. I'll go."
  
  The sanisi made a sweeping gesture with his hand. The pressure in the room increased, like being underwater. Roh's body shuddered. His back arced. For one blazing moment, Roh's body was suspended above the bed; screaming. The blood that smeared the room peeled away from floor, their clothing, their skin, and burst into the air. It clung to Roh for one terrible moment like a second skin.
  
  Lilia put her hands over her ears.
  
  Taigan dropped his hand.
  
  Roh fell back to the bed. Lilia smelled burnt meat. She broke into another fit of coughing.
  
  Matias ran to the medicinal shelf, and brought back a cup of foul-smelling water.
  
  Lilia choked it down as the Oras gathered around the bed.
  
  "Oma," Dasai said.
  
  "Yes," the sanisi said. "One does not need to believe a thing is true for it to be fact. Oma is rising. I've channeled Oma since I was a child, and my power gets stronger each season. You are looking for an omajista? There is your proof, and your little ward-unmaker back to you. Fully formed."
  
  Roh's skin was no longer broken; there was no sign of injury but his torn clothing. Lilia grabbed at his tunic. The blood that coated him was gone, eaten up as hungrily by the power in the room as the thorn fence.
  
  "How did you know he can see through wards?" Nasaka asked. "Not one Ora in twenty here knows that."
  
  Lilia lay still next to Roh as her breathing eased. They paid her no attention, as if she were only some dying fish.
  
  "He saw through mine," the sanisi said. Now he looked at Lilia. "And he saw through yours, too, didn't he?"
  
  Lilia felt cold. She remembered Kalinda's words: "We'll be ready for them next time, won't we?" But she was not ready. Not at all.
  
  "You asked what I'm really here for," the sanisi said. "I'm here for the girl. But you already knew that, didn't you, Lilia?"