text: The dying woman stank like a moldered corpse. The stink was so strong Lilia smelled her from ten paces away. Taigan stood when she saw the woman and her litter-bearers approach, and drew her blade. Lilia thought drawing a blade was a foolish thing – what was the old woman going to do, bite them?
  
  Lilia and the caravan of refugees were still three days away from Kuallina, the great stronghold at the center of Dhai where the Kai had agreed to house and feed the six hundred until they could be assimilated into the clans. That put them just outside Clan Raona, eating rice and camping out along a very contaminated stretch of road. She had requested parajistas to accompany them, but the Kai only gave them one, and she had a very long night of running up and down the road killing virulent plant life that tried over and over again to devour the people camping along the road.
  
  The militia boy who had asked Lilia to cure his grandmother had met them there with a gaggle of his relatives, pulling the old women behind them. Now Lilia stood at the entrance to the tent they had placed her in, trying not to gag at the smell.
  
  Beside Lilia, Gian put a hand to her own nose. "I told you it was very bad," Gian said.
  
  The militia man stood well outside with his other family members. Lilia glanced back just once at him, then entered the tent where Taigan was already kneeling.
  
  "I'm Lilia."
  
  The old woman winced. Her face was a doughy, wrinkled map. But though her face and belly were plump, her hands were withered claws. Lilia thought perhaps Oma's breath would allow her to see some part of the woman she could not through her other training, but when she pulled on Oma's breath, it gave her no special sight.
  
  She sat back on her heels.
  
  "I am Mahinla Torsa Sorila," the woman said.
  
  "You have pain?" Lilia asked.
  
  "Always."
  
  Taigan leaned into Lilia, so close she nearly brushed Lilia's ear with her chin. "You intend to heal her?" she said. "You can see it's cancer."
  
  Lilia shook her head.
  
  "Oma is a fickle star," Taigan said. "You haven't been trained. It's like wondering why you can't speak a word you've never heard."
  
  "You can cure her?"
  
  "The cancer? I can kill it, yes. But then her body must reabsorb it. She also has arthritis, two failing kidneys, and an aging digestive system. She is, in a word, old. Bodies fail. They are imperfect things."
  
  "But we can save her?"
  
  "For a year? Two? Certainly."
  
  Mahinla raised her voice. "Girl? Lilia?"
  
  Lilia bent back over the woman. "What is it?"
  
  "May I take your hand?"
  
  Lilia looped her good hand into the old woman's. Mahinla moved her arm, but did not try to close her fingers. Lilia imagined it hurt terribly.
  
  "My grandson is a good boy," she said. "Takes me to good jistas."
  
  "We will help you," Lilia said.
  
  "No, no," the woman said. She sighed. "I am a hundred and forty-three years old. It's enough."
  
  "He's asked a favor," Lilia said, and caught herself. What he wanted had no bearing on this woman's wishes.
  
  "I, too, am asking a favor," Mahinla said.
  
  "You do not consent to being healed?" Lilia said. "Why? I would give–"
  
  "I am tired," Mahinla said. "You don't know what that is, yet, to be tired of this world."
  
  "But why did you–"
  
  "I wanted to see the girl who opened the gates of Liona."
  
  Lilia glanced over at Taigan. Taigan shrugged. "I know what it is to want to die," Taigan said. "You'll understand one day, too."
  
  It took some time to sort things out between Mahinla and her grandson. Great-great-grandson, Lilia amended. After some tears and a few soft words from Gian – who gave them each a sticky rice ball she had secreted away in her tunic pockets – they called the boy's sisters and the three of them hauled Mahinla away.
  
  As they did, Mahinla called Lilia over one last time.
  
  "I had stopped believing," Mahinla said, "when my granddaughter was killed on the other side of Liona. I thought Faith Ahya had turned her face from us. But she has not. She gave us you."
  
  Lilia watched them go. Taigan came up behind her. "Good stories, there."
  
  "Is everything political?" Lilia asked, disgusted.
  
  "Of course," Taigan said. "All you have to decide is whether you'll take advantage of it or let it run its course. In this case, I suggest you pursue it."
  
  "How?"
  
  "I can take care of it, if you wish."
  
  "You won't hurt anyone?"
  
  "Not every task I perform is that crude. What do you think, Gian? I suspect planting stories in people's ears is something you have some skill at."
  
  "What do you know?" Gian said. She rummaged through her pack and triumphantly pulled out an apple.
  
  "Gian and I will take care of it," Taigan said. "It's a long way to Kuallina still, and we can spread very good stories about you as we go."
  
  Lilia watched the little family trundle off into the woods.
  
  "There will be two stories," Taigan said, pressing her. "The story the Kai and his people tell, of a mad refugee girl pretending to be Faith Ahya, trying to fool the country. The other is that you are, indeed, Faith Ahya, or some aspect of hers. That woman and her family already hold a spark of that. All I intend to do is kindle it. We kindle our story, Lilia, or we get burned up by the blazing storm of someone else's."
  
  "I'm not going to lie to people," Lilia said.
  
  "You already deceived them," Gian said, munching her apple.
  
  "This is different."
  
  "We'll tell the stories they've already made up," Gian said. "It's not as if we'll make new ones."
  
  "I'm going to burn up all those Tai Mora in Liona," Lilia said. "That will be story enough." But she heard the wisdom in Taigan's words. All her power came from these people. If things went wrong, and the Kai blamed the war on her…
  
  "You're untrained, raw," Taigan said, "and after killing a few legionnaires who couldn't defend themselves and hurling yourself to the top of a wall, you've gotten supremely arrogant. Power is nothing without discipline. Power without discipline is short lived."
  
  "All right," Lilia said. "But don't hurt anyone. I could bind you up in a bone tree forever."
  
  "See how that transpires a second time," Taigan said coolly.
  
  "What do you care what happens, Taigan?" Lilia said. "Why not go home to Saiduan on your own?" But that wasn't her real question. Her real question was why Taigan gave her any choice in her fate at all now. Why hadn't she bundled Lilia up in a sack and thrown her into a ship bound for Saiduan yet? What was she playing at?
  
  "I do what I please," Taigan said, but there was a briskness to her tone that made Lilia wonder why she would be so defensive.
  
  "It's at least seven more days to the harbor," Lilia said. "We should talk about what happens there."
  
  "Ships arrive. Ships depart," Taigan said.
  
  "Bone tree," Lilia said.
  
  Taigan shrugged. "What is it you intend to do there? Burn them all up? There will be more than a few hundred legionnaires there with them. And the Tai Mora will be gifted. The legionnaires were not. You have won thus far on luck," Taigan said. "Best not forget that." She slunk off back to her tent.
  
  Gian came up beside Lilia. She had finished her apple, and now asked, "May I take your hand?"
  
  Lilia held out her hand. Gian took it. There was fear in her face. "What is it?" Lilia asked.
  
  "Let's stay in Kuallina," Gian said. "We don't need to go to the harbor. Look how safe it is here! Food for everyone. Nice people. Freedom. My whole life, I just wanted this. Two people holding hands in the warmth of a fire. We can have our own warm house, our own–"
  
  "The Tai Mora killed my mother," Lilia said.
  
  "I don't want to be lonely anymore," Gian said. She raised her hands to Lilia's face. Lilia remembered, again, the other Gian, clearing a path with her weapon, shirtless, the corded muscles of her back moving just beneath her skin. The Gian who had died for her, for a greater cause than Lilia would ever understand. Did Lilia have that kind of resolve, to die for a cause, for what she believed was right, even when others called her mad for it?
  
  "Can I kiss you?" Lilia said, and her voice trembled when she said it, because she knew she wanted to kiss the woman for all the wrong reasons – for who she could be, not who she was, and for a life she dreamed about, not one they would have.
  
  Gian kissed her. Her mouth was warm and soft.
  
  "Let's stay here telling stories," Gian murmured. "We'll build a life here, just the two of us. I can plant a garden, grow big tomatoes and squash and–"
  
  Lilia saw her mother's terribly twisted body mounted on the top of the Tai Mora mirror, saw her bursting into a thousand fractured pieces when she destroyed it.
  
  "I'm sorry," Lilia said, "But I don't have any hold on you. You can do what you want."
  
  "Do you want me to stay?"
  
  "Yes," but when the words bubbled out, it all felt very selfish. She liked the way Gian looked at her. She liked that Gian seemed to need her. Gian wanted her.
  
  Her feelings were terribly tangled up, because if Lilia asked herself what she wanted, she wasn't sure anymore. Maybe all she wanted was to go back to the beginning of it all, and refuse to go through the tear in the world, and fall on the Kai's willowthorn sword. Maybe the world where she did that would be a better place.
  
  "All right then," Lilia said, "but you must be with me to the end. Promise me that. No matter what happens."
  
  "I promise," Gian said. "To the end."