text: Ahkio leaned over the table in the Assembly Chamber at the top of Oma's temple. He watched the gathered Elder Oras and senior Ora advisors and wondered which of them had murdered his sister, and to what purpose. He was a little unsteady, so sat in the chair to the right of the Kai's seat, the chair reserved for her heir, which he'd sat in only once, the day they returned from the Dorinah camps and Nasaka called the circle of Elder Oras and the temple's Ora council – the same faces he saw now.
  
  Gaiso frowned at him from the other side of the room, but did not break in conversation with her assistant. Elder Ora Masura of the Temple of Tira waved to him from the hall. Masura was a splendid, regal old woman, and one of his mother's many lovers. She came around the table and asked to take his hands.
  
  He consented, only because he did not want to draw her suspicion; he was exhausted, and angry, and he feared what he would say. She took his scarred hands in her smooth, cold palms and blessed him.
  
  "It's been a decade since I saw you last, hasn't it?" she said. "I wish it were under better circumstances."
  
  In truth, it had been twelve years since he sat with these people. He could have gone a lifetime without sitting here again.
  
  Gaiso dismissed her assistant and rounded on Ahkio. "Has the Kai passed, then? Is that why you're here?"
  
  "Are you questioning my right to be here?" Ahkio said softly.
  
  Gaiso looked taken aback. "What did you say?"
  
  "I'm so sorry, Ahkio. No one wanted this," Masura said.
  
  "I wanted twenty babies," Gaiso said. "I was made Elder Ora of Oma's temple instead. We don't all get what we want."
  
  Masura made a sound of distress. "Don't speak as if your life decisions were not made just as politically as your cousin Tir's."
  
  "For a clucking, drunken little bird," Gaiso said, "you spend far too much time aggravating cats."
  
  "I see you're all getting along as expected," Nasaka said from the doorway.
  
  "Who else is coming?" Ahkio asked. He wanted to see the reactions of the other Elder Oras to Kirana's death.
  
  "Just Ora Almeysia," Nasaka said. "Elder Ora Koralia of Sina's Temple and Elder Ora Saraba of Para still haven't sent a response. Ora Dasai will be here, of course. He's bringing up the sanisi now."
  
  "It's curfew for the novices," Gaiso said. "Ora Almeysia will doing a bed check. Let's start without her. I don't want to keep that sanisi waiting any longer."
  
  Nasaka nodded to Ahkio. "I see you found your seat."
  
  "I expected you wanted me in another."
  
  "That will do," Nasaka said.
  
  Ahkio glanced next to him at the seat of the Kai, his sister's seat. He wanted to sit there just to spite Nasaka, but though he made to press himself out of his chair, the rest of his body would not obey him.
  
  He heard footsteps in the hall.
  
  A young Ora entered – one Ahkio did not know - and made a sweeping gesture as the sanisi pushed up ahead of him. The emissary's rudeness was shocking.
  
  "May I present Shao Taigan Masaao, a sanisi messenger from Saiduan," the Ora said.
  
  The sanisi was tall, taller than Ahkio expected. He easily towered a head and shoulders above Ahkio, like some giant. For all that, he moved like water, with a slightly hunched posture that made Ahkio wonder if he bore some old wound on his back.
  
  "Which of you is the Kai?" Taigan asked.
  
  Ahkio put his hands on the table, and made to stand.
  
  Nasaka waved him back, said, "I'm afraid you've reached us at a difficult time." She had not yet made it to her chair, the one at the right side of the Kai seat, reserved for the Kai's religious and political advisor. "Let us sit–"
  
  "What I have to say is for the Kai," Taigan said. "We have very little time to chatter on about complications and niceties and backward Dhai customs."
  
  "Excuse my tardiness," Dasai called from the hall. He limped in, leaning heavily on his cane. "Thank you, Ora Chali," he said, dismissing the sanisi's escort.
  
  Chali looked more than happy to leave them, and ducked past Dasai into the hall.
  
  Taigan peered at each of them in turn. His gaze settled on Ahkio. "You're no Ora," the sanisi said. "What is your function?"
  
  "I am the Kai's brother," Ahkio said.
  
  "Ah," Taigan said. "A boy. Yes, this explains much. You're not gifted, though, are you? You're not who I was looking for. Is this all there is? No other relation to the Kai? I have no time to be politic."
  
  "Let us be rested," Dasai said. He clutched the top of his walking stick tightly. Ahkio wondered how many polite rituals and welcomes they had already trampled past.
  
  Ahkio was too tired to pay it much mind. No doubt this meeting was important, but what he wanted more than anything was to go sit by his sister's side. He should have been here when she got sick. She should have called him. They could have uncovered, together, who cursed her with the illness that took her.
  
  "That won't be necessary," Taigan said. "Oma is rising."
  
  Ahkio raised his head. "What?"
  
  "Not according to our stargazers," Nasaka said.
  
  "Then they are ill informed," Taigan said. "Oma, just like any other star, has been known to appear suddenly. One cannot always track its path. Now I tell you it's effect is being felt across my country. With Oma come invaders. Such is as its always been. This time, they've found a way to come through before Oma's full appearance."
  
  "Who are these invaders?" Ahkio asked. "What do they have to do with us?
  
  "The last time Oma rose," Nasaka said, "two thousand years ago, the Saiduan invaded what was then Dhai, when we ruled the continent. There is always a great power that unseats another during Oma's ascent. Always. I do not contest that. But I see no proof of Oma's rise here besides your word."
  
  "If you had seen what I have seen, you would not question it," Taigan said.
  
  "Shao Taigan," Dasai said, "we respect you greatly. Yet you do not use the speech we have come to expect of the Patron's emissaries. What is it we can do for you, sanisi, during your time of trouble?"
  
  Ahkio saw four figures dressed in red come into the Assembly Chamber. They were members of the militia posted to the Kuallina Stronghold; he knew them by the pins at their collars. The temple itself had no standing militia. They must have traveled in on the Line behind him and Nasaka. A bit of fast thinking on someone's part. But not mine, Ahkio thought. They told me as little as they could. He glanced at Nasaka, and wondered how much she'd kept Kirana in the dark, too.
  
  The sanisi laughed at the militia. "You think yourselves safe?" Taigan said. "You may be able to hold for a time, it's true, with your defendable pass, and the mountains to the west, and that harbor wall to the north, but they will devour you eventually. Oma is rising. These people will route you."
  
  "What can we possibly offer in assistance?" Dasai said.
  
  Taigan gritted his teeth. "Scholars," he said.
  
  "Eh?" Gaiso said. "Book people?"
  
  "Your best translators of ancient Dhai," Taigan said. "That is what my Patron requests of you. It may help turn the tide."
  
  Nasaka folded her arms. "You have Dhai records that predate the last Rising, then," she said. "Records that could help you find out how to turn these people back. But of course they're all in ancient Dhai, aren't they, and you've killed all the Dhai in your empire who can read them."
  
  "Yes," Taigan said. "The invaders destroy our archives. Strange, no? They could target supply lines, terrorize civilians. They do that, yes. But the archives are first."
  
  "So send the records here," Ahkio said. "We could find –"
  
  "Impossible," Taigan said. "We have two thousand years of records. Do you know how many holds we pillaged to collect it? We can't risk putting it on a cart to some indefensible country."
  
  "So we must travel to Saiduan," Dasai said.
  
  "It was a very long time ago," Taigan said. "All this death and killing of the Dhai people. You speak as if it was I who did this thing. We have let you alone here. Imported your infused weapons. Are we not friends now?"
  
  "What do we get in return?" Nasaka asked.
  
  Ahkio thought that a bit bold. He wondered if she'd been bold enough to kill Kirana… but to what end? He rubbed his face. And now, Oma. He couldn't imagine Nasaka was as ignorant of that as she pretended. Kirana talked often of Nasaka's obsession with Oma's rise in prior ages.
  
  "In return?" Taigan said. "In return, you will live. Is that not enough? In return, we may be able to push back these invaders on Saiduan's shores, instead of seeing them spill all across the world the way they have in the past. When Oma rises, the world breaks. This is written in every holy book."
  
  "We should have a treaty," Ahkio said. "Kirana would request it."
  
  "Papers?" Taigan spat. "You would ask for papers when the very world is being ripped apart—"
  
  "The Li Kai is right," Nasaka said.
  
  "Paper," Taigan said. "It means nothing."
  
  Nasaka leaned toward him. She was as tall as Ahkio, wiry, but though the sanisi dwarfed her, she stood before him like a woman twice his size. Ahkio saw her again in the Dorinah camp, slaying legionnaires with a weapon he had only before seen her used to chop wood.
  
  "It means something to us," Nasaka said.
  
  "It will take weeks," Taigan said.
  
  "So it will."
  
  Ahkio glanced up at the representation of the heavens above him, and the dark stain of Oma. Oma was an embodiment of the gods, the Book said. It was not supposed to be a true star. A philosopher-astronomer once said that Oma's rise was actually just an eclipse of the satellites, a brief moment when all three stars crossed paths in the sky.
  
  "These invaders," Ahkio said, "where are they coming from? Which direction?"
  
  "Boats," Taigan said, but Ahkio saw something in his expression that troubled him.
  
  "From the east, then?" Ahkio said. "Or the south?"
  
  "They come from…" Taigan muttered something in Saiduan. "They come from the sky, sometimes."
  
  Masura spoke for the first time, her tone incredulous. "The sky? Have you been drinking, sanisi?"
  
  Ahkio heard someone running in the hall outside. The militia turned toward a blue-clad Ora, who burst through the door. One of the militia members held up a hand. The Ora stopped, bowled over, gasping for breath.
  
  Gaiso stood. "What is it?" she asked.
  
  "Murder," the Ora said. Ahkio recognized her as Nasaka's assistant, Elaiko. She wasn't much older than Ahkio.
  
  Ahkio saw Nasaka tense. He was keenly aware of the weapon at her hip. She had yet to bare it, but he was waiting. It felt like an inevitability now. He missed Meyna. He missed his house. But most of all, he regretted running from this temple just when his sister had needed him most. Now he was left alone amid a sea of scheming Oras, murder, and rising stars. He was not ready. But he stood anyway. His sister once affectionately called him a coward, and it was true. He wanted a quiet, honest little life.
  
  Oma, it seemed, had other plans.
  
  "There's blood all over the scullery stair," Elaiko said, "like bad tea. He's in a storage room."
  
  "Who?" Dasai asked. "Let's not make a bear out of a fly."
  
  "Rohinmey," Elaiko said. "I'm not making up some fish story, Ora Dasai. Roh is dead."