text: Lilia found Gian in Mohrai's quarters, speaking in a voice so loud Lilia heard it through the door. Lilia opened the door without prelude, and stood frowning while Gian turned.
  
  Gian's expression was difficult to read. Shock, horror? She leapt up and ran toward Lilia. Lilia did not open her arms, but endured the embrace stiffly, guardedly. Gian's hair was clean, the clothes new. Gian took her so tightly that even more of Lilia's charred clothes smeared away.
  
  "I thought you were dead," Gian said, breathless. Lilia looked beyond her, to Mohrai.
  
  "What were you speaking of?" A question for Mohrai, not Gian.
  
  Mohrai stood. "Gian suggested we send her out to negotiate."
  
  "Curious," Lilia said, tone flat. "What makes you think they would listen to you?"
  
  "I…" Gian trailed off. Released her. "It's just that, I thought–"
  
  "Are you theirs?"
  
  "What? Tai Mora? No! How could you think–"
  
  "Then why would you–"
  
  "Emlee told me about Gian," Gian said. "Your… other Gian."
  
  Lilia hissed out a breath. "She had no right to tell you that."
  
  "If that Gian was part of some resistance, I could pretend–"
  
  "You will stay out of this," Lilia said. "Emlee had no right to tell you about Gian. My Gian."
  
  Gian's face fell. "I thought–"
  
  "That's enough here," Lilia said. "The Kai and I have already discussed a plan. We'll do it when the rest of the parajistas arrive from the temples. He's had to call them all here. It could be a few more days."
  
  "Lilia–" Gian's tone was wheedling. Lilia didn't like it.
  
  "I'm having a bath and going to bed," Lilia said. "Do you have a place for me, Mohrai?"
  
  "No," Mohrai said. "You'll have to share with Gian."
  
  Lilia nodded curtly. "I need to have my jistas accommodated. They are prepared for war, unlike ours. I'm putting them in charge of our defenses."
  
  "The Kai approved that as well?"
  
  "I would not have–"
  
  "How many is he going to marry?" Mohrai said, bitterly.
  
  "What?"
  
  "Is that what he offered you? Do you have some secret child, too?"
  
  "I have no idea what you're talking about."
  
  Mohrai waved at her. "Never mind."
  
  "Show me where the room is, Gian," Lilia said.
  
  Gian hung her head. Lilia felt guilty, then. Weren't they all just doing the best they could? Gian led her to a small, cramped room with two narrow beds. The slim window looked out into the central courtyard, now packed with Dhai from the surrounding clans. Lilia gazed out over them, a swarm of desperate people.
  
  Gian closed the door. "The Kai married another woman," Gian said, "and declared a Li Kai. They're saying that's not usual."
  
  Lilia rubbed her face. It was tingly from all the mahuan root. She was salivating again, hungry. What was a little more? "No, that's not very usual. Kais haven't had multiple spouses since…" She racked her memory for the history of it. "Since at least the first two."
  
  Married and declared a Li Kai… he must have thought he was going to die here in Kuallina. Lilia didn't blame him.
  
  She took a breath. "It's gone," Lilia said.
  
  Gian stiffened. The rigidness of her body frightened Lilia.
  
  "Oma," Lilia said. "It's… gone."
  
  "That can't be."
  
  Lilia started to cry. She hadn't let herself cry yet, and it all came out now, loud and ugly. "I think I burned myself out. I didn't know. I wasn't trained. That's all Taigan would say, how I wasn't trained."
  
  Gian tangled her fingers in Lilia's hair and made soothing sounds. "It will be all right."
  
  "Please stay with me," Lilia said.
  
  "Of course, yes," Gian said.
  
  "Will you hold me?"
  
  Gian lay next to her in the bed. She pressed her body against Lilia's, spooning her from behind, but Lilia could feel the fear and anxiety in her body. It made Lilia tense too. Who was she, if not a powerful omajista? Without Oma, she was just a refugee girl with a bad leg and crumpled right hand.
  
  She needed to show strength, or she would lose all of them – Taigan, Gian, the refugees, the Kai, the Catori, the jistas. How long could she pretend nothing was different? The only omajistas she knew were Taigan and Tulana, and Taigan was gone.
  
  Lilia felt something lumpy under the pillow and pulled it out. It was a yellowish tuber, one her mother had warned her about. The sight of it nearly stilled her heart. "Gian! Where did you get this?" Lilia said. "You haven't eaten it. Tell me you haven't eaten it!"
  
  Gian snatched the tuber from her. "Sorry," she said. "They grow by the river. I was just saving them. I–"
  
  Lilia found two more of them in the bed. She took them to the window and started throwing them out.
  
  "No!" Gian said.
  
  "These are poisonous," Lilia said. "How did you even–" And then she stopped throwing the tubers. She held the last in her hand, and squeezed it tight. "Oh," Lilia said. "Oh, this is much better."
  
  "Can I have it back?" Gian said.
  
  "I'll do better," Lilia said. "I'll bring you a dozen more. But don't eat them. Not yet. Not until you understand them." Lilia kissed Gian's forehead. "I have a plan, Gian. Oh, I have such a better plan now."
  
  "What plan?" Gian said.
  
  "I can't tell you yet. But it's going to be beautiful."
  
  The army came from Liona, and smashed against Kuallina's eastern defenses. Ahkio stood on the wall with Lilia and Mohrai when it happened. They were a vast force, far more terrifying than the few hundred who had come down from the harbor. This was several thousand. They bore great colored banners and wore chitinous red, green and blue armor that made them look like a swarm of beetles. They burned much of the wood as they went, so the smoke preceded them.
  
  "How do you know their leader is with them?" Ahkio asked Lilia.
  
  She shrugged. "I don't. But if it were me, and I'd waited my whole life to take Dhai, and I wanted it untouched, I'd be here in person. She's with one of these armies, or someone who can speak for her is."
  
  "I'm going down to calm the militia," Mohrai said. "I don't want panic."
  
  "Gian," Lilia said. "Could you get me a coat?"
  
  Ahkio eyed her sharply. The season was moving into low spring. It was unlikely she was cold.
  
  Gian nodded and left them.
  
  Lilia leaned toward Ahkio. She was a head shorter than him, though it seemed like more when she hunched over as she did now, leaning on the parapet. "I can go alone, Kai. Someone needs to lead them from here."
  
  "We should both go," he said. "Mohrai will lead them."
  
  She put her chin in her hand. "You have another wife at the temple, they said, and a child. Maybe things being less complicated will be good."
  
  "No," he said. "I've considered the options. If Meyna and her child are lost, there's still Mohrai and hers. If Mohrai and hers are lost, we have Meyna." He had considered every angle. In another country they may have thought multiple heirs would divide them, but all Ahkio could think of now was redundancy. What made them different than the Tai Mora? How could they use it to their advantage?
  
  "And you–"
  
  "If I'm lost, it doesn't matter," he said. He was surprised at the sound of the resignation in his own voice.
  
  "Kai, I think you should return to the temples, once I go down there."
  
  "Is this part of your grand scheme?"
  
  "Someone needs to lead the people from the temples into the Woodland. If you go at the same time I do, you can have them cleared out before her armies get there."
  
  "I don't see–"
  
  "More importantly… Kai, there's something you should do, have done, when you go up. You need to have them burn the fields behind them. The temples, too. Burn every orchard. Every house. Burn down everything in the temples. All of it."
  
  "I thought you were mad before, but this–"
  
  "They want Dhai untouched," Lilia said. "Did you consider why?"
  
  "I know what they want in the temples."
  
  "Then burn it down. Burn it all down."
  
  Ahkio gripped the rail. His face was hard, knuckles clenched. "This strategy–"
  
  "It's not nice," she said. "But when we were out there, we saw that they weren't destroying anything. They mean to live here, Kai. The only way to thwart that is to make it uninhabitable. Mohrai will lead them into the woodland here while I distract them. The Seekers will help. But while we're doing that, you need to start the burning. Only you can do that."
  
  He pressed his fists to his face. "Oma's breath," he said.
  
  "I've thought about it a hundred times," she said. "If we go, we have to burn it down."
  
  He wept, then. He felt nothing when he did it, and Lilia just stood there dumbly beside him, chewing her mahuan root and gazing out at the army.
  
  "If I hadn't broken the mirror it would be a much bigger army," she said, "one we couldn't have held even this long. One we couldn't run from."
  
  When he did not stop crying, she seemed to soften, but that wasn't what he wanted. It wasn't what he needed. He wanted her to comfort him in some way, but she stood resolute. It was why he had given her this chance in the first place, because she was more ruthless than him. He knew it the moment he met her. He had unleashed this monster. It was the only way he could think to save them all, and what they were. She would be the monster. He would be the politician. He would not have a drop of blood on his own hands, though he would know, always know, that every life she took was his to share.
  
  "I can do it myself," Lilia said. So certain.
  
  "No," he said. "I should meet her."
  
  "Why?"
  
  "She's my sister," he said.
  
  "Oh," she said. "I never had a sister."
  
  A runner arrived for him, and he excused himself, grateful for an excuse to flee from her company. Farosi waited for him below with a message written on delicate green paper.
  
  "From Yisaoh," Farosi said.
  
  "You've seen her?"
  
  "No," he said, "but I had the handwriting verified in Garika."
  
  Ahkio opened the note.
  
  If you've a desire to meet, it will be on my terms. Temple of Tira courtyard.
  
  She wrote a date two days from the current one. There was still a clear Line path between Kuallina and the Temple of Tira. With the army blocking them in from the north, the temples of Sina and Para could be considered under enemy lines now. Anything north of Kuallina was gone – burned and routed – the inhabitants driven south ahead of the army. Ahkio had every parajista they could muster at Kuallina now, running in shifts, backed up by sinajistas and tirajistas, directed by Lilia's omajista captain, Tulana. He had not thought they would last a day, let alone weeks, against the armies that smashed them here at Kuallina, but the Seeker ran her teams with an iron discipline, rotating them out in two-hour shifts. The constantly shifting parajistas on the wall ran like a water clock winding down.
  
  "Can you take a response to her?" he asked Farosi.
  
  He shook his head. "The runner who brought it said it was a one-time offer. You meet on her terms or not at all."
  
  Ahkio let out a huff of displeasure.
  
  Someone knocked at the door. Caisa entered. "Kai?" She had arrived with the last of the parajistas from the Temple of Para, all that were able to get onto the last Line out.
  
  "News?" he said.
  
  "The… Lilia would like to see you to discuss the banquet again."
  
  "Let that lie," he said. "I need you to come with me to the Temple of Para tomorrow."
  
  "Why?"
  
  "We'll discuss that on the way."
  
  He told only Mohrai he was leaving. She was not pleased, but he pitched it as a trip to take stock of their resources at the Temple of Tira. Food was at a premium now with so much of the stores at the harbor overrun.
  
  "No surprises," she said. "I'm sick to death of surprises."
  
  He rode the Line south to the Temple of Tira. It took a few hours. Caisa read the whole way from The Book of Oma. He saw her mouthing the words and nearly started to recite along with her.
  
  "Is there a Book of Oma over there?" he asked.
  
  "No," she said. "Ours is The Book of Dhai. It's about our history, mostly, how we are the blessed of Oma, how Oma delivers us from evil during times of madness."
  
  "How many times?"
  
  "Four thousand years, two turns of Oma," she said. She leaned forward. Space in the bubbled chrysalis was tight, so her nose nearly brushed his. "Thank you for taking me back."
  
  "You heard about Liaro. Did you know?"
  
  "I know he loves you very much, Kai. I know… whatever happened, he thought he was doing the right thing."
  
  "I've had enough of betrayal."
  
  She moved back. "Kai, you know this is just starting."
  
  "I thought it was ending."
  
  She pointed at the sky. "Oma hasn't even risen yet. That's when things get very bad, the books all say."
  
  He laughed out loud at that.
  
  They arrived at the Temple of Tira under a misty rain. The Line carried them up and up through a massive tangle of trees, deep into the Woodland. Perched atop a massive cliff, its great foundations spanning two huge rivers spilling over the side, was the Temple of Tira, a green-black fist of a temple with the same domed top as the Temple of Oma. Even this far into the woodland, the plants had not reclaimed the temple. It kept them away with some kind of inner defense, one the Oras had never understood. Ahkio heard it posited that the temple's living skin secreted some kind of chemical or pheromone that repelled living things, but if that were so, it would have been impossible to keep a garden within the temple grounds, and Tira's gardens were the most renowned in the country. Its walls were made of tiered gardens, spilling with red and purple and yellow blossoms.
  
  When the bubble of the Line arrived inside the Line chamber of Tira's temple, a novice already waited for them. She threw a bucket of living matter over the chrysalis, disintegrating it all around them.
  
  Ahkio stepped free. "I have an appointment in the courtyard," he said.
  
  "You're expected," she said. "Please wait while I get the Elder Ora."
  
  Masura's cousin, Aimuda – an aging man with just a thin wisp of white hair left atop his slightly conical head – stepped through the doors a few minutes later. Rumor had it a midwife had pulled him from the womb with a pair of tongs, permanently deforming his head.
  
  "Welcome to the Temple of Tira, Kai," Aimuda said, pressing thumb to forehead. "You are expected below."
  
  Aimuda led him down six flights of stairs, plenty of time for Ahkio to note how quiet the temple seemed. "Where is everyone?" he asked.
  
  "Only a few of the novices and the support staff remain," Aimuda said. "The rest have been sent to Kuallina."
  
  "I didn't realize you sent so many," he said.
  
  "Elder Ora Soruza of Oma's Temple was very persuasive in their insistence that we send all we could spare, as the very survival of Dhai was at stake. We could spare all. We sent all."
  
  He led Ahkio into the rear courtyard among the great tiered gardens. A labyrinth of petrified bone trees stood at the center of the courtyard. The great grinning skulls leered down at him, creatures so long extinct he had no name for them.
  
  There, at the edge of the bone tree labyrinth, stood Yisaoh, smirking and smoking.
  
  He expected her to look haggard, pursued, thin and wan, but she was plump as ever, cleanly dressed, her hair combed to a fine luster.
  
  "I heard you were looking for me," Yisaoh said.
  
  "How is it you've been here all this time?"
  
  "I haven't," she said. "Easy answer."
  
  "You convinced the Elder Ora to harbor you for a meeting, though?"
  
  "It's for the good of Dhai," she said, flicking ashes. "The two of us at odds has done neither of us any good."
  
  He stepped forward, but she retreated into the shadow of the misty bone trees, her face lost to the fog. He saw only the burning embers of her cigarette.
  
  "I came to hear your apology," she said.
  
  "Apology?"
  
  "What else would you call me out here for? I want to hear you apologize, and invite me back to Dhai, so I can spit in your face and laugh. Because what country do we have to return to? A bleeding mess. Your mess."
  
  "A mess I inherited."
  
  "Will you apologize or not?"
  
  "The Tai Mora are looking for you."
  
  She inhaled a long draught. Smoke bloomed around her head like a cloud. "That is a fact I'm aware of."
  
  "If they hate you, and they hate me, that should make us great allies."
  
  "Enemy of my enemy, and all that?" she said. It took him a moment to understand the reference. It was a Tordinian saying.
  
  "Something like that," he said.
  
  She nodded, then poked the hand with the cigarette at Caisa. "You still following this mad man, girl?"
  
  "He's Kai."
  
  "So where's my apology, Kai?" Yisaoh asked.
  
  "I'm not here to apologize," he said. "I'm here to propose a solution to our impasse."
  
  "This should be terribly interesting. Do continue."
  
  "Marry me," he said.
  
  She laughed. Laughed so hard she choked on smoke, and doubled over, waving her hand at them. "No, no, really!" she said.
  
  "It's a very serious offer," Ahkio said. "We have a problem easily resolved. A great many women who wanted a voice as Catori."
  
  "So your solution is to marry all of us? Oh, Ahkio, you are darling." She finished the cigarette and stomped it out under her foot.
  
  She turned and made to enter the bone tree maze.
  
  "I need you, Yisaoh," he said.
  
  "Do you?"
  
  "I need a united Dhai," he said. "Help us in Kuallina."
  
  "Kuallina is lost."
  
  "We know that."
  
  "Then why ask?"
  
  "I need you to lead the civilians out of Kuallina," he said. "You know the woodlands, and they'll follow you."
  
  "Where are you going to be?"
  
  "I'll go back to the Temple of Oma, and hold that position. The temples have greater defenses than the holds. But the woodlands have the best defenses, and I think you can disappear there. I think you've been planning that for some time."
  
  "This is too bold to be your idea."
  
  "No. There's an omajista girl, Lilia. She came up with the plan. She says we should burn everything behind us."
  
  "She is right, you know."
  
  "I know."
  
  "Why not have Mohrai do it?"
  
  "Mohrai grew up at the harbor." He thought of the lute, and her soft fingers. "She's not made for the woodlands. She doesn't know it like you do. And what Lilia has planned to delay the army while we escape… I don't think she'll survive it. Many people still trust you. A lot of those who fled to Kuallina are from Garika. They'll go with you."
  
  "If you aren't speaking truthfully–"
  
  "I've never lied to you, Yisaoh. You know I speak plainly."
  
  "I'll do it on one condition," she said.
  
  He waited. She pulled out another cigarette. He wondered how she could stand to inhale so much smoke. "You tell everyone you apologized," she said, "and never ask me to marry you again."
  
  Ahkio broke the news of Yisaoh's arrival to Mohrai first. He found her in the great dining hall, pouring over maps of the troop arrangements outside Kuallina.
  
  "We've turned Yisaoh," he said. "She's agreed to lead the civilians if something happens to me."
  
  Mohrai raised her head. He wasn't sure what he expected, but it wasn't for her to shake her head resignedly. " You never wanted to be Kai," Mohrai said.
  
  "I wanted to be a teacher." Ahkio rubbed his forehead. "And you wanted to play the lute. Yet here we are, neither teaching nor singing."
  
  He thought she might throw something at him, but she just shrugged resignedly. "What you did is done," Mohrai said. "And so are we. Let her in, and let us discuss what's next."