text: Ahkio kicked at the confines of his cell – and a cell was what it was, though none were supposed to exist in the temple. In his naivety he'd assumed Nasaka had cleared a storage room for Almeysia, but no, this was very clearly a cell, the like of which he'd only read about in bad Dorinah romances and references in The Book of Oma.
  
  Liaro had not come down with him, but it was still his name Ahkio yelled inside the black cell. He shouted himself hoarse. It wasn't until he kicked a bucket in one corner, sending it clattering across the little eight foot by eight foot space, that the gravity of the situation came over him. He pressed himself against the floor, right up to the little sliver of air that crept in from under the door, and cried one final time, "Nasaka!"
  
  "She won't come."
  
  The voice was faint, and familiar.
  
  "Who's that?"
  
  "Don't tell me you don't know?"
  
  He heard another sound, a faint cry that sounded like a cat, or, absurdly, an infant.
  
  "Who is that?"
  
  "It's Meyna, Ahkio."
  
  The cold from the floor seeped into his bones. His cheek felt numb. But he squeezed against the seam of the door anyway, pressing his face as close as he could to try and see into the hall.
  
  The cry came again. Then the sound of Meyna murmuring.
  
  "Nasaka put you here?" Ahkio said. As if he needed the answer.
  
  "She came for me after you left," she said.
  
  "What did she want from you?"
  
  Silence. The fussing cry. Ahkio closed his eyes. Her baby, the one she had been so close to having last summer when he exiled her, growing up in this prison in the guts of the temple while he ran around upstairs, arguing with Nasaka.
  
  "This is a poor way to speak," she said. "I'm coming over."
  
  "How will–"
  
  He heard a scraping sound. Footsteps.
  
  Meyna's eye appeared on the other side of the crack beneath the door, wide and bold. He stared at her, speechless. Heard the amusement in her voice.
  
  "The hinges are on the inside," she said. "This isn't a proper prison. We don't have any. I busted out the hinges weeks ago from the inside, using the refuse bucket."
  
  "How are you still here?"
  
  "The other door is locked, the one to the hall. Hinges on the outside. I've been up and down this whole corridor. It's full of old records. No secret ways out. It would take us an age to tunnel out with our bare hands. A hundred years at least."
  
  "How do I get out?"
  
  "Grab your refuse bucket. I'll talk you through it."
  
  Ahkio followed Meyna's instructions, though it was difficult in the dark. He felt his way around the hinge pins. It took two hours of sweat, a splintered bucket, and no small amount of cursing, but he managed to remove the hinges and haul the door inward.
  
  On the other side, Meyna stood before him, thinner and filthy, her greasy hair bound back with what looked like a torn bit of her tunic. Her mouth was a puckered moue, brows drawn.
  
  "I'm sorry you became a part of this," he said, because he could think of nothing else.
  
  "I chose this," she said, "when I told Kirana I'd look after you. Every bid for power comes with a price, doesn't it?"
  
  The baby wailed.
  
  She sighed heavily.
  
  "Do they send more than one person down to feed you?" he said. "We can overtake one together."
  
  "It used to be Elaiko," she said. "Now it's some other one."
  
  "Pasinu?"
  
  Meyna shrugged. "She didn't share her name."
  
  "If we can–"
  
  "Ahkio, I want a bath and a steaming bowl of curried rice and yams. I want a clean swath of linen and a tunic that doesn't stink. But she sends gifted people down here. If we move on them now and fail, we'll have given our trick away, and then I'll be bound up even more securely, or killed. If they've already brought you down here, I suspect we've reached the final days."
  
  "Final days of what?"
  
  "You haven't figured out Nasaka's plan, have you? Ahkio, what have you been doing all these months?"
  
  "Keeping the country together. She's betrayed us to the Tai Mora. I found out that much."
  
  "She wanted me to bring Etena here. My mother was one of the woodland Dhai who escorted her into exile."
  
  "And you… didn't? You chose to stay?"
  
  "Choice? You're so naïve, Ahkio. She'd have killed my child."
  
  "Rhin and Hadaoh? Mey-Mey?"
  
  "Safe," she said. "Unless you did something to them."
  
  "We need to work together," he said.
  
  "Then let's talk of the present. The past is rotten."
  
  Ahkio stayed awake all night… all day? Time was limitless here. He had no idea how Meyna had stayed sane. She was emotionally stronger than him. It's what drew him to her from the very first.
  
  He must have nodded off at some point, because the scraping open of the door at the end of the corridor started him awake. He crawled to his own door. He had pushed it back into place with the hinges still broken. Meyna said that when they fed her they had to open the door, which is why she had to keep replacing the hinges every night.
  
  Ahkio tensed, listening. The clanging of a key in a lock. His door. He stood and pressed his palms lightly against the door. Waited for the click of the lock, and the give of the door—
  
  He stepped back half a pace and put his shoulder to the door, ramming it with all his strength. The door toppled outward onto the person outside of it. The hall was too narrow, though – the top of the door stuck on the wall opposite. Ahkio rolled under it, swinging his bucket at the figure caught under the door. He smashed the bucket into the figure's face, bursting the nose, before he realized it wasn't Pasinu.
  
  It was Nasaka.
  
  Ahkio tackled her, pinning her to the ground. Meyna pushed her door open, wielding her own bucket. She swung. Ahkio ducked. The bucket narrowly missed his head and swung into Nasaka's face.
  
  Blood spattered Ahkio's face. He sputtered.
  
  "Stop! Meyna!"
  
  She brought the bucket down twice more.
  
  Nasaka's nose was smashed, her left cheekbone clearly crushed. Blood welled from her mouth. She spit two teeth, sputtering more blood into Ahkio's face.
  
  "Meyna, the door!"
  
  Meyna ran to the door to the corridor, pushed it open. "The hallway is clear!"
  
  Ahkio yanked Nasaka up and pushed her into another of the rooms. He found the keys on the floor, smeared with blood. His hands trembled as he fumbled with the keys, finally locking her in.
  
  "It won't hold her," Meyna said.
  
  "I'll send someone down," Ahkio said.
  
  "Who?" Meyna said. "You don't know how many of them are hers. She could have turned them all against you in the night. You could be walking into a trap."
  
  "Ahkio…" Nasaka rasped.
  
  He pressed his hands to his ears. He didn't want to hear it.
  
  "You said Pasinu was the only other one who came down here," he said. "Lock the corridor door behind us. Even if she gets out of the cell, she won't leave the corridor."
  
  "You'll let her die down here?"
  
  "Grab your child," Ahkio said. "I'm closing the door."
  
  Meyna ran back into her cell. Ahkio had expected an infant, but the bundle in her arms was a plump little nine-month-old child, sitting up in her arms, sucking on its fist. The big eyes were Meyna's, the tangle of dark hair, the broad face. It was a relief to see nothing of himself in that face; a child birthed in a prison.
  
  Ahkio urged Meyna into the hall. "Up. We need to get to Pasinu, quickly."
  
  Nasaka's voice, pained, slurred, "Ahkio…"
  
  He slammed the door. Found the key, and twisted the lock. He wiped the blood from his face and forged ahead.
  
  "You know where Pasinu is?" Meyna said. "If she's–"
  
  "Let me think."
  
  "You've gotten mouthy."
  
  "You're much the same."
  
  He glanced back. She smirked at him, and he found himself returning the smile, absurdly. He covered his mouth, but a laugh bubbled up inside him, and he could not stop it. He bent over, and laughed so hard he thought he'd retch.
  
  "Are you all right?"
  
  "It's just… The absurdity…"
  
  "Hush. Voices."
  
  He went quiet. He recognized the voices – Una and her assistant, Sabasao.
  
  Meyna whispered, "Are we going to fight them too?"
  
  "No," he said. He straightened and pushed forward boldly into the hall.
  
  Una and her assistant rounded the corner, and came up short. Una's mouth hung open. "Ahkio? Kai? This is…"
  
  "Surprising, I'm sure," he said. "You're exiled. Sabasao, you're gatekeeper of Oma's Temple."
  
  "This is a mistake," Una said. "Ora Nasaka–"
  
  "Is no longer with us," Ahkio said. "Get out. Meyna?"
  
  Meyna came up behind him. The child clung to her hair.
  
  "Oh," Una said.
  
  "Oh?" Ahkio said. "Is that all you have to say for yourself? Go forward, Una. Sabasao, you need to choose a side right now. The one that locks up Dhai children in the temple basements, or the one that frees them. Which do you choose?"
  
  Una started gabbling.
  
  Sabasao was a young man, not much older than Ahkio. "It's time, then," he said. "Kai, there are so many sworn to Ora Nasaka that–"
  
  "She's dead," Ahkio lied. "So there are fewer options."
  
  "I need a bath," Meyna said. "Curried yams. Remember?"
  
  "Could you give me a moment?"
  
  "Yams."
  
  Sabasao nodded. "Up we go, then. I can tell you who you have, but it's not many."
  
  "Fool child," Una muttered.
  
  Una's star was in decline, but he didn't think she was as far gone as Nasaka. If she tried something now, she had no one to blame it on but herself. If had learned one thing in all this time trying to rule Dhai, it was that what people really wanted was to rally around a strong leader.
  
  They pushed upstairs and into the foyer. Ahkio led Una out the front doors and yelled for a stir of militia. He found eight of them, and for one tense moment, he worried Nasaka had gotten to them first. But they were Ghrasia's still. Bold, loyal, Ghrasia.
  
  "Three of you need to escort Una out of Dhai," he said, "to Liona. The rest need to go upstairs and contain Pasinu, Nasaka's assistant."
  
  "I'll warn you, Kai," one of the militia said. "She has Oras up there."
  
  "So do I," Ahkio said. "Let's head up. Meyna–"
  
  She was already forging toward the kitchens, baby hitched on her hip. "Yams and a bath, Ahkio."
  
  He headed upstairs. The militia followed. They found Pasinu in Nasaka's study, standing on a ladder, shelving books. Ahkio yanked the ladder out from under her. She fell hard.
  
  "Bind her and drug her," he said.
  
  "Kai," she said. "Kai, what is–"
  
  "You know very well," he said. "Where's Liaro?"
  
  But she did not know. Ahkio took the stairs two at a time. He went all the way to the top, strode across the Assembly Chamber, and found Liaro passed out in the bed in the Kai's quarters. He ripped open the curtains.
  
  Liaro raised his head, bleary-eyed.
  
  "Get out," Ahkio said.
  
  "Ahkio!" Liaro rubbed his eyes. "Ahkio, this is bad business."
  
  "Meyna was in the basements. With her baby. What was Nasaka going to do with me, Liaro? What else did she have planned?"
  
  "Where is she?"
  
  "Dead," he lied again, and the lie was getting easier.
  
  "She ordered all the parajistas back from Kuallina. She wants everyone back in the temples."
  
  "She'd prefer we died at Kuallina. How many civilians dead, to ensure–"
  
  "You don't understand. She told me–"
  
  "What lies did she tell you, Liaro?"
  
  "Please, I'm–"
  
  "Hung over? Still drunk. Get out of this bed, out of this country–"
  
  Liaro crawled out of bed. He reached for Ahkio's hands.
  
  Ahkio pulled away. "Get out, or I'll have the militia throw you out."
  
  Liaro dressed, tears falling freely. Ahkio didn't want to understand Liaro's betrayal. He just wanted it over. He followed Liaro out, down the stairs, cutting him off every time he tried to speak. At the big double doors, Liaro tried to plead his case one last time.
  
  "You're the love of my life, Ahkio," Liaro said. "What I did I did to protect you. I thought it was right."
  
  "Goodbye, Liaro." He ushered him out the door. Closed it.
  
  Soruza crossed the foyer to him. "Ahkio, I've heard some terrible news about Ora Nasaka–"
  
  "Recall your orders for the parajistas," he said. "Ora Nasaka wasn't working on my order. She's dead. Whatever you thought you were doing for this country, it was most likely treason. So I suggest turning things around. Recall them."
  
  "Yes, Kai, but Ora Nasaka said–"
  
  "I don't give a care for what she said. If it's not been clear to you until now, Nasaka is a traitor to this country. She's been aligned with the Tai Mora all this time. Every order she gave you was in service to them. Those parajistas need to be in Kuallina."
  
  "I'm sorry, Kai. I… didn't know."
  
  Hadn't she? Ahkio honestly had no idea. "I need another note sent to the Temple of Para," he said. "To Caisa Arianao Raona. Tell her to meet me in Kuallina. Take the Lift."
  
  "But you just–"
  
  "I've changed my mind. You'll find that changing one's mind in the face of new information is wise."
  
  "Yes, Kai."
  
  "Can I trust you to hold this temple until I return?" So far as he knew, there was no other power vying for attention in the temple. With Nasaka locked up, they had few options. It was follow him or descend into chaos. He wouldn't blame them for choosing chaos.
  
  "I will, Kai."
  
  He inquired in the kitchens, and was directed downstairs to the bathing chamber where Meyna was submerged, scrubbing her hair with everpine while a gaggle of novices played with her child. It was strange to watch. The novices were so unconcerned, completely ignorant of the shift in power going on above them.
  
  Ahkio squatted next to her.
  
  Meyna rolled her eyes up at him. "Put your things in order?"
  
  "I'm going to Kuallina. The harbor has fallen. The Tai Mora."
  
  "Tai Mora?"
  
  "Have someone catch you up," he said.
  
  "You'll do just fine," she said.
  
  "I just said–"
  
  "I'm going with you to Kuallina," she said. "The way by Lift is hours. We'll have time to catch up."
  
  "That sounds like a terrible idea."
  
  "Does it?" She ducked under the water, rinsing out her cloud of dark hair. Surfaced. "If there's one person up here you can be sure isn't on Ora Nasaka's side, it's me, isn't it?"
  
  "You hate me as much."
  
  "Not quite as much," she said.
  
  "The baby–"
  
  "Every Kai led with a baby at her hip. There's a long tradition. You could, too."
  
  "This game again?"
  
  She laughed. It sounded genuine. She came to the edge of the pool, whispered, "Kai Ahkio, what better way to shore up your position here than with a baby of your own on your hip? You are a childless man, still. With me and your baby, you give people hope. A future. Have you considered that?"
  
  "You're a scheming Mutao, just as Nasaka said."
  
  "I'm right, though, aren't I?"
  
  She was right. He chewed his lip. Liaro gone. Mohrai pregnant, but was she still alive in Kuallina.
  
  He gazed into Meyna's dark eyes and read mirth there. She was still one of the smartest people he knew, and unlike Nasaka, he knew her motives. Her final move. If he gave it to her, she had no reason to fight him.
  
  "Will you marry me, Ahkio?"
  
  "You and Rhin and Hadaoh?"
  
  She shrugged. "The more the merrier? They are in the Woodland. We can address that issue when we get there."
  
  The child shrieked with laughter. He glanced over at the grinning novices carrying it about in their arms.
  
  "Is the child gifted?"
  
  "It's Nasaka's grandchild," Meyna said. "I suspect it will be."
  
  "One who can bear children, or cursed like me?"
  
  "All signs say it will bear children," she said. Meyna had not gendered Mey-mey until she was a year and a half old, when Mey-mey started applying a gender to herself.
  
  He held out a hand and helped her out of the bath. She was gloriously naked, but he handed her a towel quickly, to keep from thinking of it. "So you've decided to invest in me, finally," he said. "What changed your mind?"
  
  "I was in prison for almost a year," she said. "It gave me time to think."
  
  They married in the Sanctuary, a hasty ceremony that earned him strange looks from more than one Ora. The faces of the Oras were different: Almeysia and Una gone, Gaiso dead, Nasaka shuttered up downstairs. Only Masura was familiar, and it was she and Soruza who held the ceremony. By all laws it was an illegal pairing; Mohrai, Rhin and Hadaoh had to sign all the appropriate documents, agreeing to the match. But Ahkio wanted symbolism. He wanted continuity.
  
  Most of all, he needed to hold up Meyna's child in the light streaming in from the dome above, colored red in the light of Oma's visage, and declare it the Li Kai, his successor.
  
  He had three dozen witnesses to it. The child squalled at him. He held it tight, gazing into the mirror of Meyna's eyes, and mourned for Kirana, and the line of Kais that could have been.
  
  Meyna had not expected this part. He saw it in her face.
  
  When he returned the child to her arms, he leaned over, whispered. "I know you want to come to Kuallina. But if I die there, something needs to continue. Do you understand?"
  
  "I'll hold the temple," she said.
  
  He withdrew.
  
  Friends. Enemies. It was all blurring together now.
  
  He got onto the Lift to Kuallina, into an uncertain future.