text: Lilia's first plan had been to serve the Tai Mora their own dead and set the whole table on fire as a massive distraction, believing that was appropriate, but Ahkio's face at her suggestion put that idea to rest. When she found the forsia tubers among Gian's hoarded food, she had a far better idea. Most of the refugees were eating plain rice now and little else, but Lilia proposed they spread out a proper banquet with fresh food shipped in via the Line from the Temple of Tira. If they pretended they were well-stocked and eating well, it told the Tai Mora they were comfortable with a long siege. And the tubers would be just one dish among many.
  
  The Line had become a front of sorts for the battle of Kuallina – the Tai Mora had already severed the lines going to Asona Harbor, Liona, the Temple of Sina, and the Temple of Para, leaving only the routes to the Temple of Oma and Temple of Tira intact. Lilia had Laralyn protecting the remaining two lines. Those who took the second shift were weaker, less experienced. It was only a matter of time before the Tai Mora hit them when the second shift protected them, and then they were completely cut off.
  
  The banquet they planned was one Lilia would have eaten at the temple during the high spring festival season: honeyed fiddleheads, curried yams, caramelized onions and salted weed plantains, marigold blossoms in buttery cilantro rice, soft braided bread braised in garlic, and fried edamame.
  
  For the final dish, she walked with little Tasia along the creek bed running behind Kuallina. The creek was now festering with the piss and shit of the great army, which used it as a latrine. Kuallina itself had a well, so it didn't threaten their own water, but the waste had polluted the stream, killing various types of fishes, toads and other, more delicate creatures, and that made Lilia angry. She had worked personally to oversee the digging of the latrines for the refugees outside the wall. Shitting in a creek was wasteful, irresponsible, filthy.
  
  Her anger made it easier for her to put up with the stink and mess of it on her shoes as she waded in and pulled out the great knobs of the dormant forsia lilies growing on the little islands at the center of the stream. Tasia carried them in a big sack that eventually dragged across the ground. Lilia needed one for every guest, and a half dozen more for practice.
  
  "Never eat these," Lilia told Tasia as she put them in the sack, just as her mother had said to her when she was small.
  
  "But you're going to eat them," Tasia said.
  
  "They are poisonous," Lilia said. "They have to be prepared the right way, and divided up and eaten correctly. Until you learn how, they will kill you. Understand?"
  
  Lilia hauled the forsia tubers back into the kitchens of Kuallina, and stood at the sink with her sleeves rolled up and scrubbed them herself. They had a spiny outer skin and soft, sweet-nutty interior. Lilia liked the idea of serving the Kai and her people some weed that grew in their own shit. Liked it very much.
  
  She cooked one of the forsia tubers in the oven, then called down Gian and the Kai to teach them how to eat the tubers without killing themselves. Yisaoh and Mohrai came down with the Kai, watching him and each other like predatory birds. War had a way of bringing people together.
  
  "This needs to be done correctly," Lilia said, "or it will kill you." She said it in the same tone she'd used with Tasia.
  
  Lilia carefully removed the skin of the root and put it aside. "Don't eat this part," she said. "This next is most important, though." She took the knife and gently tucked it into the center of the tuber, and pulled the knife all the way around its stiff core. She pulled apart the two halves, revealing a sticky black center from which radiated three dark tendrils.
  
  "This whole black center must be removed," Lilia said. "These tendrils, too. You must not eat this part. Not even a taste. It will kill you." She began to de-vein the tuber.
  
  Mohrai examined the skin of the tuber. "We should at least have Ahkio's already cleaned."
  
  "It will give us away," Lilia said.
  
  "What will happen if he dies at that table?" Mohrai said. "It took a year to unite the clans. Succession now, especially after that… performance in the temple, will be contested. This is much riskier than I thought."
  
  Yisaoh shrugged. "Let him do it."
  
  "You would say that," Mohrai said.
  
  "How serious is this poison?" Ahkio said.
  
  Lilia neatly pulled the first black thread away, and set it aside. "An hour, maybe two. They can burst if you don't handle them carefully."
  
  "Can we wash them?" Ahkio said.
  
  Lilia sighed and set down the knife. She wiped her hands on her apron and then rubbed her aching head.
  
  "If we think they will fall without a head," Mohrai said, "their… leader is certainly thinking the same thing. If this doesn't kill Ahkio, sending him down there surely will. I'm having second thoughts about this. It sounds bold here inside, but out there–"
  
  "Kai?" Lilia said. "You thought this a fine idea when I proposed it."
  
  Mostly fine, anyway.
  
  Ahkio folded his arms, tucking his hands under his armpits. It was an annoying, defensive gesture. He looked at the table as he did it, weighing and considering.
  
  Lilia smacked her hand on the table. "Now is not a time to talk," she said. "Now is a time for action."
  
  "I hate to say it," Yisaoh said. "But Mohrai is right. Do you really think you can sit at that table and kill your own sister, Ahkio? We know she's down there. I don't think you can."
  
  Ahkio raised his head. Lilia saw his answer. He was not a ruthless man, not a killer. It infuriated her more than she thought it would. She had given him a way out before, but he insisted on being part of this, and now, when the time came, he became a coward. He would not follow through.
  
  She stared hard at the knife on the table. "I have given a lot of things to fighting these people," she said. "You–"
  
  "Revenge," Ahkio said.
  
  "It's not revenge," Lilia snapped. Reflexive. Of course it was about revenge.
  
  "I'm sorry about what they did to your mother," Ahkio said. "I'm sorry about your world, your village, your leg. But destroying them fixes none of that."
  
  "This is not about revenge, it's–"
  
  "We'll have a banquet," Ahkio said, "without the poison. We'll meet them like civilized people, and accept what happens. The more I've considered this duplicity, the more I dislike it."
  
  "It's the only way," Lilia said.
  
  "Is it?" he said. He seemed disappointed in her. They all did. She was disappointed in herself, too – for failing at the harbor, for burning out, for not telling them. "Ghrasia wouldn't have agreed to this," he said. "It was compassion that had her open those gates for you. The same compassion that would stay her hand now."
  
  "You can't speak for the dead," Lilia said.
  
  Yisaoh interrupted. "We'll do as the Kai says." She pulled a cigarette from a leather case in her tunic pocket. Lilia wondered if she would run out soon, and whether or not she would be so mellow, then.
  
  Lilia picked up the knife and jabbed it into the table. "Fine, then. But I won't be part of it. This was my idea, and this was the only way it was going to work."
  
  "The way it worked at the wall?" Mohrai said.
  
  "It would have–" Lilia stepped away from the table. "Do what you like. This isn't my battle anyway."
  
  She stormed out of the room. Gian ran after her, grabbing at her hand.
  
  "I'm sorry, Li," Gian said.
  
  Lilia pushed away her hand.
  
  Lilia went to her room and curled up on her bed. No one but Gian and Tulana knew she could no longer call on Oma, but even with no power, with nothing but bluster, she was willing to do this: to sit with the leader of Tai Mora and feed her poison and risk the consequences. Because this was their only option. The illusion that shielded the retreating civilians was already going to be difficult to sell after the bold one she had used to cross the great army. She knew her plans sounded extreme, desperate, and they were. But doing nothing was worse.
  
  Gian came in to sit with her, but Lilia yelled at her to get out. She was increasingly agitated now, anxious. She chewed more mahuan root and lay alone in the dark room. Hunger gnawed at her belly, but she did not get up.
  
  Taigan was right. She should have gone to Saiduan. The Saiduan, at least, would do what needed to be done. The Dhai were cowards, just like she had been. They lived fearfully, like she had. But cowards never changed anything. Cowards didn't win.
  
  She didn't remember sleeping, but she must have dozed. She woke to the smell of Tordinian tobacco.
  
  Her door opened, slowly. In the pale light of the moons, she could just make out Yisaoh's long face, the crooked nose.
  
  "I've drugged the Kai," she said. "You and Mohrai are going out tomorrow, with Gian and Mohrai's cousin, Alhina. I'll lead the civilians out while you distract them. Ahkio will go back to the temple, when he's awake."
  
  "What happens when he finds out?"
  
  Yisaoh shrugged. "I'm telling him you drugged him. If you succeed, he'll have to forgive you. If you fail, we'll say you went rogue and manufactured this yourself. Fair enough?"
  
  "But–"
  
  "I know what it is to be driven by revenge," Yisaoh said. "You're the only one of us foolish enough to do this."
  
  The active assault of Kuallina's defenses ceased the day the Empress accepted their parley, but as Lilia stepped through their own still-active parajista shield, her heart hammered so loudly she thought Mohrai, walking beside her, might tell her to turn back for being cowardly after all.
  
  They made an odd party – Lilia and Gian, Mohrai and Alhina. Gian held tightly to Lilia's hand. It sweated terribly in hers, but Lilia dared not let go, not now.
  
  Behind them came the staff who had prepared the banquet. They carried dish after steaming dish.
  
  Two great tables had been moved from Kuallina, and set in a narrow space between the two barriers that protected each of the forces. Behind Lila's side were the refugees, so close she could reach them in just fifty steps. And behind Kirana was her camped army, tent after tent aligned in neat rows, as if a siege were the most normal thing in the world.
  
  Lilia and her companions came up beside their chairs on the dais. The cooking staff spread out the food.
  
  Lilia waited. Gian nervously tugged at her hand. Mohrai coughed a few times, and whispered something to Alhina.
  
  "Will they come?" Alhina asked Lilia.
  
  "She'll come," Lilia said.
  
  They had attracted crowds from both armies. The army on the other side of the table, the Tai Mora, all sat outside their tents, watching. Some stood, sipping tea from metal cups. It seemed to Lilia like an extravagant use of metal.
  
  There was a ripple among the army further back; Lilia followed it with her gaze.
  
  The crowd parted, and two women and two men strode forward. The woman at the front wore chitinous red armor, but no helm. Beside her was a woman wearing a Dorinah-cut dress. The men behind both wore armor as well. The armor was the blue she associated with parajistas. Lilia had wanted to bring parajistas too, but knew that if things went very badly at this table, no amount of parajistas would save her.
  
  The two women at the front she knew. The woman in the armor was the Kai, the one who had attacked her mother with a willowthorn sword while Lilia stood on the other side of the rent between the worlds, screaming. The other was Isoail, the woman who wore Lilia's mother's face here, the one who had happily sent Lilia off to the slave camps before realizing she was more useful than she first realized.
  
  Lilia's stomach knotted. She had to let go of Gian's hand, then, because she was going to grip it hard enough to hurt her.
  
  As the Kai approached, Lilia reached for some sense of calm, the same calm she had when others were grievously injured, and she had to concentrate wholly on their problem. She felt her fear bleed away. Her hands ceased to tremble.
  
  The Kai was just a woman. Women died.
  
  And Isoail… she should not have been surprised that Isoail had switched sides.
  
  Kirana reached her seat. Placed her hands casually on the back of it. "I was promised your Kai, ugly bird," she said to Lilia.
  
  "I am the Catori of Dhai," Mohrai said. "I speak for the Kai. You must excuse his absence. He was called away on other matters."
  
  "He lost his nerve, you mean," Kirana said. She sat in her seat, and waved at the rest of them. "Sit, sit. Let's get this over with."
  
  Isoail sat beside Kirana, but the men did not sit.
  
  Lilia sat opposite Isoail. Mohrai sat opposite the Kai, with Alhina to her right. Gian sat at Lilia's left.
  
  The serving staff removed the covers on the food. The smell of it made Lilia's stomach growl. She had not eaten properly in days. She could not keep herself from looking at the piles of the forsia tubers, their honey-smelling steam dominating the other scents.
  
  "You know I won't eat anything," Kirana said. "I'm not so great a fool as that."
  
  "Eat what you like," Lilia said. "But it's polite here, to parlay over a table, especially during this festival season."
  
  "A festive season." Kirana laughed.
  
  "You and I know one another," Lilia said. She asked Mohrai to pass her one of the forsia tubers. Mohrai raised her brows as if to ask "So soon?" but she passed it nonetheless.
  
  Gian took one as well, though her fingers trembled as she did. Mohrai and Alhina did the same before adding other dishes to their plates – the fiddleheads and rice, the honeyed onions and oily kale.
  
  Kirana touched nothing. Lilia started to panic. If she would not eat, it meant they needed to drag this distraction on a very long time, long enough for the civilians pouring out the back entrance of the temple to make it a good way to the woodlands. Hours, maybe. She could not imagine sitting with this woman for hours.
  
  Kirana tapped her glass. One of the men came from behind and filled it with something from a flask at his hip. "Do I know you?" she said. "I know many people."
  
  "You killed my mother," Lilia said. "So I destroyed your mirror."
  
  Kirana smiled broadly. It was Isoail who looked like she wanted to bolt. "You did?" she said. She drank the amber liquor in her glass. Smacked her lips. "You killed your own mother in the process. How did that feel?"
  
  "I could tell you, if I felt anything anymore," Lilia said, "but I've given that up for embroidery."
  
  Kirana laughed. It sounded like a genuine laugh, deep and long. For a terrible moment, Lilia imagined a world where they could have been friends, or lovers. Different worlds. Different choices.
  
  "Isn't it right that we get along?" Lilia said. "We both love this world."
  
  Kirana smiled. "Let me take a stab. Poisonous, is it?" she said. She pushed at her plate again.
  
  Mohrai and Alhina were already eating, but neither had dared touch the tuber.
  
  "There's nothing wrong with any of it," Lilia said. "You insult me." She began to carefully cut up the tuber. Gian watched her plate, too intently. Lilia should have left her in Kuallina. Taigan had a less easily read expression, but Taigan had abandoned her, and Gian had only run from her. Lilia tried not to smile too broadly as she ate the first bite of the rich, spongy interior of the tuber. It tasted nutty-sweet. Like revenge.
  
  Kirana peered at Lilia's plate. Lilia's stomach squeezed. It was very possible they had the same kind of plant over there. If it was recognized, they'd take Lilia's head now. She may as well take it off herself.
  
  Instead, it was Isoail who took one of the tubers from the plate. She set one on Kirana's as well, and served her rice and fiddleheads too.
  
  Isoail did not exchange a single look with Lilia. She began to cut up the tuber. She removed the skin, as Lilia had. But as Lilia watched her cut it up she noted Isoail missed the translucent, veiny spine of it. The part filled with the poison. Isoail took a careful bite. Rolled it around on her tongue. Her eyes lit up. Surprise. Joy.
  
  "That's very fine," Isoail said. "Just as I always read."
  
  "Yes," Lilia said, though what Isoail was tasting was something Lilia never had. Her mother said forsia was the most delicious delicacy in the world. The most sublime. Unforgettable. The inner, edible tuber was nothing compared to the ecstasy of the poison. And Isoail knew what it was. She ate it gladly. Isoail was not a traitor. She was another captive, with no way out.
  
  Isoail continued eating while Kirana talked. Lilia tensed with each bite Isoail took. Lilia ate her own, de-veined tuber slowly. Each bite tasted like stones now.
  
  "Let's get to the point of this meeting," Kirana said. "I believe we're to have an exchange. What is your proposition?"
  
  "We ask for immediate cessation of hostilities," Mohrai said. "In exchange we are willing to turn over a woman of some interest to you. Yisaoh Alais Garika."
  
  Kirana took a long, slow drink. "Why should I cease this assault for just one woman?"
  
  "If she is of no interest to you, then we are at an impasse," Mohrai said. "We will send her home."
  
  "She is in Kuallina?" Kirana said. Too quickly.
  
  Lilia knew, then. Yisaoh was someone to her. The double of someone close to her.
  
  I know your weakness, Lilia wanted to squeal, but Isoail was washing down the poisoned tuber with more water. Refilling the glass. Extreme thirst was the first sign of poisoning. Lilia could do nothing. Could not speak. Could not yell. This was Isoail's choice. The woman with her mother's face.
  
  "Water?" Gian asked. She was filling their glasses. Lilia nodded absently.
  
  "She has asked for harbor in Kuallina," Mohrai said, "but if we cannot work something out, I suspect she will return to the woodland."
  
  "You'll just turn her over to me, like that?"
  
  "We understand our position," Mohrai said.
  
  "It seems like a very easy choice," Lilia said, "but you can think on it here as you eat. We'll have drinks, after, and decide then."
  
  "I have no interest in dragging this out," Kirana said.
  
  Lilia stopped eating her tuber and picked at her rice. As she scooped a bit of it to her mouth, she saw a black thread in it, right before eating. Her stomach heaved. It was a bit of the poisoned vein of the tuber. She set it back on her plate.
  
  "We are in no hurry," Mohrai said.
  
  Kirana leaned forward. "Is that right? Well, I am. If this is a serious offer, let's say this – you bring me Yisaoh, alive or otherwise, it makes no difference to me, and we withdraw for one hour. We let your civilians leave the fortress. But your jistas and your militia stays. Their lives are forfeit."
  
  "Unacceptable," Mohrai said.
  
  But Lilia wondered, for a long moment, if they should take it. They were here risking their own lives to save those civilians, to give them a few precious hours to escape. Could they not turn over Yisaoh? Yet the Kai would never permit it. Mohrai would know that too.
  
  "That is my offer," Kirana said. "Convenient as it is for you to deliver Yisaoh to me, even if she runs, I will find her eventually. I find all those who oppose me, and I give them a fitting end."
  
  Her gaze swept the table. She made some imperceptible nod and served herself up some kale and weed plantains. Lilia tried not to stare as she poked at the tuber on her plate.
  
  Lilia concentrated very hard on her own food, making a moat around the tainted rice.
  
  Alhina spoke, suddenly, words spilling loudly, "You will love the forsia tuber," she said. "It is such a delicacy."
  
  Lilia stiffened. Fool.
  
  Mohrai said, "I will consider the offer. We will, of course, have to speak to the Kai."
  
  "I doubt that," Kirana said. "You forget we share faces as well as temperaments. My brother was always a coward. I suspect this Ahkio is no different."
  
  "In that, you are wrong," Mohrai said. "He is one of the most compassionate, honest and trustworthy human beings I have ever had the pleasure of knowing."
  
  Kirana raised her brows. "There are some differences, then," she said, and laughed a little as she began to skin the tuber.
  
  Lilia tried to measure how much time had passed since they had left the hold. Nearly two hours? The Kai would be awake now, and angry, but Yisaoh would have already begun the retreat into the woodlands.
  
  "Did you recover many omajistas?" Lilia asked Kirana. "The ones the rebellion sent to other worlds?"
  
  Kirana paused in her peeling. "We recovered a great many," she said. "They were on the wrong side of this conflict, and all of them knew it. It's too bad you yourself burned out."
  
  Mohrai and Alhina turned to stare at Lilia.
  
  Heat moved up Lilia's face. "Why do you think that?" she asked.
  
  "Because Isoail here has had you in a palisade spell this whole time, and you have yet to attempt to counter it," she said.
  
  Lilia met Isoail's look across the table.
  
  Isoail's gaze was warm and very frank. She did not look away as she pulled the black mushy center of the tuber from its heart and pushed it into her mouth.
  
  Of course Isoail knew what forsia was.
  
  Isoail gagged almost immediately. She vomited on the table, so violently it splattered Mohrai and Alhina, who shouted and pushed away.
  
  Lilia pressed her hands to her mouth, but did not move.
  
  Beside her, Gian gagged. She knocked over Lilia's wine glass. Fell to the floor. Began to convulse.
  
  Lilia stared at her, not comprehending. She grabbed Gian's plate and saw the broken tendrils of the of the forsia plant mixing with bits of her rice and fiddleheads. Gian had accidentally eaten it, just as Lilia had almost ingested it herself.
  
  "Gian!" she scrambled after her, and held her in her arms. Gian vomited black bile. It splattered across Gian and Lilia both.
  
  "Parajistas!" Kirana's voice.
  
  The voice that called for the destruction of Lilia's village, for the enslavement of her mother. The voice that would bring the whole world to its knees.
  
  Now that voice would smite her, once and for all.
  
  Something flashed in the sky overhead.
  
  Lilia held Gian's convulsing body close. Black bile oozed from her mouth and nose now, and her eyes were glazing over, so very dark, just like the other Gian… the other Gian… so many Gians, all dead. So many worlds, all dead.
  
  Flickering in the sky. A wash of violent light.
  
  Lilia looked skyward. Two stars blazed in the sky where there had only been Para a moment before. As she watched, Para blinked out, leaving the great purple mass of Sina blaring balefully upon them. A great, thunderous rumble shook the clear sky.
  
  "Gods," Lilia said.
  
  The parajista walls. The barricades around Kuallina. Their entire defense relied on Para's breath.
  
  Kirana started shouting again, a different order. She had left the platform. Mohrai and Alhina, too, had fled, running back toward Kuallina through the broken barricades.
  
  "Sinajistas! Raise the flags! Raise the flags! Burn that fucking hold down while it's vulnerable!"
  
  Lilia held Gian a breath longer. She ran her fingers through Gian's long, silky hair. On the other side of the table, she saw Isoail's prone form covered in black bile. They were the only three still on the dais.
  
  Lilia – ungifted, forgettable once again. Her greatest gift was appearing too ordinary and powerless to bother killing when there was a whole defenseless stronghold at one's mercy, and she had already murdered all of her greatest allies.