text: Lilia climbed the stairs up the great harbor wall, dragging her foot behind her, trying to make up the difference in speed by pulling herself hand over hand on the rail. Her breath came hard and fast, and she found herself wheezing. She had to slow down, though wave after wave of militia pushed past her, like she was just a drudge again, some spectator caught on the stairwell.
  
  When she reached the top, it was still dark, but the moons were out, and they bathed the world in a pale white glow. All along the piers, dark, chitinous figures were pouring out of the boats.
  
  "Parajistas!" Lilia huffed. She coughed, then: "Where's Ora Naldri?"
  
  "Not on the wall yet!" a young parajista called from her place at the parapet.
  
  "Do you have the barricade up?" She leaned over, trying to catch her breath. She needed to let it go. Not think about it. Just breathe.
  
  "It's up – but I can see Para's breath around their boats. They're going to deploy something!"
  
  Taigan was at the other end of the wall, barking at two young parajistas just roused from sleep to join the two on watch at the wall.
  
  "We need to double that barricade, Taigan!" Lilia called.
  
  "They're too raw to act quickly," Taigan said, and Lilia recognized a Saiduan curse.
  
  Lilia limped down the opposite side of the wall to see how many people they had on it. Forty militia, crowded up to the front of the battlements with their bows.
  
  "Stand three paces from the wall!" Lilia said. Her chest hurt, but she had a thread of breath again. The parajistas were getting lost in the muddle of bodies. "Let the parajistas get line of sight!" She spoke as loud as she could, but to these people, she was just a little shouting person. She was no one of consequence.
  
  "Mohrai!" she called. She continued down the wall, breathing deeply, until she found Mohrai, shouting orders for the militia to prepare the first volley.
  
  "Give the parajistas line of sight," Lilia said. "They can't attack what they can't see. Three paces from the wall."
  
  Mohrai frowned. Turned back to the militia, shouted, "Three steps back and hold!"
  
  The line of militia obeyed, as if Mohrai wielded her own bit of magic. Lilia paused a moment more to rally her ragged breath, then called: "Parajistas!" and she started back down the line of the wall again, shouting, "Make sure that barrier ends at the top of the wall! Top of the wall! Make sure this volley can get through! Mohrai is sending a volley!"
  
  Her throat was already hoarse. Though strategy on paper was all very well, limping and shouting along the wall was not the best place for her. She needed her mahuan powder. If not now, then very soon.
  
  One of the parajistas broke away. She was a young woman, a few years older than Lilia, and though Lilia could not see the blue waves of power she manipulated, she recognized the slack face, the lack of concentration. The woman stepped away from the parapet, trembling.
  
  Lilia yelled, "Step up!" right at her face, though Lilia was a head shorter.
  
  The parajista cringed. "There are too many of them," she said. She bolted.
  
  Lilia staggered after her, and nearly collided with a member of the militia. A spit and hiss came from the harbor, and a blister of red breath penetrated their defenses. Lilia fell back, but the tangle of mist collided with the militia member and the three behind her. Their clothes smoked and flamed. Their skin blistered. Screams.
  
  The line of parajistas wavered. Lilia yelled at them again to hold. She skirted past the dying militia and forged after the parajista who had fled the ranks. The woman reached the stairs and plunged down them, far too fast for Lilia to follow.
  
  Lilia crumpled by the entrance to the stairs, gasping like a dying fish. She saw another wave of red mesh slip through their shoddy defenses, but did not have the breath to even warn them. The red wave engulfed two parajistas. They flailed and vomited, their skin sloughing off as if soaked in acid.
  
  Naldri came up the steps behind Lilia, out of breath. He gaped, staring at the bodies, and Lilia, and the quavering line of parajistas. He yelled below, calling for a doctor, and headed out to the line of parajistas, shouting at them to hold their ground.
  
  "There's a tide!" one of the parajistas yelled. "Plant matter of some kind, crawling up the coast!"
  
  A half dozen militia crowded forward at the parapet.
  
  Lilia watched them as if from a great height, listening to the rasping of her own breath.
  
  Then there were two doctors on the wall, an apprentice snapping her fingers at Lilia, Lilia mouthing "mahuan," and then Gian was there, and there was more shouting, and another red sliver darting through the parajista's barrier, setting an entire line of militia on fire.
  
  Gian argued with the apprentice. Pulled out the mahuan from her pocket. How did she think to carry it everywhere? She tipped it into the apprentice's water bag, shook it, and poured it into Lilia's mouth.
  
  Lilia was so starved of air that stopping to drink felt like drowning. She coughed and sputtered. Naldri came up behind her, calling for the parajistas, but it was all a jumble. Now they had Naldri and Mohrai, at the far end, yelling at them. Disparate orders. Fear. The lines were falling, one by one.
  
  The apprentice ran off to tend the next felled parajista, or militia. Two dozen bodies littered the parapet.
  
  Gian kept Lilia drinking until she spit it into her lap and pushed her away. Lilia tried to get up, stumbled, fell into Gian, and Gian held her up. She smelled of sex and lavender. Lilia clung to her a moment longer.
  
  Her breath came better now, enough to find her feet, but she was delicate, she knew. "Go below," Lilia said.
  
  "We should both go," Gian said. "There's nothing you can do here. This is for Mohrai and Ora Naldri."
  
  A cry came from further down the wall. Lilia saw a snarl of red mist engulf another parajista.
  
  "Go below," Lilia said. She pulled her hands away. "Now, Gian."
  
  Gian's expression was pained, but she went, looking behind her twice, three times, before she disappeared down the stairwell.
  
  Lilia saw the remaining parajistas, trembling and sweating, their concentration breaking. It was too much – for her and them – to watch this horror.
  
  She limped across the parapet, dragging her bad leg. She sucked at Oma's breath, pulled it fast and deep. In that glorious, blinding moment she could take a real, full breath of air. Her lungs opened, like she was perfect and powerful. And in that giddy first blush of total power she wanted to burn the whole world down, just because she could.
  
  Below them, the red algae tide deployed twenty minutes earlier had reached the hem of the gate. Red flesh bloomed up the outside of the gates.
  
  The parajistas were stepping back, making more sounds of distress. Dhai did not have the stomachs for fighting. Taigan had told her that again and again, and she hadn't listened.
  
  "Burn it out!" she yelled. But they had no sinajistas on the wall yet to burn the algae tide. They had only her – raw and untrained.
  
  Lilia let loose the burning breath of Oma. She drew deep and pushed the breath from her body out onto the gate, tangling it into intricate flaming trefoils with long tails. The massive clouds of mist met the red algae and burst into roaring flame. Just as she let go of Oma, she saw the answering tide of omajistas on the other side.
  
  A solid wall of red mist formed ahead of the ships and moved toward the gates at an astonishing speed.
  
  "Parajistas! Wall!" Naldri ran down the lines of parajistas again, rallying them.
  
  Lilia had no idea what was contained in that red wall launched by the Tai Mora, and would not know until it burst upon them. Fire, choking smoke, pestilence, or something else? She didn't know everything Oma could do. She had no idea how to counter it.
  
  What if she could build anything she imagined? She brought up her fist, and watched a ball of red mist curl up and away from her skin. She was brimming with Oma, soaked in it like bread left in water.
  
  She could not see if her parajistas had succeeded in forming a wall. She could not see its chinks, its holes, its weaknesses.
  
  "Is it up?" she called to Naldri. He wrung his hands. She realized that no matter how well she planned, the best strategy in the world was nothing if she had no people on the ground who knew how to carry it out. They had not trusted her.
  
  The wall of red was just a hundred paces away.
  
  Lilia spread her arms and opened her mouth and gasped as the star filled her lungs and suffused her skin. Push it out, push it out… push it out… She expelled the breath from her lungs, forcing it out through her body, like vomiting some great formless monster. She had no litany for what she wanted, only will.
  
  Turn it away. Push it back.
  
  The power left her and roiled out across the parapet. She took a breath, but instead of air, drew Oma. She choked.
  
  "Lilia!"
  
  Oma's breath entangled her. She saw great streamers roiling into her body, taking form only as it touched her bare skin. She tried to scream. But there was nothing. She fell.
  
  Taigan was running toward her. "Fool!" Taigan yelled.
  
  Her vision swam.
  
  The world exploded.
  
  Taigan saw what was going to happen the moment Lilia stepped out onto the parapet, gasping like a drowning swimmer. A massive bubble of misty red breath suffused Lilia's form. It whirled madly around her, licking and twisting like some hungry ghost.
  
  "Release it!" Taigan yelled. She bolted forward—
  
  –and saw the wave of Oma's breath hurling toward them from the sea.
  
  She had to choose – cut Lilia off from her source, or save every person on the wall, including herself, from the Tai Mora assault.
  
  It was an easy decision. Taigan had been making it her entire life.
  
  Taigan called the Song of Davaar, and drew deep and fiercely, so much so quickly that the ends of her fingers ached. She twisted her strings into an intricate netted trap and pushed the woven snare of Oma's breath over the parapet. Released it.
  
  Taigan ran toward Lilia, muttering the song that would cut her from Oma's grip. Arrogant, foolish, mad – all that and—
  
  –a rush of hot air took her off her feet. She heard a heavy whumping, as if a forest of trees fell in unison. The air shuddered and contracted.
  
  Taigan spun through air heavy as spoilt milk. She pulled Oma to break her fall. Oma eluded her. How could one trust a god so impermanent, so intemperate?
  
  Taigan hit the parapet hard. Her left shoulder bore the brunt of her fall. The bone snapped in two and thrust up through the flesh of her arm, opening her cheek. Her fingers crunched.
  
  She hissed. Heard another great wallop as the tangled palisade defense she had built collided with the offense the Tai Mora had thrown. The air juddered. The whole gate trembled. She bit through her pain and pushed herself over. She saw a great snarled light just over the parapet – her concoction warring with theirs.
  
  Her fingers were unresponsive. As she tried to stand, she felt a sharp pain in her back, and crumpled again. She had broken something vital.
  
  She reached for Oma and caught a breath. She began to reknit herself. Flesh hissed. Burned. She pieced her spine back together first, then pushed up again and limped toward Lilia while spinning the intricate whorls of Oma's breath to yank back and reknit her bones and flesh.
  
  Lilia lay at the center of a massive charred ruin. The explosion had taken off the rear half of the parapet and half the parajistas on the wall. The edges of the splintered wood were still smoking.
  
  Taigan found Lilia blistered, her clothes blackened tatters, most of her hair gone.
  
  She edged closer, rubbing at her own burning arm as the bone restored itself.
  
  "Lilia?"
  
  No response.
  
  Taigan knew what she would find, but tried anyway.
  
  She pulled on Oma, and began to compose a song for a constricting mist that would kill the girl.
  
  The ward on her back did not burn. Nothing compelled Taigan not to kill this girl.
  
  There was nothing to say Lilia was uncommon at all.
  
  Taigan dropped her hold on Oma. Sighed. She hoped Lilia was dead, or perhaps would die. It wasn't too late for that.
  
  A boom behind her shattered her reverie. She ducked. The battling songs that bound Oma's breath had burst apart, their fight exhausted. Taigan saw the blooming mist of another Tai Mora attack engulfing the skies over the boats.
  
  She gazed once more at Lilia.
  
  Broken little girl, worse than nothing, now. Worse than what she had been even when Taigan found her. Because when Taigan first found Lilia, there was still the potential she could be powerful.
  
  Now she was a burn out. She would never draw on Oma again.
  
  Taigan stepped away.
  
  "Sanisi?" the leader of the parajistas called to her. He limped over, clutching at a wound from a fragment of broken wood. "Where are you going? What's happened to Lilia?"
  
  Taigan shrugged. "That's none of my concern." In truth, Taigan was going down to find a doctor, though she could hardly admit that even to herself.
  
  Then her knees buckled. She cried out, and fell.
  
  A searing pain set her spine on fire. She arched her back. The pain was worse than falling, worse than knitting herself together again.
  
  Maralah's ward.
  
  Maralah calling her home.
  
  The pain receded, but only just. The compulsion held. The ward only burned softly now, like a fingertip pressed to a hot teacup. Taigan shuffled to her feet. Sweat poured down her face. She should have gone a long time ago, yes. These people were foolish. This battle was lost long before it started. Now she had no omajistas at all, nothing to show for over a year of hacking across this blighted place.
  
  "Wait, sanisi. Who will help us?"
  
  "I suspect you'll save yourselves," Taigan said. "Or perish. It doesn't concern me."
  
  Taigan turned away. Her spine still ached. Home, home, but what was that anymore, but a burning brand and a woman with a leash? She began the long climb down the wall.
  
  She would miss the scullery girl.