text: Kirana lay in bed with Yisaoh, absently stroking her temple while the light of the satellites streamed through the windows and the double helix of the suns made their slow bid for dominance of the sky. She wanted to linger much longer, but she already heard the children awake in the next room, laughing. And the sky waited for no one.
  
  She pulled off her coverlet and dressed just as someone knocked at the door and peeked in. A little Dhai servant, come to stoke the fire and set out tea.
  
  "Come in," Kirana said.
  
  "Shall I let in the children?" the Dhai girl asked.
  
  "Give Yisaoh a few more moments to sleep."
  
  "Yes, Empress." The girl set the tea tray on the table at the window and went to tend the banked fire.
  
  Kirana had dreamed of death, of fighting herself in a large dark cavern as it slowly filled with water. She stood at the basin of water on her dresser and peeled off her sweaty shift. Wiped the stale sweat from her chest, under her arms, beneath her breasts. She gazed long at herself in the polished metal mirror, her face so thin and ravaged by worry and hunger that she could have been looking at a stranger. How would she know?
  
  Another knock at the door.
  
  "Yes?"
  
  "Madah has urgent news from the beachhead."
  
  Kirana pulled on her shift again and opened the door. A little Tai Mora page stood there, fairly shaking. "She opened a way into the Assembly Chamber?"
  
  "Yes, Empress."
  
  "Tell her I'll be a moment."
  
  Kirana dressed. Kissed Yisaoh. Yisaoh murmured something, but did not wake.
  
  Kirana went through her office and into the Assembly Chamber where Madah already waited, pacing the room with Mysa Joasta, one of the omajistas Kirana had assigned to her.
  
  "News?" Kirana asked.
  
  "The sand bar has become unstable," Madah said. "I don't suggest we try and brute force our way in any longer. I can move the temple, if you give me a few more jistas, but I'm worried it relies on the sea water. That it breaths it."
  
  "I have a better idea," Kirana said. "I'll have Yivsa bring a gift, one the temple may well recognize."
  
  "The boy's blood?"
  
  "Oravan said it worked downstairs, to wake the temple keeper. They got little out of it, though. Just more nonsense about a guide and a key."
  
  "You think it will recognize you, with his blood?"
  
  "I will make it recognize me," Kirana said. "You have everyone assembled on the beachhead?"
  
  "We're ready."
  
  "Give me a few minutes to prepare. I want Himsa and Talahina to come with us."
  
  When she had gathered her stargazers, Mysa opened a wink between the temple's Assembly Chamber and the sandbar about fifteen hundred paces from the shoreline where Gian and her jistas waited for them.
  
  "This is quite an undertaking," Gian said.
  
  "I expected nothing less," Kirana said.
  
  The seething leviathan of the temple pulsed so strongly the water rippled around it; the sandbar trembled slightly.
  
  Kirana freed the blood inside her jar and smeared it on her palm. She peered at the gooey creature and smiled grimly. "Let's see what you say now, friend." She pressed her palm to its skin.
  
  A tremor. A sigh.
  
  A seam opened in the side of the leviathan, and a gush of seawater poured out, soaking Kirana's shoes.
  
  "In!" Kirana called to those behind her. "I want to open another wink between this temple and the basement in Oma's Temple so we can communicate with them there. Are the jistas still locked into the other temples?"
  
  "Yes," Madah said. "No change."
  
  Kirana waited for her force of jistas and fighters to enter ahead of her; many were the same trusted people she had left with Yisaoh back on their world. When Kirana finally slipped through the slit in the temple's skin, Talahina was already ordering around the jistas and getting them up onto pedestals. The great cavern sparkled with light; the constellations on the ceiling began to move and shimmer.
  
  Kirana gaped, taking in the measure of the cavern. Her feet splashed in the water beneath her. "An organic machine," she said.
  
  Gian, beside her, said, "Like our ark. Something built, awakened, and left… sleeping, for a time."
  
  "Now we wake it up," Kirana said.
  
  Her parajista stepped onto a glowing blue pedestal and a surge of power bent him nearly double. His mouth opened in a silent scream.
  
  The tirajista and sinajista were next. Talahina conferred with Oravan, and they argued over something.
  
  Kirana came over to them. "What is it?"
  
  "We need someone to go in there, the Key," Oravan said, gesturing to a great white webbing that bisected the cavern. "These last two pieces we were… less certain about. Let's ask Mysa."
  
  "I don't want to risk too many omajistas," Kirana said. "I don't want to get stuck in here."
  
  "Suari would have been–" Talahina began.
  
  "We don't have him," Kirana snapped. "Does it have to be a jista?"
  
  "Yes," Talahina said.
  
  "Gian?" Kirana said. "You have a strong jista?"
  
  Gian frowned. Nodded. She called up three of her people and gave them over to Oravan.
  
  Oravan instructed the first to get up into the webbing and then call on his star.
  
  There was a brilliant flash of white light, then a sound like a burst melon. Bits of flesh and blood, broken bones and gooey viscera, splattered them all as the jista was obliterated by the combined burst of power.
  
  "Well, that… didn't work," Oravan said, staring at the fleshy bits of what was left of the jista.
  
  "Try another until it does work!" Kirana said. "I'm getting up on that pedestal."
  
  Talahina said, "Are you sure? What if–"
  
  "If anyone's going to break the world, it's me," Kirana said. She climbed up. Once standing there, she wiped her palms on her tunic. Below, Gian looked less than impressed.
  
  "How much of this are you guessing at?" Gian called.
  
  Kirana said, "Have you done this before? Make a good suggestion or get out of the way."
  
  A sound behind her. A gasp from the jistas nearby. Oravan swore.
  
  Kirana swung her gaze to the other side of the chamber where a group of around two dozen people were already scrambling to their feet. They had simply… appeared. No wink, no– She felt the wave of air headed toward her, too late. Kirana tumbled off the pedestal and into the water below.