text: Ahkio started awake in the arms of three strong women whose names he was pleased to remember. His cousin Liaro lay sprawled naked beside him; a long, lean man with a face that would inspire no poetry. The number of infused everpine swords and baldrics scattered across the floor reminded him that their bedmates were members of the Dhai militia posted at the Kuallina Stronghold.
  
  It was not an unpleasant way to start his morning.
  
  After untangling himself from bed, Ahkio snuck out the back of the house to avoid bumping into his housemate Meyna and her child. Her husbands were likely off working in the sheep fields, which made his exit that much easier. He walked down the ramp leading to the knotty exterior of their living house. Most homes in central Dhai were hollowed out of gonsa trees, their crowns so great they blotted out the sky. It took a good half hour of walking to clear the shadow of the gonsa trees and reach the Osono Clan square.
  
  The dozen students he taught religion and ethics were already assembled under the immature gonsa tree next to the square, the one that would be big enough to house a proper school in another eight years, when Tira became ascendant, and the tirajistas would use that power to sculpt it. In the distance, he saw the silky threads of the webbing that dissuaded the worst of the walking trees from inundating the square. Most homesteads beyond the webbing had only thorn fences and homegrown defenses like fox-snaps to protect their families and livestock from creeping vegetation with a taste for blood and bone.
  
  "Ahkio!" the students called when they saw him, and he waved, for a moment forgetting to be self-conscious of his hands. The children had stopped asking about his scars when he told them he once fought a fire-breathing bear. It was a prettier story than the one their parents might have told them.
  
  "Today we talk about Dhai government," he said.
  
  "Does this mean you'll tell us about your mother?" one of the girls asked, "and how she died so your sister could become Kai?"
  
  Ahkio winced. "Terrible things sometimes happen to Kais," he said, "like what happened to my parents. We'll discuss that when we speak of the line of the Kai, and I'll also tell you about Faith Ahya, who birthed the first of us."
  
  Ahkio tried to smile, but it took a great effort. His sister Kirana was Kai now at twenty-seven - eight years older than him - and talking about her supposed divinity always made him uncomfortable. His sister hadn't blazed down from a satellite the way it sounded like Faith Ahya did in The Book of Oma, though there were days he wished she had. Mostly, she was just his sister – a warm, sometimes aggravating, and often wise woman who believed in him even when the rest of the country wanted to see him exiled for madness after the death of their parents.
  
  "Government is not determined by Oma," Ahkio said. "If you learn nothing else in this class, remember that. It's created by people like you. When we were slaves to those Dorinah witches across the mountains, five hundred years ago, a woman named Faith Ahya fell in love with a man named Hahko, and the Dhai people followed them and their kin out of bondage in Dorinah, not because of their brute strength or cunning, but because of their faith in the vision Faith and Hahko spun for them. This was the refuge they created. Now each of you are a part of building its future."
  
  Only one student rolled her eyes. Ahkio made a note to tell her some terrible story later about how people from Saiduan spirited away arrogant young students who didn't listen to their teachers.
  
  "Oma," he muttered aloud, because he realized he'd heard precisely that type of story from the Oras in the temple when he was younger. He was going to end up an old man teaching the children of shepherds to fear monsters in the woods.
  
  At midday, most of his students went home to help move their family's thorn fences so they could rotate their sheep from one plot of community land to another. Ahkio napped and spent some time at the local tea house playing kindar with Saurika, the clan leader of Osono, a pleasantly plump, beady-eyed old man who kept claiming his leader piece long before he'd swept Ahkio's family pieces off the board.
  
  "You're a cheater," Ahkio told him.
  
  "You're one to talk," Saurika said. "I taught your sister to play kindar. I know all the tricks."
  
  Later in the afternoon, a few students returned for a lesson in arithmetic, something Ahkio was not nearly as qualified to teach as religion and ethics. When he tired of it, he invited everyone home to dinner with Meyna and her husbands.
  
  They arrived at Meyna's house and sat at the big communal table out back - Ahkio, three of his students, his cousin Liaro, and Meyna's husbands, who were also brothers - big Hadaoh and skinny little Rhin. The brothers shared a father, and one could see their kinship in their faces, their postures. Hadaoh stood at the outdoor stove, poking at the embers and drinking from a mug of wine. Rhin rubbed Meyna's swollen feet and told her some bit of gossip from the square about a merchant's new husband. Meyna was hugely pregnant with her second child. Her first, Mey-Mey, was two, and danced around the table with a large day lily stalk.
  
  The night was hot, and moths circled the lanterns along the path to the house. Clan Osono was known mostly for its sheep, and the warm wind carried the sound of their bleating. The smell of them was less noticeable. After two years in Osono, Ahkio had gotten used to it.
  
  His students were deep in a discussion with Liaro about the virtues of the country's second Kai, and whether or not Faith Ahya actually glowed when she appeared to prophets and seers.
  
  Ahkio kept his hands tucked beneath his long sleeves. He gazed out past the students to the lights and laughter coming from the families nearby who were doing just as they were – congregating for good food and good company on one of high summer's last vital nights. He heard someone swear, and stab out into the darkness at some flailing thing. The woman came back from the shadow beyond her table carrying a limp florid flower, its sticky tentacles still seething. She tossed it into her outdoor fireplace. Even from a hundred paces away, Ahkio heard the plant hissing.
  
  "Ahkio?" Meyna said.
  
  He started. "Yes?"
  
  "Go get me wine, love. It's your turn to fetch drinks."
  
  Ahkio touched thumb to forehead in a mocking way - an overly formal gesture between kin – and rose from the table. He paused a moment to admire her. She tilted her head, smiled; she was beautiful by any measure, and a formidable businesswoman.
  
  "Are we drinking to our engagement?" he said.
  
  "And what would you add to our house?"
  
  "A pretty face isn't enough?"
  
  "You're not that pretty," she said.
  
  Liaro laughed. "Now you're just playing," he said. "If I didn't bring Ahkio along to the tea house I'd never lure over an accomplished woman."
  
  "Liaro has the truth of it," Meyna said. "Those militia women in the house this morning surely kept you quite busy."
  
  "I'd give it all up for you," Ahkio said, and though his tone was playful, his heart fluttered when he said it, because it was true. He would give up a great deal to marry Meyna and her husbands. More than he'd admit.
  
  "Fetch us a drink," Meyna said warmly. "We'll discuss it."
  
  He grinned and pushed away from the table. Liaro called after him, "Don't fall for it, Ahkio! She says that to everyone!"
  
  Meyna said something less than complimentary in turn.
  
  Ahkio walked around the side of the house and opened the entrance to the cellar. As he started down, something caught his attention. In the dim light of the flame fly lanterns at the front of the house, he saw someone on the porch.
  
  Ahkio hid his hands in his sleeves. He called to the figure. "Welcome, kin. Food, rest, or company?"
  
  The figure raised its head, and Ahkio's chest tightened.
  
  It was Nasaka, one of the Oras from the Temple of Oma.
  
  The last time an Ora had come for Ahkio, his parents were murdered, and he was saved from a fiery death by his screaming sister and Nasaka's glowing willowthorn sword.
  
  Nasaka was a lean whip of a woman, well over fifty, hawk-nosed and gaunt, with a firm mouth and broad jaw. She was his aunt – his dead father's sister - and people often remarked that she and Ahkio bore a resemblance to one another. The resemblance annoyed him. He'd rather look like some useful farmer.
  
  She wore dark colors. Not temple colors. That meant she had traveled without wanting the locals to recognize her as an Ora. The scholarly magician-priests of the temples weren't well favored in most clans. They dirtied up Dhai politics. As if Dhai politics weren't dirty enough.
  
  "Just a smoke, I'm afraid," Nasaka said. "Come sit with me, Ahkio."
  
  Ahkio hesitated. Dread knotted his stomach. He heard Meyna's laughter behind him. He wanted to turn around and pretend he had not seen Nasaka at all.
  
  "Has my sister sent for me?" Ahkio asked. He leaned against the porch rail. He, Rhin, Hadaoh and Meyna had built the railing the year before, when Mey-mey had started to walk.
  
  Nasaka pinched her fingers to the end of her pipe. A soft glow lit the end of the pipe. She began to puff. She drew her fingers away, shaking off ash. It was a trick Ahkio was surprised the old woman could manage. She was a sinajista, and Sina had been descendent many years. What little power Sina's gifted still retained wouldn't amount to much more than calling up a tiny flame or perhaps removing an uncomplicated ward. At its height, Sina bestowed far darker powers – sinajistas had been known to steal lives with a touch, and set forests ablaze with a look.
  
  "You certain?" Nasaka said, gesturing with the pipe.
  
  "I don't smoke," Ahkio said. "You're thinking of Kirana. How is my sister?"
  
  Nasaka exhaled a long plume of smoke. "Your sister is dying," she said.
  
  Ahkio was glad for the rail, then. "You're wrong," Ahkio said. "Kirana is Kai, and Kais don't die without heirs. I've spent all morning teaching that to children."
  
  "Just because a thing has not yet happened does not mean it can never happen," Nasaka said. "She is dying. And she has summoned you. There is no one else, Ahkio. You knew this day might come."
  
  "Kirana isn't going to die," Ahkio said. Of the two surviving children of the former Kai, Kirana was the one who could channel the power of the satellites. When Tira was ascendant she could heal the blind and coax a morning star vine to become a sturdy ship's rigging. The rest of the time, she excelled at talking down disputes among bitter clan-rivals and managing trade negotiations with the Aaldians and Tordins to the south.
  
  Ahkio taught ethics to the children of shepherds.
  
  Nasaka exhaled more sweet-smelling smoke. It was a foreign blend of cloves, purple hasaen flowers, and Tordinian tobacco, a spicy, not unpleasant scent that clung to the woman night and day; a smell uniquely Nasaka. It put Ahkio in mind of the temples, and another burning, a long time ago.
  
  "I hoped you would marry," Nasaka said, "a good strong Osono girl or two. It was why I permitted you to leave the temple."
  
  "Kirana married, and see how happily that turned out. You never got your heirs from her and what's-his-name."
  
  "And look where we are because of that. I have a dying Kai and only her weak, irresponsible brother to tap for the seat."
  
  "My life is here," Ahkio said. He looked into the dim yard. The moons were rising. "I've kept house with Meyna and her husbands-"
  
  "Oh, Meyna this, Meyna that," Nasaka said, and her tone let Ahkio know the low regard she held for her.
  
  "Don't speak ill of Meyna in her own house."
  
  "I need you at the temple tonight," Nasaka said. "Clan Leader Saurika has someone prepared to take over your classes."
  
  Ahkio thought about telling her no. He thought about running off into the sheep fields. But telling Nasaka no never ended well. He knew that as well as anyone.
  
  "Is she really dying?"
  
  "I wouldn't be here otherwise."
  
  "Who did it, Nasaka?"
  
  "It's some illness."
  
  "Then call some sensitive tirajista who could still channel Tira in decline, and she'd fix it. Don't take me for a fool."
  
  Nasaka sucked at the end of her pipe. The silence stretched. Then, "Whatever her illness, it can't be cured. It's gotten worse, Ahkio. I'm sorry. I don't know how much time she has, and I want you to sit with her before the end."
  
  Ahkio pressed his hands to his eyes. Took a deep breath. "Was it Tir's family?" he asked. "Rhin and Hadaoh's father?"
  
  "I suggest you pack your things and come with me," Nasaka said softly. "If it was then this house is no longer safe for you."
  
  Ahkio turned away from her. He went back around the house to where his kin had gathered. He could not still his hands. Politics had caught up with him, a decade after he thought all those terrible days were dead and burned.
  
  The remains of dinner smeared the bowls and plates. Eating sticks and hunks of half-eaten bread littered the table.
  
  Meyna held Mey-Mey, asleep, in her lap. Hadaoh was relating a story about birthing a lamb. Rhin conferred with one of Ahkio's students, scribbling something in charcoal on the wooden table.
  
  Liaro grabbed at Ahkio's hand with his rough, calloused fingers. Ahkio had given him blanket consent some time ago, and the unexpected touch calmed him now. Liaro set his black stare on Ahkio.
  
  "Something tells me that Ora isn't here to propose marriage," Liaro said, and from the look on Liaro's face, on everyone's faces, Ahkio had done nothing to conceal what he felt.
  
  "How did you–"
  
  "I sent him for wine," Meyna said. "You were dallying. He saw Ora Nasaka. Is it true?"
  
  "Kirana's summoned me to the temple."
  
  Meyna cut a look at the house. He wanted to take her smooth, unblemished hands in his. He wanted her to tell him everything would be all right, and she would propose in the morning, and they would be his family now. Kirana was not dying. He wouldn't be left all alone.
  
  But all Meyna said was, "Be careful."
  
  Rhin and Hadaoh exchanged a look. "We should speak to Yisaoh," Rhin said.
  
  Their sister, Yisaoh, had contested Ahkio's mother for the title of Kai just a decade before. Ahkio had thought Meyna inviting him into their house meant the end of all those bad feelings. He was not his mother. But Meyna's expression had darkened. As Ahkio stood there rubbing his hands, the mood of the table sobered. Whoever had come for his sister would come for him next, he knew. He knew it and still rebelled against it, because to step back into the temple with Nasaka meant she would try and turn him into everything he hated.
  
  "I want to stop the world right here," Ahkio said aloud. "Just like this."
  
  "Too late," Liaro said, and pushed away from the table.