After a few moments, she heard Elaiko come after her with great plodding steps. The misty red light did not cross the water, but what was left of the vine continued to burn, shedding red-black embers of itself that sailed through the air, dipping and spiraling before extinguishing themselves in the water.
“Lilia? Is that you?”
A figure at the top of the trail, still a hundred paces further up. Lilia squinted. “Salifa?”
“Yes, come, I’ll help you–”
“Don’t use your gift! They are watching from the temple!”
Salifa came down to meet her. “I can help,” Salifa said, “put your arm around me.”
Lilia looped her arm around Salifa’s waist, grateful for the help. “Who is this?” Salifa asked. “Where are the others?”
“This is Elaiko,” Lilia said. “She has a ward. You’ll need to remove it before we go much further. Just… wait until we reach the dogs. I want to be able to move quickly if they see you.”
They reached the place where they had left the dogs: two more than they needed with Avosta and Harina missing.
“Tie them behind,” Lilia said. “We meet at the rendezvous point. If they make it out, they will see us there.”
“I’m so sorry,” Salifa said. “What happened? Were you successful?”
“We were successful,” Lilia said, and she turned to Elaiko, daring her to say something, but Elaiko only shivered atop her mount, cold and miserable.
“Will you please take off the collar?” Elaiko asked.
Salifa reined her dog next to Elaiko and twisted a few breaths of Tira’s power that neatly untangled whatever weave they had put on the collar to keep Elaiko from drawing on her star.
“Another parajista,” Salifa said, nodding. “All right. We could always use another jista, even one with a descendant star.”
Lilia turned away so neither could see her grimace. “Let’s hurry,” Lilia said. “The sky waits on no one.”
17
Taigan thought it quaint that the Dhai had retreated to the Woodland. Perhaps it was inevitable, but he kept imagining them pushed further and further west, until they were caught up against the sea. He envisioned them hurling themselves off the cliffs and dying spectacularly in a grim pile of broken bodies and squalling babies.
He had always enjoyed his vivid imagination.
Taigan suspected they had moved far north, and his interrogation of the local Woodland Dhai confirmed that. He had followed Lilia across the Woodland to a fingerling peninsula that jutted into the Hahko sea before, in pursuit of her and her little girlfriend, the first Gian, the one he had hated less than the second, and certainly the least of all three of them. That Gian had some sense. Lilia’s fondness for that area made it the first he considered. She would be less likely to bury herself in the foothills of Mount Ahya, though that would have been the strategically smarter choice. That would have also been the first place the Tai Mora looked, and from what he gathered, where they were spending most of their time rooting out small bands of Dhai that Taigan suspected were likely decoys.
Luna ate little and spoke less, which he would have considered a blessing if he had not been so starved to hear Saiduan spoken. For a year he had traveled across Saiduan, holing up in little abandoned towns to see what he could do with Oma now that it had risen. He had great fun with that for a few months, but one could only raze so many villages and dismember so many wayward livestock before growing bored.
When he had sought out company, there was little to find but Tai Mora. Unlike in the Dhai valley, they had kept few Saiduan slaves. Once they had their people and armies through, and their world imploded, there was no reason to kill more Dhai, or anyone else, for that matter. All of the doubles in the Tai Mora world who could arrive had already come over. And someone here had to do the filthy work of farming. In preserving her armies, their Empress had had little time to save her farmers. She was a lord with armies aplenty, but no one who knew how to weave a basket.
Being a warlord was one thing. Being a leader was entirely another.
The trek through the Woodland was as awful as he remembered it, though he was prepared for many of its horrors this time. The swinging bone trees, the curling tendrils that signalled a bladder trap, the dreadful little tree gliders that would dart forward and steal food straight from one’s mouth – all of these he could navigate much more easily than before.
It was not long before he found the tracks of a scouting party. He and Luna followed those for a few days to a tree-based camp of what he realized were Woodland Dhai, not refugees. They shouted the two of them off, and deployed a sticky fence that would have trapped them if not for Oma’s fiery breath at his call.
“I’m surprised there are this many left,” Luna said as they continued their long march toward the sea.
Taigan worked ahead of hir, burning vegetation with little tendrils of Oma’s power. He delighted in watching the nasty little plants begin to curl and char and drop. He crushed them under his feet as he walked, and found it deeply satisfying.
“They won’t be able to gather in groups of more than a few hundred,” Taigan said. “They won’t want to draw on their jistas, either. That would be like drawing a great target down over themselves.”
“But… aren’t you doing that, then? By clearing the brush that way.”
Taigan frowned. “It’s not much power.”
“And you enjoy it.”
“I enjoy it immensely.”
A few days later, Taigan found signs of another scouting party. This one was much less careful than the first. Despite the tree cover, he could smell the sea. He heard the scouting pair because they were arguing about food – a common topic among everyone during these hungry times.
“How will we approach them?” Luna whispered as Taigan caught his first sight of them through the trees.
“They aren’t gifted,” Taigan said. “It will be easy.”
Taigan tied up the two young scouts with a few threads of Oma’s breath and marched down the little gully to them. They could not have been much into their teens. It was almost too easy.
“I’m here to see the little rebel girl in charge,” Taigan said. “She is an old protégée of mine. I assume you are led by this rebel girl, the one with the limp?”
The terrified scouts took some persuasion, but eventually led him and Luna to a large thorn fence that encircled what appeared to be little more than a handful of tents. Something about the whole arrangement seemed off. Was this a forward camp? Surely no one lived here.
He felt the air compress around him, but he had already put up a defensive shield. He noted two tirajistas up in a tree a few paces distant, and neatly cut them off from their satellite using the Song of Unmaking. One of them squealed.
“I’m not here to harm anyone!” he called. “Tell your Kai that Shao Taigan Masaao has brought some information that you may all find quite useful.”
A flurry of movement at his left. A young runner bolted from one of the tents and disappeared below ground. Ah, of course. Underground. Taigan grinned because he recognized Lilia’s thinking in that. Ever the pragmatic strategist.
It was nearly an hour before anyone else approached them. Taigan released the two young scouts, who hopped the fence and sprinted away. Taigan sat on an old downed tree next to Luna.
“You really think they’ll let a sanisi in there?” Luna said.
“They will meet me.”
“What if they don’t? What then?”
“I make them meet me.”
Luna grimaced. “You are just the same.”
“Dire times call for–”
“No, you have always been mean. That’s why Maralah loved you and hated you.”
“What do you know what Maralah thought?”
“She told me. You frustrated her.”
“Good. You know what it is to be compelled by her, against your own wishes.”
“Yet you would do it to these Dhai.”
“Yo
u have a bleeding little heart for a Saiduan,” Taigan said.
“I don’t think I’m Saiduan. Not Dhai either. Is that possible?”
Taigan shrugged. “Many foreign slaves exist in the spaces between things. I was never like anyone else.”
A slender, pock-marked man with a mean little face approached them a few minutes later, coming up from the camp with a line of jistas positioned behind him. Taigan kept a thread of Oma’s breath just beneath his skin, in case he needed to cut them off in addition to the tirajistas still powerless in the trees.
“I’m Liaro,” the man said. “The Kai’s cousin. He’s asked you to tell me of your first meeting with him, to confirm your identity.”
“I had an audience with him in Oma’s Temple,” Taigan said. “Though he spoke little and his elders spoke much. I informed him of the importance of finding a gifted omajista, someone we thought could act as a worldbreaker. Your Kai was not terribly pleasant to me.”
Liaro nodded. “We would ask that – as a show of good faith – you release your hold on our Oras and novices and let them draw upon their satellites again.”
“Will that get me an audience?”
“It will, if you would permit them to shield your power in his presence.”
“You realize I am just as deadly without Oma as with it.”
“Which is why this is merely a show of good faith.”
“I permit it,” Taigan said.
Liaro waved back at the line of jistas. Taigan released the Song of Unmaking, and let go of Oma’s breath. He felt the combined weight of several jistas immediately and inexpertly attempt a Song of Unmaking on him. The air went heavy, then lightened as they became satisfied with their work.
It was not a true fix; Taigan could still sense Oma, and knew that if he applied himself, he could break their clumsy spells. But it seemed to satisfy them, and that’s what he wanted.
Liaro led Taigan and Luna back to the circle of jistas. They surrounded a tent which had the flaps of the walls rolled up so that the people sitting around the table inside were clearly visible.
Taigan recognized the Kai first, a pretty young man even with his sad eyes that had dark circles beneath them. Another was familiar, probably Yisaoh, the daughter to one of the clan leaders. He had moved through Clan Garika on his journey to the temple, and she had made a nuisance of herself. The other woman, with fiery eyes, slightly bent over the table, and a large man and skinny man who stood just behind her – either lovers or bodyguards, perhaps both – he did not know.
“Shao Taigan,” Ahkio said.
Taigan inclined his head. “You live.”
“As do you. This is Catori Yisaoh.”
“We met very briefly.”
“I remember you,” Yisaoh said, curling a lip. She had something in her hand; a cigarette butt, unlit. Where were they getting Tordinian cigarettes out here? “You were skulking about Garika.”
“I’m glad I’m memorable,” Taigan said.
“And this is Catori Meyna.”
“Two Catoris?” Taigan said, amused. “I’m surprised there aren’t more. Always good to have redundancies.”
“There were,” Yisaoh said, coolly. “Catori Mohrai has died.”
“That sounds very tragic,” Taigan said.
Luna was already tugging at Taigan’s sleeve. “What is it?” Taigan asked.
Ze stared at Yisaoh. “She… I’ll tell you later. But, it’s important.”
“Who is this with you?” Meyna asked.
“I’m Luna,” ze said. “Taigan and I know each other from Saiduan.”
“You said you have information?” Ahkio gestured for them to sit.
The weight of the attention from the circle of jistas made the air thick. Taigan sat across from the Kai, and Luna sat next to him, balling up hir hands into fists in hir lap.
Taigan leaned back in his chair and observed the three figures at the table. Yisaoh leaned away from them. Ahkio’s hands trembled slightly, and he pulled them from the table. Meyna was most confident. She had the intense black stare of a woman with a plan she was already in the midst of rolling out.
When he spoke, it was to Meyna. “Luna was working with a number of your scholars in the north. Ze discovered what it is the Tai Mora want with the temples, and how to use them.”
“We know the Tai Mora have plans to close the ways between the worlds,” Meyna said. “But that’s none of our concern.”
“Isn’t it?” Taigan said. “I bring you the knowledge of how to do far more than that.”
Meyna shook her head. “It’s not in our interests, what she’s doing. We have come to a decision to leave Dhai.”
That surprised him. He looked to the Kai, who nodded. “Meyna and I discussed it at length. This is not a conflict that is winnable if we want to remain true Dhai.”
“Pacifists, you mean,” Taigan said. “That is true.”
Ahkio nodded. “We have already committed many crimes in the face of this conflict. If we want to continue, to rebuild, it is time for us to leave Dhai.”
“I can’t imagine that is going over well with those who follow little Lilia.”
Meyna and Ahkio exchanged a look. Yisaoh snorted and tried to light her cigarette stub with a fire pod.
“Lilia is no longer with us,” Meyna said. “Even if she were, she is not a Catori. Her wishes have no part in the decisions we make here.”
“Dead, then?” Taigan said.
“Dead to me,” Meyna said. “Her actions put all of us in danger.”
Taigan rolled that over. Interesting. “How do you intend to get away from the Tai Mora?” he asked. “They have you pinned here against the sea.”
“We are not trapped,” Meyna said. “I am working with the Woodland Dhai, and some Saiduan refugees who washed ashore over the winter. In return for helping them rebuild their ships, we will go with them.”
“A fine and simple plan,” Taigan said, “if you trust Woodland Dhai and the Saiduan.”
“We share a common enemy,” Meyna said.
Luna raised hir gaze from hir lap. “You can’t outrun the Tai Mora,” she said. “They’ll find you, if they want to. And what they could choose to do to the world with all the power they could wield… it’s far more than just keeping other worlds from coming here. They could reshape everything. Grow a mountain right out of the ground, or have the sea wash you away, wherever you are. You can’t run.”
Meyna said, “What’s your name again?”
“Luna.”
“Luna. You speak with a Saiduan accent, Luna.”
“You speak with a Dhai accent.”
“This is Dhai, you silly little thing.”
“Best tell the Tai Mora that, then.”
Taigan smirked. He wanted to pat Luna’s precious little head. “If we cannot work together, then we will part ways,” he said.
“And how do I know you won’t give us up to the Tai Mora?” Meyna said.
“What motive would I have for that?”
“You could be their emissary.”
“I invite you to attempt to stop me from leaving. It would be a very fine show. Your people have had, perhaps, a year to train your little Oras and novices in the fighting arts. In my country, we did not separate our physical fighters from our gifted ones. And I have been fighting for longer than anyone in this whole blighted little refugee camp has been alive.”
“We aren’t refugees,” Ahkio said. “This is our country.”
“You are refugees,” Taigan said. “This is not your country. The sooner you all understand that, the easier it will be on you. By all appearances you’ve sat about here squawking and arguing and doing nothing for a year but dying, getting picked off by Tai Mora. It’s a wonder any of you are still alive at all. One raging case of yellow pox comes through here and the temples, and you’re all dead, finished, the Dhai race extinguished. You are already a memory, a footnote in some history book.”
“Then why are you here?” Ahkio said.
&
nbsp; A cry came from behind them. Taigan peered around Ahkio and saw a young girl burst through the line of jistas. She could not have been more than five or six years old, a fat-cheeked girl with dark hair, soft chin, and luminous eyes.
Yisaoh hurried over to her. “Go back, Tasia.”
“Is she here?” the girl asked. “Is she back?”
With the others’ attention shifted, Luna leaned toward Taigan. “That woman, Catori Yisaoh, and the child. I’ve seen them both before.”
“All Dhai look alike.”
“No, on another world. Where that woman, Kirana, is keeping her family.”
Taigan raised his brows.
Luna lowered hir voice further. “The names are even the same. Yisaoh, the Empress’s consort, and Tasia, one of the Empress’s children. They can’t come over.”
“Interesting,” Taigan said.
Yisaoh passed the child off to one of the jistas, who took her back below ground.
“I apologize,” Ahkio said. “The children get restless.”
“I’ve no doubt,” Taigan said.
“If you believe us bested already,” Ahkio continued, “why bother with us?”
Taigan snorted. “I didn’t come for you. I was looking for the crippled girl. She had more sense and more backbone than the rest of you. A pity.” He stood. “If you will do nothing to alter the course of this cycle, then we are working at cross-purposes. I will find other allies.”
Luna sighed.
Ahkio stood as well. Meyna turned to confer with the men behind her. Yisaoh gave up trying to light her cigarette and stuffed it back into her pocket.
“It is a shame Lilia isn’t here,” Ahkio said. “I know the two of you did not get along, but she had become a great ally to you.”
“Oh it’s fine,” Taigan said. “She has a head for strategy, but it’s true she has been far less useful since she burned out. I had hoped, however, you all would share her determination to stop the Tai Mora instead of running from them. I suspect she’s off doing something you don’t approve of, like finding a way to murder a bunch of Tai Mora.”
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