Djola gripped Samina’s hand. The cold didn’t bite through his mesh glove. “You and I must talk first. About the transgressor hut, about our children.”

“No.”

He blew warmth into her fingers. “We never talk about them.”

“They put me in a hut to torture you. Our children got lost in poison sand. What more to say?”

“Yari would have saved any one of them vie could find.” Djola kissed her fingertips. His lips burned. “Bal doesn’t haunt me.”

“You want to be haunted?” She slipped free and floated up to the frozen waterfall.

“Yes.” Djola followed her. “Did you see their bodies? Did Kyrie?”

“You want to believe Bal lives, but I can’t help you with that.” She seized a wooden mallet and played a familiar melody on hanging crystals and icicles. A few thudded, leaving holes in her song.

Djola found a mallet and played harmony. “I speak the world I want. Don’t you?”

“I’m not who I once was,” Samina said.

“Why didn’t you live?”

“No matter how I look to you, I’m—”

“Why didn’t you fight?”

“Council masters tricked me. Your half-brother said they had our children.”

“Money and Water poisoned Nuar at Council.” Djola’s tongue ached.

“Nuar came to me in the huts.” Samina swayed in melancholy vibrations. “He was dying. They’d poisoned him. I was not Kyrie. She knows better how to cheat death.”

“So you sacrificed yourself. You’re the power in her Mountain Gates? Don’t lie. I felt you there as I passed through. Tessa and Quint as well. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Eidhou means—all rivers flow from my heart.” She played gurgling river music. “All gates require sacrifice, spirit blood.”

“You abandoned me.”

“You left us for Council, doing what you believed. Could I do less?”

“A clown’s crusade,” he muttered. “Kyrie saved her mountain, but not you, not Tessa, Quint, or Nuar.”

“I gave my life willingly.” She sighed a squall of sleet.

“Urzula betrayed you. She took her children to the floating cities while ours died in the desert.”

“Don’t hold the children against Urzula or Kyrie, and neither are we to blame.”

“Whose fault then?” Djola played dissonant tones.

Samina’s deep-throated moan echoed through the cave. “Come to Mount Eidhou. We’ll tell a different story of Nuar and our children.” Samina reached for his mallet. He held onto it. They struggled, flailing against icicles. Several giant ones fell and shattered. Splinters of ice and crystal passed through Samina and cut Djola’s cheeks. He lost hold of his mallet as they leapt from the ice shower to the hot spring.

“You know why we fought.” Samina pounded him with both mallets. “Why pretend you don’t know?” She flung the mallets into the trees.