A few petitioners elbowed Nuar. He drove them back and boomed in Empire vernacular, “Master of Poisons, we intend to survive.” Nuar scrunched his face under the blindfold as if at a bad odor. “You feel too good about yourself”—he leaned over the ropes—“standing in the path of a deadly storm like an idiot.” Perhaps Nuar saw Djola on the annex wall watching the mob chase a wild elephant.

“I would learn the storm’s secrets,” Djola said. “Ignorance won’t save us.”

“You gave up the old ways hoping to be worthy, more than a savage.” Nuar switched to Anawanama. “Where are the women? How do you decide the world without them?” He shook his head. “You call down ruin. I should sit at the stone-wood table. The Empire has made you an enemy to yourself.” Older brother had found a good argument.

Djola sputtered, caught off guard. “Get to your petition, man.”

Nuar lifted the basket high and spoke Empire vernacular again. “I don’t bring words for Azizi and Council to dismiss. I bring the bones of my great, great, great grandchildren in a basket of the ancestors.”

Petitioners shouted curses and threats. Arms signaled an end to the audience. Nuar tossed the basket. Bouncing off the closing doors, the basket landed at Djola’s feet. Money toed a braid of green and brown bark. Djola snatched the basket up and hugged it.

Nuar was the first northern chief Djola talked to the peace fire. Nuar gave up ambushing Empire caravans for farming. Other chiefs followed his lead. Empire crops ruined the land in ten years. The soil was now unfit for basket trees. Only sweetgrass held on. If nothing was done, it would all be desert soon. Nuar came to Council to warn them, to speak for the ancestors and the unborn.

“We’d make a fortune selling sweetgrass baskets that hold ancestors and the future,” Money said. “But savages won’t sell sacred vessels.”

“Anything might be in that basket,” high priest Ernold said. “Nuar’s an old scoundrel.”

“He tells us to choose carefully or suffer high spirit debt,” Grain said.

“Jumba jabba,” Ernold muttered.

“You could sell other baskets,” Djola said, “and avoid spirit debt.”

Azizi was late. His esteemed masters argued over heroes and debts, over a glorious past and a ruined future, over untamed northlanders and rebels rioting outside the citadel. The Master of Water proposed conquering barbarians south of Holy City, but the war chests were empty. Arms wanted to collect back taxes, but who could or would pay up? Money and Water wanted to sack a floating city across the Salty Sea. They suggested masquerading as barbarians. Arms laughed. The Empire had no conjure against the superior defenses of the floating cities. The best Arms could do was send warriors to die in a futile siege.