She rinsed the wound with the water they had and collected a handful of scorch pods from Gian’s pack. Her mother once taught her how to track and take a beehive, and she desperately needed one now. I should be running before the sanisi catches up to us, she thought. But her heart would not let her.

She found a small spring an hour up the trail. She refilled their water, then followed the heady, fragrant smell of fungus flowers. Two more hours of stalking bees the size of her thumb paid off. She knocked down a massive papery beehive and used the heat of the broken scorch pods to confuse the remaining bees.

Six stings later, she had four bricks of honeycomb. Dusk was falling. She moved quickly, following the broken branches and little stone markers she had left along her way.

When she arrived, Gian was slumped to one side. Her hand rested limply on her bloody thigh. Too late.

“I’m a murderer,” Lilia breathed. “Gian?”

She came up beside Gian and rested a hand on her bare arm. It was cool, but not cold.

Lilia worked quickly in the dim light. She mashed the honeycomb inside a woody seed pod, mixing it with water and a few leaves of night dagger she’d collected.

She pulled back the tunic she’d left over Gian’s wound as a makeshift bandage and recoiled at the smell. It had mortified quickly.

Lilia washed the wound out a second time, then began to pack it with the honeycomb mixture. Gian came to as she did.

“Get away!” Gian said, slapping weakly at her hands.

Lilia ignored her. She had seen her mother with feverish patients.

“I won’t tell you anything,” Gian said.

Lilia unknotted the tourniquet. She used it to secure the tunic around the wound again. All the while, Gian babbled.

“It wasn’t me,” Gian said. “I won’t do it.” She grabbed at Lilia’s arm. “I love you,” she said. “I won’t do it.”

Lilia tugged Gian’s pack from her shoulders and pulled out their food. Most was packed in waxed linen, so hadn’t been poisoned too badly. She sat over the pack for a few minutes, staring at its contents. There was enough food to get only one of them back to the valley.

She glanced up at Gian. Gian’s head lolled back against the great trunk of the rattler tree.

Lilia thought of Roh, and the Temple of Oma, the Oras there who sheltered her, the drudges who worked with her, and the farmers and herders and craftspeople who cared for her after her mother pushed her through to the other side.

“I’m sorry, Gian,” she said. “My place is here.”

Lilia left the food in Gian’s pack. Lilia could forage on her own, but Gian wouldn’t be fit for it. She set a full water bladder at Gian’s elbow.