He was arguing with Nasaka about something. Ghrasia expected they argued a good deal.

“Kai?” she said.

He turned but did not smile. His expression was terribly serious. A small tragedy, she thought, to have that face and never smile. She tried – and again failed – to tuck that thought away. She suspected Nasaka was vetting this boy’s lovers with an eye toward some political end, and warding off all the others with a large stick.

“Ghrasia,” he said.

“Ghrasia Madah,” she said.

“Of course,” he said. He clasped his hands behind his back as if it mattered. The whole country had seen his scars, as had she, when she fought beside his cowering cousin Liaro in the temple foyer. She felt his mother’s loss again. Burned up in a foreign country, driven out by fear and some terrible argument with Nasaka that not even Ghrasia understood. “Your mother was formidable in her own right.”

He had not cared much for small talk when she met him in the foyer. Understandable, of course, with their feet mired in the puddle of their kins’ blood. “It’s an old name in our family, Madah,” she said. “I named my daughter Madah.”

“You have many children?”

“Just the one,” Ghrasia said, and she still cringed when she said it. She had often thought to adopt more children, but there never seemed to be a good time. Liona and the militia there were more family to her than her husbands and daughter, some days. “Oma does not bestow the same gifts on everyone.”

“Indeed it does not.”

“You wanted to speak with me?” she said, and her tone sounded harsher than she wanted it to. It wasn’t the boy’s fault for dredging up so many conflicting emotions. That was her burden. “I apologize for my abruptness, but I need to prepare and send home my own dead this evening.”

“Of course,” he said. “I’m sorry. Nasaka was… wise to send for you.”

Ghrasia glanced at Nasaka. Nasaka, too, bore a face that suffered no amusement. Ghrasia imagined Ahkio would look much like her in his old age – serious as death, his face scoured in deep lines, posture always rigid, formal. Ghrasia had not seen Nasaka smile in years; she suspected that after all of Nasaka’s crimes, she had very little to smile about.

“Ora Nasaka’s instincts are often correct,” Ghrasia said. Even when Ghrasia never wanted them to be. She had kept far too many secrets for this woman, but then, Nasaka had kept hers as well, hadn’t she?

“We’re a people with very little experience in violence,” Ahkio said.

“Based on what I saw downstairs, we’re getting a taste for it,” Ghrasia said. She felt the anger again and tamped it down. Anger solved nothing. She had chosen a sword. No one forced it on her.

“I know,” he said, “and it’s the beginning of something worse.”