“Yes?” She did not turn. There were times when she could not bear to look into his face, because she saw the young man he had been, the sparkling, handsome youth with the black eyes that everyone – man or woman – fell headlong into, until all they could see was his vision for Saiduan, for the restoration of a bloated empire stretched far too thin. Twenty years he worked to make them stronger. But it hadn’t been enough. Now, to her eyes, he looked tired and broken, and she feared that if she looked too long at him, too often, she’d see her own broken face reflected back at her.

“If you betray me,” the Patron said, “by twisting Taigan or anyone else, or if you are not the Maralah I know, I will have your hair, and then your life, however little that means to you now, and however much I cannot spare you.”

“I understand,” Maralah said, and left him.

She made her hand into a fist. He could take her life, but she would always have his heart.

Chapter 22

22

Ahkio wore red, the color of mourning, and rode at the head of a procession of corpse-filled carts. Ghrasia Madah and Liaro kept pace with him. Two dozen militia took up the flank and the rear. Any journey by foot outside the temple required an Ora. Ahkio had brought a dozen of them, including Nasaka’s assistant, Elaiko, and Ohanni and Shanigan, two of the only senior Oras in the temple that Ahkio could stand. He also chose four novices, younger, less predictable choices like Caisa, and a boy named Jakobi, and a powerful parajista called Naori who was about the same age as Ahkio and also his third cousin once removed. She reminded him just enough of Kirana that he was willing to see where her loyalties lay after six years inside the Temple of Oma. He had specifically chosen a greater number of novices than senior Oras for this trip. They would begin in Garika but end in Osono, because Yisaoh was not the only woman he meant to meet with.

Meyna had still not answered his letters.

As they neared the clan square, Ahkio sent Caisa off with six militia to clear out Kirana’s quarters. She had kept a temporary house in Garika for long political visits; he only hoped Yisaoh had not cleared them out first.

“What if they fight us?” Caisa asked. She had been humming bars of a terrible Dorinah opera for the last eight miles that she’d picked up from a way house minstrel. Now she firmed her jaw and sat up a little straighter on her bear, and Ahkio was reminded of her age. He wasn’t much older than her, and he was sending her off to wrangle with an angry family who’d just tried to kill him.