“How will you evade me when Para is descendent?” Lilia said. “Your tricks won’t work then.”

“By then, I’ll be a fine fighter,” he said, “married to a dozen powerful sinajistas who’ll protect me from you.”

Roh was at least six years away from becoming a fully trained Ora – one of the jistas trained in theology and ethics across the Dhai valley – and Para would be descendent far sooner than that. Even with its erratic orbit, it wouldn’t dominate the sky more than another two or three years. Sina was coming around next. She wondered how Roh would get along then, because she couldn’t imagine him being happy without a satellite to call on.

“So, are you going to tell me what it means or not?” Lilia said. She had slept very well the last week after turning over the symbol; not one shrieking treeglider or bloody-eyed bear. It reinforced her convictions. She was old enough to make good on her promise. She wasn’t such a weak little girl anymore.

“It’s just upstairs,” he said, pointing.

Lilia saw no Ora watching them from the great spiraling bloom of the stairs. Above, the hourglass of the twin suns blinked at her through the giant dome that capped the temple’s foyer, twelve floors above her. She squinted. The afternoon meal had already been prepared and washed up. They wouldn’t be looking for her for some time. Even though she was just a drudge, she often took part in strategy games with the novices, and even some Oras, but her next game wasn’t until the early evening.

“Alright,” she said, and set the laundry out of the way, just outside the entrance to the scullery stair that ran behind the banquet hall. She made to go back to the main stair, but Roh gestured for her to go up through the scullery stair instead.

She limped along behind him, dragging her mangled foot. Kalinda had ensured she didn’t lose her whole leg, but she was missing two of her toes and much of the ball of her foot, and the melted flesh and scar tissue left behind wasn’t pretty. Roh once asked her if it hurt. Only when she looked at it, she told him. When he laughed at that, she knew they would be friends.

They went up four sets of stairs and passed two other curious drudges. Kinless and ungifted, just like Lilia.

“How far are we going up?” Lilia asked. “I’m not allowed above the sixth floor.”

“I won’t tell if you don’t.”

Her foot was already throbbing. Her breathing was labored. She felt the tightness in her chest that often signaled a seizing of her lungs. She firmed her jaw and leaned her weight on the rail and kept going. What she lacked in physical power she had to make up for in endurance and patience.