“Dancing?” Kihin said, but Dasai was already walking to his own room.

“What were the other scholars like?” Roh asked.

Kihin yawned. “Dull. Very serious. They have an odd scholar, though. Luna. He’s one of those ataisa, like Driaa.” They spoke in Dhai, and Kihin used the Dhai male-passive pronoun for Luna, not the Saiduan ataisa pronoun, which Roh thought was interesting. “He’s Dhai but bound to Saiduan. He’s… interesting.”

“Kihin, have you seen many women here?”

“It’s odd, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t think it’d bother me that much. I know they try to separate people here. But it feels very strange.”

“I expect we’ll get used to it.”

Roh wasn’t sure that was something he wanted to get used to.

Through the door, Roh heard Nioni’s voice. Roh fell asleep to the sound of Dasai and Nioni talking in low voices.

Later, Roh woke to the sound of Chali’s raised voice, and before Dasai hushed him, Roh heard him say, “–death for every one of us if they catch you out at this, Ora Dasai.”

After that, a door slammed, and Roh heard nothing more.

Chapter 24

24

Traveling across Dhai unnoticed was not as difficult as Lilia imagined. The spaces between the clans were toxic, contaminated, crawling with poisonous plant life. Most people took the Line, riding inside the shining chrysalis that traveled along the tirajista-trained cables linking the temples and holds. The few who took carts stayed on the roads. And they always traveled during the day, unlike the night-traveling sanisi who urged Lilia on.

Taigan bought another bear – with no small amount of grumbling at the trouble Lilia had caused him – and escorted her across the Dhai valley to the pass at the Liona Stronghold. The stronghold was as old as Dhai, a massive construct of parajista-shaped stone wrapped in vines and tirajista-trained trees that clawed at the sky. The pass cut through the jagged mountain range separating Dhai from Dorinah – more a canyon than a rolling path – and the stronghold spanned the rent in the mountain range at its narrowest point. The stronghold was far vaster than Lilia thought possible, even from the illustrations she saw in books. She had thought the Temple of Oma the largest structure in Dhai.

“I can’t believe we built such a thing,” Lilia said. She looked forward to a bath and a meal that didn’t involve Taigan trying to press her into eating dead animals.

Taigan snorted. They were alone on the road. It was nearly dusk, and most people had stopped at the way house eight miles behind them. “Gifted tricks build great things,” he said. “But they can be torn down as easily as anything else.”

“How can you say that? It’s been standing five hundred years. The Dorinahs never once got over it.”