“Better to say that you should not be surprised to be blind if you continue to close your eyes.”

Every morning, Taigan ran her through a series of stretching and concentration exercises, not unlike those she started her mornings with at the temple in Ohanni’s dancing class. She found most of it boring, the same way she did in the temple.

“You’re not actually making any progress,” Taigan said. They sat around the remains of a fire, the charred ends of sappy crackling brush covered over in ash. It was the only thing that burned well in the mountains.

“Then why are we still doing this?” she said.

“Because you’re incompetent,” Taigan said.

“That bone tree might have a different opinion.”

Taigan stood. Lilia started. She clenched her fists and prepared for the worst, but he only sighed and said, “I have a story for you.”

“A Saiduan legend?”

“Something like that,” Taigan said. “A problem. A puzzle.”

“I’m good at those,” Lilia said.

“Let’s say there’s a man who does tricks. Not the sort someone gifted does. Do you have these sorts of tricks in Dhai? Sleight of hand?”

“Yes, of course. We play all sorts of strategy games, too. Screes, kindar, bendi-”

“Fine, fine,” Taigan said. “There are two men in a small village. Like most people in their village, they are illiterate.”

“You’re saying they can’t read? Everyone can read.”

“No, not everyone can read.”

“Every clan has schools.”

“They are Saiduan. Not Dhai. We are a very large country. We cannot school every child.”

“That’s very sad.”

“Be that as it may,” Taigan said, and she could already hear the rising irritation in his voice. “A younger man approaches an old man and asks him to pick a stone from a bag. He asks the old man to write a symbol on the stone. Any symbol he likes but preferably one of great power. The young man puts the stone back into the bag, hands the bag to the older man, and instructs him to find the stone he marked. But the stone is not in the bag. The young man tells him he can find the stone one mile from their village, in the belly of a bladder trap. When the older man goes off with the other villagers, they dig up the bladder trap and find the stone, with the same exact symbol the older man wrote on it, deep within the flesh of the trap. How did the young man perform the trick?”

“What does this have to do with magic?” Lilia asked. “Was he a tirajista?”

“No. The whole village was full of ungifted, I told you. Not one could draw on the satellites.”

“That’s not very realistic.”

“Not in Dhai, perhaps. But in Saiduan and other places, it’s quite typical.”

“The men lived in the same village together? All their lives?”

“Yes.”

“Where were the women?”

“What?”