“He lived in the same village with the older man,” Lilia said. “He planned the trick a long time before, when he was a child. He wrote the man’s name, the symbol, on the stone and planted it many years before. Then he chose that same man for the trick. He knew that man would write the one symbol he knew. His name.”

“Is that what you’ve been up thinking about?” Taigan asked.

“I tried to think what one symbol everyone would know,” Lilia said. “Something that was the same across Saiduan and Dhai. We’d have to know our names. To sign public records.”

Taigan grunted.

“See, I’m doing well,” Lilia said, and rolled onto her side.

But he needed a gifted young girl, not a clever one. He had been a clever girl once, and Oma, Lord of Heaven, knew how that turned out for him. He scratched at the wound at the base of his spine.

Taigan suspected being clever would not turn out any better for her than it had for him. He sniffed the air. Their trackers were closer. Another day, and they’d be upon them. He needed to decide how much of the girl to leave to them.

At midday, Lilia stopped to gather water in the trickling gully of a streambed that looked like it was once a huge clay pipe, as big around as Lilia was tall. The water came from a massive hole milled from the side of a sheer rock face that stretched on and on, covered in scraggly trees and vines Lilia had no name for. She was tired, and Taigan had been surly all morning.

Taigan regarded the cliff face as Lilia rubbed at her sore rump. “Where now?” she said, gesturing to the cliff. “It’ll take a long time to go around.”

“We go up.”

“We can’t climb that.”

“Up,” Taigan said. “Draw on Oma, as I’ve taught you, and propel yourself up.”

“Taigan, I’m–”

“Up,” he repeated, and raised his hand. A whirlwind of air threw dirt and small stones at her. Taigan kicked up and grabbed hold of the tiny crevices and spurs of the rock. He jumped up the rock face like he weighed nothing – a feather pulled by a string, leaping from point to point, sixty feet up the face of the cliff.

Lilia watched him, breathless, as he came to the top. He crouched. Peered down at her. “Your turn,” he called.

“You know I can’t!” Lilia said.

“You will,” he said, “or you’ll die down there.” He moved away from the edge of the cliff. She lost sight of him.

“Taigan? Taigan! You promised to take me to my mother!”

“Fly, fly little bird!” Taigan called, his voice growing distant.