“It means I’m not crazy,” Lilia said.

“Well, that’s debatable.”

Lilia leaned across the table to get a better look. She traced the shape of the jade: a perfect trefoil with a long, curled tail. Pain radiated up her bad leg, but she hardly noticed it. She saw other symbols, too, which she didn’t recognize. A triangle with two circles where the Temple of Para should be; a circle with two lines through it in the woodland around Tira’s temple; a coiled curl with a circle at the center near Sina’s temple; and a square with a double circle inside over the Temple of Oma. There was one more near the Liona Stronghold that marked the mountain pass that separated them from Dorinah – a trefoil with four tails, one at each compass point.

“What do these all mean?” Lilia asked. “There’s no temple or stronghold here. I know. I’ve been there. But it’s marked like the others.”

“You should find out,” Roh said.

She pulled her hand away. “That’s the other side of the country. Through the woodlands.” She wasn’t gifted. How was she going to get all the way out there by herself?

“So what are you going to do, clean up after novice Oras your whole life?” Roh crossed his arms. He was almost as tall as her, and more than a year younger, but leaner and stronger. For a moment, she wished she could have his perfect legs and powerful confidence.

“I’m glad you found this,” she said. She got down from the chair and made her way back to the scullery stair.

“Listen,” Roh said. “I can’t leave the temple without permission, but you can. You’re just a drudge.”

“Thanks for reminding me.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I?”

He sighed. “My mother once asked another seer about my fate,” Roh said, “because as much as she tried, she couldn’t see it. The seer told my mother I’d die an old man in an orchard. I’d be a farmer, with six spouses and dozens of children.”

“A parajista farmer? I can’t imagine that.”

“Me either,” Roh said, “but Para’s going to be descendent in another few years. What if it never comes back?”

“It always comes back.”

“Well, the seer saw something different,” he said.

Lilia gazed at the dark shape on the ceiling that followed Oma. “They always come back,” she repeated.

“Maybe,” Roh said, “maybe not.”

“You were passed some good pieces in life,” she said.

“Is everything some strategy game to you?”

“Well, yes,” she said, as she’d been thinking of kindar, a cooperative board game played with wooden pieces meant to represent family members. Roh had a large family, multiple mothers and fathers and siblings and other relations. “Be happy with how things turned out. You have a family that loves you.”

“You don’t love me,” Roh said.