Almeysia quieted. Ahkio waited. Threatening her with a long life spent with Nasaka was the surest way he could think of to get her talking sense.

“The gates are open,” she said softly.

“Is that more nonsense?” Ahkio asked.

She pressed her hands to her head. “Keep me from Ora Nasaka.”

“I can do that if you’ll help me.”

Almeysia gave a little sob and said, “They’re here to kill you, and me, and others. The Tai Mora. Softening the way. They’ve already integrated themselves. They could be anyone. Everyone. They could be you.”

“That would be a neat trick,” Ahkio said. “How do you know what they’re called? Tai Mora? Are those the invaders? That sounds Dhai.”

Almeysia snorted out something like a laugh. “It doesn’t matter now. She has what she wanted. This place, all of you, all of us – we’re all dead now.”

“I’m very much alive in this moment,” Ahkio said, “and I want an answer to my question.”

“She has what she came for. She wasn’t your Yisaoh, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was the other Yisaoh.”

“The… other Yisaoh?”

Almeysia laughed again. “She hasn’t told you? Ora Nasaka hasn’t told you?”

“What?”

“The other people,” Almeysia said, and she uncurled from the bottom of the cart. She got up on her hands and knees and pushed her head toward him, pressing it against the webbing, distorting her features. He saw, then, that her eyes were milky, clouded. She was blind.

Ahkio recoiled.

“The other people we’re fighting,” Almeysia said. “They’re not invaders. They’re not foreigners. They’re not some violent Dorinah or meat-eating Saiduan. They’re us. We’re fighting ourselves.”

“How is that–”

“It was Yisaoh’s shadow you saw, not the Yisaoh you know. I had to murder our Yisaoh to do it, to let the other one come over, but Tir is clever, very clever. He has three omajistas, did you know that? And they saved Yisaoh’s life. She died, for a time, but they brought her back. And now you’ve exiled her, and we’ve lost her, and they are not happy, Ahkio. The other Yisaoh is stuck in her world, and she is not happy.”

“This is very mad,” Ahkio said.

“She’s speaking truth,” Nasaka said.

Ahkio started. Nasaka stood just a pace behind him.

“I told you to stay back.”

“You’ve taken philosophy,” Nasaka said. “There could be billions of other places just like ours, with people just like us, brought close enough to kiss by Oma. That’s who we face now. Not foreigners this time. Not Saiduan. People from another version of our world, when our people made different choices.”

“How long have you known this?”

Nasaka shrugged.

“How long?” Ahkio said.

“Some time,” Nasaka said.