“My name is Taigan. I need to speak with the Kai,” the sanisi repeated. As Lilia peered around Kihin, she saw the sanisi still looking at her. “If things are progressing here as they did in my country, it’s time you all stopped dancing around the olive trees and prepared for war.”

Chapter 3

3

Ahkio started awake in the arms of three strong women whose names he was pleased to remember. His cousin Liaro lay sprawled naked beside him: a long, lean man with a face that would inspire no poetry. The number of infused everpine weapons and baldrics scattered across the floor reminded him that their bedmates were members of the Dhai militia posted at the Kuallina Stronghold.

It was not an unpleasant way to start his morning.

After untangling himself from bed, Ahkio snuck out the back of the house to avoid bumping into his housemate Meyna and her child. Her husbands were likely off working in the sheep fields, which made his exit that much easier. He walked down the ramp leading to the knotty exterior of their living house. Most homes in central Dhai were hollowed out of gonsa trees, their crowns so great they blotted out the sky. It took a good half hour of walking to clear the shadow of the gonsa trees and reach the Osono Clan square.

The dozen students he taught religion and ethics were already assembled under the immature gonsa tree next to the square, the one that would be big enough to house a proper school in another twelve years, when Tira became ascendant, and the tirajistas would use that power to sculpt it. In the distance, he saw the silky threads of the webbing that dissuaded the worst of the walking trees from inundating the square. Most homesteads beyond the webbing had only thorn fences and homegrown defenses like fox-snaps to protect their families and livestock from creeping vegetation with a taste for blood and bone.

“Ahkio!” the students called when they saw him, and he waved, for a moment forgetting to be self-conscious of his hands. The children had stopped asking about his scars when he told them he once fought a fire-breathing bear. It was a prettier story than the one their parents might have told them.

“Today, we talk about Dhai government,” he said.

“Does this mean you’ll tell us about your mother,” one of the girls asked, “and how she died so your sister could become Kai?”

Ahkio winced. “Terrible things sometimes happen to Kais,” he said, “like what happened to my parents. We’ll discuss that when we speak of the line of the Kai, and I’ll also tell you about Faith Ahya, who birthed the first of us.”