Ahkio tried to smile, but it took a great effort. His sister Kirana was Kai now at thirty – almost eleven years older than him – and talking about her supposed divinity always made him uncomfortable. His sister hadn’t blazed down from a satellite the way it sounded like Faith Ahya did in The Book of Oma, though there were days he wished she had. Mostly, she was just his sister – a warm, sometimes aggravating, and often wise woman who believed in him even when the rest of the country wanted to see him exiled for madness after the death of their parents.

“Government is not determined by Oma,” Ahkio said. “If you learn nothing else in this class, remember that. It’s created by people like you. When we were slaves to those Dorinah witches across the mountains five hundred years ago, a woman named Faith Ahya fell in love with a man named Hahko, and the Dhai people followed them and their kin out of bondage in Dorinah, not because of their brute strength or cunning but because of their faith in the vision Faith and Hahko spun for them. This was the refuge they created. Now each of you is a part of building its future.”

Only one student rolled her eyes. Ahkio made a note to tell her some terrible story later about how people from Saiduan spirited away arrogant young students who didn’t listen to their teachers.

“Oma,” he muttered aloud, because he realized he’d heard precisely that type of story from the Oras in the temple when he was younger. He was going to end up an old man teaching the children of shepherds to fear monsters in the woods.

At midday, most of his students went home to help move their family’s thorn fences so they could rotate their sheep from one plot of community land to another. Ahkio napped and spent some time at the local tea house playing kindar with Saurika, the clan leader of Osono, a pleasantly plump, beady-eyed old man who kept claiming his leader piece long before he’d swept Ahkio’s family pieces off the board.

“You’re a cheater,” Ahkio told him.

“You’re one to talk,” Saurika said. “I taught your sister to play kindar, and now I see you using my own defenses against me.”

Later in the afternoon, a few students returned for a lesson in arithmetic, something Ahkio was not nearly as qualified to teach as religion and ethics. When he tired of it, he invited everyone home to dinner with Meyna and her husbands.