Gian frowned and hunched her shoulders. “I understand if you don’t want to talk to me,” she said. “It’s just that you’re a temple Dhai. I thought you must be different.”

“Because you betrayed the Empress?”

“It isn’t like that.”

Lilia gestured to the stage. “You should tell them your story.”

“My story is mine,” Gian said.

“We’re one people,” Lilia said.

“You really are a temple Dhai.”

“Yes.”

“You have yet to tell a story here, either,” Gian said. “I know. I’ve been standing at the back, watching to see if you’ll speak.”

“Why didn’t you come up to me before?”

Gian’s color deepened. “I was afraid.”

“Of what?”

“This,” Gian said.

Lilia shifted in her seat and tried to think of something else to say. “I don’t think they’d be interesting, my stories. Mostly, I tell stories about what I’ve read.”

Gian spoke softly into her ear, “I think you could spin a beautiful story.”

“I–”

Gian pressed her hand to Lilia’s. She had strong hands with long, slender fingers. Just like the other Gian. Lilia stared at their joined fingers.

Lilia withdrew her hand. “You should ask first,” she said. “I’m not a dajian.”

“I apologize,” Gian said. “I want to know the woman who saved me. Most of these people would have let me die.”

“Emlee–”

“It’s your face I remember.”

Lilia looked into Gian’s eyes. Dark eyes. The same as the Gian she had watched hack through the undergrowth in the Woodland. It was unsettling.

“Tell me a story,” Gian said.

The man on the stage reached the end of his story.

Lilia stood. She had done so much else. Why not tell a story, a real one, instead of pretending?

Lilia walked up onto the stage and looked out over the long rows of benches. She felt different up there. Taller. Stronger. She could be anyone, up there. The three or four dozen people before her looked cold and tired, but their eyes were bright – mostly with drink – and only a few were talking among themselves.

“I once made my mother a promise,” Lilia said, “and I still intend to keep it.”

It was an easy story. She thought it would make her sound brave. But as she spun out a story of Roh’s arrogant swagger and Taigan’s sour sense of humor, she felt like she was telling the story of someone who could be brave, if only she let go of all the bloody things that came before her, and forged some path not constrained by old promises.

Lilia finished her story at the point when she fled from the sanisi and started down the road to Kalinda’s. She could not say much more, because that’s when Gian entered her story. The real Gian.

As she left the stage, Gian’s twin walked toward her.