It made Roh angry that he thought first of protecting Shodav, though it was his own friends who were already dead. Luna’s only protecting Shodav, Roh thought, so what happened to Dasai and the others doesn’t happen to him.

“I didn’t,” Roh said. “I said the book was just something Ora Dasai found.”

“I’m sorry about what happened,” Luna said.

“It’s done,” Roh said.

“You could have run.”

“The way you and Kihin were going to run?”

Luna looked away, but not before Roh saw Luna’s eyes fill.

“I’m sorry,” Roh said.

“It’s all right,” Luna said. “It’s how it is here. Every time you think you find a way out, they hobble you again.”

“Did you love him?” Roh asked.

“Do you love Kadaan?”

“That’s a mean question,” Roh said.

“Yes,” Luna said.

“Kadaan is kind,” Roh said. “It could have turned out a lot worse.”

“Kihin was a nice boy,” Luna said, and did not speak of it again.

Roh and Luna worked on the book until their fingers were numb and the letters all looked the same. “Why do some of these look like Dhai characters?” Roh asked as Luna taught him the few Talamynii characters Luna knew.

“They borrowed from each other a lot,” Luna said. “It’s pretty rare to see one people take over without picking up a lot from the people they conquered. This is more likely a Dhai book than a Talamynii one – it’s the Talamynii that’s borrowed, not the Dhai.”

Roh turned to the back of the book, where there were simple line illustrations, mostly maps and circles. Without being able to read the characters, the circle figures were unintelligible. But at the beginning of the illustrated section were five symbols carefully drawn on a map with the familiar cross-section of mountains found only on Grania. This Grania, though, had no oceans. The map seemed to go on far past the page. Written onto the map were five familiar symbols. Roh knew them immediately. They were the same ones he had seen on the table in the Assembly Chamber in Oma’s Temple: a triangle with two circles; a circle with two lines through it; a coiled curl with a circle; a square with a double circle inside… and the trefoil with the tail. The one Lilia dreamed her mother pressed into her skin.

“I know these,” Roh said. “These symbols are in the Temple of Oma in Dhai.”

“What do they mean?”

“I don’t know,” Roh said. “Most of them marked the temples.” He traced the trefoil with the tail. The table map had shown that symbol over a spur of land that jutted into the ocean. But on this map, there was no ocean, just flat land. Whatever the trefoil had marked had probably fallen into the sea during the cataclysm the last time Oma rose.