Kadaan shrugged. “I’m not sure it matters. We may be at an end of Maralah’s hunt through the archives. Whatever they’re looking for wasn’t made for us to understand. It’s something only some old Dhai would know.”

Roh remembered the Dhai-looking characters in the Talamynii book and swore softly. “They’re our people. Dhai. They can read all these books. That’s why they want them,” he said.

“What?”

“I need to talk to Luna. Just… give me a few minutes.”

Roh woke Luna from a dead sleep.

“Lord of Light, Roh,” Luna said. “What–”

“I need to see the book.”

“It’s under the bed.”

Roh pulled the Talamynii book from beneath the bed and unwrapped it. He set his lantern beside the book and grabbed Luna’s sketchbook and a charcoal pencil.

He opened to the inside pages and counted the characters. He put them down in the order of the Kai cipher – two down, four across, three up, over one. He set down each letter, then reversed the order.

Luna pulled off the blanket and knelt next to Roh. “What’s that?”

“Kai cipher,” Roh muttered.

“What? Really?”

Roh scribbled out what he’d written. It was all nonsense.

He groaned and started over. More nonsense. Nothing.

“I just thought…” Roh wrote it out yet again, but the letters made no sense; they didn’t form any words he knew. He threw down the charcoal pencil and rubbed his face.

Luna took up the book. “I think that made it worse,” Luna said. “Good idea, though. How did you have the Kai’s cipher?”

Roh cried. He didn’t even realize he was crying until Luna touched his face, and Roh pulled his hands away, and they were wet.

“Roh?” Luna said. “Roh, there’s not an answer to everything.”

Roh sobbed then. It bubbled up from inside him like some terrible sickness. His shoulders shook. He wrapped his arms around his knees and keened like a child. Nothing made any sense. Nothing was what it was supposed to be.

“Roh, don’t cry,” Luna said.

“It was all for nothing,” Roh said. “Ora Dasai’s dead, Aramey… my brother… for nothing.”

“What happened to making your own fate? Isn’t that what you always say?”

“I did make it,” Roh said. “This is it. Freezing to death, at the end of everything, for no purpose.”

Luna pulled Roh’s hands from his knees. “Living is the purpose, Roh. For however long we have to do it, we live. That’s all. That’s all there ever was.”

“We aren’t going to win,” Roh said.

“No,” Luna said, “but we’re going to live.”

Chapter 47

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