Liaro laughed. It turned into a cough. “Run a man through, then tell him stories. Sounds very Dhai.”

“Ghrasia told me what you did just outside the square. It was brave.”

“I tripped over my own sword and fell on it,” Liaro said. “That’s just stupid. It wasn’t even an infused blade.”

“But brave that you tried,” Ahkio said.

“How is your friend Ghrasia?” Liaro said slyly.

“She’s as well as can be expected,” Ahkio said.

“Caisa told me you took that horrible painting down in Clan Leader Talisa’s room before you blew it up.”

“I did. Why?”

Liaro leaned toward him conspiratorially. “I wouldn’t want all those dour people looking at me while some hero took me to bed, either.”

Ahkio’s face burned. He cleared his throat.

Liaro smirked. “I knew it.”

“Can I read to you or not?”

“You know, I always thought Caisa played for the other side,” Liaro said.

Ahkio’s fingers lingered over the text. He still needed to deal with Caisa. But not yet. “Which one?”

“Good point. Not ours.”

“Don’t tell me you’re becoming as paranoid as Nasaka.”

“I’m just worried,” Liaro said. He bunched up his bedsheets in his fists.

“Because you care for her?”

“We’d have been a merry union in another life,” Liaro said, “me and you, Meyna and Caisa.”

“You never liked Meyna.”

“I didn’t dislike her.”

“Let me worry about Caisa,” Ahkio said. “I’m good at it.”

Liaro waved a hand. “Fine, fine. Read. It’s been one person after another jabbering away in here, asking when I’ll be ready for cards and bendar.”

Ahkio turned to the last story in Kirana’s book, titled Faythe. It was the story he heard at every Festival of Oma. He should have known it by heart. But as he read the story to Liaro, he found it was not at all the story he remembered. In this version, Faith was a slave from Aaldia. The child she carried was not Hahko’s but an enslaved Dhai condemned for thievery in a dajian camp. Faith was not strong and brave and passionate. She was petty and weak and self-serving. The book made Faith into a figure of pity, not worship. Ahkio did not know if he liked it, and could not say if Liaro did, for he had fallen asleep.

Faith lay in childbed to give birth to the first Kai of Dhai. But when Hahko burst in, it was not to claim her child and free her, but to steal the child and proclaim it Kai. Ahkio decided that no, he really didn’t like this story.

At the end of the last page of the book, Faith Ahya was still alive.