“Hush now,” Taigan said. “The first thing you must learn is that there is a time to mourn, and a time to act. Now we act.”

Ahead of them, the great webbed netting that encircled the temple garden from the wild heath and untamed lands between clan territories loomed large. A parajista waited at the webbed gate. She pressed her hands forward and sliced through the gate with a cone of air.

The sanisi led the bear through. They traveled across the stone bridge connecting the rocky spur that housed the temple and the broad plateau it had been separated from. The plateau was barren of all but the most harmless of vegetation, most of it burned out. The sanisi took them to the head of the precipitous path that cut into the edge of the plateau. Down and down they went into the valley as the suns rose and Para’s light entered the sky with it, bathing the world in a blue wash. As they walked, the sanisi kept his short blade out. Squelching tripvines and bramblewash sensed their heat and motion, and slithered their way across the path. The bear ate most of what assailed them, but for the bigger plant life, the sanisi used his blade to hack and cut and beat back. Lilia clung tightly to either side of the high seat of the saddle. No one traveled the spaces between the temples and clans without a trained Ora by their side, preferably one skilled in drawing on the dominant body in the sky.

After hacking off the clawing fingers of the fifth yellow pox plant of the morning, the sanisi said, “Why your tirajistas haven’t irradiated this filth continues to baffle me.”

“Where do you think it all came from?” Lilia asked. “The Oras say we were the ones to blight the world, during the war with your people, two thousand years ago.”

Taigan frowned. “I cannot contest that. The world was a heaving wasteland after that. It took two thousand years just to become half-habitable again.”

“It wasn’t just us,” Lilia said. “You’re no better.”

Taigan gazed at the wriggling tendril of a creeper spitting green, acidic bile into the dirt. “No,” he said, “We are not.”

Lilia leaned forward in the saddle. “Why did you save him?” she asked.

“What?”

“Roh. Why did you save him? Why trade him for me? I’m nothing. I’m nobody.”

The sanisi shook his head and tugged the bear forward. It caught up the wriggling tendril with its tongue and ate it.

“I think you know,” Taigan said.

Lilia looked away.