Lilia dropped beneath the bear and scrambled toward the way house, dragging her bad foot behind her. She heard the hissing kiss of the blades and the roar of the bear. But instead of going inside, she ran around to the other side of the way house. The ground immediately outside the house was scorched and safe. She crouched there and waited, listening to the fighting.

The sanisi could not save her from those men. Only one person had kept her safe all this time, and only one woman would believe her about those strange weapons. Could Kalinda help her again?

Taigan cursed. Lilia saw a burst of blue light.

She darted further into the woods, away from the purls of blue light. Her breath came fast. She tried to slow her breathing as she slogged, fearful of her poor lungs. She limped through snaking creepers and sticky pox tendrils and emerged again on the road, behind the sanisi and his attackers. She saw the bear snuffling off back the way they had come, spooked by the fight.

She hobbled forward, making soothing sounds, and – with great effort – climbed onto its back again. She glanced behind her only once. She saw the blue arc of the weapons, still whirling, the battle still undecided between Taigan and… who? The same people who’d come for her before, so many years ago. She had made a promise, and she intended to keep it. But things were spiraling out of hand, and she didn’t think she could do it alone.

“We’ll make our own fate,” she murmured to the bear, and urged him forward, back to the crossroads, back to Kalinda Lasa.

Chapter 9

9

Ahkio stood at the eastern wall of the Assembly Chamber, staring out the wall of windows overlooking the Pana Woodlands. Para’s bluish light kissed the horizon, herald of the double dawn, which was just a few hours off. The light washed over deep green adenoaks and clumps of pale lime-colored bamboo and less savory things that rolled out across the plateau and into the distance. Clouds boiled over Mount Ahya, obscuring the summit. It was a rare day when one saw the peak.

He had come up here to be alone after the disturbance with the sanisi downstairs, but as ever, Nasaka found him. He knew the footsteps behind him were hers, even before she drew a breath and said, “They’re getting ready to prepare your sister. I suggest you spend your grieving hours with her.”

“If Oma isn’t rising, that sanisi made a good show of it,” Ahkio said.

Nasaka held a green sheaf of papers in one hand; the other rested on the butt of her willowthorn sword. “We hoped it was a century distant,” Nasaka said. “But as with all things as they pertain to the gods of the satellites, our calculations can only be approximate. They bend us to their own will.”

“He came here looking for omajistas,” Ahkio said.