“They’ll come for me whether or not I’m here.”

“Not if you renounce the seat.”

Ahkio had nothing to say to that. He watched Para bubble up over the horizon like a great bristling urchin. He thought of Kirana downstairs, her final words a mad cacophony of nonsense. He did feel very young, very small; Kirana had happily seen him off to Osono, away from Nasaka’s poisonous influence, and the ongoing headache of Dhai politics.

“I’m going to go and sit with Kirana,” Ahkio said. He turned away, crossed the room.

When he looked back, Nasaka still stood at the window, her lined face made brilliantly ominous by the blazing blue light of Para.

Ahkio walked downstairs. He grabbed a flame fly lantern from its niche in the hall, shook it, and brought it with him to Kirana’s room, where the curtains were still closed.

He moved to the stool by the bed. He saw Kirana’s slack face staring back at him. She seemed smaller. The smell of her voided body wafted up from the bedding, mixed with the smell of her sickness, but he still paused there, and gazed at the body of the woman who was once his sister.

He looked behind him, so he wouldn’t miss the stool as he sat to pay his last respects. He remembered when he and Kirana did the same over their parents’ bodies. Huddled together, trying to understand the loss. This wake was for kin only, a few hours of stillness before the funerary attendants arrived to perform her final rites, the washing and liturgy, ensuring her soul was well gone before preparing her for the funerary feast.

As he turned, he heard a noise behind him, a rustling sound.

He thought perhaps one of the windows was open, letting in a soft breeze to stir the curtains.

The curtains remained motionless.

But his sister was sitting up in bed.

Ahkio’s gut went icy.

Bodies sometimes moved. Even after death, they could move. They…

Kirana turned to look at him. Her eyes were glazed over, unfocused. Her hair fell into her gaunt face. She threw her legs over the side of the bed. Stood. She wore a thin white dressing gown that clung to her skinny legs.

Ahkio couldn’t move. “Kira,” came out in a strangled whisper.

“Listen,” she said.

She took hold of the front of his tunic in her clawed hands, and pulled him forward. She was nearly a head shorter than he, her face awash in the light cast by the lantern he still clutched.

“The heart is for you,” she said. “She’ll let you through, but you must find her. You will see me again, but not as I am. They’re coming, Ahkio. You must meet them.”