The tall woman who had been standing far across the room was now within just a few paces of Lilia. The woman, Gian, took a step back and crossed her ropy arms. Her long, dark hair fell nearly to her waist in a thick braid. Lilia found herself a little jealous of it. No one in the temple had long hair.

“Get inside,” Kalinda said. “Gian, bolt that door. You remember how? Lilia, come with me.” She gestured to the others at the table. “Go home. Quickly and quietly. Wake our guests and send them on their way. We need the house clear.”

Kalinda came forward. Her plump, round face was heavily lined, very serious, the thin lips pressed tightly into something that was not quite a frown.

“When did they come?” Kalinda asked.

“A day… two days ago. He wanted me to go with him.”

“You specifically? Did he forcibly take you?”

“No. He saved my friend. I agreed to come with him.”

“Come downstairs. Gian, you too.”

Gian reentered from the kitchen, carrying a large beam with her. It was a knotted thing, silvery with some still-living plant compound that Lilia did not recognize.

“Why does he want me?” Lilia said. “Why are there people chasing me?”

“Come,” Kalinda repeated.

Lilia followed her into the cellar. It was built among the roots of the massive tree that made up one wall of the way house. The large roots bore carved compartments for storing foodstuffs and supplies. Lilia passed row upon row of pickling jars and fibrous, knee-high seed pods that held water and wine.

Kalinda walked to one of the tree roots at the back of the cellar and released a catch that let a chunk of the root pull away. Inside was a dark space. She held a flame fly lantern ahead of her. As they entered, Lilia saw that the room was a perfect sphere lined in the decayed skin of an old bladder trap plant. Lilia recognized the shape from her classes in ecology and vegetal manipulation. She had heard they grew beneath the soil of trees like these, feeding on bears, giant shrews, and careless people, but it was the first one she’d seen up close.

Kalinda set the lantern on the carapace of some giant dead thing, its form lost as it was digested by the bladder trap. Whatever the bladder trap secreted, it kept this creature more or less mummified.

“Tell me precisely what happened,” Kalinda said.

Lilia told her. Not just about the sanisi, but about the mark on her wrist the sanisi said he could see, the map on the Assembly Chamber table, and the familiar weapons of the sanisi’s attackers.

“Why did you go looking for that mark?” Kalinda said.

Lilia straightened. “I made a promise to my mother.”

“You were a child.”

“I’m not a child anymore.”

“No,” Kalinda said, eyeing her. “You are not.”