Chapter 20

Ghrasia Madah said prayers to Sina over the now-deceased kin she had brought with her to Oma’s temple, and the smooth-cheeked young people she had thought of as kin. So many dead in that bloody hall two days ago, and for what? Petty politics. Power. Their names would fade from history or be erased from it because of their crimes. No one worshipped a kin-killer.

She had trained and cared for these youth at the Liona Stronghold for over a decade, only to see their blood spilled by their own people. Anger coursed through her, so high and hot that she took a long plunge in the cold pools beneath the temple. She swam through the marbled tiers of the pools, thinking of the future she was promised so long ago as a girl. Her mother was so angry when she joined the militia that they didn’t speak for three years. Her mother called her a warmonger and worse. Ghrasia had spent her life trying to prove her wrong, but when she closed her eyes, all she saw were all the people who died at her hand.

Some days, she wept to think her mother may have been right.

When Ghrasia emerged from the baths, the blood-red spite of her anger was gone. She was spent. Empty. The same way she had felt when she killed her first Dorinah during the Pass War. It was always the same. The blood tore her apart. Killing was like cutting off one of her own limbs. Every time she killed, she felt like she was bleeding out with them. Losing some part of herself.

After bathing and dressing in the red tunic and skirt the drudges had cleaned for her, she walked up into the sky of the temple to meet with the Kai. The Liona Stronghold was not a living hold the way the temples were. She did not like touching the walls or the railings here. Even sleeping within them gave her nightmares.

She ran into Nasaka’s little mincing assistant, Elaiko, two floors up.

“Ghrasia Madah!” Elaiko said. “I apologize, but you must have an escort in the upper tiers of the temple.”

“The Kai asked to see me,” Ghrasia said. “Is that not allowed?”

Elaiko made some polite noises and small talk about tea as she accompanied Ghrasia up, never really answering her. Ghrasia already knew who was in charge of this temple, but it was good to get confirmation.

The Kai stood in one of the open Ora libraries at the top of the temple, his wiry young body illuminated in the spill of the suns gleaming through the glass ceiling. She was always disappointed he did not look more like his mother, though she had to admit his beauty was still captivating. Javia had been a good friend and companion. Javia had confessed to never really understanding her young son. Reading and mathematics were a struggle for him, and he had never been gifted by the satellites. Seeing him now, Ghrasia had to push away a strong surge of desire; his was a hard beauty, the sort cut with sorrow. She had a softness for sorrow, because sorrow so often showed up on the map of her days. Sadly, a pretty face did not a politically savvy ruler make.

He was arguing with Nasaka about something. Ghrasia expected they argued a good deal.

“Kai?” she said.

He turned but did not smile. His expression was terribly serious. A small tragedy, she thought, to have that face and never smile. She tried – and again failed – to tuck that thought away. She suspected Nasaka was vetting this boy’s lovers with an eye toward some political end, and warding off all the others with a large stick.

“Ghrasia,” he said.

“Ghrasia Madah,” she said.

“Of course,” he said. He clasped his hands behind his back as if it mattered. The whole country had seen his scars, as had she, when she fought beside his cowering cousin Liaro in the temple foyer. She felt his mother’s loss again. Burned up in a foreign country, driven out by fear and some terrible argument with Nasaka that not even Ghrasia understood. “Your mother was formidable in her own right.”

He had not cared much for small talk when she met him in the foyer. Understandable, of course, with their feet mired in the puddle of their kins’ blood. “It’s an old name in our family, Madah,” she said. “I named my daughter Madah.”

“You have many children?”

“Just the one,” Ghrasia said, and she still cringed when she said it. She had often thought to adopt more children, but there never seemed to be a good time. Liona and the militia there were more family to her than her husbands and daughter, some days. “Oma does not bestow the same gifts on everyone.”

“Indeed it does not.”

“You wanted to speak with me?” she said, and her tone sounded harsher than she wanted it to. It wasn’t the boy’s fault for dredging up so many conflicting emotions. That was her burden. “I apologize for my abruptness, but I need to prepare and send home my own dead this evening.”

“Of course,” he said. “I’m sorry. Nasaka was… wise to send for you.”

Ghrasia glanced at Nasaka. Nasaka, too, bore a face that suffered no amusement. Ghrasia imagined Ahkio would look much like her in his old age – serious as death, his face scoured in deep lines, posture always rigid, formal. Ghrasia had not seen Nasaka smile in years; she suspected that after all of Nasaka’s crimes, she had very little to smile about.

“Ora Nasaka’s instincts are often correct,” Ghrasia said. Even when Ghrasia never wanted them to be. She had kept far too many secrets for this woman, but then, Nasaka had kept hers as well, hadn’t she?

“We’re a people with very little experience in violence,” Ahkio said.

“Based on what I saw downstairs, we’re getting a taste for it,” Ghrasia said. She felt the anger again and tamped it down. Anger solved nothing. She had chosen a sword. No one forced it on her.

“I know,” he said, “and it’s the beginning of something worse.”

Ghrasia knew where the power was behind the boy. The same place the power had always been. “What’s he talking about?” she asked Nasaka.

“We’ll require your services,” Nasaka said. “He wishes to return the bodies of Tir’s kin to Garika personally.”

“Is that so?” Ghrasia regarded the boy again. Was he coldly calculating or a simpleton? Always hard to tell with young men. Even in Dhai, their passions often got the best of them. And this one had a reputation for losing his head.

“My mother thought very highly of you,” Ahkio said.

“Many others do as well,” Nasaka said.

Ghrasia wearied of Nasaka’s endless politics some days, but Nasaka was easily the smartest and most calculating woman in Dhai now that Javia was dead. It made Ghrasia’s heart ache, even now, many years later. Because for all Nasaka’s cunning, Javia had still died under Nasaka’s watch. On purpose? Ghrasia often wondered. It was no accident this boy had the title now. Ghrasia suspected Nasaka had maneuvered him into it from birth, though by all counts, he never wanted it.

“If the Kai wishes it,” Ghrasia said, “I will, of course, accompany him to Clan Garika. I expect you will require the Liona militia I brought with me as well?”

“It would be appreciated,” Nasaka said.

Ghrasia put thumb to forehead. “Tonight, or tomorrow morning?”

“The morning,” Nasaka said. “We have much still to sort here.”

“Thank you, Ghrasia Madah,” Ahkio said.

“Of course,” she said.

“Did you want to speak with Ora Dasai?” Nasaka asked Ahkio. “The scholars leave for Saiduan in the morning.”

“Yes, of course,” Ahkio said. “I’ll leave you to your business.”

He nodded to Ghrasia and walked into the corridor.

Ghrasia sighed and waited. She felt the familiar dread that came with being alone in Nasaka’s presence. Nasaka’s darker nature only manifested itself in private. Ghrasia stood a little taller. She could still beat Nasaka in a duel, and that was something.

“So you bumbled in here three hours late,” Nasaka said, “and we nearly lost everything.”

“I’m not some gifted Ora,” she said. “I can’t control the Line connecting the temple to Kuallina. There was some problem with the vine that links up to the chrysalis. They had four tirajistas out on that strand to repair it. I could have marched, I suppose, and shown up three days too late.”

“You could have sent word.”

“I’m a woman of action, not words. You’re the woman of words.”

“Let’s not do this. I’m overtired.”

“You know I would never stand for a Garika on that seat. What’s really happening here, Ora Nasaka?” In truth, she never thought Nasaka would dare to make Ahkio Kai. There were too many rumors about his parentage, mostly spread by Garikas, but the way Nasaka hovered over the boy only gave them greater strength.

“Oma’s rising. We’ve been born under the wrong star.”

Ghrasia stared at the floor a long time, trying to untangle her thoughts. Javia had spoken often of Oma and the collision of worlds written of in The Book of Oma. Legends and mysticism, Javia had said. But Ghrasia knew better. Far greater minds than her own had written The Book of Oma many thousands of years ago. It was the only guide they had now. She murmured a prayer to Tira, the star she had been born under. She wished, not for the first time, that she had been born in another time, under some other star.

“You understand I won’t be an aggressor,” Ghrasia said. “I defend the Dhai. I don’t go out and murder people for no cause or for political gain, no matter what star’s in the sky.”

“You insult me,” Nasaka said, but her tone was flat. “I have others for that.”

“Your casual attitude toward the living makes me question your own humanity.”

Nasaka frowned. “You are as troublesome as–”

“Let’s pretend to be friends, Ghrasia. Do I need to bring up your daughter’s offenses again? Let’s not argue about the sanctity of life.”

“No,” Ghrasia said. It never took long for Nasaka to bring up her daughter. Murder was murder, no matter the circumstances; Ghrasia knew that better than anyone. But Madah was her only daughter and had hardly known better when she was twelve. Mistakes happened. Ghrasia should never have gone to Nasaka for help when she found Madah standing over her cousin’s body.

“You have my loyalty,” Ghrasia said. “You know that. But loyalty doesn’t mean I won’t argue with you. I’m not foolish enough to think I won the Pass War on my own, but I know how to lead people, the sort of people who don’t like you very much. So, though you may not like me at all, I would ask for your respect.”

“You know you have it.”

Ghrasia smiled. It improved her mood just by forcing it; an old trick she learned from her mother. “Is there anything else, Ora Nasaka?”

“Keep an eye on him for me,” Nasaka said. “He knows you were a confidant of his mother’s. He will trust you. I need to know what he confides.”

“As you like,” Ghrasia said, but the words tasted bad. “I’m going to go prepare for our departure.

Nasaka turned away. Her usual dismissal.

Ghrasia made her way back downstairs. Elaiko shadowed her until she reached the second floor, asking if she needed food or tea.

“I’ve been assisted enough,” Ghrasia said, and she failed to hide the exhaustion in her voice. It was not going to get any easier in Garika.

Once she was free of Elaiko, Ghrasia did not go back to her room but instead walked into the long foyer that looped around the Sanctuary. Inside the Sanctuary, the dead and wounded had been removed, and little seemed amiss. She walked until she reached the large, intricate tapestry of the Liona Stronghold. The scene was meant to depict the Dorinahs at the pass during the Pass War. The massive walls of the stronghold were shown from the viewpoint of an invading horde of maned, red-eyed women. And there, at the top of the battlements, stood the Dhai, calling their fistfuls of air and fire and snarling green plant life. It was difficult to ignore that one woman stood out among them, a tall, massive figure with a long tail of black hair. Her red tunic and skirt glowed, the way Faith Ahya’s vestments were said to glow when she appeared to her people.

It was a terribly inaccurate depiction of Ghrasia, but it was her favorite. Many of the other portraits included her with Javia and her family, or standing among a number of great historical Dhai and Oras and clan leaders and heroes. And in those depictions, she looked more as she saw herself – a diminutive woman whose only real strength appeared to be the squint of her gaze and the profound loyalty she inspired in those who collected around her like flies to honeyed pitcher plants. It was not a fame she cultivated. It was something she was good at. Her face, her people often told her, was open and kind. And when she spoke, she did so with authority. One did not learn how to speak with authority in Dhai, not unless they had been raised as Ghrasia had, vying for very limited resources in a very poor clan. She was not truly of Clan Taosina. Her birth mother relocated there from Clan Mutao when she was very small, after her spouses were killed in a mining accident. She gave them both the moniker of Clan Taosina and pretended the past had not existed.

“We build the story of ourselves,” her mother often said.

Ghrasia stared at the glowing woman on the battlements. This was how they all saw her – a shining god who could push back a tide of evil.

But in truth, she was just like everyone else. Bowing and scraping to Nasaka and her endless political push. What was Nasaka’s true intent? She had gotten the boy the title, something Ghrasia had not thought possible. What else did she have in store for them?

Ghrasia had picked her side many years ago when she shared Javia’s bed, but it didn’t make the idea of spying on Javia’s son any easier. Oma was rising, as Faith Ahya had promised in The Book of Oma. And Nasaka was rising with it.