We spent little time in Ikanhaba, Ashmaryakas giving us stares like we were no longer allowed in Anagalshu. Innin had found a lighter cloak for me to wear while we traveled southeast; the paranoia that seemed to lessen after my Blue Moon Beautillion only coming back in full force. It made sense to me that Arshaka may have started a quiet character assassination against the Reissu Crown Prince. I was adamant on going against everything he wanted, there was no reason for him to sit idly by while I ruined his carefully laid plans.

The Reissu were to be made out as villains once more, just as tribal histories had decreed. I wasn’t convinced of that one bit, something hazy had kept coming back to me, each time getting more and more concrete. Books upon books upon books all crammed into little shelves in a room Innin let me roam around in once. They were old things, none of them the gifts my mother gave me for birthdays, for special occasions. I feared they would turn to dust if I danced my fingers from spine to spine. I walked through the rows of books, looking for anything that seemed interesting to me: history, laws, politics, treaties. Gingerly, I took book after book, scroll after scroll off their shelves to pore over. There was one scroll I found particularly intriguing, a copy of a treaty from hundreds of years prior. It detailed everything the Aeces, the Flodkaros, and the Reissu lost at the end of the Great Conflict. Everything the Jakeki wanted on behalf of the Qriacin, and Erberos.

I gripped the reigns of my horse as I remembered the words written in faded ink. They strangled us, took our ancestral lands, forced us into the center of the continent where we were to be observed on three sides. Let the Reissu take the blame for a war the Erberos pushed the Qriacin into. Rewritten histories forced on by Jakeki hands. The Reissu pushed into Qotut. We were aggressors to them, not people trying to keep ourselves safe. The Flodkaros accepted their fate. Stripped of their native tongue, given our northern lands, they were given the best fate by not pressing for more. The Aeces and Reissu had pushed and pushed until the Jakeki beat them down. Their small colonies in now-Zinosoc were taken from them, forced into a peaceful society, their warpaint ceremonial now.

Irelu, goddess of war, of death, of destruction. Her statues, her temples, her name desecrated in the call of peace. Her name a curse, any meaning in our old language long gone now that Jakeki was the only language we were to speak. I remember tracing the symbols that made up her name on the old treaty, asking Innin what the strange lettering meant. The worship of gods were no longer permitted under our conquerors. She was nothing now but a word to be uttered in anger.

We made camp at night, starting fires with what little wood and dry bush we could find. The desert nights were frigid, but the visibility low. It was safer for us to stick to old roads during the day then to wander and freeze in the black. I gave Pili my heavy cloak, not wanting a repeat of our journey into Bulos. He wrapped himself in it, and we huddled around the fire, eating into our little provisions. “Ezollen,” Innin handed me my share of dried meat and nuts, “how is your memory?”

“There are still gaps.” I stared at the sand on the edges of the fire. “Little things are causing me to remember, though.” I chewed on a few nuts. “I could convince the noble. It’s all there,” I tapped at my temple, “everything they’ve done to the tribes in the past.”

Innin let out a sharp breath. “You know laws,” he said, almost solemn, “you have yet to negotiate.”

“I’ve not,” I nodded, suddenly feeling confident in my abilities, “but I know my laws, Innin.” I ate the rest of my nuts, not wanting to eat the dried meat, yet knowing I would need the strength it’d bring. “Believe in me, please, Innin. If only once.”

He relented without much convincing, an odd sense of overprotectiveness still hovering over me. He laid down with his back to the fire after I finished eating my meat, having torn it off in little pieces. His last act as guardian for the day was to remind Pili and me not to wander and to go to sleep soon. We would be back on the horses by sunrise.

Pili grabbed my hand, warm from how he had kept it wrapped in the cloak. “Am I making the right choice?” I asked, laying in the sand. The stars better viewing than the dying fire.

He fell on his back next to me. “If it can save countless lives, I believe it is.” He rolled to his side, pulling the cloak about himself to stay warm. “He may not see reason, but you would have tried.”

“Do you still wish to join me in this?” I turned to face him. I wanted his confirmation once more. I wasn’t going to drag him further into this if he had changed his mind.

He rested his cheek on the back of his hand. “I do,” he said. “You’ve shown me a world I never thought possible on Ukicho.” He smiled wistfully. “I’ve met people, experienced things I wouldn’t have had the chance to meet or do without you.” He closed his eyes. “Whatever it may be, I’ll stay for as long as I’m able.”

I closed my own eyes. “Thank you,” was all I could think to say.