Trinity walked at an easy pace, the city still waking up around them, temple bells carrying from somewhere deeper in.
"When I first met your father," she said, "he was passing through on his way to Nirvana. He didn't say much — just that he couldn't stay long. But he came back later. Stayed a while." She paused, choosing her words. "He spent his time meditating. And from it, he unlocked something I've never seen before or since. He learned to feel his surroundings — every shift in air, every subtle movement, registering against his skin. As though he'd turned his body into a map of everything around him."
Sheu was very still. Najo, who had been drifting at the edge of the conversation, had quietly closed the distance.
"Could you teach us that?" Moto asked.
"In a manner of speaking. Meditation here helps you understand your own gift — what you unlock depends entirely on what that gift is."
"What's yours?"
"I can transfer one person's ability to another." She said it simply. "Once every three months."
"That's incredible."
"You'd think. It's not much use in a fight."
"We don't fight like that here," Trinity continued. "Each tribe designates one person to carry the burden of violence. My father holds that role for ours. Fortunately it hasn't been needed."
Moto immediately wanted to know when they could try the meditation.
Trinity laughed softly. "Patience. We're almost at the square."
Bishop City opened around them like a held breath finally released — colour and sound and the particular ease of a place that hadn't been building toward anything violent in a long time.
A boy shot past them at speed, three monks in pursuit, their robes flying. Trinity stepped into his path by instinct. He was quick — caught her shoulder, pivoted around her, landed a precise kick behind her knee, and was gone before she'd finished wincing.
Moto was already tensing.
"Don't." Trinity steadied herself. "You can't be seen chasing people here. The guardians handle it."
The monks ran past. Ahead, as the boy hit the crowd, something split cleanly from his body and ran left while he ran right — a second form, deliberate and complete, dividing the pursuit without breaking his stride.
Moto stared. "Who was that?"
"Aemon." Something complicated moved through Trinity's voice, too layered to name quickly. "The guardians will deal with him."
Before anyone could ask more, the sound came from the other side of the city — drums and pipes, bright and rhythmic, building as it came closer. The square's quiet dissolved. People emerged from doorways and side streets, waving coloured cloth, the celebration moving through the crowd like a current.
"Andzani has returned from Nirvana," Trinity said, watching the procession begin to form. "The King's brother. They'll want time together — we should see King Khosa tomorrow. You can stay at my place tonight."
Sheu looked at Moto. "Are we not in a hurry? The mission—"
"Your mission is our mission," Moto said. "The King knew your father. We're not leaving before we see him." He glanced at Najo. "And I have a question for him too."
He turned it over quietly. Alicia had told him peace was impossible. Douglas had said the same thing in gentler words in a candlelit room. Both had arrived at survival over everything — the flood is coming, build a boat. But this place. This city pausing for joy. What would a king who had built this say to the same question?
Trinity retrieved a small metallic container, vented on all sides. She placed a six-leaf herb inside, struck a match, and set it burning.
The reaction was immediate.
Three monks on the far side of the garden, who had been sitting in perfect stillness a moment earlier, inhaled at the same time. One of them opened both eyes far too wide. Another slowly gripped the stone bench beneath him as if the earth had made a personal confession. The third whispered something to the sky and began nodding with grave, urgent understanding.
Najo stared.
One monk turned to another with tears gathering in his eyes. "Brother. The beetle was right."
Moto blinked. "What beetle?"
"The beetle," the monk said, as though that explained everything.
The second monk rose halfway, pointed at a tree, and said, "That branch has been judging me since childhood."
The first monk gasped. "You too?"
Najo's face folded into open concern. "...Is this normal?"
Trinity, with the careful smile of someone choosing national pride over visible embarrassment, took his hand and gently pulled him toward the center of the garden.
"Come on."
Najo looked down at their joined hands, then back at the monks.
"I'm just saying, if I start apologizing to insects, someone hit me."
"Gladly," Moto said.
Sheu almost smiled.
Trinity released Najo's hand a little faster than politeness required.
"Shelton used to meditate here," she said quietly. "This spot is believed to be closest to the Ore. He spent hours here after his missions." She looked at Sheu. "This might be the closest you can get to him now."
They sat. The vapour moved around them. The city continued at a distance.
Sheu's world went ghostlike.
Trees, stones, birds, grass, even the distant shapes of people moving through Bishop City became pale vapour, intangible and layered. But when wind left her palms, the world answered. The air pressed back against her skin in tiny, countless nudges, each one carrying shape, distance, texture, intention.
A branch two metres behind her brushed the current, and she felt it along her shoulder as if the bark had touched her directly. Grasshoppers became flickers against her wrists. Leaves trembled against her fingertips without ever reaching them.
The air was no longer empty.
It was a second body.
She sat with that for a moment.
Then her eyes found Moto. The yellow crystal at his throat was glowing faintly, softly, in a way that had nothing to do with the light.
Moto went down slowly.
The smoke thickened as he descended — grey first, then darker, the familiar compression of it, until his feet found ground. Hot beneath him. He looked down through the surface he stood on at a deep sea of flame, slow-moving, orange and dark red. He walked, looking for somewhere that didn't burn through his shoes, and the smoke folded closed behind him.
His hand hit something solid.
A wall. Crystal, vast, its colour the exact amber of his necklace, warm through his palm. The ground was cooler at its base. He pressed close, trying to see through to the other side, shapes beginning to resolve in the depths of it —
Najo screamed.
The vision shattered. Moto was back in the clearing, heart hammering, the vapour still drifting. Najo was on his hands and knees in the grass, breathing in ragged pulls, eyes open and not seeing anything. Around his hands, the ground flickered — small threads of electricity creeping and fading and creeping again, involuntary, a language his body was still trying to speak without knowing it had remembered how.