HIS NAME WAS Thennjay Satyaparathnam. He had just turned nineteen, and he was a healer by day and a storyteller by night. His role as a nexus of protest was mostly an accident. Mostly.

“So this was what that Tensor was doing,” Thennjay said. He had the picture scroll stretched between his curious hands and was turning it this way and that under the glare of a suspended sunball, as if the light might reveal something of its inner workings. “She showed up at the protest with this strange wooden box, and she kept pointing it at us. I thought it was a weapon.” His laugh bubbled up from the belly. “I realized it wasn’t one when nobody died. When the Protectorate wants blood, it doesn’t usually hesitate or fail.”

The three of them were cross-legged on the floor of the tent. Akeha took another sip from the cup cradled in their palms. The liquid rolled in their mouth: spiced tea so laden with sugar and ginger it went down like a punch. Thennjay rolled up the picture with deft fingers and handed it back to Mokoya. “How does it work?”

“It’s slackcraft,” Mokoya said, slowly. “I’m not sure I could explain it to you if you’re not familiar with the five natures.” And then more quickly: “Not that there’s anything wrong with that—it’s just that it’s complicated.”

Akeha was not used to watching their twin speak this delicately, putting down words as if they were stacking porcelain cups.

Thennjay folded his hands in his lap. “I know a bit of the theory. You can try me.”

“Light,” Mokoya said, “has connections to metal-nature, for reasons we don’t fully understand yet. You can re-create a scene, the colors and everything, by copying the shape of metal-nature in a box and bringing it back to artisans in the Tensorate, who then paint what they see.”

“This is remarkably lifelike for a painting.” Thennjay reappropriated the scroll, put it next to his face, and imitated his own expression.

Mokoya ducked their head to hide a smile. “The artisans are very good.”

Thennjay had grown up on the margins of Chengbee, several generations removed from Antam Gaur. His father had been a fire breather and a storyteller; his mother a stilt walker and a doctor. In the circus, everyone took on multiple roles. Everybody did what they could. The line between community and family was thin and blurred here. When Thennjay was five, his father was among sixteen circus members arrested for putting on a series of farces, slapstick satire deemed to be insulting to the Protector. The charges laid were sedition, and the sixteen had been exiled south to perform hard labor, never to be heard from again. Thennjay’s mother had then raised him until she died of a fever when he was eleven. Then the task had fallen to the rest of the circus, much as it was able.

The boy leaned back against his table. “So what are we going to do about this prophecy, then?”

“Nothing at all,” Mokoya said. “There isn’t anything we can do.”

Puzzlement marred his face. Mokoya explained, “We’ve never been able to change the prophecies, no matter what we’ve tried.”

“We, meaning . . .”

“The Protectorate. Well, my mother, to be exact.”

“What, do you mean she doesn’t control fortune and the heavens, as they would have us believe?”

“Stop.” Mokoya smacked him on the knee as he laughed. They moved with a simple, alarming ease.

“Surely it can’t be that hard. You could just have me assassinated, for example. Then the prophecy doesn’t come true.”

“An assassination would fail. My mother has tried it, in the past. Not on you, but on someone she didn’t want getting a position I prophesied.”

“Of course she would.”

“It backfired. Not only did the person get the position, they had enough blackmail material to ensure it would be a hereditary position. For nine generations.”

“Quite a feat.” Thennjay laughed until a thought occurred to him: “Wait. Are you saying that until your prophecy comes true, nothing can happen to me? That I’m fireproof?”

“No, I—” Mokoya halted. As the boy continued laughing, they hissed, “That is not what I wanted you to think!”

Akeha put their empty cup of tea on the floor and watched as Mokoya twisted into a coil of anxiety. “I’m not joking!”

The deep rumble of the boy’s laugh was like a thunderstorm in the distance, which could sound comforting to some and be a warning to others. “Well, I was. I’m sorry.”

Akeha studied the way the boy looked at Mokoya, an alien and gentle expression on his face. Was this what tenderness looked like?

Mokoya, completely oblivious, had their hands in their lap, staring down at the lightly curled fingers. “It’s best if we don’t interfere with the prophecies. Nothing good has ever come of trying to change them.”

Thennjay frowned. “Then why did you come here? To warn me?”

“I . . .” Akeha could almost feel Mokoya turning the question over in their mind, slowly and carefully, like a grilled fish. “I was curious about you. Wouldn’t you do the same thing, in my position?”

“I suppose.”

Thennjay folded his hands together, mirroring Mokoya’s pose, seguing into contemplative silence. Eventually, his gaze fell on Akeha. “You don’t say much, do you?”

Akeha stared evenly back at him. “No.”

The moment of silence stretched. Mokoya broke in: “This news must come as a shock to you.”

Thennjay chuckled and sighed, and for the briefest moment, Akeha caught a glimpse of darkness lurking under the bright, easygoing exterior. “It is what it is. As you said, there’s nothing we can do to change it, can we?”

“In the monastery,” Mokoya said, “they taught us that fortune is both intractable and impartial. That when bad things happen, it’s the result of an incomprehensible and inhuman universe working as it does. The mountain shrugs, but thinks nothing of the houses crushed in the avalanche. That was not its purpose.”

“And that’s meant to be comforting?”

“Yes,” said Mokoya, a little too earnestly. “Because it’s not about you, or what you’ve done. There’s no bigger reason to things.”

Thennjay stared at the heavy canvas ceiling in contemplation. Then he said, “Growing up, I was taught to believe that the fortunes don’t give you more than you can handle. It was a mantra, almost. Something bad happens? Well, you can handle it, because otherwise why would it have happened? I think it was the only way people could cope with the things that went on, sometimes.”

“You don’t sound like you agree.”

He looked in the direction of the tent door. Heartbeats passed. “You saw Anjal and Kirpa,” he said. The suspicious children outside. “They’re six and four. Think about that, six and four. Their parents died in that factory fire. They don’t have surviving close relatives. No grandparents, no aunts or uncles. A cousin is looking after them, but he’s got hungry children of his own to feed. I ask you: Can you believe, really believe, that they’re supposed to have the strength to cope with that?” He shook his head. “My personal belief? I don’t care about the fortunes. I care about doing whatever you can, with whatever’s in front of you. Because it’s the only thing you can do.”

Mokoya stared at him with a mixture of joy and disbelief, like he was some sort of miracle. “That’s beautiful.”

A feeling like a fist pressed against Akeha’s sternum.

Thennjay turned to Akeha. “And you, what do you believe?”

Akeha leaned back, balancing on their tailbone and clenched hands. “Why do my beliefs matter? I’m not a prophet or a future abbot.”

Mokoya swung around with a furious glare. Keha, what?

Akeha barely blinked. We’ve been gone a long time. There’s going to be trouble.

Mokoya’s nostrils flared. But of course Akeha was right. They turned back to Thennjay, defeated. “We need to go. We sneaked out of the Great High Palace, and Mother isn’t going to be pleased.”

“Starting my career in the disfavor of the Protector? That sounds dangerous.” The boy got to his feet, and offered a hand to Mokoya. After a brief moment of hesitation, they took it.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen next,” Mokoya said. “What steps Mother is going to take, or the Grand Monastery. Once word spreads, people are going to start coming to see you. I’m sure of it.”

He would be the most unqualified candidate for Head Abbot in the history of the Grand Monastery, Akeha thought uncharitably. Could he even perform basic slackcraft?

“We’ll cross that valley when we reach its borders,” Thennjay said. He still hadn’t let go of Mokoya’s hand.

Mokoya wasn’t pulling away, either. They were staring up at Thennjay, at his face, at his broad-shouldered bulk.

“If you could stand to escape the palace again,” Thennjay said, “you should come to the circus tonight. We put on quite a show, and it’s only five brass tals per entry.”

“I . . .” Mokoya lowered their hand slowly as Thennjay released it. “I’ll try. It’s not easy to leave the Palace without being noticed.”

Thennjay smiled, an expression radiant as a firework. The two of them were standing so close to each other their bodies nearly touched. The boy said, “I have a feeling we’ll meet again soon, my dear prophet.”

* * *

Akeha’s feet kicked up dust as they cut through the rumbling guts of Chengbee. The aftertaste of ginger tea clung pungent and sticky as glue to their tongue and mouth. Mokoya might have felt the same way, all wrapped up in a thick, woolly layer of thought. Akeha watched the back of their head, the black peach fuzz emerging from it, and thought about the long years they’d spent shaving their heads like they were still acolytes, so that they could appear identical.

They conjured an image of what Mokoya might look like as a woman, silk-draped and pigment-smeared, hair wrapped into unnatural shapes. This woman, this stranger, laughed with painted lips and clung to the arm of the tall, handsome man who smiled approvingly down at her. She made trite jokes and used the feminine version of “I.” Akeha tried to imagine themselves in the same role: an alien form, making alien gestures. Their chest liquefied into molten ore.

“So,” they said to their twin’s silhouette, “is that why you want to be confirmed? So you can go around flirting with boys?”

Mokoya turned around, eyes as round as dumplings. “What?”

Akeha knew it was a bad idea, but continued talking anyway. “Come on. You saw the way he looked at you, didn’t you?”

“What is wrong with you?” Mokoya hissed. They stormed a furious clutch of paces ahead, then slowed for Akeha to catch up. “You can be angry with me, but leave him out of it. He’s got nothing to do with . . . whatever your problem is.”

“He likes you.”

“And you don’t like him.”

Akeha shrugged. “I don’t have to. He’s going to be the Head Abbot, not my new best friend.” They snorted. “Unless I have to contend with him as a future brother-in-law?”

Mokoya’s impenetrable silence only deepened as they turned away and continued walking. Furious. “You’re going to the circus tonight, aren’t you?” Akeha asked.

Their twin squared their shoulders, squared their jaw. “Fine. I am. I like him. I think he’s important. You,” they added acidly, “don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”