“You can see for yourself,” they said, holding it out.
The pearl harbored alarmingly lifelike warmth. Akeha tensed the vision open, unspooling its coils like a snake. Mokoya’s vision washed over them.
A procession of monks sang sutras as they shuffled down the thoroughfare in front of the Great High Palace’s ceremonial pavilion. Tensors and palace staff lined every building, every corridor, hands folded, watching silently. Handbells rang, rhythmic and solemn, and heads bowed as the front of the procession passed them by.
Leading the procession was a young man Akeha had never seen before. Lean and broad, dark-skinned, jaw framed by a hefty beard that seemed impossibly neat. His head had been shorn and tattooed with the sigils of the five natures. This was him. The new Head Abbot. He was a boy. And it was preposterous. He looked like a student dressed up in ceremonial robes for a play.
At five-step intervals, the new Head Abbot stopped and bowed, pressing his forehead to the ground. The boy’s face was perfectly serious. Akeha watched as he got to his feet, walked five steps, and bowed again. Deep-set eyes, straight and narrow nose. He had a presence that could be felt even through the echo of a vision. And the vision lingered on him—in a way that Mokoya’s visions never did—as if the fortunes, too, found him irresistible.
A Gauri boy. Extraordinary.
Where was Mother in all this? Akeha pulled on the reins of the vision and spun it around, searching for the Protector in this theater of ritualized obeisance. They’d learned to do this recently, based on notes they had borrowed from the laboratory studying Mokoya’s visions. It turned out they weren’t just dreams, but chunks of time captured in their entirety. With enough willpower, you could navigate through them.
Akeha found the Protector on the high dais in the ceremonial pavilion, shaded by awnings of yellow silk. Sonami was seated next to her, as she usually was these days. Kara, Sonami’s youngest, clung to his mother’s lap. He didn’t look much older than he was now, freshly turned three and freshly declared to be a boy. Mokoya was right: this was going to happen soon.
Mother’s face looked like she’d drunk a cupful of vinegar. Good.
Akeha exited the vision and pressed the pearl back into Mokoya’s waiting palm. “Ha. Did you see? Mother’s going to burst a vein.”
“This isn’t a joke, Keha. There’s nothing funny about it.”
Akeha quieted. It was crass, they supposed, to be amused by this turn of events. The Head Abbot’s health had been failing for several years, but the old man had looked after them as children. He was the closest thing they had to a father. “I’m sorry.”
Mokoya sloshed the vision around in their hands. “I don’t understand,” they said finally. “Why him? Who is he?”
“It’s the flow of fortune. Why start questioning it now?”
The capture pearl froze sharply midrotation. “Why don’t you ever take anything seriously?”
Akeha blinked. Their twin shoved the pearl back into its box, closing the lid with a harsh snap. “Moko,” they said appeasingly, but it wasn’t enough to stop them from furiously collapsing back against the divan.
“Oi.” Akeha slipped off their own bed, hesitantly, afraid to cross the gulf between the furniture. They half stood, half leaned against the hard wood of the bed frame. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” Mokoya said. They had turned to face the wall. “Go back to sleep.”
Akeha sucked on their bottom lip and let several seconds pass. When Mokoya said nothing further, they ventured, “It’s not nothing. You’ve been grouchy for the last few days. Something is wrong, you just won’t say it.”
Silence from the other side of the room. Then Mokoya sat up, slowly. “Our birthday is in less than two weeks. I want to be confirmed.”
Akeha sucked air between their teeth, willing what they’d just heard to change. “What?”
Mokoya turned. “I want to be conf—”
“I heard you. Why?”
“Why? Keha, we’re turning seventeen. We have to do it at some point.”
“We made a promise never to get confirmed.”
“We were six when we made that promise. We’re not children anymore.” Mokoya shifted on the bed. “Keha, you didn’t really think we could avoid confirmation forever, did you?”
Akeha shrugged, not trusting their mouth to say the right things. Nobody jumped from undeclared gender straight to confirmation. They’d take a couple of years to be sure. Unless they were Sonami, and Akeha wasn’t Sonami.
Mokoya sighed noisily. “Keha.”
“So that’s why you didn’t talk to me? You thought I’d be upset?”
“Well, you are.”
Akeha wordlessly clambered back into bed. I’m not upset, they thought. This is not a big matter. But it was.
“You don’t have to decide now if you don’t want to,” Mokoya said. “I’m just telling you that I’m doing it.”
Akeha lay motionless on the divan, which suddenly seemed unreasonably hard and lumpy. They watched spots of light dance across the ceiling and listened to the uneven cadence of Mokoya’s breathing from the other end of the room.
Eventually Akeha asked, “And what will you be confirmed as?” But even as the question left their lips, they already knew what the answer would be.
“A woman,” Mokoya said, without hesitation.
The room was silent except for the soft sounds of their breaths.
Into the dark their twin repeated, “You don’t have to decide now. I’m just telling you what I want.”
*
The sun beat down upon baked dirt and brick as the twins slipped through Chengbee’s intestinal byways like fish, flat-soled feet barely making a sound as they ran with the shadow of the Great High Palace at their backs. They had shed the company of their hapless minder, Qiwu, long minutes ago, losing him in the thick porridge of the main market’s morning crowds. Now they were putting distance between themselves and the places they were meant to be. Mokoya, racing slightly ahead, traced the twins a solid path through the twisting streets.
They were headed south, to the ragbone-meat quarter. Mokoya’s pace slowed as they headed into unfamiliar territory, trying to connect real living streets, in all their dirty, shouting confusion, to lines on a painted map.