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girl’s name—which he never uses anyway—he lets it pass. “Okay, just give me a sec. I’m coming.”
    “Are you?”
    “Do I got a choice?”
    Rose’s smile warps gently. “Do any of us?”
    N’Doch can’t think of a smart answer to that one. He’s not sure there is one. “I’ll be there.”
    Rose nods, then turns away and disappears from his line of sight, N’Doch lets his gaze drift back to the little window, where huge white flakes are drifting down from a lead-gray sky. He sees himself running, through flames, through a city in flames, trying to . . . desperate to . . . he can’t remember. Only the place itself. That he sees, outlined against the milk-white snow, with gut-wrenching clarity.
    “I’ll be there,” he says again, without moving.

C HAPTER F OUR

    P aia is still staring at the painting when the squat red sun clears the scrawl of mountains. Her tower studio burns with dusty light as the first traces of the daytime heat bleed through half a centimeter of armored glass. She can hear the morning gongs now, faint and rhythmic. If she lays her palms against the window wall, she’ll feel the heat and the dull reverberations from below, a metallic conscience calling to remind her that the day has once again begun and with it, her solemn duties in the Temple.
    Of course, she’d much prefer to stay where she is, floating guilty and free among trees and rivers in this blue-green world of her imagination. But they’ll come looking for her eventually, her guards and chaperones. An alarm will be raised if her bed is found empty, and a crisis of such vast proportions will ensue until she’s found, that Paia hasn’t the heart or nerve to set it in motion.
    She takes a step back from the painting, hoping this one brave move will break its spell. But the distance only sharpens her longing to be there, not beside it but
in
it. This is worrisome. She repeats to herself a few of the God’s stern admonitions about the danger of nostalgia, what he calls “the Green Heresy.” His catchphrase is
Survive the day
. He’s even worked it into the Temple litany. The God, in his own hedonistic way, is a pragmatist, and Paia sees the sense in it. So she steels herself and turns away, searching for a square of oilcloth to cover the still-moist paint, to hide the siren landscape from her susceptible gaze, or from anyone who might venture up here. For it is perilously subversive, this painting she’s made. It makes one yearn toopiercingly to have what one cannot, and be where one can never go.
    She roots out an antique plastic tarp, crackling with age. She had been saving it, as a relic of her childhood when plastic things were everywhere and still relatively functional. But opening it now seems the right thing to do—to risk a little shredding along the fold lines for the sake of her sanity, to properly blot out the demon image. She should paint it over, is what she should really do. But she can’t bring herself to do that. Already she’s planning how she can set time aside during the day to sneak back upstairs, to draw aside the faded blue tarp, and gaze once more on this forbidden landscape. Paia wonders if she’s having a crisis of faith.
    She remembers a word from her studies, an ideal from a long time ago when an image of wilderness could embody paradise and perfection. It’s a name, a concept, really. She decides to title the painting “Arcadia.”
    And once the concealing tarp is in place, it’s easier to pack up her paints, drop her brushes in oil, and head down the winding staircase, snatching a trailing silk robe off a handy hook to hide her undignified T-shirt and sweats. Traipsing along the empty corridor, like she’s just been for a walk, she surprises the dawn contingent of the Honor Guard as they’re settling into their watch. They snap to startled attention as she sails past them with an august wave, too fast for them to even consider her unkempt appearance, and shuts the door