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stolen it to raise Ramos. But those who have the Matrix wish
only to prevent him from rising."
"We do not know yet who stole the Matrix."
"Orim was attacked by a Mercadian and your guard
commander."
"So she says," interrupted the vizier.
Sisay nodded. "Yes, but assume for a moment her story is
true. If that's the case, your enemies have our ship and your
Matrix. If they can acquire the Bones of Ramos too, we'll all
be doomed."
The vizier shook her head skeptically. "And if you had the
Matrix and could join it with your ship and the Bones of
Ramos, what is to say you would use your ship to help us? We
Saprazzans might be doomed anyway."
"No," Sisay said, clear eyed. "I give you my word. If
Ramos rises, his children-Cho-Arrim, Rishadan, and Saprazzan-
will rise too."
* * * * *
Even after two weeks, Orim found sleeping difficult in
Saprazzo. The soft, diffuse light that came through her
underwater window made her feel sleepy and sluggish, and the
perpetual damp gave her the feeling she risked molding. Her
bedclothes felt damp as well, and she often shivered beneath
them half the night, or avoided them altogether, rising to
pace back and forth across the room, waiting impatiently for
morning.
Even the coming of day brought no change in her
restlessness. The Saprazzans were continuing their
investigation of the theft and murder, but at a leisurely
pace, characteristic of everything that happened in the city.
Orim was permitted to leave her quarters and move freely about
Saprazzo, but she was invariably accompanied by a guard, who
never left her side. She could talk to whomever she pleased,
and though she spent time with Hanna and Sisay, she found she
had little to say to them. Most days she spent meditating in
her cell or sitting on the seawall and staring at the ever-
changing water.
This morning, in what had become a disturbingly familiar
routine, she rose, dressed, and rang the bell that signaled
she was ready for breakfast. Having completed the meal, she
opened the door and, the guard at her side, walked up into the
city.
Unlike Dominarian merfolk, Saprazzans were excessively
friendly, even with a prisoner. Orim had several times been
invited to dine with the vizier, who questioned her
extensively about Dominaria and the journeys of Weatherlight.
Orim answered the questions as best she could, trying to avoid
explaining too much about the Legacy or Gerrard. The vizier
never seemed to take offense when her questions were turned
aside. Instead, she moved politely on to some less sensitive
topic.
Orim's daily meditation in the little courtyard had
reduced the pain of Cho-Manno's death to a dull heartache. It
no longer overwhelmed her, as it had in the first weeks since
it occurred, but it was always with her, always a sadness that
rose up behind every thought and action.
Now, as she sat in the courtyard, the sun slowly rose over
the city. Orim emptied her mind as the Cho-Arrim had taught
her. She let her senses flow out around her, embracing her
surroundings. The voice of Cho-Manno returned to her.
To live is to grow. We live only because we are growing.
Even death is a kind of growth. Growth is more than mere
change. To grow is to become one with those things around you.
All existence-the sky, the earth, the water-strives to become
one. All things yearn to be united to one another. Thus to
grow is to progress toward a state of oneness, of unity.
Intellectually it had been easier for Orim to grasp this
idea than to understand all its spiritual implications. The
desire for unity was common to many religious systems. She had
encountered such beliefs many years before at the Argivian
University. What she found more difficult was the Cho-Arrim
conviction that to actually attain unity with one's
surroundings meant rejecting the logical connections formed by
the conscious mind and surrendering to those elements she had
always rejected as irrational and ineffable. Nonetheless, each
time she practiced the meditation Cho-Manno taught, she felt
closer to a moment of revelation, a flash of insight in which
all creation would suddenly come into focus and, for the first
time, she would become complete. This feeling was still a dim
anticipation, but she now found meditation a delicious rest
rather than a vain striving against some distant, unattainable
goal.
She felt, rather than heard, a step behind her on the
stones of the courtyard. Her concentration broke, and she
rose, a reproof on her lips.
Silence enveloped her. The world rushed away, and all she
knew was concentrated in the face before her.
Cho-Manno.
He stood exactly as she remembered him, one eyebrow
slightly raised, his mouth drooping half-humorously. He was
clad as he had been that day of the raid-in a short skirt, his
chest bare, and coins flashing in the braids of his hair. She
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