I land with a splash in the running water between Nerimes and the crowd, one fist to the stone. There’s a sudden uproar, and I stand with deliberation to face the people, throwing my hood back so they can see my eyes. Violet eyes. My father’s eyes.

  The sight makes the crowd fall silent, then the roar is doubled. I raise my head, eyeing the temple that raised and rejected me, then push my thoughts into the water. I am Aletheia Vjolla, of the House Vjolla, former student of this temple and daughter of its rightful Chosen.

  There are gasps—many of these seers have likely never experienced thought-pushing. I use the advantage it gives me to press my case. Since Nerimes tried to kill me one week ago, I have hidden in the city gathering evidence about his crimes against us. I stand here today to tell you he is a usurper and murderer, unfit for the Ujela Dais.

  The roar triples, men leaping from their chairs. I glance back at Nerimes, unsure how much time I have. The man stands unperturbed, watching me as though I pose no threat.

  I ice the fear that comes up, the sudden sense that this is all going according to his plan, not mine.

  To my left, two overseers detach from the wall, their thoughts too buried in the absolute chaos of the water to read, but their intentions clear enough. I tense, glancing at Dashan. I knew it might come to a fight, but hoped I’d have more time. No matter. I start to uncoil the rope from my waist—

  “Stop,” Nerimes says, echoing his speech in the water, and his command cuts through the roar. The crowd stops talking like it was slapped, and the Chosen smiles. “There. That’s better. Aletheia. How nice of you to join us.”

  The overseers stop too. For now, at least.

  I turn to Nerimes. “There’s nothing nice about this. Except for you finally getting justice.”

  “Justice? For what?” he asks, playing neatly into my hands.

  Too neatly. He has a plan—I am sure of it now—but I don’t know what. And this is my only chance to expose him. I have to risk it.

  “For spreading lies about my father. For selling us to the Deul to get into power. For trying to kill me when I learned the truth.”

  Thoughts churn in the water like a barrel of snakes. I ignore them, focusing on Nerimes. On figuring out his angle.

  “Aletheia,” he says, “we all mourned your father’s passing. But the training should have taught you better ways to deal with your grief.”

  I grit my teeth at his tone—like I’m some wayward student and he’s a teacher forced to make an example of me in front of the class. I turn back to the crowd.

  “Nerimes campaigned against my father on claims Stergjon was a heretic, that he ruined trade, and that he created conflict with the Theracant Guild. I have proof those were all lies, were in actuality problems the council or their allies caused in order to make my father look bad. And that Ieolat paid for all of it.”

  There is a rush of nervous whispers from the back of the hall where the merchants are clustered, but closer in, the seers all watch with still faces. They are not surprised. Dashan spread what I knew a few days ago—they know the arguments, though they haven’t seen direct proof.

  Nerimes steeples his fingers. “Oh, do tell.”

  I frown. This was the moment I expected he would call on his supporters, on the overseers, that a fight would happen if it was going to. To stop me before I could reveal his guilt. Instead, he invites me to do it? Everything is wrong about this.

  I push on. “My father was no heretic,” I say, to the crowd as much to him. “I spoke to the criers in town and got confirmation their guild was bribed to spread those rumors, to announce he was a heretic, though there was no truth to it.”

  The merchants’ whispers increase, but the seers still watch me with silent eyes. “Bold claims,” Nerimes says. “And your proof?”

  This is also the moment I was waiting for, with more anxiety than the thought of the temple descending into civil war. But I have to do it.

  I stand up straight, take a deep breath, and drop my blind.

  It’s like stripping naked in front of my entire school, and it takes me a minute to just ice every wave of embarrassment and shame and fear that comes up, doubly hard because they can all read my thoughts as I do it. I get my emotions under control, though, and direct my thoughts to the memories of the crier in the streets of Serei confirming the guild was paid to spread lies about my father.

  It does what I want. I stand there mentally naked and let them read my memories, my past, unable to hide all the thoughts I had at the time about Gaxna, about stealing, all my anger and fear and rage, but more importantly all the information I learned about the criers getting bribed.

  The seers gasp, looking at each other, water again roiling with thoughts, some of them so surprised that they start talking out loud. There. They are learning the truth, now. That Nerimes and his council didn’t just sweep in after my father’s murder. They set it up.

  I turn to the Chosen, victorious, but he still looks unconcerned. Waits for the hubbub to die down, then makes a dismissive wave with one hand. “Criers. You can’t trust the things. If they can be paid to lie once, why not again? How do we know you didn’t first pay these criers to say what you wanted?”

  “Because I didn’t. You can see it all right here in my memories.” I run through them again, including more time before and after, but again he waves a hand.

  “Selective memories. Still no proof you didn’t bribe them some other time. But go on. You had something about trade?”

  The crowd seems to sway back on the basis of Nerimes’ argument, on the man’s unshakeable confidence, but I’m not done yet. Not by an ocean’s length.

  “The city’s trade slowed in the last few months of my father’s rule,” I say. “It was one of the things Nerimes used to argue Stergjon was unfit for the Dais. But Ujeian dockworkers and Seilam Deul laborers alike confirm it was a coverup—that the Deul warehouses were actually full to the rafters with goods they were just refusing to sell. That they were buying goods for higher prices upcoast to keep traders from coming to our port, all to make trade look depressed. And all on Ieolat’s orders.”

  I call up the memories and let them play out. “Not only that, but local merchants confirmed they were given money to stay in business during the slump. The whole thing was a manipulation to make it look like my father had sabotaged trade. A further proof of which you can see in how quickly everything went back to normal after Nerimes took office.”

  The Chosen raises an eyebrow. “Some call that competence, my dear.”

  Still, I see the faces in the crowd growing sympathetic. There’s no denying my memories. “What’s more, the Seilam Deul dockworker confirmed Ieolat was involved in the manipulation. He remembered her specifically when I asked who was behind it.”

  I play that memory too, lingering on the image I read in his mind of Ieolat. “My age mate Dashan may not have been the only one to see Deul chests of money entering the temple a few months back.” I play that memory too, and am pleased to see Dashan echo it with his own in the water. “Is taking foreign money to gain power not treason enough to condemn Nerimes? Is our Ujela Dais just another trinket available to the highest bidder? It is no accident you see a Seilam Deul woman standing before you in matrimony today.”

  More mutters in the crowd. Nerimes still looks unworried, but Ieolat’s face is a thundercloud. “Mind which games you play, girl,” she hisses in the clipped tones of the Deul. “Especially when you don’t know the rules.”

  Nerimes gives me a tight smile and turns to the crowd. “Again, dockworkers. Would you take their word against mine? Especially when Aletheia here used force to coerce the one, and flirted the other into saying what she wanted?”

  I blush, remembering the interaction with the first dockworker, then ice the emotion, hard as it is with everyone reading my thoughts all the while. “That had nothing to do with this. And I used force to make sure the man was telling the truth. Anyway, I was reading his thoughts—there was no way he could lie.”

  “Unusual methods, to say the least,” Nerimes says. “But go on.”

  What is the man’s plan? A knot of worry kinks in my stomach even as I see my proofs sway the monks. He should be running, fighting—anything other than smiling a pleased little smile.

  “You mentioned the theracants?” he prompts.

  “Yes,” I say, icing the uncertainty. “I have proof from their own mouths that they had no conflict with my father or the temple, but were tricked into thinking we were going to attack them, and that’s why they started policing the streets more. Which you then used to argue my father was stirring trouble with them, and to fuel your current call to arms against them.” I bring up the memories and let them play out, knowing this is my last piece of evidence, my last chance to make it all stick.

  “So I ask you, seers and merchants of Uje, is this the man you want leading your city? The one who lied and manipulated his way to power? That would start a war with the theracants? That sold our Dais in exchange for who knows what? Can you in good faith witness this marriage—”

  “Enough,” Nerimes says, but I roll on.

  “—knowing it was paid for by the death of our rightful Chosen?”

  “Enough!” he thunders, and I relax for a moment even as I worry about what he has planned, because I know I got to him. Can see it on the faces of the seers, too—they know the truth now.

  “Yes,” I turn to him, “it is enough. Enough to prove that you usurped the Dais, that my father was innocent, and that you should be given to Uje.”

  “On the basis of the theracants’ proof?”

  “On the basis of all this proof,” I say.

  I see my mistake a moment later.

  Nerimes smiles, victorious. “You condemn yourself, young Aletheia.” He turns to the crowd. “How would any seer from the temple get information from a theracant? Unless they were secretly in league with them?”

  The current of opinion swirls like the rage and worry in my gut. “I am not in league with them. You all know me, know my father, know the Vjolla have always been loyal to the temple!”

  “Your father was a heretic,” Nerimes says. “Why else would he put a girl into training? It is high time we finally erased his heresy.”

  The swirl resolves into pure anger. I don’t bother icing it. “I am no heretic. Everyone in this temple knows I have watersight, knows I have always been at the top of my class, and my gender has nothing to do with it. Urte! Will you not speak for me?”

  The wizened trainer raises his head, but does not spoil his dignity with words, speaking instead into the water. She is of true heart and mind. This I have seen after many years of working with her. She is an asset to the temple. Perhaps our greatest.

  Nerimes raises his eyebrows. “I see. How, then, do you explain this?”

  He snaps his fingers and a new mind enters the water. I look up to see a heavily bandaged man at the back, his fingers trailing in the water. The overseer I attacked. Floods.

  His memories are damning, of course. Of me attacking him in the Seilam Deul warehouse, knocking the barrels down, forcing my proofs into his mind, and using the resulting confusion to defeat him. He conveniently leaves out the last part, where I argued for the justice of my cause, and asked him to tell his age mates. I add this, but the water is astir with his revelations, and Nerimes rides the wave.

  “You see, brothers, what sort of loyalist she is.”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “I was defending myself!” I cry, leaving the memory open. “He attacked me unjustly!”

  “You were stealing,” Ieolat spits. “From my warehouse.”

  “To survive while the whole city hunted me,” I retort. “While Nerimes called for my death, so no one would ever find out the truth.”

  “It does not change the fact,” the Chosen says, “that you are in league with the witches.”

  The seers turn to me with cold eyes. Sympathetic to me or not, the temple has always hated the theracants. “I am not! You heard Urte!”

  “Ah. But you have bloodsight, don’t you?”

  I think of Yelin before I can stop myself. I slam my blind down a moment later, but the room goes dead quiet.

  “I have watersight. That is all that matters.”

  “Then why have you closed your thoughts, little one? You were one of them all along. As your father was. He was selling out the temple, and you are the witch he tried to plant among us.”

  “I am no witch. I am a woman, it’s true, but I am just as deeply a seer—you all know that. I could not show and read these proofs before you if I did not have watersight. And I wouldn’t be here risking my life to expose injustice if I didn’t think the temple was worth it.”

  I can’t help a glance at Gaxna as I say this—because part of me hates that I put the temple before her, before us. That I was willing to risk her for what I wanted. Guilt presses in on me, just when I least need it.

  “Then why do the theracants protect you?” Nerimes goes on, oblivious now that my blind is up. “Why do you not mention the overseer they killed for you?”

  I gasp, he snaps his fingers, and another memory opens in the waters. Not mine, or the dead overseer’s, but someone else, someone who was watching from a rooftop nearby. Watching my brief struggle against the overseer, then the arrow that takes him in the ear, and the theracant guards cleaning up the evidence before hustling me away.

  It is damning. And yet—“I didn’t ask for that! The man was trying to kill me!” Probably no good saying that he was bloodborn too. “Because you ordered it!” Still I can feel the temple’s tide shift further away from me. What they see is the theracants killing an overseer—a brother—to protect me.

  Like I was a theracant.

  I turn to the crowd, desperate. Drop my blind again, heedless of the memories of Yelin and my bloodsight, to show what really happened that morning. “That is not what happened! Yes, I consulted with them to learn the truth. Yes, I bargained for their help, because I could not do this alone. But I am loyal to the temple!” As I say it, I realize it’s not exactly true. I am loyal to a memory of the temple, not this one. “To Uje! To the city! To all the people who have been forever held back by this stupid war between seers and theracants! Would you follow me, to finally making peace with them, or follow this man”—I jab my finger back at him—“into more war and conflict in the name of pride and petty division?”

  The tide shifts again, but I cannot tell in which direction. My plan is coming apart.

  “The question,” Nerimes says, “is whether you believe the daughter of a deposed heretic and proven witch, or the rightful Chosen of Uje?”

  Too many faces turn at his words. “You’ve seen my proofs!” I counter. “The waters do not lie! But what of your leader? Why does he not open his mind to us and prove he did none of the things I accuse? Why does he fear the transparency of Uje?”

  Nerimes freezes, open mouthed. I’ve got him. Then he smiles. “Secrets of council,” he says. “There are things too delicate to release into the general public. It is for the temple’s own good.”

  It is a good argument—but a second too late. The crowd has seen his hesitation. Seen my proofs, and also his. I watch for a sickening moment as the whole room lurches, a ship caught in a midwinter storm, water seething beneath my feet.

  “Guards!” Nerimes calls, uncertainty lighting his face too. “Overseers! Take this girl away!”

  They hesitate, looking from Nerimes to me, another disaster balanced on the razor’s edge.

  “The girl is rightful!” Urte cries, echoing his words in the water. “Her cause is just! All those loyal to Uje rise up and defeat the usurper!”

  The room hangs a moment longer, every man looking to the other, then shatters into a hundred different knots of men, all pulling staffs and spears and swords.

  A battle it is, then. I never wanted this, but I am ready for it. I raise my blind, pull my staff, and push my awareness into the water.

  Hundreds of voices cry there—men in pain, merchants in panic, loyalists calling to each other, and undecided seers caught in the battle. Then the sharp, rapid thoughts of men locked in combat.

  One comes for me, a tall seer I recognize from the overseer’s council, swinging a heavy ironwood staff. I duck under its blow, seeking his mind, finding a hint behind his shaking blind of an old stomach wound. I dart forward, punching the wound on my way past.

  It is not the way of the temple to fight like this, not the tactic of an honorable seer, but I was never a seer in their eyes, and I have learned a lot since the temple.

  That, and I have someone I care about more than honor.

  Others come for me, some to attack, some to defend, and I dance through them all, trading staff for sword for cudgel in the shifting sea of bodies. Already a few men lie on the floor, trampled and dying. A seer jabs at me with a knife and I catch the blade in my cudgel, then punch savagely across his wrist, shattering it. His blind shatters at the same time, sending a wail of pain through the water, and I use the temporary wince of everyone nearby to push through.

  Gaxna. I have to get to my friend, get her free and able to climb out of here before the overseers take matters into their own hands. Or Nerimes does. Something hits me in the face and I swim sideways, turn it into a rising kick that takes someone—my attacker?—in the sternum. This is probably a trap—Nerimes probably brought Gaxna here knowing I’d defend her, knowing I’d go for her when the fight started.

  I don’t care. I’ve done what I can for my father. Now it’s time for me.

  I lean sideways around a sword thrust meant for someone else, slip behind a trainer I recognize from second year, and break out into a clear space.

  Clear because a trio of overseers stand back to back, fighting off anyone who comes close. Gaxna is tied up between them.

  I don’t wait. I can’t wait. The first lunges for me and I counter his blow, left hand freeing my rope. He strikes back in, snake-fast, and I counter again, seeking his mind in the water, finding only a winter-cold blind. The other two ignore us, fending off anyone else who comes near. He strikes a third time, and I am ready.

  I step left and take the blow on my forearm, using the opening to throw my thief’s rope. It catches on his calf, and I jerk back as he swings in again. His blow lands, but my rope pulls a leg out under him. As he teeters I strike with my club, a quick slash to the knee and a two-armed swing at the temple once he’s down. His mind vanishes from the water, unconscious, and then the other two are on me.

  I pull the thief’s rope up, but with two overseers attacking, it’s all I can do to stand my ground, to keep from getting gutted by the sword of the first or brained by the staff of the second. Then a knot of men push in behind me, Dashan at their head, and suddenly the numbers are on my side. Dashan and a senior seer engage the first overseer, and I use my rope against the second, catching an arm and pulling him off-balance enough that the men behind me can land blows.

  I don’t wait to see how it ends. To check on the battle overall. I run to Gaxna, ungag her, untie her hands. Wrap my arms around her, though it’s the middle of battle and we could die at any time. I can’t help myself.

  “Gaxna! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  “For what?” she barks, gruff as ever, though she hugs me just as tight.

  “For everything! For getting you into this—”

  She shakes her head against mine. “First rule of thievery. Never apologize for something if you don’t need to.”

  I smile in relief, pressing my cheek into hers. “I missed you,” I whisper into her ear, battle raging around us. “Uje and Jeia how I missed you.”

  She breathes in as though to speak, then shoves me away. A second later, a staff swishes between us, in the space that would have been my head, and I ice my shock. I spin to find Nerimes, his narrow face still supremely confident, but angry now too.

  “Stupid girl,” he snaps, sweeping his staff left in a low strike I block with my cudgel. “You were supposed to be dead.”

  “I wasn’t supposed to have watersight, either,” I say, stepping on his staff and throwing the cudgel at his head. “Too bad for you.”

  He dodges, but the move pulls the staff from his hand, and I snatch it up. “Gaxna,” I hiss, advancing on the Chosen. “Go.”

  I can’t see if she does or not—Nerimes is striking in again, fists as deadly as any blade, and it’s all I can do to counter him. I seek his mind in the water, any premonition of his moves, but find only silence there, a dead bubble in the middle of the room’s shouts and cries and panic. He chops left. I dodge and try a sternum strike. He grabs the staff. I kick his hand and the dance is joined, fist and foot and staff and steel.

  I am good—the best of my class, better than most full seers.

  He’s better.

  I take a bruising blow to the forearm as I’m trying to sweep his feet out and revise that. He’s not just better, he’s inhuman. His punches land too strong, his hands blur too fast, his blind is too perfect even in the middle of battle. His moves are always a split-second ahead of mine, like he can see right through my defenses.

  There’s no space to use my thief rope, or to climb, or do anything but desperately block and dodge and try to land my own blows. I get maybe one in for every three of his, and my body starts to weaken, pain and exhaustion creeping in. I miss a jab and he pulls the staff forward, jerking me in for a crushing blow to the ribs.

  I stagger on my feet, trying a downward kick meant to dislocate his ankle, but the man dances away, then, before I can react, swings in with a fist that will knock me unconscious.

  This is it, then: the end of my story. I have no doubt he will kill me—and once I am dead, so is Gaxna, so is my father’s legacy, so is any hope of stopping Nerimes’ pollution.

  A fist catches the blow. I turn to see Urte, weathered face a mask of determination. He nods at me, already shifting into Wind Carries Waves to meet Nerimes’ next move, and I clear my head. Ice my thoughts. Breathe deep. And attack.

  The fight is much different with two of us. Nerimes is still impossibly fast, his moves always the perfect counter to what we try, but the man only has so many hands. We begin to drive him back, Urte’s Spring Erodes the Stone matching my Thunder Shakes the Rooftop, my foot and his staff landing on the Chosen’s lean body in rapid succession. We push him out of the melee, over the dais, toward the edge of the balcony, where the temple’s water flows off the cliff. Men rally to his side, others rally to ours, and for a period of minutes or hours we are the edge of a greater tide, shifting back and forth in a sea of blows and counters.

  In a brief moment, I glance back at the wedding chamber, now a mess of shattered dishes and overturned tables and men fighting for their lives. It’s not easy to tell, but those around Dashan seem stronger, more numerous. Gaxna is there, swinging the leg from a table, and I want to go to her, but a moment is all I can spare. We are winning. That’s enough.

  I turn back to find Nerimes striking at me with a sword he took from a fallen seer, and I bash it aside with the ironwood staff, pushing closer. Men are falling to either side, dead or disabled, but Urte and I keep hounding Nerimes, forcing the man to give ground beneath the fury of our combined attacks. There is a peace in Urte’s mind that I admire, a stability that I don’t have, but what I lack there I make up in speed, in watersight, and in tricks neither expects.

  Like climbing the balcony to leap at Nerimes from above—he counters with Wave Strikes Stone, but it is awkward against someone falling from above, and Urte gets in a solid blow to the Chosen’s ribs. There is a noise behind, some confusion, but I land and keep pressing, Urte and I to either side of the man now, keeping him spinning, wearing him down. I strike at his legs and he jumps, far hand blocking a blow from Urte, who counters with an Ice Fingers Rising that makes his fall awkward. Seeing an opening, I leap in, jabbing hard at the Chosen’s temple with my staff.

  It’s why I don’t see the spear that goes through Urte’s chest until I hear him gasp. Until I turn from Nerimes’ last-second block to see the overseer behind Urte, grimly pulling the blade from my trainer’s chest. Behind him waves of overseers crash into the battle, stoic and methodical and deadly.

  They shouldn’t be here. Regiana was supposed to stop them in the city with bloodborn.

  Nerimes rolls to his feet with a snarl while I fend off the overseer, and kicks Urte into the water. “Flooding heretic,” he curses, shaking his robes loose. “May Uje find you wanting.”

  I have no space for grief. The overseer is joined by a second, and in my weakened state their combined attack is almost more than I can handle. I try pushing my thoughts into them, stunning them like I have other men, but my concentration is slipping too. One lands a blow to my side, and the other kicks me onto my back, knocking the wind from my lungs.

  “Overseers!” Nerimes snaps, and the attack stops. They look to him in surprise, and he waves them back. “Enough. This one’s mine.”

  Fear floods me. Urte and I did well, but we didn’t weaken Nerimes enough for this to be a fight I can win. I ice it anyway.

  “Give it up, Nerimes,” I gasp, trying to get up. “The temple knows now. The city knows. Kill me or not, you won’t be able to keep the Dais.”

  “Won’t I?” he asks, turning to me with new focus. “With an army of overseers behind me, and a friend in the theracants?”

  I bare my teeth. “Miyara.”

  “And a few of her friends.” He smiles, the confident ruler back, and gestures behind him. I see them then, ducking and weaving beside the overseers with their hooked rings flashing: theracants, harvesting the blood of the fallen. “These women would do anything for a chance at some blood.”

  “But—the traditionalists. They would never agree to this. They hate the theracants.”

  His smile is oily. “You’d be surprised what you can convince fundamentalists of, in the name of orthodoxy. The fools.”

  So it was just Nerimes, not his whole party. Nerimes and Ieolat and Miyara—she must have been pushing Arayim. “But why?” I shake my head. “What’s in it for you?”

  He chuckles like it’s a clever joke. “What’s always been in it for me? Control. These women control the loyalists, I control the overseers, and a new balance is born. Theracants under overseers under me, with your friends dead or bloodborn.”

  “Regiana. She wouldn’t—”

  “Oh, the witch was quite loyal to the end. But despite her age, a touch naive. Miyara’s in control now. And she’s quite all right with keeping me in power, in exchange for a little loyalist blood.”

  The horror of it hits me like a stone to the chest. Regiana didn’t betray me—her guild betrayed her. As the temple did my father. The ideals of both religions corrupted. And with Miyara and Nerimes in control, we are lost. And still—

  “You can’t.” I push myself up. “I won’t let you.”

  His smile widens, and my anger finally comes back. “And what, little one, are you planning to do about it?”

  I attack in answer. Put everything I have in a lightning strike to his face.

  He slaps it aside and plants a fist in my sternum that slams me against the rail.

  “With so many loyal to you,” he says, gliding up to me, “I could not kill you outright. But now? You have no one left.”

  I strike again, because I do have someone left: Gaxna. Gaxna, who I pray to Uje got out of here before the overseers came. He grabs my staff, jerking it from my hands, and throws it over the edge.

  “Oh, I’m afraid she didn’t,” he says, closing in on me.

  I gasp. He read thoughts through my blind again. “How—”

  That smile again. “There are greater powers in this world than Uje’s, girl. A pity you couldn’t stay down when you were beaten. We might have made something of you.”

  “Gaxna. Where—”

  Nerimes barks something in the water, his voice like a thunderclap, and behind him I hear her scream.

  I lunge for her. “No!”

  His arm stops me, solid as ironwood though it’s slick with his blood. I taste copper on my tongue. “She is mine now. Though I think I might not kill her. An ex-theracant with hints of watersight—she could be useful.” He grins, and my hate knows no bounds. “Who would’ve thought?”

  I try a third attack, desperate. I’d rather die than let him have Gaxna.

  He slaps me down again, my head bouncing painfully off the stone. I am just feet from the open edge of the balcony, with its two-hundred-foot drop into immersion and death.

  “There is nowhere left to run, Aletheia. Unless you’d care to repent and renounce your family line?”

  “Never,” I spit. He would kill me anyway. Better to die here. Let my death be a message.

  “You know, your father looked like that, the moment before we pushed his head underwater. Like a lost little puppy. Goodbye, Aletheia, and good riddance.”

  He raises his foot for Avalanche Meeting Stone, a blow to end my life, and I do the only thing I can. I roll backwards off the edge.