Текст книги "Hammerfall"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

Luz daredto challenge the Ila, to question her. The guards, the whole chamber poised and braced for retaliation.

“Because,” the Ila said, as if it were no consequence, and with a turn of her wrist, as if she deflected a blow. “ Because we wished to send him, cousin. Because through him you challenged us. Because he is less mad than the rest, and because I saw if any of that herd would come back across the Lakht, he was the likeliest. And if there were madmen appearing across the land, it was as clear a sign of something arrived as was likely to come. Yes, I sent him. I sent him to find an answer to the madness, and to explain it, and he has, beyond any doubt.”

“But they’re no longer mad, those I keep. They are safe. They will besafe in what will come. You know the nature of their voices. You know the source of their visions. I don’t need to explain. More than that, you feared, Ila Jao, you fearedwe were the ondat. We are not.”

“ Butin their service.”

“Not in their service, only having made peace with them. You know what they fear and why they fear it and why they will reshape the world.”

The Ila stared, stone-faced. “I can guess.”

“Omatbarat. Do you know that name?”

“I know it. I was not there.”

“As we know. You were not there.”

“Yet they come here to destroy the world.”

“To reshape it. To stir the pot and be sure that what arises here out of the soil of this world is shaped by this world, notby you, Ila Jao. When wesay to them that the makers weloose have had their way with the world, then, thenthe armistice will hold and the ondatwill admit their war is over. But until that day a handful of us of your own kind have set ourselves down here, damned ourselves along with you, for yourfathers’ sins, Ila Jao. We bear you personally no ill will. More than that. We can save you, if you aren’t a fool.”

There was a heartbeat of terrible silence.

The Ila’s white hand lifted abruptly, made a gesture for silence as a hushed murmur began among the officers. Pens made rapid strokes—ceased, as the au’it stopped, both of them.

“And the other madmen?” the Ila asked.

“Remained at the tower,” Norit said.

“Who is this woman?” the Ila asked aside, of Memnanan, and, looking straight at Hati: “Are you a prophet, too?”

“No,” Hati said. “No, Ila. But I saw the tower. I saw tents all around it, white tents, that cool the air. I saw a river with green banks.”

“White tents,” Marak said, drawing the Ila’s dangerous attention to himself, “and as much water as anyone wants. Craftsmen. Farmers. All that survived to reach the tower are in that camp. Luz wants you to come there before it’s too late. She wants everyone to come.”

The Ila looked straight at her, eyes burning in her white and angry face.

“Listen to him,” Norit said– Luzsaid. “You know. You know, Ila Jao. There’s nothing to gain. Your war is lost. You knew it was lost when you came here, five hundred years ago, and you knew it was hopeless when your makers couldn’t defeat what we loosed. You couldn’t cure the mad. You tried, but you couldn’t, so you sent to know what we are. But it’s not hopeless. I’m offering you a refuge from what you’ve brought on yourself.”

“Take that woman out!” the Ila said, and the guards moved at once.

Norit held up her hand abruptly, as yet untouched, and turned, and walked of her own accord toward the curtain.

There she stopped, faltered, felllike the dead.

Marak started to move without thinking. But guards had reached Norit, and felt of her pulse.

“Fainted,” a guard said.

“It’s Luz in her,” Marak, appealing to the Ila, for fear what consequences Norit might suffer. “The body is only Norit. She’s an honest woman, a shy, gentle woman… she’d never say what Luz said. She wouldn’t know how to answer you.”

“And are you Marak, and only Marak?”

He had never wondered. It was a terrifying question. “As far as I know.”

“And this?” The Ila gave a wave of her gloved hand toward Hati.

“Hati. An’i Keran. She knows the desert. She knows the way to the tower as well as I do. She helped me reach Oburan.” He had no idea of the Ila’s motives in asking, or her intentions afterward, and had no idea whether it was better for Hati to be important or invisible, but now he had no choice. “Out on the pans we’ve seen two storms on the way. Stars fall in their thousands. We passed places where they make pits in the sand. We saw rain, on the Lakht. Luz said the world would change. And it’s changing all around us. The earth is shaking. The storms are like nothing anyone’s ever seen.” He had trouble thinking of the wreckage the other side of these canvas walls, but it was all around her: how could she be ignorant of it? “She says we’re almost out of time. That something worse is coming.”

“I trust all the things you saw on your journey are in the au’it’s book,” the Ila said with a glance at their au’it, and the au’it nodded slightly. “So. I will read them at my leisure.”

“Everything we saw in our visions,” Marak said, desperate for time to make his point, such as it was, “everything we saw came true. All the mad had the same visions. And now we three, Hati and I, and Norit, as far as I know, we’re the only ones who see visions beyond those. We see rings of fire, spreading over villages. But if we come to the tower, Luz claims she can keep everyone safe there. I don’t know what the truth is. I don’t know who’s right. I told you I’d come back, and I came back, and I’ve made my report, such as I can. I don’t knowwhat’s right.”

“Come here,” the Ila said, beckoning, and beckoning twice called him forward, and forward again, and a third time, until he stood face-to-face with her.

The earth shivered under them, a little tremor, the like of which happened hourly.

“Lay your hand here,” the Ila said, and indicated the arm of her chair.

He by no means trusted he would be safe to do that. Yet he did. Within her place of power, the Ila’s directions were the only safety at all.

“Captain,” she said, holding out her hand to the side. “Your knife.”

Marak did not move. He looked at her eye to eye as she held out her hand and Memnanan gave her his belt-knife.

She clenched her fist and stabbed the blade down into his forearm. She was not adept with weapons. The point hung on the gauze and turned, though it scored his arm deeply enough. Blood ran down and divided at his wrist, thin streams that dripped down past the arm of the chair.

It was a demonstration of her power to harm, perhaps. He demonstrated his own, not to flinch from her threats.

“You may move back,” the Ila said then calmly, and handed the knife to the captain.

Marak stepped back, blood dripping off his fingers. He disdained to stop it. Knowing it was a test or a chastisement, he knew he had had worse, and stared still straight into the Ila’s face, as she stared at him, a long, long while.

Then the Ila dismissed them all with an abrupt gesture. “Care for them! Give them my hospitality.—Don’t bandage the wound.”

That was a strange exclusion, Marak thought, relieved and stunned. He bowed and, with Hati, went where Memnanan directed, the rings singing on the rods, and singing again as the servants drew the curtains together again. Guards carried Norit and brought her with them, unconscious, unaware, unresponsive… but safe.

The servants directed them into a narrow chamber still within the huge tent, a curtained area warmly lit with lamps.

There Memnanan drew the curtain aside, and the Ila’s women-servants attended Norit, and wished them to separate, the guards urging Marak alone to a second chamber, but not far. It was apparently for modesty, and he did not resist.

Memnanan stayed with him there a moment, as men-servants stripped off the gauze robes. “Did you lie?” Memnanan asked him when he stood naked.

“No,” he said. The servants turned back the carpets, laying bare the sand beneath, and moved him onto that spot beginning to wash him with sodden, herb-smelling towels. One overwhelming question had fallen unasked in Norit’s assault on the court; and to ask it might bring down consequences as yet unconnected—but not to ask might lose him all chance to ask. The Ila’s honesty was in question; so was Luz’s.

And he cast back his one measure of truth, and promises kept. “I didn’t lie, in there.—The Ila promised my mother’s safety, and my sister’s, if I came back. Is that true? Is my mother here? Is my sister?”

The slaves had stopped their work. Memnanan studied him and bit his lip. “What if I said she was here?” Memnanan was no fool, to give away the Ila’s points in advance; but he was a decent man, Marak had sensed it once, and he believed it now,, in the silent war in Memnanan’s eyes.

“I’d believe you if you said so,” Marak said.

Memnanan changed the subject. “Your arm has stopped bleeding.”

It was an inconsequence. Marak bent it, glanced at it, expecting what he would see, that the wound was dry before the blood was. The area had grown warm with fever, and would swell.

He had denied all his life that he more than healed quickly, foolish notion. Now he knew that what lived in his blood would keep him alive through far worse than this. It might be a disadvantage.

“The Ila will hear you again,” Memnanan said in leaving, “I’m relatively sure of it. Ask herabout your relatives.”

“The people out there…” Marak began, and Memnanan stayed from letting the curtain drop between them. “Did she call them in, or did they come?”

“They came. When the misfortunes began, where else would they go, but Oburan? One village passed another on the road, from farthest west inward, from south to north. So the trickle became a flood. They’ve left most of their harvest in the fields. They’ve eaten most of their provisions. Now they deplete Oburan’s.” Memnanan divulged his own worries, the coming, undeniable privations. “We can hold out a while. This tower you saw… this green-sided river… can it supply all the people in the world?”

“I don’t know how many. It supplies a good many already. If she hears me,” he said. “If she listens, then we have that much chance. If she asks you, tell her that. I could have stayed there in safety. I chose to come here, for my mother’s sake, to rescue her, and anyone else I could.”

“And the Ila?”

“I made her a promise. I’m here. I came back.”

“So you did.”

“Is she disposed to listen?”

“The earth shook. Everything came down. I don’t know what her disposition is. But you were right in what you guessed. And the woman said far too much.” Memnanan had already told him far too much, himself. Memnanan let the curtain drop and left him to the servants.

“Omi,” they said, and came with their basin, and poured clear water over him, and washed his hair.

“I can wash myself!” came from beyond a curtain, and his spirits lifted. Hati was not threatened, or bullied. Hati was Hati.

It was Norit he could not account for. He knew that Memnanan was right, that Norit was deeply at risk. He saw no way to help her, more than he had already done, and had a slashed arm to show for it. He could argue with the Ila for Norit’s life. He might have his way, if the Ila wanted the things he had to offer.

But what stopped Luz? What prevented Luz making things worse?

The servants dried his hair, dried him, gave him a sleeping robe of fine blue cloth, and drew back the curtain. Hati was there, damp and not yet robed, water a fine sheen on her dark skin. She cast a burning glance at the female servants, snatched the robe from their hands, and slipped it on, disdaining to fasten it.

The servants ebbed out of the chamber, through the curtains as she came to him. Hati wished to see his arm, which had already grown fevered and swollen.

“It will heal,” he said. But Hati knew that, no less than he. “Where’s Norit?” He failed to see her anywhere about the chamber.

“They took her away,” Hati said. “I don’t know where.”

Hati’s bath chamber provided a gilt-framed bed, and he led her to it, and they lay down, under the bronze lamps, weary, and able at least to rest. Thunder rumbled in the skies, and more than once they felt the earth give a slight shudder. That brought the crack and crash of stone as the nearby ruin settled.

“She’s too proud to listen,” Hati said, as they lay there wrapped in each other’s arms. “She’s lost everything she had, and I think she’s too proud to take this offer.”

“You were supposed to leave and go with the beshti,” he said. “You were supposed to be with Tofi, safe, so I didn’t have to worry.”

“Not as I see it.”

“You saw your tents. The Keran are here. Could you go to them?”

Hati shook her head, a tumble of moist braids on his arm, a scent of oils and herbs. “No. And if the Ila agrees to be sensible and go, we’ll all go. And if she doesn’t, I’ll go and tell the Keran the truth, and then see what they do.”

“Don’t threaten her.” He moved his left hand over her braids, smoothed her brow as she leaned her head against him. “Escape this place. You can walk out there, change your robe, and be one of ten thousand.”

Hati heaved a long, deep sigh, and in that sigh was the chance of violence and dire actions considered, and denied.

“Only with you. If you wish me to leave, man of my choice, we both go to my tribe.”

“Memnanan hinted that my mother and my sister might be here.”

“Fine. We’ll rescue them. We’ll go east. We know where the stars fall. We’ll go fast through that part.”

It was dreaming out loud.

And it was dangerous, counting the thin curtains that surrounded them. The whole of his life had turned fragile, and all of life he trusted, all of life he held as his was in his hands, in Hati’s slim, hard arms, in the confident look in her eyes. There might only be this. They might die at any moment. And life had never been worth more to him.

“The Ila knows about the healing, doesn’t she?” Hati asked.

“I think she does know,” he said. Above the tent he heard the thunder, and heard the distant shift of uneasy stone in the ruins. He was too weary to make love. He thought that Hati was, too. They simply looked at one another until Hati’s eyes began to drift shut, and then did close.

He lay very, very still, for Hati’s sake, despite the muttering of heaven and earth, and had one lengthy sleep toward what he thought must be dawn.

Then men-servants came in and provided them clothes, and brought them dried fruit and fresh bread, with butter… butter, which was a rare treat.

Memnanan came next. “Marak Trin,” he said. “Come. The Ila wishes to speak to you.”

Hati was immediately concerned, and was a move away from getting up to go with him, but Memnanan had a word for her, too. “Stay here. He will be safer if you do.”

Hati sank back down and cast him a look as if to ask if he thought that was the truth.

“Do as the captain asks,” Marak said.

Chapter Fifteen

« ^ »

It is the Ila’s will that the abjori should exist, and at her pleasure and on a day to come, they will cease to exist: for this hour they are the trial of her people, gathering all her enemies together so that everyone may know them.

—The Book of the Ila’s Au’it

Memnanan brought him alone through the maze of veils, stopped him in a narrow space, and nudged his arm to gain his attention.

“The Ila spent the entire night with the au’it,” Memnanan said. “Watch yourself. Rein back that temper of yours. This time it won’t serve you, or the women.”

“Why do you warn me?” Marak asked, trying to catch the man eye to eye. “You being the Ila’s man, why should you warn me?”

“Would you come this far, through so much, to tell her a lie?”

It was the plain truth, he discovered of himself. He was not set on the Ila’s destruction.

Then what don’t you believe? he wanted to ask Memnanan, seeing Memnanan believed him that far. What don’t you believe, and what doesn’t she?

But Memnanan wasthe Ila’s man.

“Come with me,” Memnanan said, and led him through the last three curtains, where the Ila sat as she had sat last night, with the au’it by her. Another au’it—who might be theirs—sat nearby, on a carpet at the side of the chamber. Lamps still burned here, hung on golden chains, but with the leaden light seeping through the canvas the lamps seemed less bright than last night.

“Well,” the Ila said. “Well.” She held out her red-gloved hand and beckoned him. “Come,” she said. ”Show me your arm this morning.“

Marak came close enough and pushed up his sleeve, no more surprised than she to find it only pink flesh.

“So,” the Ila said.

“I heal well,” he said, letting fall his loose sleeve. ”I always have.“

“So again,” the Ila said. “And do you understand the makers, as this Luz calls them? The nanoceles?”

“No. I don’t, at all.”

“Falling stars,” the Ila scoffed. He was accustomed to shame, regarding the visions. But these were no visions. He had seen the pits where they fell, and he would not be dissuaded.

“There are,” he said.

“So this Luzhas appointed herself our savior. Our god. And wants me to go to her.”

“She wants everyone.”

“Oh, doubtless she does! You’re stillmad,” the Ila said. “Have you looked about this tent? Do you see the size of this encampment? And you’ll lead us all to the edge of the Lakht?”

It was a question, a very terrible question. And the au’it wrote it in their books.

“If we have to do it, we have to do it,” Marak said quietly. “These encamped are the villages. They have their harvest tents, and beshti enough to get here. There are the tribes, who know how to get anywhere they choose to go. All I have to do is tell them ‘beyond Pori’, and they’ll know.”

“And will this Luzstop the fall of stars?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think she can.” That sort of honesty was his besetting fault. It had gotten him his father’s chastisement a hundred times before he could learn prudence. But he plunged ahead. “I don’t know what she can and can’t do. Or what you can. She’s a stranger. I came to ask you, can youstop this?”

Perhaps no one had ever asked the Ila to do something impossible for her. She frowned at him, frowned long and hard.

“Such faith.”

“I don’t have faith,” he said. “I don’t trust strangers.”

“Or me.”

“At least you’re not a stranger.”

“So she wants me to come there. For what?”

It was the foremost question, and he could not answer that.

“If we stay here,” the Ila said, and in that little time the earth shivered and shook, so that the au’it gripped their books tightly as they wrote. “If we stay here, we will die. Do you believe that?”

“I know that for a truth,” he said, trying to gather his wits, beset by her and the restless earth. “I know the wayto the tower beyond Pori.” It struck him that the Ila had senthim to Pori, not to the west, not to the north, not to the south, but specifically to Pori. She knew where the tower was. She had known before she sent him.

How much else had she known before she sent him?

“And you can guide us,” the Ila said.

“If I can’t, I have Norit.”

“ Youhave Norit,” the Ila scoffed. “ Luzhas Norit.”

“When Luz is done with her,” he said, “she’s my wife.”

“Your wife!”

“Norit has no part in what Luz does.”

“Have you?” the Ila asked him sharply. “Have you any part in what Luz does?”

He asked himself. And shook his head. “No.” He added, because it was the absolute truth, “I don’t trustLuz.”

The Ila lifted her chin, looked down at him with hard and suspicious eyes. “Do you trust me more?”

“ Younever offered me anything.”

The Ila made a bridge of her gloved hands. “Oh, but I did.”

He shook his head, denying it. “I asked a favor of you, and you agreed. You never offered me anything.”

“So I sent you out,” the Ila said, “a man who eluded my patrols for three years, and this Luztook you up as quick as seeing you. Or quicker. She knew who you were. I doubt she had to listen to rumor to know you for the great Marak Trin Tain. You are her prize among the mad. What did she offer you?”

“What she offers everyone. Paradise. Paradise in white tents beside a green river.” That image came back to him, but the more urgent visions were of disaster. “That was before the stars fell. I have no idea what’s become of that place now. I think it’s still safe. I think Norit would act differently if anything happened to her. Luz hasn’t left her but moments at a time, all through our journey. ”

The Ila’s lips rested against those bridged fingers. Her eyes burned, dark and deep.

“I have your mother, Marak Trin, and your sister. And your father.”

So. He had steeled himself against caring. Against anything that could be a weapon in her hands.

“So you promised,” he answered quietly. And suspected everything she said, every motive in her heart. “So I kept my promise to you.”

“Virtuous of us.”

She prodded at him, wanting an answer. He could think of none. He simply kept still.

“Suppose I said to lead all these people to the tower, Marak Trin. What would you do? How would you manage it?”

He drew a deep breath, a fleeting chance to think of first things, and second. “Do you want me to answer in specific?”

“Do.”

“First, put in charge of each unit those who led them here. If a unit has beasts, they keep them. If they have tents, they keep them. If they have waterskins, they keep them. It’s only fair. They have foresight. It makes them the likelier to live. Have the order of march and camp understood. Set the tribes to the fore: they would move quickest. Whoever moves slowest, falls behind, and who falls behind… there’s nothing anyone can do. They’ll die.”

“It’s that simple.”

“Nothing can be simpler. The Lakht is the Lakht. It’s never different, no matter who asks.”

The Ila lowered her joined hands to her lap. “Captain.”

“Ila,” Memnanan said from back near the curtains.

“Assist him in this undertaking.”

Marak blinked, thinking, Surely not, not that easily, not that quickly.

Not me, not over all this.

But silence followed. He understood dismissal, with that, and began to back away.

“Marak!”

He stopped. “Ila,” he said, as Memnanan did.

“When will this people set out?”

When did not rest in his hands. Whenrested in the star-fall and the calamity in the earth.

Marak, Marak, the voices clamored, suddenly riotous with urgency. Norit knew what was agreed. He was sure she knew. And then he was sure that Hati did.

“Tonight,” he said, and took his life in his hands, for what had to be said. “I would advise, Ila, that you yourself use a common tent, one that two men can raise and pack, for your own safety. That you carry more food and water than weapons.”

An implacable face met that judgment. “You would leave each segment of the caravan to its own decisions.”

He had not asked himself why he chose as he did. It had seemed evident. Now he did ask. “The line of march will stretch too long. The leaders can’t be everywhere along the line. The fastest have to go first. I will, however, give them advice, such as I have. Shelter, water, food, and then weapons. Beshti won’t take the Ila’s orders: they limit their loads.”

The au’it stopped writing. Everything stopped.

The Ila lifted a hand and made a gesture toward the second au’it, a command to rise, a second command less apparent.

The au’it went to the curtain behind the Ila’s seat, and drew it back, and there sat, pile after pile, books, books of the au’it’s recording, hundreds, thousands of books, leather covers, canvas covers, stained books, ornate ones tattered with age and use.

“This is the knowledge,” the Ila said. “And what will this Luzgive to have it? And how will you move these, Marak Trin? Tell me how you will do it.”

He was stunned. A village house could scarcely contain that pile. His voices clamored at him, Marak, Marak, Marak, and he had no idea what their desire was, or if Luz understood what he saw, or what it meant. They were the books of the au’it, all the knowledge, all the recorded history there was.

“This is my condition,” the Ila said as the earth shuddered, a small thump, like a heartbeat. “Not the tent, not this piece of furniture. They can go to hell. Where I go, thisgoes. Can you find beasts enough?”

“I’ll find a way,” he said on a deep breath.

The Ila regarded him thoughtfully. “Do that,” she said, and moved her fingers in dismissal. “Do it by tonight.”

That was all.

Marak, the voices said. He tried to manage his retreat. Memnanan guided him, held the curtain aside for him, took him by the arm. He saw fire, and ruin.

By tonight.

“I need the two women,” he said to Memnanan.

“Not your father?” Memnanan asked. “Not your mother?”

“I have no time,” he said. He remembered his father’s parting with him and had no desire to see him. And for his mother and his sister there was no time.

Marak, Marak, Marak, the voices said, let loose, given sudden free rein. In his vision the rings of fire spread again and again: pools glowed red as iron in a forge, and he could all but smell the smoke.

He struggled to think and make lists. “I need Tofi. I need Hati and Norit. I need every leader of every tribe and village to meet me on the edge of the camp, on the caravan road to the south, inside an hour.”

Memnanan looked at him, then passed the order to a subordinate who waited nearby. “See to the meeting,” Memnanan said, with a wave of his hand, and that man gathered two others.

So the matter would spread, without their help. But Memnanan stood fast. “The two women. Luz’s eyes and voice.”

“One is Luz’s voice,” Marak said. “The other is an’i Keran. That tribe of all tribes will survive to reach the tower. If my mother and sister are here, let them go to the Haga. If they’re there, that’s all I need to know. They’ll be safer than I can make them.”

“And Tofi for his skills? He’s a boy.”

“Not since his father died. I want him, and his two men. He of all the masters understands exactly what’s out there. I want him to manage the Ila’s tents. Our tents.”

“Beasts to carry the books?”

The captain might have his own estimate how many that was, a massive caravan unto itself, able to carry neither food nor tents.

“In the deep desert,” Marak said, “we lost a besha on a slide and it started a mobbing. The mob left not a bone, not a scrap of leather. The besha was taller than either of us. The largest of the vermin in it didn’t top a man’s knee. We didn’t wait to watch, but I’ll imagine a man could watch it vanish.”

“A remarkable sight,” Memnanan said. “The god’s wonder you lived. What do you mean?”

“That you don’t need beasts to carry the books. You need the strongest, the likeliest men to live, of every village, every tribe.”

Memnanan said nothing for a moment, frowning, but with thoughts sparking within his eyes. “Allow the books into the hands of the tribes?”

“Do you want these books to come through?” Marak asked, and saw that Memnanan listened to him intently. “Will these books pitch tents and manage a half a hundred beshti? Men do that far better. The books will have thousands of feet, and if one is lost, they won’t all be lost.” He drew a breath, space to think. “This caravan can’t camp in a ring. They’ll be strung out like beads on a necklace. We can’t help that. If fools drink all their water, we can’t help that. Water the beasts to the full. Feed them. Fill every waterskin in camp. Even the bitter wells are uncertain.”

“That saves the villages. Oburan itself has few tents at all… few beasts, except the breeding herd. They’re city folk. They don’t know the desert.”

“Apportion the important ones like the books, a few to every band. If there are too many walkers, they go last, enough strong hands to drive stakes, a besha to carry the canvas and keep them headed right if they drop behind.” The beasts would smell the way to those in front, given any breath of an east wind or a lingering scent above the trail. A caravan this large would assuredly leave scent. It would leave a trail of waste, breakage, vermin, and all too many lives.

Memnanan, like him, was a man in authority, one who saw bitter necessities when they were laid in front of him, who knew how to make a rule for the good of the many. Individual compassion, for the two of them, was a vice secretly practiced.

“It’s a chance,” Memnanan said. That Memnanan knew the desert, Marak suspected, as the Ila’s men generally knew enough of it to live… knew it as a place where they were strangers, being on their way to a place, on their way from a place, never at home in it. The villages existed within the desert: they had never quite lost their skills. When the big winds blew and ten men could die going out to secure an orchard netting, when sand could choke an unprotected well, when hunters caught in the open could easily die, if they failed to take the right steps… the knowledge of the desert was not that far removed.

“If you have a household,” Marak said to the Ila’s captain, “put them with the tribes. Or in my tent, with Tofi and his men. I trust you’ll be busy with the Ila’s company, and I’ll have room.”

Memnanan gave him a look. “Too many old, who can’t walk. A wife six months pregnant. The city has far too many.”

“Put them with me,” Marak said. “Get beshti for them. We’ll get them up and down. Save your worry for the Ila. Be selfish, man. Give yourself this one gift. You’re due it. I’ve asked several. We’ll need to get the books down to the gathering. Give them to the leaders. Leaders survive. They have a duty to do that.”

Memnanan said not a thing to that. He walked, and led him back through the veils, where he found another subordinate, in the chamber with his desk. “Bring the an’i Keran,” Memnanan said, “and the village woman, the prophet.”

But Hati came on her own, through the other curtain, expecting him and Memnanan, trailing an embarrassed guard. Madness had its advantage, in that regard, that no one had struck her; Hati reached him unhindered, seized his arm, wound his fingers into hers as Memnanan dismissed the confounded guard. In a moment more, Norit followed her, guard-led, with that calm, still face that told him Luz was entirely in the ascendant. Memnanan dismissed that man, too.

“We’re going outside the camp,” Marak said to Hati and Norit, “to talk with the leaders. We’ll be moving this evening, with the Ila, with the tribes.”

They did not question what he said. The three of them walked out of the tent with Memnanan, under a sky slate-colored and menacing. The water-gatherers at the Mercy of the Ila moved about their business. A handful of wretched people carried bundles out of the gates of the city, bent beneath their load. It was all useless, that gathering of resources.