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.