(He knows that Eiadh is attracted to you. He remembers that you were once attracted to her. He also knows that I have chosen you to lead. He's mad with jealousy. He hungers for your death. It consumes him so that even the act of making love to her is a kind of murder in his heart.)

Don't you realize that this is the most terrible thing of all? If there's anything I want in my life, it's for Elemak to love me and respect me. What did I do, to turn him away!

(You refused to let him own your will.)

Love and respect have nothing to do with controlling what other people do.

(To Elemak, if he doesn't control you, you either don't exist or you're his enemy. For many years you didn't exist. Then he noticed you, and you weren't as easy to manipulate or intimidate as Mebbekew, and so you became a rival.)

Is it really that simple?

(I glossed over the hard parts.)

His tent isn't bouncing. Does that mean he's coming out soon?

(He's getting dressed. He's thinking of you. So is Eiadh.)

At least she doesn't want to kill me.

(If she ever got what she's wishing for, it would end the same, with you dead.)

Don't tell Luet that Elemak is planning to kill me.

(I'll tell Luet everything, exactly as I tell you. I don't lie to the humans who serve my cause.)

You lie to us whenever you think it's necessary. And I don't want you to lie to her, anyway—I just don't want her to worry.

(I do want her to worry, since you refuse to. I think sometimes you want to die.)

You can relieve your mind on that score. I like being alive and intend to continue.

(I think sometimes you look forward to death, because you think that you deserve to die for having killed Gaballufix.)

Here he comes.

(Notice how he makes sure you smell his hands.)

Nafai didn't appreciate the Oversoul's calling attention to that—he might not have noticed, otherwise. But, truth to tell, that was unlikely, because Elemak made a point of putting both hands on his shoulders, and even of brushing his fingers across Nafai's cheek as he said, "So you did stay awake. Maybe you'll amount to something in the desert after all."

"You didn't leave me on watch all that long," Nafai answered.

The womanly smell was plain enough. It was vaguely disgusting that Elemak would use his intimacy with his own wife this way. It was as if she had become nothing to him. A tool. Not a wife at all, but just a thing that he owned.

But if the Oversoul was right, then that was how Elemak experienced love—as ownership.

"Did you see anything?" asked Elemak.

"Darkness," said Nafai. He did not tell Elemak about the bandits only a few hundred meters away. First, it would only make him furious that Nafai was getting information from the Oversoul. And second, it would humiliate him that he chose as his campsite a place where bandits could conceal themselves so close. He would probably insist on searching for them, which would mean battle and bloodshed, or waking everybody up and moving on, which would be pointless, since the Oversoul was having no trouble keeping this spineless group of cutpurses under control.

"If you ever looked up, you'd notice there are stars," said Elemak.

Elemak was baiting him, of course, and Nafai knew that he should just ignore him, but he was filled with anger already, knowing that Elemak was plotting to kill him and yet still pretended to be his brother, knowing that Elemak had just made love to his wife in order to try to make Nafai suffer from jealousy. So Nafai could not contain himself. He flung a hand upward. "And that one is Sol, the Sun. Barely visible, but you can always find it if you know where to look. That's where we're going."

"Are we?" asked Elemak.

"It's the only reason the Oversoul brought us out of Basilica," said Nafai.

"Maybe the Oversoul won't necessarily get his way," said Elemak. "He's just a computer, after all—you said so yourself."

Nafai almost answered again, some snide comment to the effect that if the Oversoul was "just" a computer then Elemak himself was "just" a hairless baboon. Six months ago Nafai would have said it, and Elemak would have thrown him against a wall or knocked him down with a blow. But Nafai had learned a little since then, and so he held his tongue.

Luet was waiting for him in the tent. She had probably been dozing—she had worked hard since they started laying camp, and unlike the lazy ones she would be up early again in the morning. But she greeted him wordlessly with open eyes and a smile that warmed him in spite of the chill that Elemak had put in his heart.

Nafai undressed quickly and gathered her to him under the blankets. "You're warm," he said.

"I think the technical term is hot," she answered.

"Elemak is planning to kill me," he whispered.

"I wish the Oversoul would just stop him," she whispered.

"I don't think it can. I think Elemak's will is too strong for the Oversoul to make him change his mind once he's set on doing something." He didn't tell her that the Oversoul had hinted that somewhere along the line Nafai might have to kill his brother. Since Nafai had no intention of ever doing it, there was no reason to put the idea in Luet's mind. He would be ashamed to say it anyway, for fear she would then think he might consider such a thing.

"Hushidh thinks she senses Elemak bonding more closely with the ones who want to turn back—Kokor and Sevet, Vas and Obring, Meb and Dol. They're forming a sort of community now, and separating almost completely from the rest of us."

"Shedemei?"

"She wants to turn back, but there's no bond between her and the others."

"So only you and I and Hushidh and Mother want to go on into the desert."

"And Eiadh. She wants to go wherever you go."

They both laughed, but Nafai understood that Luet needed reassurance that Eiadh's desire for him was not reciprocated. So he reassured her thoroughly, and then they slept.

In the morning, with the camels packed, Elemak called them together. "A couple of things," he said. "First, Rasa and Shedemei have proposed it and I agree with them completely. While we're living in the desert, we can't afford to have the kind of sexual freedom we had in Basilica. It would only cause rancor and disloyalty, and that's a death sentence for a caravan. So as long as we remain in the desert—and that includes at Father's camp, and anywhere else that our population consists of just us and the three who are waiting for us—this is the law: There'll be no sleeping with anyone except your own husband or wife, and all marriages as they presently stand are permanent."

Immediately there was a gasp of shock from several; Luet looked around and saw that it was the predictable ones—Kokor and Obring and Mebbekew—who were most upset.

"You have no right to make a decision like that," said Vas mildly. "We're all Basilicans, and we live under Basilican law."

"When we're in Basilica we live under Basilican law," said Elemak. "But when you're in the desert you live under desert law, and desert law has it that the word of the caravan leader is final. I'll listen to any ideas until I have to make a decision, but once the decision is made any resistance is mutiny, do you understand me?"

"No one tells me who I must sleep with and who I may not" said Kokor.

Elemak walked up to her and faced her; she looked so frail compared to the sheer mass of Elemak's tall, well-muscled body. "And I tell you that in the desert, I won't have anyone creeping from tent to tent. It will lead to murder one way or another, and so instead of letting you improvise the dying, I'll let you know right now: If anyone is caught in a position that even looks like you're getting sexually involved with someone you aren't married to, I will personally kill the woman on the spot."