Koshmar wondered now and then whether the thing to do was to get out of Vengiboneeza altogether, to return to the open country and begin all over again. But whenever the thought arose in her she choked it back. In this city they were supposed to find their destiny: that was what the Book of the Way said. And what kind of destiny was it to go slinking away like beasts, relinquishing the city to another tribe? The People had come here for a purpose, and that purpose was not yet fulfilled. Therefore we must stay, Koshmar thought.

If ever I see Harruel again, she told herself, I will kill him with my own hands. Whether he is awake or asleep when I find him, I will kill him.

“Are you in pain?” Torlyri asked her one afternoon.

“Pain? What pain?”

“You had the side of your mouth pulled in in a strange way. As though something was hurting you, and you were struggling with it.”

Koshmar laughed. “A piece of food, stuck between my teeth. Nothing more than that, Torlyri.”

She allowed no one to see the torment within her. She went about the settlement with her head held high and her shoulders squared, as though nothing had happened. When she twined with Torlyri — and they twined often now, for Torlyri had been badly hurt by the defection of Lakkamai, and was in great need of Koshmar’s love and support — she worked hard to conceal the troubles of her spirit. When she went among tribesfolk, she radiated cheer, optimism, goodwill. She had to. They were all shaken by the Breaking Apart and by the coming of the Helmet People. A delayed reaction had set in, and it affected almost everyone. These people who throughout all their time in the cocoon had been the only people in their world now had strangers virtually in their midst, and that was not easy to swallow. They felt the pressure of the Helmet People’s souls nearby, pushing against their own spirits like the close, dense air that weighs heavy before a summer storm. And the loss of the Eleven — the ripping apart of the fabric of the tribe, the breaking of friendships and family ties that had endured all their lives, the sheer impact of change on such a scale — oh, that was hard too, that was very hard.

With such pain on all sides Koshmar could not permit her own to weaken her. But she went often to her little chapel, and knelt and spoke with the spirit of Thekmur and with those of other former chieftains, and took what comfort she could from the wisdom they offered her. She had found a certain aromatic herb that grew in the crevices of the walls of the city, and when she burned it in her altar-fire it made her dizzy, and then she could hear the voices of Thekmur and Nialli and Sismoil and the others who had gone before her. They showed no disdain for her, gods be thanked! They were merciful and kind, even though she had failed as chieftain. Even though she had failed.

The essential thing now was to learn to live with the Helmet People. To resist their encroachments by any means short of war. To work out a division of the city that would not be a humiliating quarantine: their sector, our sector, the shared sector.

But it seemed that the Bengs had other ideas.

“They don’t want us going here any more,” Orbin reported, pulling out a tattered copy of the map Hresh had made, and indicating a quadrant of the city far to the northeast, against the bulwark of the mountain. “They’ve got a cord stretched across the entrance to the whole district, and when Praheurt went near it yesterday they shouted at him and waved him away.” Haniman had a similar story to tell. “Here,” he said. “Along the water’s edge. They’re putting up some kind of idols made of wood covered with mats of fur, and they look annoyed if we come too close.”

“Count them,” said Koshmar. “I want to know exactly how many Bengs there are. Make a list, write every one down by the shape of his helmet.” She paused. “You know how to write?”

“Hresh has taught me a little of the art,” Haniman said.

“All right. Take a count. If we have to fight them, we need to know what we’re actually up against.”

“You would fight them, Koshmar?” said Haniman.

“Can we let them tell us where we can go and where we may not go?”

“There are so many, though! And Harruel and Konya are no longer with us!”

Koshmar glared. “Those names are never to be mentioned, boy. Were they our only warriors? We can handle ourselves in any sort of struggle. Go and count the Bengs. Go and count them.”

Haniman and Orbin reported, after a few days, that there were a hundred and seventeen of them, including the women and children, but possibly not some of the infants inside the houses. At least forty appeared to be warriors. Koshmar contemplated those numbers uneasily. The People had eleven warriors left, not all of them in prime fighting shape. Forty was a weighty presence indeed.

And the Bengs’ beasts, their vermilions, rambling and snuffling around at will — they were weighty too, in another way. They went wherever they pleased in Vengiboneeza, and frequently strayed right into the People’s own settlement, damaging small buildings, scattering and breaking things that had been left out in the sun to dry, terrorizing the children. In any battle, Koshmar knew, her warriors would face Beng warriors mounted on those monsters. Such combat would be absurd.

There is no way we can fight these people, she thought.

They will take Vengiboneeza from us without raising a finger.

We should leave this place at once, regardless of the prophecy in the Book of the Way.

No. No. No.

“You must teach the Beng language to us all,” Koshmar told Hresh. If they were indeed to be the People’s enemies — and that was far from certain; in many ways they were still taking pains to be courteous and even friendly — then it was necessary to be able to spy on them and understand what they were saying. Hresh had found a way to master it, as she had known he would. But he said he was not yet ready to teach it to others. He needed a deeper grounding in it first, and more time to analyze and classify his knowledge of it, before he could impart what he knew to the tribe.

It was clear to her that Hresh was lying: that he was simply concealing from her and from Torlyri how fluent he was in the Beng language. He had always been like that, enhancing his own prestige and power by keeping special knowledge to himself. But now it was proper for him to share what he knew with the others, and she let him see that she was on to his game.

“Just another few sessions with Noum om Beng,” he promised. “And then I’ll hold classes, Koshmar. I’ll teach it to everyone.”

“Will we be able to learn it?”

“Oh, yes, yes. There’s nothing really difficult about it, once you grasp the basic principles.”

“For you, perhaps, Hresh.”

“We will all speak Beng like Bengs,” he said. “Just give me a little more time to grow familiar with it, and then I’ll share what I know with everyone. I promise you that.”

Koshmar smiled and embraced him. Splendid Hresh! Indispensable Hresh! No one else could have carried them through these difficult times. What a calamity it would have been if Hresh had followed his mother Minbain and gone off with Harruel! But Koshmar knew that she would never have let him go. There she would have drawn the line; there she would have fought, even if it had meant her death, the deaths of them all. Without Hresh the tribe was lost. She knew that.

They spoke for a while of the Beng encroachment, of the barriers that had gone up here and there around the city. It was Hresh’s opinion that the Bengs were marking certain places off for purely religious reasons, rather than to protect their claim to any Great World machines they might contain. But he was far from certain of that, he said, and eager to return to his own explorations as soon as conditions in the city became more stable again, lest the Bengs find things that could be of value to the People.