“I already know,” Tofi said unhappily. The young man who had thought at the beginning of this trek that the world would survive now had different ideas. “There is none here. We’re lucky it’s not our bones lying back there in the sand.”

“We had warning. They didn’t. We have Norit. Listen to her.”

“The question is, what’s there? Is it any better there than here?”

“Norit will know,” he said. “I think she knows as well as anyone what the state of the tower is. If anyone can get you back there alive, she can.” He thought of the Ila’s promise to save his mother and his sister, and now he knew that calling the Ila into the tangled affairs of his family might have put Hati and Norit in danger, and if things went wrong in the Ila’s eyes, and she decided to blame him, he knew that she would never release those related to him: that was not the pattern of the Ila’s justice. He could not ask Tofi to save his mother and sister in that case: there was no likelihood at all that Tofi could pry them from the Ila’s hands and far less that Tofi could rescue him. But Hati—Hati was not a name the Ila even knew about.

“Don’t let Hati come with me once we reach the city,” he said. “If you have to carry her off by force, do it. Claim her as if she were your family.”

“Can you argue with her?”

“I’ll give her that instruction. I’ll tell her to take care of you. Go along with it.”

“I’ll do my best,” Tofi said, and joined the scheme to get the most of them back. “If the Ila’s men ask, I’ll lie and say she’s my wife.”

That was the measure of Tofi’s courage, his loyalty to a stranger… that he would lie to the Ila’s men and rescue Hati. It was what happened to men on campaign together; and Tofi was no longer a boy, no longer a youngest son, struggling with a man’s burden. The ex-slaves obeyed him… respected him, that had happened day by day.

Now Marak discovered the courage that was in Tofi, as great as any man’s he had ever ridden with; and he went to Norit, too, riding alongside her.

“Tell Luz,” he said, “if anything goes wrong, go to Tofi and tell him to get you to the tower. You’ll need Hati, too. I can promise you, you’ll get nowhere without her. Hati’s of the tribes. You don’t know enough about the desert on your own to live the day out. Your advice is dangerous to the inexperienced.”