And the beasts were bent on water. They resisted the rein; they had nothing else in their heads but their thirst and the relief from their packs.

Marak, the voices said. Fire ran like water across his vision. Marak! the voices cried, while his eyes searched desperately in the fading light, through the distraction of the visions. Marak, Marak, Marak!

One thing the visions wanted. One thing he was supposed to do. If anyone could find his mother and his sister in this mass of people, the Ila could find them; if anyone could save a life or damn one, it was the Ila. He had to go there first and take the risk.

And if shot through the heart now, the beshti would continue to seek water, where, at the end of this single street, up past all this chaos of tents, it poured out at the Ila’s Mercy, under the glass-crowned walls of the city.

Those walls came into view, cracked and ruined, above the tents. The gates stood lastingly ajar on a heap of rubble, and the Ila’s Mercy spilled out a flood that wet the cracked pavings and seeped into the thirsty sand. People came and went here with jars, with waterskins, and crowded close not only about the drinking basin but about those troughs below it that were meant for beasts.

No one stood against the beshti when they arrived, squalling and threatening. Men and women scattered from hazard as Osan forced his way to the trough, as Hati’s mount did, and Tofi’s. Men scrambled for safety, scooping up a precious last jarful of water, taking a half-full water bag, as the ex-slaves’ beshti, and Norit’s, and the au’it’s, shoved and pushed their way in, heads down, gulping up water as if it would never exist again. Then the whole string of pack animals arrived and pushed their way in, nipping and yanking at the rope that prevented their maneuvering: two tangled, and bit, and squalled, a fight that itself made the two room at the trough, the two ex-slaves risking life and limb to get the pack line free.

Marak slid down. Osan sucked up water in a steady stream and never lifted his head or noticed as Marak squeezed between the tall bodies and helped Norit down, bringing her back of the line of rumps.

Hati had helped their au’it… their au’it, their au’it: that was how they had come to think of her. She joined him. Tofi came close to him, looking about him in the overthrow of everything they knew of the city.

Sunset had gone to twilight as they rode. Now a few tents nearest the water, at heart of the camp, shone with inner light—white tents, glowing from inside.

There was wealth and power still in Oburan. Authority still existed, even if chaos ruled the outskirts.