“I have a message from the far side of the Lakht,” Marak said. “Obidhen’s dead. His son had a chance to stay safe, the other side of the Lakht, but he came back… his father’s duty, he said. He needs help: two freedmen and too many beshti to keep contained out there at the well. These two,” Marak added, meaning Hati and Norit, his last attempt at cleverness, “these two can help with that. The Ila will need those animals. And the master.”

Memnanan heard all that with a weary, dazed look, and then went to the curtain and passed curt, coherent orders to the soldiers to get slaves and assist at the well.

He let the curtain fall then, and looked at the several of them, dusty and dirty as they were, in this immaculate place, Hati and Norit making no attempt to leave.

“I am the Ila’s au’it,” the au’it said in a soft, little-used voice, “with her book.”

She might have said I am the god’s right hand. It was that kind of utterance.

“Go through,” Memnanan said, and lifted his arm to forbid Marak. “Have you any answer worth delivering,” Memnanan asked him, all other things aside, “considering what you see outside?”

“I have the only answer worth delivering,” Marak said, and succeeded at least in surprising the man.

Came a rumble in the earth, then, a shudder, and the walls even of this tent billowed and moved. Cries of panic resounded outside the canvas walls, far and away across the camp.

He saw pools of fire burning in the dark, walls of fire racing across the land.

Be patient, he told his voices, and threatened them in desperation. Be still—or fail.

Memnanan moved as soon as the earth was still, and swept that curtain back. Servants moved it farther, sent it traveling on gold rings that sang as they went. A desk was beyond, and servants, with a black curtain at their backs. They parted it.

Behind that curtain a red one.

Slaves hastened the third curtain back, gathering its folds in their arms, carrying aside several small chairs and a lamp from what had been a small room.

The Ila maintained her state beyond, on her gold chair, on a wide dais of far fewer steps. She was robed and gloved and capped in red. An au’it—not their au’it—sat cross-legged at her feet.

They stood at the edge of a priceless carpet, the three of them, with boots scuffed and coated with dust, in the dusty gauze robes of Luz’s tower.

Here was what remained of power. Above them was white canvas, extravagantly lighted with bronze lamps. About them were all the trappings of wealth and control of the lives of men, even in the desolation of the city.

But above that canopy was thunder in the heavens, and under their feet was the shiver of a newly restless earth.