He saw from this vantage the glass-edged defenses he and Tain had once tried to breach, and with a soldier’s cold eye, too, looked up at the scars he and Tain had left on the limestone walls of the holy city, the jewel of the Lakht. They were no few scars, and lasting ones, but not mortal, no, far from mortal wounds against this city.

They had not known, then, about the guns, or the launchers.

He imagined there were things about the city he did not guess yet. The very reason for this summons was one.

Did the Ila in her power shrug off the war out of the west, and yet seek out the mad on a whim? Was it mere curiosity?

So now the damned and the mad gathered at the Ila’s request, to live or to die, and the son of the Ila’s enemy was here, one among many, and yet not unknown, he was sure. He was in the records these men had made, and he was sure someone would inform the Ila what a prize her men had gathered in the west. He wondered if the Ila’s men would single him out before the Ila knew; would they make his name known in the streets? And he wondered if that happened what the people would do, who had lived through the years of the attack?

Would they resent him?

Attack him, if he shouted out, I am Marak Trin Tain?

He was tempted to do it, if only to die with a name and to make the most trouble possible in his dying. But he had another purpose yet to accomplish.

The guards moved the other prisoners on, and he bowed his head like the rest and walked with them, led like the beasts.

“Walk!” the Ila’s men shouted at them. For the first time in a day they used their quirts, set afoot, moving among the mad to set them on their way through the gates.

The journey was over. The caravan masters would seek their pay of the offices, most likely, as in every town, when cargo was offloaded. The Ila’s men had assumed all command now: the beasts and their masters they left behind with the tents and the baggage, all except the beast that carried the old man. The boy, Pogi, stopped to stare at their parting; but the guards whipped him on.

A prudent man might be ready for whatever whim moved the Ila, and the sergeant in charge of the caravan was, over all, a prudent man. He shouted out curses at men who whipped the boy too hard; he shouted encouragement at the mad to walk. “Not so far now,” the sergeant said. “You’ll sit up there! Move!”