The servants dried his hair, dried him, gave him a sleeping robe of fine blue cloth, and drew back the curtain. Hati was there, damp and not yet robed, water a fine sheen on her dark skin. She cast a burning glance at the female servants, snatched the robe from their hands, and slipped it on, disdaining to fasten it.

The servants ebbed out of the chamber, through the curtains as she came to him. Hati wished to see his arm, which had already grown fevered and swollen.

“It will heal,” he said. But Hati knew that, no less than he. “Where’s Norit?” He failed to see her anywhere about the chamber.

“They took her away,” Hati said. “I don’t know where.”

Hati’s bath chamber provided a gilt-framed bed, and he led her to it, and they lay down, under the bronze lamps, weary, and able at least to rest. Thunder rumbled in the skies, and more than once they felt the earth give a slight shudder. That brought the crack and crash of stone as the nearby ruin settled.

“She’s too proud to listen,” Hati said, as they lay there wrapped in each other’s arms. “She’s lost everything she had, and I think she’s too proud to take this offer.”

“You were supposed to leave and go with the beshti,” he said. “You were supposed to be with Tofi, safe, so I didn’t have to worry.”

“Not as I see it.”

“You saw your tents. The Keran are here. Could you go to them?”

Hati shook her head, a tumble of moist braids on his arm, a scent of oils and herbs. “No. And if the Ila agrees to be sensible and go, we’ll all go. And if she doesn’t, I’ll go and tell the Keran the truth, and then see what they do.”

“Don’t threaten her.” He moved his left hand over her braids, smoothed her brow as she leaned her head against him. “Escape this place. You can walk out there, change your robe, and be one of ten thousand.”

Hati heaved a long, deep sigh, and in that sigh was the chance of violence and dire actions considered, and denied.

“Only with you. If you wish me to leave, man of my choice, we both go to my tribe.”

“Memnanan hinted that my mother and my sister might be here.”

“Fine. We’ll rescue them. We’ll go east. We know where the stars fall. We’ll go fast through that part.”

It was dreaming out loud.