“It’s a chance,” Memnanan said. That Memnanan knew the desert, Marak suspected, as the Ila’s men generally knew enough of it to live… knew it as a place where they were strangers, being on their way to a place, on their way from a place, never at home in it. The villages existed within the desert: they had never quite lost their skills. When the big winds blew and ten men could die going out to secure an orchard netting, when sand could choke an unprotected well, when hunters caught in the open could easily die, if they failed to take the right steps… the knowledge of the desert was not that far removed.

“If you have a household,” Marak said to the Ila’s captain, “put them with the tribes. Or in my tent, with Tofi and his men. I trust you’ll be busy with the Ila’s company, and I’ll have room.”

Memnanan gave him a look. “Too many old, who can’t walk. A wife six months pregnant. The city has far too many.”

“Put them with me,” Marak said. “Get beshti for them. We’ll get them up and down. Save your worry for the Ila. Be selfish, man. Give yourself this one gift. You’re due it. I’ve asked several. We’ll need to get the books down to the gathering. Give them to the leaders. Leaders survive. They have a duty to do that.”

Memnanan said not a thing to that. He walked, and led him back through the veils, where he found another subordinate, in the chamber with his desk. “Bring the an’i Keran,” Memnanan said, “and the village woman, the prophet.”

But Hati came on her own, through the other curtain, expecting him and Memnanan, trailing an embarrassed guard. Madness had its advantage, in that regard, that no one had struck her; Hati reached him unhindered, seized his arm, wound his fingers into hers as Memnanan dismissed the confounded guard. In a moment more, Norit followed her, guard-led, with that calm, still face that told him Luz was entirely in the ascendant. Memnanan dismissed that man, too.

“We’re going outside the camp,” Marak said to Hati and Norit, “to talk with the leaders. We’ll be moving this evening, with the Ila, with the tribes.”

They did not question what he said. The three of them walked out of the tent with Memnanan, under a sky slate-colored and menacing. The water-gatherers at the Mercy of the Ila moved about their business. A handful of wretched people carried bundles out of the gates of the city, bent beneath their load. It was all useless, that gathering of resources.