“Oh, they gave us everything. You never saw such food. And fine clothes, and everything. But Mother wanted to leave.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“Then the sky started doing what it does.” Patya was brimming with things she likely had no words to say. “And everybody was scared. Why does it do that?”

“I don’t know,” he said, which was only the truth.

“The tribes started coming in. And the villages and all. Father packed up Kais Tain and left. That’s what we learned, anyway. We were living in the Beykaskh until it shook down, and then we lived in tents, and then the servants told us we were free and we could go to the Haga, outside the camp.”

“That was what I asked Memnanan to do.”

“What’s going to happen to us? Is there a tower?” His sister knew he could lie. His sister wanted the truth the Ila and the tribes and all the villages might not get from him. And would repeat it.

“There is a tower. I promise you there’s a tower.”

Patya looked relieved at that. “I’ll tell Mother.”

“Good.”

“You can ride here a while,” Patya suggested, falling a little behind as he quickened Osan’s pace. “You could ride over and see Mother.”

“She knows you’ll tell her. I have a job to do.” He put the quirt to innocent Osan, who hardly needed that vigorous an encouragement, but he wanted away, quickly. Hati was with him as they rode forward in the line.

“She seems a fine girl,” Hati said. Around them the sun had brought color to the land. The desert had acquired detail while he talked with Patya, so rapid the sunrise was on the Lakht.

“So she is. But full of questions.”

“The same with Aigyan,” Hati said. “I won’t answer him, either. I’d rather not go that far.”

He saw that clearly enough.

“Have you a mother? A father?”

“Both gone,” Hati said. “Gone in the war, with my uncles. We fought the Migi for the southern wells. The Migi are dead. But so are most of Aigyan’s house. Don’t go there yet. Don’t talk to him. He’ll only argue. Don’t talk to Menditak this morning, either. You’ll only make Aigyan suspicious. Let them settle out, on the trail. Let Aigyan declare his camp with no one advising him. That will be soon enough.”

Marak, the voices dinned at him, a rising echo, a warning.

The vision was back, the star-fall, the ring of fire.

He took the warning. He reined back, to the side of the column. They need only wait there as the column proceeded, until they could simply set the beshti in motion to rejoin Tofi and Norit.

“Is everything all right?” Tofi asked.

“Well enough,” he said, and the au’it, closely attending them, wrote.

They rode through the morning. There was a minor shaking, and toward noon a star fell on the horizon, a bright stuttered trail beneath the scattered clouds, then a loud boom. It frightened Tofi’s slaves. The two freedmen and Tofi had grown accustomed to such sights.