He and Memnanan had created this panic. They had primed the people with fear and uncertainty and the sense of one essential escape from their plight, one door by which they might exit, and it to the south. He had used every tactic, every wile he had, he had said he knew not what in the urgency of saying something, promising something to get the people to move. He had abandoned his own mother and his sister to the safety they could find, and now his only companions were companions in the madness: he was through with dealing with sane people, ignorant people, desperate people.

Tofi, who had seen the tower, Tofi, who had the tents, was the missing piece, of all the structure he still had to assemble, and he knew where Tofi had said he would be, one young man and a handful of beasts and two slaves, on whom he depended, out across the flat, to the southwest of the city and imperiled by men desperate for tents and transport.

Leave me alone! he raged at the voices and the visions, and rubbed his eyes until they were shot full of dark and red stars. Let me alone! Let us alone! Let me see and hear!

“There’s Tofi!” Hati cried, riding up even with him and pointing ahead, on the flat where Tofi had said they would be.

There, through a haze of dust and the running figures of men bound for the tents, Marak saw beasts, all seated, all ready for their packs, and Tofi, who was waiting for them, waving them in while confused and desperate men ran past his goods and his beasts.

“Omi!” Tofi cried, as they rode in. “Omi, we’re here. We have everything. What are we to do?”

“Stay where we are,” Marak said, though Tofi was clearly ready to load on the instant. The ex-slaves, Mogar and Bosginde, were with him; so were older, hard-faced men, caravanners who might know their trade, and more slaves, young and strong ones as anxious in this confusion and the threat of the heavens as any free man. All this Marak saw with a glance. “The captain’s on his way back to the Ila. He’ll manage that part. She’ll arrive with her tents.” He reined Osan about before leaving the vantage of Osan’s high back, with Hati by him, but Norit was nowhere in sight, and Hati was looking anxiously behind them, scanning all the way they had come, through a milling crowd.

He did not immediately see Norit, but he knew her coming, knew her presence as a magnet knew iron. He saw her riding through a gust-borne cloud of dust and waved to her, signaling her.

She rode toward them, and priests labored in her wake, white-clad men afoot, crying out after her, but a surge of running people poured between and cut them off.