A great number of the dissolving camp surged toward the Ila, those who worshiped her posing a more serious threat than bandits. Silver flashed in the dim sunlight as the Ila’s guards cleared a path for her safety.

So the Ila and her court came down from the hill.

“Get the packs on,” Marak shouted over at Tofi, who sat his saddle sweating and pale from the latest fight. “Pack up! We’re through with this! We have an armed escort now. And we’re going to move!”

Chapter Seventeen

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Give shelter to an enemy and you hold a knife by the blade.
—Miga proverb

The ila might never have ridden in her life, Marak thought, but ride she did, at Memnanan’s side, and behind her rode the aui’it, a broad gout of jewel red in a landscape otherwise brown and rust and yellow, under a murky sky. Behind them came the Ila’s guard and the Ila’s household, down to the servants.

Then came the pack beasts, to the number of about a hundred, all under Tofi’s direction, and under the management of his freedmen and his slaves: the Ila’s staff had no idea how to pitch a tent.

For so large a group, including tents for the guard, it was a modest number of beasts: Memnanan above all that staff understood the necessities of the Lakht, and might have enforced his choices on the Ila’s will. Tofi had had the foresight to gather help, at a time when skilled help had become as precious as water.

None of Tofi’s doings needed question. Marak only waited while that line of riders clove its way through the confusion and turned toward them.

At the last, calmly despite the recent armed confrontation, he simply lifted his hand to confirm his location, if Memnanan had doubted it. Memnanan lifted his hand. They saw one another. It was accomplished, all they had set out to do.

Now it was a matter of getting this mass of people directed south in some kind of order.

Hati moved off to consult with Tofi, but Norit stayed by his side, silent, watching as Tofi’s men hurried to attach the packs to the saddles. “Hup-hup-hup!” Marak heard, that call that had afflicted the mad on their march, but this time it came as a welcome sound, a promise of freedom. Beasts snarled and grumbled and got up to work.

Tofi himself brought a waterskin for him, and the two freedmen brought Norit’s. They had secured none for themselves: it was the way the day had progressed. “I have your gear packed aboard,” Tofi said, “all of it.”

“I’m in your debt,” Marak said. He had regarded Tofi as a quickwitted young man; he was not surprised, or disappointed, either. “If debts will ever be paid in this life.”