“I’ve no doubt that she has something yet to try, and will. We’re equally determined it won’t work.”

“An attack on us. In us. Again.”

“I fear so.”

Anger welled up in him, a distracting, overwhelming anger. “You listen to me. Your voices can damned well let me alone when I have something to do. There’s no need to be chattering at me the way you do. You’re sitting in the tower. You can tell your damned voices that while you’re at it. And you can let Norit go! Let her be! She’s not yours!”

“She’s an excellent viewpoint. You’re far too inclined to turn and twist things into what you want to say. And you grow distracted and don’t listen. I need to know where you are.”

“You know damned well where we are! Let her alone! Give her her nights free of you, at least!”

“It’s too important,” Luz said. “I won’t lose all of you just for her comfort.”

“Then talk to me a while!” Hati said.

“You won’t do, any more than he will.”

“Give her some rest!” All this talk of makers fighting makers had disturbed him. He saw nothing to do about that, but Norit’s plight, at least, seemed within their reach, a point on which they could reason with Luz. “You’ll make her sick if you go on at her like this.”

“I’ll let her rest,” Luz said quietly.

Immediately Norit blinked several times and seemed herself again, a little distressed, a little lost, a little confused. Marak put his arms about her, and Hati did, and Norit shivered, and shed tears, then simply sat down on the sand and sobbed.

“Everybody,” Norit kept saying. “Everybody,” but they made no sense of it.

“What can we do?” Hati asked him in dismay.

“I don’t know,” he said. He had no idea now whether it was worse for Norit to be awake and to know what she might know, or whether during those times of Luz’s possession Norit simply took refuge somewhere Luz failed to bother her, and Norit only realized the nature of what had flowed through her once she waked… but whatever Norit saw that they failed to, it seemed terrible. He squatted down and wiped Norit’s tears, and all the while Norit’s tears kept flowing, tears for what she saw in Luz’s visions, tears for what had happened to her, tears simply of exhaustion: he had no idea what caused them.

“Find Lelie,” she said once.

He remembered Norit had shouted that name once, in her greatest distress.

“Please find Lelie for me.”

“Where shall I look?” he asked, but of course it was Tarsa he should search. In those days before their march to the tower, Tarsa was all Norit had ever known.

“Who is Lelie?” he asked, but Norit failed to answer him.