“Like the rest of the vermin,” Marak said, all trace of humor gone from his heart. It was a reasonable suspicion, and one their plans could not deal with. “If that’s started, our line will grow shorter until they have too much to carry. Or they’ll tail us, picking off what they want, when they want it. We can’t divert our march to deal with them.” He knew this kind of war, this bandit harassment. He had practiced it himself, against the Ila’s caravans. He had equipped bands of raiders that way.

“It’s not in our hands,” Memnanan agreed. “But we’ll send no more men back there.”

“I’d say that’s wise,” Marak answered him, “if it was for me to say anything.”

“Oh, you’re the desert master, Marak Trin. I listen.”

Desert master because the abjori had fought from the desert, and Memnanan from the city, always from the city. And Memnanan remembered, too, what the marks were on his fingers.

“I’ve no better advice,” Marak said. “I haven’t, and Luz hasn’t, nothing that I know.”

The Ila remained secluded, and peevish. They parted, and Memnanan returned to his duty with a grim face. A short spate of rain soaked them, and then the clouds broke and shredded, and went flying along with amazing rapidity.

At sunset of that day a brilliant seam of color showed on the horizon and persisted after dark.

Clouds, some said. They had seen plenty of those.

Fire, others said. But the glow went out after dark, so they decided it had been cloud, and that foretold weather.

Sphere hit sphere in Marak’s vision. Hati was as downcast as Norit, and kept looking behind them as they rode. Stars fell, not many, but large ones, one of which left a stuttered trail for a long distance.

By dawn both those clouds and the wind had reached them, and it blew stiffly at their backs, raising the dust—if not for the dust, the wind at their backs would have been a benefit.

“How will it be?” Hati asked Norit, for she, more than they, had become a weather-prophet. “How long will it last?”

“It should last,” Norit said quietly as they rode. “But it won’t blow hard. Not enough to fear.”

Not enough for the labor of deep-stakes, that was, and still, as the dust rose, Marak thought of using them, because they dared not take risks with their lives and their sustenance, for the sake of all the rest. But Norit seemed right: by every scrap of weather-sense he possessed, he felt it would be a windy day, and the dust would get up, that curse of the pans, where a silken fine dust mixed with alkali and tasted bitter.