By noon of that day, the fine dust was thick in the air. The Keran, ahead of them, were shadows in the curtain of dust, but it was not enough to worry them: the day was still bright, not that all-darkening gloom of the great storms, and the beshti made light of it, blowing the dust from their nostrils in occasional noisy gusts. They camped without the deep-stakes, and since the Ila’s men attached the flaps on the windward side of that tent for her comfort, Marak ordered the same for their tent.

It gave them a few hours of relief from the wind. Dust seeped around the single wall, but far less of it. He and Hati even made love in the noon quiet, discreetly, hanging their robes on lines strung from the nearest center pole to the edge. Norit and the au’it were there to witness, but the wiry little au’it kindly went to sleep, and Norit lay with her back turned.

Marak slept afterward with his arm around Hati, next to Norit, who snored gently, troubling no one. The gusting of the wind, the thumping of the canvas, had assumed a quiet sameness.

Then someone came running. That was the impression that waked him from half sleep, that someone was running, and that someone coming into the tent had disturbed Memnanan’s family from their rest.

He sat up, and moved the curtain. Tofi and his men, free and slave, were awake and upright on their mats, startled from sleep. It was a young woman… his sister Patya, her aifad trailing loose, her hair flowing wildly in the breeze from around the windbreak. Her expression told him something terrible was amiss.

He scrambled to his feet. He snatched his robe off the line, flung it on, beltless.

“Marak,” she said, then: “Mother,” and burst into terror and tears.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Father. Father came. She told me—”

That was enough. In leaden fear he ran out from under the tent, and Patya and then Hati ran with him. The au’it, too, snatched up her kit, but what she did, Marak did not stop to know.

He ran through the blowing dust, back through their camp, in among the Haga tents, among a gathering of men and women roughly waked from their own noon sleep. Patya had his sleeve, and guided him straight to the heart of the camp, in among the tents. “She told me to run,” Patya managed to say on the way. “She said run, and I ran.”

There was a crowd, shadows in the blowing dust, foretelling the worst. He pushed their way through, and saw, on the ground among them, a woman, their mother.