If she was a god, Marak proposed to find out. Under his brow, head bowed among the herd, he measured the length he must go to reach that figure. He imagined to himself dealing one, just one strong blow to that fragile-seeming neck before they cut him down.

Orders passed in gestures, the permissive lifting of the Ila’s hand, and the guards brought them forward as a group, for the Ila’s examination.

Marak’s heart beat fast. He had seen men and beasts run, even shot through the heart. He could perhaps reach her before the guards even organized an objection.

But until they offered to prevent him from a peaceful, even requested, advance, he made himself as obedient as the rest of the madmen.

Marak, the voices said suddenly, and the mad twitched and turned and spun for the Ila’s amusement. He restrained himself desperately from moving to that urge: it was his one breach from the rest, the one indignity he had refused all his life.

There were drawn blades all around them, guards stationed among the pillars. The Ila’s men were justifiably anxious in this viewing of the mad. They waited for the afflicted to do something more extravagant to prove their madness, and now a guard prodded him in the side, curious about his difference.

Pride would not allow him. He had run into the desert as a boy. He had hidden his fits in storerooms, in privacy, in long rides into the waste. He had learned that the fits had had a rhythm: they came at certain hours of the day, at certain times in the night, regular as the calendar, regular as the moons in waxing and waning. He had learned to live with them, to pretend, to conceal the twitches and the urges.

But lately the fits had gone out of rhythm, out of the ordinary.

This manifestation now was out of rhythm, as if the Ila’s very presence had provoked it.

{Marak, the voices said. Turn. Walk. Come.} And quietly, biting his lip until the blood came, he would not.

The mad, within the room, became agitated. The Ila sat observing them. An au’it sat nearby, writing, writing. One by one the records went down, as the guards separated each madman from the herd in turn for the au’it to record his name, his origin, his behavior, turning each back when they were done. The Ila seemed bored, impatient.

Then a signal passed, a motion of the Ila’s hand, and the guards held back the latest madman they had cut out of the herd.

“Tain’s son,” the Ila said, and the guards, letting go the one, prodded at Marak instead and moved him forward.

Now, Marak thought, anticipating the next few moments, and became steady as any hunter. Hate fueled his patience. Desire kept his head down and held his gait to an ordinary shamble, all to come as close as he could.