He could not go back to Kais Tain. Having seen a father part with his daughter and a village agree with that act, he could no longer delude himself that Kais Tain would ever confess their own guilt for turning him out. They would never change their minds, or give up their allegiance to Tain. He had rescued Lelie, but no one would rescue him, if he went on into territory where Tain’s word had more credit than his, and where a man who spoke for the Ila was the enemy.

He hugged the child more gently, a living prize, when the ride had begun with a death. He knew Kaptai would have hugged Lelie. Kaptai had had a large soul. Kaptai had loved his father, which took particular persistence and patience—and too much patience, and too much belief. He knew now what she had never confessed: that she never should have left her tribe, and now Kaptai lay somewhere ahead of him in the dark, that, for all her love and her loyalty… not prey to vermin, not now, not like those shallow-buried others… not when the sand got up like this, and not when, knowing it, the Haga raised a mound over their dead. The sand would cover her, make her the heart of a dune, turn her to one of those strange dead the sand gave up rarely. She had loved the high desert, and now it took her in, and he could do nothing to mend her death and nothing to get her back.

“This is my wife’s baby,” he said to Antag, shouting over a gust. “She’s divorced from her husband. He’d kept the child and didn’t want it. At least there’s this.”

“A good thing,” Antag said, as they moved along beside the next village in the line. The baby’s wail for a moment was louder than the wind. “She’s likely scared. The wind’s no lullaby.”

“She’ll sleep,” Marak said. Her struggles were wearying, but they were nothing to him. “She’ll grow tired.”

“So do the beshti,” Antag shouted back. “We can gain a little distance, still, tonight, but we ought to camp with one of the villages next noon, and maybe get that baby some milk or something. Not to mention changing her.”

There was a young man who knew infants with complete common sense. Camping with one of the villages was also better sense than he had been thinking of.

And he was willing to do that.

“We should pick a group now and keep their pace,” he shouted at Antag and the brothers. “No sense wearing the beshti down. We’ll sleep, gain back a little tomorrow, ride back if we can.”

“That’s good!” Antag yelled back at him.