And she was right: those who destroyed so many lives were no friends. Those who would destroy this many lives were no fit rulers. That was all his battered wits came up with for an answer: that their fit ruler was madder than the mad, and had been saner in her long life, but she was still—for reasons most of them never understood—their god, their precious ruler, the definition of what they were. Was it virtue in her, some last remnant of sanity, that she bent every effort to make them hate her, and spared them when they failed to kill her?

He, on the other hand, held Luz’s makers. And what had he just tried to do? He had ridden after Tain, and now he defied the Ila.

Now he committed himself to one more mad act, and rode toward the head of the column, increasing Osan’s pace to a run that jolted his side. It hurt: it jarred to the roots of his teeth, but he was not done being mad: he rode up among Hati’s tribe, up where Aigyan rode among his household, all on lofty, richly ornamented beasts. Bells attended their going. Swords and the occasional long barrel glinted in the sun. This was armed might the likes of which Tain and the Ila herself had to reckon with, and it did not obey Hati, or him.

But it had arrived in his camp, and pitched tents around him, and he meant it should justify its presence with him and with the Ila.

“Omi,” he said, bowing in the saddle, respectfully enough, and the au’it, his au’it, who had chased after him into the Ila’s presence, now arrived after him in some disorder, and unfolded her book to write when he had said no more than that word.

Marak, his voices said, however, and could the au’it write that Luz was agitated, perhaps outraged? She had asked for his attention. The Ila had stirred her up, and now she was back, a ceaseless din. He set Luz and her complaints to the back of his attention, and meant to have command of his own camp back.

“Awake and alive,” Aigyan said, looking him over as he rode. “Bullets, then, have as little power over you as the Ila’s orders.”