He remembered things Patya might remember, too, Patya very early lamenting to him she was not born a boy. She was the one in the family without illusions. She was the sane one, and knew their father failed to love her. These things the au’it could not write. Not even Hati knew the pain that Tain had inflicted, long before he murdered Kaptai.

“There’s four of us of the household, now,” Marak said, lingering by Patya, deafening himself to the voices. “Tain’s not our father anymore. Hati and Norit are your sisters. That baby’s Lelie, and her father didn’t want her. I’m not sure Norit does, when she’s crazy. Help her.”

Patya’s eyes still carried shadows of Kaptai’s death and Tain’s hate. But there was courage in her. There always had been, a finer, steadier courage than his. “I’m fine,” Patya said, pressing her lips to a thin line. “I’ll get myself a husband. If a rock from the sky doesn’t fall on us. I’ll marry you some help.”

“I have help enough,” he said. “Marry for love. Bring some peace to the house. That’s what I want. And stay to the center of the camp. Don’t go on the outside edge, and I promise you won’t.” They both had to fear every night and every day from now on that their own father might be aiming at her life or his, or at anyone Tain thought they cared for. He put it in words, and knew that somewhere the feud had to have a bloody ending.

But not today. Not this moment. Marak, Marak, his voices nagged him, and east, east, east, when life and water lay south. Luz would make him crazier and crazier. She would drive Norit, and Hati, who must hear the same urge, and find it harder and harder to resist—off a cliff, no less. He would not have Luz dictating Patya’s life. Patya was always and forever the sane one.

“Stay with Hati,” he said. “I’ll be back before we camp. I’m not going anywhere near the edge. Hati?”

Hati paid sharp attention.

“Water,” he said. “Water, at Pori, before everything.”

“Something’s going to happen,” Hati said, and Norit, with no sanity at all in her eyes: “There’s no time, Marak.”

“The hell.” He reined Osan back a second time, with the au’it lagging back after him. He let them slip farther and farther back, past the Ila’s pack train, and all the Ila’s servants, city-bred men and women wrapped in white, under the fierce, bright sun. Marak, the voices said, and the rock hit the sphere, vividly, persistently. Luz was increasingly upset with him.

“I understand you,” he said to Luz under his breath. “And you want the damned books, don’t you? Every village that dies, you’re losing a book.”