He rode forward, up to where Hati was, where Patya rode, carrying Lelie on her saddle. “Did Norit find you?” Hati asked, and looked back behind him, but Norit was not in sight.

The au’it wrote that, too, it might be.

“Shall I go after her?”

“I know where she is,” he said. It was impossible for them to lose track of one another. The moment he wondered, he knew, and Hati seemed to, the same.

“So do I,” Hati said. “She doesn’t care about her daughter. Norit wants to, but Luz doesn’t. Patya said she’d take care of her. Or Lensa will.” That was Memnanan’s mother, who rode with Memnanan’s wife, Elagan: Laga, they called Elagan, a stronger woman than seemed likely, all belly, now, and very small limbs… endured the ride, simply endured, day after day, smiling sometimes, bravely—while Memnanan’s allegiance had to be elsewhere given, and while she grew closer and closer to her time. Lensa will. Lensa and the aunts, frail and one sickly, had enough on their hands, and he had brought Lelie back to be an inconvenience to everyone… to fight Luz for Norit’s sanity, and now Norit went raving back along the line, wearing her besha’s strength down, frightening anyone who would listen to her, among the Ila’s servants and among the tribes, that being all she could reach.

Them and the priests, he thought.

That was where Norit had gone, to tell the priests, and the priests told everyone, simply, clearly, without distortion or reinterpretation. That was their value to the Ila, and that was their value to Luz.

As rapidly as word could pass, at their noon camp, as rapidly as single priests could walk to the first of the villages, and village priests, and that man to the next, and that next to the village following, word would spread.

“Tell them there’s water at Pori,” he muttered to Luz. “Have her do something useful. It’s not damned useful to scare everyone.”

East, the word came to him. East, east, east, and an overwhelming sense of urgency, but he denied it. The needs of a whole caravan short of water denied it. Pori was the destination.

They camped. They had to, and he had reached the limit of his recovered strength. He sat down until the slaves had the tent ready, and he let Hati unsaddle Osan.

And curiously, without any threat in the heavens, every tent deployed side flaps on every side but that facing their line of march, an arrangement which both gave them deep shade and prevented the air moving as efficiently.

It cut off the view of anyone trying to find a target within the tents.

Norit came back to them, saner than she had left. She sat down under the tent, and Patya gave her Lelie, who was fretful and confused, as what child might not be?