They traveled toward that haze of dust that marked the passage of the caravan across the land at the same steady pace.

And uneasy as he was about the land behind them, Marak became aware, in that sight, that he knew where Hati was. He knew it as well as he knew Norit’s location beside him, as steady, as reliable as the pole stars in the general fall of the heavens. She was there in the heart of the column. The constellations might be shaken, but he could not get lost in the world that contained the other parts of himself.

The caravan had no need of another dreamer, another guide as mad as Norit.

It needed a plain, headblind madman to say only: I’ve been there before. I can lead you. I know a way down. Don’t hesitate, don’t camp.

It needed Tain’s son, too: it needed him to say: Don’t have pity on the dying. Don’t hesitate. When the line goes, go.

He rode toward the column, and on the edge of joining it, on the very moment of crossing toward safety in among the plodding beshti, he realized their party had been one member short on the retreat. He was so used to the au’it following him and Hati and Norit that he had failed to notice that this time she had not followed them out from the caravan.

Surely she had not come out with them.

“No au’it followed us,” he said to the Keran, half a question. “You saw no au’it tracking us at any time.”

“No, omi.”

At least they had not lost her. He thought they had not.

He rode in among the Ila’s servants, and near the Ila, and up to Hati’s side.

“I advised Aigyan,” Hati said first. “He knows all the situation. He’s going to keep the line moving. We’re going over the rim.”

Hati looked aside. The Keran had let Norit down off his besha, and Tofi had gotten down. Norit’s besha was, not surprisingly, walking with the rest, riderless, and Tofi called out to Bosginde to catch the beast and bring it. The caravan, meanwhile, never stopped. Such small exchanges dropped behind temporarily, and caught up again, beshti tending to seek their own herd.

But if anyone was as likely as the Ila’s priests and servants to be alive with the Ila’s own makers, if there was anyone in the Ila’s service who could be as aware of the Ila’s whims as he was aware of Luz’s moods and desires, it was the aui’it.

Her priests, her servants knew the Ila’s wishes and obeyed her.

The au’it had reported, that was what.