He suddenly realized where this was going. He understood Patya’s desperate, anxious silence. They were young, and there was no time for decent understandings—that was the very point. The desperation in the air drove more than one older, more sober couple to their mats, trying to beget their way to immortality. The desperation gave no time for joy, or hope—or patience with custom, or modesty.

“Out with it,” he said. “Time’s short. You’re using it all up.”

“Patya and I…” Tofi tripped over his own need to breathe, or the need to remember what he had meant to say, exactly those desperate, calculated words.

“Patya and you,” he said. He looked at Patya. “Is this your idea, as well as his?”

“I want—” she said.

“You want. Everybody wants. Go to it. Good luck to you.” He got up from his mat and took Patya’s face between his hands, kissed her on the forehead. “The best of luck,” he said, and knew, for himself, in the back of his moiling thoughts, that he could not risk himself for more than the immediate needs, either… he had more than a wife to constrain him.

He had the Ila on his hands, and her dealings with Luz. And not Memnanan nor Norit nor any of the tribal lords could deal with her as he did.

Patya blushed. Tofi did. Patya hugged him. He clapped Tofi on the shoulder and sent them away. There was no privacy in the whole camp.

But lovers managed. They went off among the beshti. Inventive. He expected that of them.

“That was sweet,” Hati murmured, beside him. “I like him. I like your sister, too.”

“He’s a good young man,” he said. He fought off despair for their situation and exhaustion deeper than any since he had come on this trek. He touched Hati’s shoulder, just touched her, wanting comfort for himself. He had not even spared half a thought for the appropriateness of his sister’s choice. Kaptai would have married her daughter to a young man of more prospects than Tofi had. But who, in this hour, had more than Tofi?

He was thinking of the deaths of hundreds and thousands. He had begun to plan for that carnage as inevitable. What share had Patya in his obligations?

Obligations all came crashing down on him with a smothering weight, all the first ride to Pori, the trip back, Kaptai’s death, and his failure to do anything for the ones who most relied on him, like Norit, like Patya. And Hati.