“If you betray me, I promise you Kais Tain will smoke for days. I promise your mother and your sister will die very unhappily. Does that excite your interest? I thought so. I give you this one year of their safety for free, and all the resources you may need, a regiment of my guard if you wish it. Gold? Gold is sand under my feet. But knowledge? That, you can bring me. Then you and I will talk again. Name what you need to accomplish what I ask.”

He saw she was utterly in earnest. “Keep your regiment,” he said. “Give me my freedom. The safety of my house and its villages for this year. And my father’s life, even if he’s offended your officers.”

“What do you care for him?”

“He’s my father. He’s signed your armistice.”

“Done. What else?”

What else was there? It was the last chance to amend their bargain. “Give me the madmen,” he said. He saw little use for them in the holy city, where they would die, hanged or stoned, the common fate of the mad once discovered. They had walked together, he and the wife of Tarsa, and the potter, and he could not walk away alive and forget their fate. “If you mean all you say, you have no need for them, and I might learn from them.”

A red-gloved hand waved away inconsequences. “Take them. Do as you please with them. A caravan and its hire. Riding beasts. All these things.”

“Weapons.” His were gone. “Tents enough for all of us.”

She laughed like a child, as if, together, she on the steps, he on the ground, they were two children planning a delicious prank. “An au’it to write things down.”

“I can write,” he said in offended pride.

“I write,” she said with a wave of her hand, “but I find it tedious. An au’it, I say.”

“What if the au’it runs mad? Shall I be blamed?”

“You will not be blamed.” The red-gloved hands clasped silken knees. The eyes deep as wells stared at him. “The east is full of strange things. So is the Lakht. Take the regiment.”

“I never needed one. I rode all about these hills and your regiments couldn’t find us. The sand and the stones are no threat to me.”

“The vermin are. Bandits are.”

“Only when you feed them on corpses and fat caravans! The holy city is their source of food. Pour out water, and vermin and bandits alike fight among themselves.” He shrugged. “A regiment will take more time than an ordinary caravan. I know the Lakht. I don’t need them. Give me a good caravan master. Good sound canvas.”

“And the mad.”

“And the mad.”

“Better than a regiment?”

“We’ve learned the desert, have we not? We walked here.”

A long, long moment that dark gaze continued, intimate and close.

“I shall be very disappointed if you fail. Is there anything you might ask of me, any favor for yourself alone.”