He could cut his way in, ruining precious cordage, risking the tent, but he waited at the door, and shouted twice more before a voice answered him and someone began to work at the lacings inside. In a moment more the storm flap lifted slightly, and one of the Ila’s servants looked at him, wide-eyed at the apparition that came to them out of the storm.

The servant did not release the flap or widen the opening. Marak thrust his arm in, to prevent the servant sealing it up again.

“I’m Marak Trin,” he said, pulling the aifad down, “and I’m here for Memnanan. His wife’s in labor. Bring him.”

“Stay there!” the servant told him, and disappeared.

Stay outside, in a storm that burned the skin, by bones the wind had scoured and dropped at the door.

Marak shoved the flap wider, tearing at the lacings he could reach, and widened it enough to step inside, into a canvas foyer lit with a brass lamp. He had brought the last of his cord-coil in with him, his link with Tofi. He cast it down there, brushed off enough sand from his robes to leave a haze on the figured carpet, and waited, fighting a dry cough and a mouth so dusty his tongue had stopped sticking to his teeth.

Memnanan came through to meet him, Memnanan—clean, well fed, showing none of the desperate condition of the rest of the camp, no more than the servant.

“Your wife,” Marak began, and coughed with the dryness of his throat: his voice shredded with it. “Your wife is in labor. She’s having some difficulty. I’ve rigged a guide rope. You can follow it over there.”

Memnanan’s worry was evident, but he made no move toward the door, rather had his hand on the curtain through which he had entered, as if at any instant he would go back to his duty. “I can’t,” Memnanan said. “I can’t go. Go back!”

Go back. A man dismissed his wife’s possible death with that go back. A man stood with his hand on that curtain as if it concealed the secrets of heaven and earth.

Something was wrong in this tent. Something was damned wrong, give or take a man’s natural embarrassment at having water enough, and food enough.

“Is something the matter with the Ila?” he asked.

“For your own safety—” Memnanan’s voice dropped. “Go.”

He was ready to. He believed the captain. He had no reason to doubt Memnanan’s loyalty to the Ila had just met the edge of his personal debt, and Memnanan warned him the Ila was in no good mood.

But he stood there… on the edge of his own debt to this man, even to the Ila, he hesitated to wonder what was behind Memnanan’s refusal.