“Oh, I know she knows. But you don’t know as much as you think. Neither does she.” The Ila rose from her chair and stood, red-robed, not a tall woman, a figure of flame red silk, with that white, white skin unmarred by the desert. “Memnanan has a new commander.”

There had been the instant in which thought simply failed him. But rational thought came back, began to assess the ground, the conditions, the hazards. There were curtains to either side of the Ila’s chair. He knew the configuration of the Ila’s tent from outside, how servants’ tents abutted. He knew his father’s tactics, he knew that curtain might never have gone back if his father was unwilling to have this confrontation, even if the Ila willed it.

There might be ten, twenty men behind those side curtains. Or aui’it. Or simply servants.

Go back, Memnanan had warned him with all his might, and that had said everything about Memnanan’s situation… and the danger.

“My mother would warn you against your choice,” he said to the Ila, with all possible meaning. “You’re being a fool.”

Did that score on his father? Tain’s face, image of his own as it might someday be, held no expression for an enemy, and he had become that. Kaptai’s son, the madman, the embarrassment, had necessarily become the enemy.

“More,” he said, chasing whatever quarry he might have started in the Ila’s mind, “did I mention that he’d killed four other Haga? Did he mention Menditak and Aigyan have sworn water peace on his account, and mean to kill him? Your ally brings you every tribesman alive for enemies.”

“I’m aware of their opinion,” the Ila said. “But you take Luz’s orders. Is that better? You can take his orders, now… or you can decide not to. Luz may have other intentions. What will those be?”

Prudence told him to lie, but the business between him and his father said his father would never believe a soft answer. “Common sense says he’s a dead man. And he knows it. He won’t say a word to me, will he? Will he?”

There was, in fact, only a stony stare, a stony, unpleasant stare; and he knew what his father had come to do, and what his father had had to accept, and the conditions he had had to take… the Ila’s outrageous offer: life, and the unlikeliest, most fragile alliance.

“He’s ashamed. He’s disgraced himself with Kais Tain, he’s alienated the tribes, he’s sold out his own village, and he’s sold himself to you to seal the bargain because he has nowhere else to go. Like me, like me, father, just the same. Don’t tell me otherwise.”