A moment of darkness. “Marak,” a voice said then, asking his attention, and someone lifted his head and gave him water, an abundance of water, as many drinks as he wanted. He was fever-hot. Heat swept through him then like a furnace, as if water were all the makers had waited to have.

Thunder walked overhead. Water dripped somewhere. It sounded like a fountain, dripping and gurgling like the Ila’s Mercy-water, the universal condition of life, had become that abundant.

Someone came at that point, someone who wanted Hati, and Norit, wanted them urgently. He thought it was Patya. He dreamed it was Patya, who bent and kissed him before she took away all his help, all his protection, leaving him entirely alone with the Ila.

But shadows immediately came and peered down at him, a handful of veiled, armed shadows, who had no possible reason for being where they were, in the Ila’s tent.

They retreated and sat, with their weapons, and they watched… Keran, he was sure. But were those Haga, sitting with them?

“Your helpers,” the Ila said to him, faintly, wryly, from beside him, in this makeshift bed they shared, of pillows and blankets and blood-soaked carpet. “I made a good throw, didn’t I? Now, one way or the other, we become allies… and what will we do with Luz, do you think? Or what will Luz do with you and me?—Or what, do you suppose, will we all do with the ondat?”

“I don’t know,” he said, in pain, not knowing where to take the Ila’s words, or how to answer. The fever produced unbearable headache, and swelled the flesh around the wounds. He had nothing to do with the Ila’s questions. The makers were at work. He had to endure it.

And the way he had held Lelie, and shed makers into her blood, he had pressed his wounds to the Ila’s wounds, and hers to his—both of them, makers shared. Makers at all-out war not only with the wounds… but with each other, live or die, win or lose.

He understood the Ila’s dealing with Tain, when she caught him. What else was she to use for weapons, when her makers had consistently lost their battles with Luz’s makers?

What else was she to use, when Tain fell into her hands?

Tain, being Tain, to be sure, meant to seize power for himself… he had not made his move yet, but that had been his intention, and surely the Ila knew it, being old as the world and still alive.