The world had changed its coat. It had been all blowing sand. Now it was murky grays, sandy mud, and a dull sheen of reflections off rain-pocked water. It was as if a well had overflowed. Some water-au’it had not been doing her job.

He shut his eyes. They balanced the litter on two bundles of baggage. Hati bent and kissed him. He heard a small baby crying. Then Lelie set up a howl. A new baby had come out of nowhere and cried, taking attention, and Lelie, he thought, was jealous, and angry.

He went to sleep again. When he waked, he saw tribesmen carrying the litter, tribesmen afoot and walking. He found that curious and went back to sleep.

Mostly he slept, and waked again, once as the earth shivered, then again at a change of bearers.

Then, a distant whisper, he heard his voices. Marak, they said. Marak, Marak.

Calmly. A part of the world. Contact, with Luz.

He drew a wider breath, ignoring the pain in his ribs. He reached up an unwounded finger, pulled down the stiff canvas that covered him above the chin, and gave a critical eye to the world.

It was unremitting gray overhead. The sun went veiled. He ventured more of his hand into the sunlight, and realized then something strange about his hand, as if it was suddenly someone else’s. It lacked the killing-marks. He extracted it completely from the canvas, held it up to the light, and saw only the reddened trace of the marks that had existed on his fingers.

A part of him, a part of his former life, was wiped out.

He shoved the canvas farther back, blankets and all as the bearers carried him, heedless, and he looked at the skin of his chest, which showed only the faintest trace of the abjori mark, as his hands showed the redness of healing cuts, and the wound in his side was sealed, swollen, painful.

“Lie still,” Hati said from the lofty height of her saddle. Her besha moved with lordly ease beside the struggling bearers. “Don’t make trouble.”

“What happened to the Ila?” he asked, but once he asked, he knew, he knew her location, as he knew Hati’s, Norit’s, Lelie’s, at every moment he was near them. And the new one.

“You beat her,” Norit said, also from above. She was riding on his other side, with Lelie on her saddle. “She’s with the priests. Memnanan’s gone to see to her. We know where she is. Always.”

So did he. She was behind him in the line. As weak and sick as he was, he thought, and with the remnant of a hellish headache.

He lay back and drew up the blankets against the chill in the air. He slept again, slept until they camped and raised the tents.