He looked, saw the Ila’s tent, and walked that way without a word to anyone. Hati and Norit went with him, perhaps under the same instruction, hearing the same voice. The au’it was not with them. He had no idea whether the au’it still attended them. Or whether the Ila, on second thought, needed an au’it with them any longer.

They went into the Ila’s tent, and inside, Memnanan was there, just putting on his belt. With him in crowded circumstances, in the tent foyer, were three of his men, an au’it, and two tribesmen, one Haga, one Keran—neither Aigyan nor Menditak, it seemed, had left anything to chance, or to the Ila’s goodwill. They had slept there, and had just begun to prepare for the day.

“Marak Tain,” Memnanan said, looking at him as a man might look at the risen dead.

“Alive,” Marak said. And added: “Grateful.”

Memnanan nodded slightly, acknowledgment.

Hati said darkly. “My husband saved the Ila’s life. But I doubt she’s grateful. She’s awake. I think we need to see her.”

Memnanan indicated the way, the curtain. “My men take my orders. The priests… have come here. They’ve been about. I haven’t let them in—waiting your orders, omi.”

The priests: a reservoir of the Ila’s own makers, a source, like a well, of her former independence.

But there was, he suspected, no renewal there: if they were overcome in her. Luz’s would win, every time, now, and every priest who took in the Ila’s makers would now take in Luz’s. That was the truth his own body told him. That was the answer the world had, from now on.

He pushed the curtain back. The Ila’s servants, rising up to bar the way, saw him and hesitated. He simply walked through with Hati and Norit, in Memnanan’s witness, and the tribesmen’s, and flung back the last curtain.

The Ila, aware of them as they were of her, sat in her chair, waiting for them. Aui’it attended her. Her white skin, the red robes—those were the same. But bones stood out in her hands as they did in his. They both had given up substance to the struggle.

Hati and Norit stopped one on a side of him. They were alike now, all together, all part of a set.

The Ila moved her hand, and the aui’it settled on the mats on either side of her and opened their books.

“You’ve had your way,” the Ila said. “You think you’ve won.”

“Luz has won,” Marak said, but he was unwilling, himself, to concede that without limits. He added, for himself: “So far.”