There had been a time breathing the air outside had burned a man’s chest, a time when even beshti could not thrive above ground. In those days they had gone out with masks and machines.

But Luz said the sea survived. Luz had already loosed makers into the creatures he brought back, to be released again. And he had dug down under thin patches of new snow and sowed seeds as far as the cliffs… being born a villager, he found himself doing what a villager did, and planting crops, of a sort, whatever might come of them.

The Ila said they had done all that before, too, and with a great deal more work, too, except they had had the vermin to carry the makers. She and Luz held long, long discussions.

So, well, he scattered seeds. With no vermin in the world to eat them, they would wait. Seeds were good at waiting.

By midday he rode into clear view of the tower, over a remembered last rise in the land.

He was surprised. He saw tents, white tents far outlying the walls they were building, a stubborn little clump of them well out from the tower. He would all but wager those were the an’i Keran. And that other one, equally separated, in an opposite direction—those might well be Haga.

It was spring. He supposed Luz herself might have encouraged this sudden flowering into the open, if it had not been a spontaneous rebellion. The tribes were getting restless under a solid roof.

It was a very good sight, those tents. But the tribes would have to devise a way to signal their differences, some badge of color and pattern. He was sure they would find it.

He crossed the last flat before the tower hill, leaving solitary tracks in the snow behind him, seeing a pattern of tracks going out to the tents. There were beshti out there, on either hand.

And being the only traveler out of the west, and having all that activity outside the tower, he was not surprised to be noticed.

He was not surprised to hear voices, Marak, Marak, Marak—and not surprised to feel that increasing warmth in the world that defined home, wherever it was.

His wives knew now he was coming. They were paying attention.

They came out from the tower to meet him as he rode up toward the doors, Norit anxious to welcome him home, Hati eager to ask what he had seen.

The children came running out, too, Lelie’s daughter’s youngsters, and his and Hati’s great-grandchildren running across the light coating of snow… that young-looking man that had come out was Memnanan’s tall son Memnanet, father to several generations himself, with Lelie.