“There are not enough beasts to carry us,” Marak said to the man. “If the party numbers over forty, we’re short, and it needs more supply than that.”

“To Pori,” the caravan master said, which might be his understanding of the mission.

“Off the edge of the Lakht. Beyond Pori.” There was no lying to the caravan master, above all else. This was the man on whose judgment and preparation all their lives depended.

“There is nothing beyond Pori,” the caravan master said.

“That’s why we need more beasts and more supply,” Marak said, and appealed to the captain with a glance. “I need more tents, more beshti, first-quality, far more than the weapons.”

The captain snapped his fingers and called over the aide who had brought the caravan master; and the aide went in and called out an au’it, who sat down on a bench in the courtyard and prepared to write on loose sheets. A slave brought a lamp close to her, and set it down on a bare wooden table, while small insects died and sparked in the flame.

“How many beasts?” the captain asked Marak.

“Ask the caravan master,” Marak said. “He knows that, or he knows nothing.”

“Ask wide, but prudently,” the captain said sternly to the master. “This is the Ila’s charge.”

The master, whose name was Obidhen, looked down and counted, a rapid movement of fingers, the desert way, that took the place of the au’it’s scribing. “Sixty-nine beasts,” Obidhen said. “The tents are enough, ten to a tent. More will mean more beasts, more food, more pack beasts, more work, more risk. I have slaves enough, my grown sons, and the two freedmen.”

“The tents are enough,” Marak agreed.

“This is a modest man,” the captain said to Obidhen. “The Ila finds merit in him, the god knows why.”

Obidhen looked at Marak askance, not having been told, perhaps, that his party consisted entirely of madmen.

But after that, the supplies must be gotten and loaded, and the caravan master went out with orders to gather what he needed immediately, on the Ila’s charge, and form his caravan outside the walls by the fountain immediately. Obidhen promised three hours by the clepsydra in the courtyard, having his beasts within the pens to the north of the city, and his gear and his tents, he said, well-ordered and waiting in the warehouses by the northern gate. He could find the rest, with the Ila’s seal on the order, within the allotted time.

“We will need for each man or woman a change of clothing,” Marak said. “Waterskins. Mending for their boots and clothing. And salves and medicines for the lot.”