As for Pori, like any entity on the Lakht, it valued commerce and took it where it could, barring feuds or weather. And it kept its neutrality. Promising everything, it had not joined Tain, either.

Clearly the village had suffered from the recent storm, and was still digging out. Tall dunes stood against walls, rising up to the eaves of some houses. Sand choked the streets. Roofs were missing patches of tile. But the black netting was intact. That said everything. Pori would safeguard that so long as the village lived.

And as they rode down among the rocks, they at last saw villagers, tiles or shovels in hand, who stopped their work on the far side of a house, and at the first sight of them, shouted: “A caravan, a caravan!” so that the whole village poured out to see.

Tofi brought his caravan to a halt at the well, at the opening of the double crescent of houses, where they surrounded a wide, sandy commons.

Here stood a stone-covered well, with troughs for animals. Even water as abundant as fed a village could not be allowed to stand under the sun and be half-drunk up by the heat: it was too precious for that. Pori—in the lowlands it would have been Kais Pori—had built a fine stone vault above ground for its well, with walls thicker than the stretch of a man’s arms. That well house protected the water, and likely fed a great amount into a deep cistern. It ran out into troughs for the beasts only when a strong man pulled a lever and let it flow out.

Already there was no holding the beasts, who knew what was their due and who liked sweet water better than foul. They crowded up to the trough, where as yet there was no water, and pushed and shoved for dominance.

Meanwhile the authorities of the village had come out from a house nearest the well, many-walled and rich.

“I have a letter!” Tofi said, having gotten down with the agility of his years, and waved it for all to see, a crumpled paper they had saved from Obidhen’s death, bearing the Ila’s red seal.

The lord of the village came to Tofi, took the offered letter, and read it.

“A caravan from Oburan! The Ila’s charge!” the village lord cried with a wave of his hand. “The Ila’s charge, all they desire in water or in supplies! Open up the pipes!”

The water master had moved to his post, either to guard or to loose the precious commodity, and at that word, turned and hammered the tap open, letting the water flow from the stone mouth. It ran along the dry stone troughs. The stronger beasts, shouldering one another, trailing and treading on the reins that should have held them, moved in.