Chula, meantime, I left in her father’s tent. I did not formally cast her off before a holy man; after the first rampaging, I had lost interest in the drama. Officially she remained my wife, but not one misunderstood that I had put her aside. Finnuk tenaciously clung to the hope that I would relent, and did not claim the emerald I offered him, though he retained the gold. I never saw her about the krarl. I think they deliberately kept her from my sight.

I have said Demizdor was my world in those months. This made me less aware of other things. Even fighting I got more wounds because of it, growing careless, though never feckless enough to let myself be killed. But I was stone-blind to Tathra. Afterward I cursed myself for my stupidity. By then the hour for cursing and for wisdom was past.

I had gone to see her the day following the Skoi raiding, when I had taken Demizdor to Kotta and thrown Chula back at Finnuk.

Tathra sat straight as a spear, but already her body was thickening, ripening with what was in it. I did not like this look, this infection on her which was of Ettook’s making. Her face was hidden by the shireen, and she did not attempt to remove it. Nor did she wear Chula’s emerald, which I had given her those years before. Instead she offered it to me in her hand.

“Have you come for this, Tuvek? Since you have disowned her, she had better have the jewel. It was her dowry.”

“Now, Mother,” I said, “I did not imagine you concerned for Chula’s rights.”

“If you do not come for the jewel, why come to me?” she said.

“Why, to see you,” I said, “to greet you. I have been away, or did you forget?”

“I forget nothing,” she said. “It is the mother’s agony that she forgets nothing. I remember your birth, I remember you at my breast. I remember how you grew to be my pride. And now I am nothing to you. It is the son who forgets.” Her voice was bitter, and old and dry as a husk. I knew the whims of women when they carried a child, and assumed it no more than that.

“Well, I am here. I have come to see you.”

“I was here to be seen yesterday,” she said. “You did not come. You went in preference to your city whore, the witch with lard-pale hair, who ensorcels you. Do you take no heed of my warnings? Am I so little to you at last?”

It was the eternal cry of mother for son. I might have recognized it and dealt differently with her, but her masked face, her wizened voice, her woman’s foolishness angered me. I had hoped myself done with this dire prognostication of evil spells.

“Don’t try my patience,” I said. “You know how things are between us, you and I. You know nothing of my way with the Eshkir.”