The camp is bordered on the town side by a few long low buildings, and from between them a group is emerging not far from us. I see a man talking agitatedly with a few others, starting and stopping, and they are nodding and making brief comments. Makemin is beside himself. He talks, gesticulating vehemently, his face drawn. Suddenly his whole body snaps and his fist staves in the side of a crate. He storms across the camp, his knuckles dripping blood into the dust. I take him in as he passes. His cropped hair and his skin are the same color and that makes his scalp look splintered. Drab tan uniform with something like a split skirt hanging from under the tunic, over his trousers, short boots and gaiters, cross-chest strap to his belt and a large buttoned holster. Medium sized and solid man, boiling with fury, and nearly all one color, clothes and person. He looks like a lot of light brown dust just congealed itself around his eyes. I’ve never seen more rage in one face.

Makemin storms by and disappears into his tent, the one Silichieh kept pointing to, with a furious dashing aside of the flap door. I glance at Silichieh and he makes an expressive face, what’s the use?

“He’s no jolly good fellow.”

He tells me to try again in a few days. If anything comes up, there will surely be an announcement.

“Well, he’s been getting divorced for months now, and she’s not just divorcing him, but there’s this lawsuit about some property or some land. That case is separate but related. So he spends every free minute he gets in there, writing letters and filling out forms or something. He can’t possibly have wanted this assignment, and I don’t know what he did to get stuck with it but it must have been pretty bad or pretty stupid. And now he has to deal with half his soldiers deserting, and no more can be spared, and so on, and they won’t let him leave. It’s all pretty bad shape.”

“Did an Edek see you, too?”

“An Edek? No! Did one see you?”

I nod ruefully.

He runs his hand over the top of his head, then drops it into his lap and sniffs thoughtfully at the air.

“Why do you stay?” I ask.

He looks up at and a little into me. “Meqhasset is enchanted, everyone says. I want to see it.”

“Enchanted how?”

He drops his eyes sideways.

“I don’t know exactly. Whatever it is, is interior. No inhabitants have anything to do with it, and they don’t talk about it. I heard about it from my cousin. He had to go there, on a boat, and he heard stories. And he saw something too, I think, but he would never talk about it.”

“What does he think of you going?”