They foraged frequently as they walked; camped in the open, heedless of detection. "If we’re arrested, they’ll take us to the army anyway," Kajpin pointed out with untroubled practicality. "What difference does it make?"
By day, Emilio could almost match that fatalism, but the nights were bad, spent wandering in charred, empty dream-cities, or pacing in the noisy darkness waiting for dawn. At last, the others would rouse, and they’d break their fast with leftovers from the previous night’s meal. Once or twice, Nico brought down some small game, but much of the meat went to waste. Emilio ate very little—his usual response to tension. Pacing restlessly until their journey resumed, he would lose himself in the silent chant: It will be well.
Eight days’ travel south of the mountains, they saw the glint and flash of equipment in the sunlight, flaring now and then on the horizon. By late afternoon, they could pick out a dark mass at the base of a dust plume when the rolling land lifted the army into sight.
"We’ll be there tomorrow," Tiyat said, but she looked west and added, "unless the rain comes sooner."
That night they all slept badly, and woke to haze and sultry air. Leaving the others to their breakfast, Emilio walked up a low rise, gazing out toward the army bivouac. The first sun had barely begun to climb, but even now the heat was making the ground dance and shimmer, and he was already sweating. Screw it, he thought, and called back to his companions, "We’ll wait here."
"Good idea," said Kajpin, joining him. "Let them come to us!"
They spent the morning sitting on the little hill, Nico and the Runa eating and chatting like picnickers waiting for a parade. But as the army grew closer and they saw the numbers, they fell as silent as Sandoz, ears straining for the first sounds. It was hard to tell if they truly heard or only imagined the thudding of feet, the clank of metal, the caroling of commands and commentary from the ranks; storm clouds now hid the western horizon with columns of black rain, and the breeze carried away all but the nearest noises.
"This is going to be a fierce one," Tiyat predicted uneasily, standing with her tail braced against a stiffening wind. The lightning in the west was nearly continuous, illuminating the underside of the thunderheads.
Kajpin stood as well. "Rain falls on everyone," she said without concern, but then added the more ominous phrase, "lightning strikes some." Tramping down the hillock to a small dip in the ground, she sat again, lowering her profile, calmly contemplating the soldiers’ ranks before remarking cheerfully, "Glad I’m not wearing armor."
"How long do you think before the storm comes?" Nico asked.
Emilio looked west and shrugged. "An hour. Maybe less."
"Do you want me to go to them and ask for Signora Sofia?"
"No, Nico. Thank you. Wait here, please," Sandoz said. He joined Tiyat and Kajpin, and repeated, "Wait here." Then, without looking back, he walked without hurry down the road until he’d halved the distance and stood alone: a small flat-backed figure, silver and black hair lifted and blown by the breeze.
By this time the vanguard had also come to a halt, and before long these ranks parted to make way for a curtained sedan chair borne from the bivouac by four Runa.
Emilio tried to prepare himself for the sight of her, the sound of her voice, but gave up and simply watched as the bearers set the chair down gently. With dispatch, they unfurled a temporary shelter like a veranda around the litter, its waterproof fabric the color of marigolds, bright in the sunlight east of the approaching storm. There was a short delay while an ingeniously designed folding chair was brought forward from an equipment wagon, snapped into shape and placed in front of the conveyance. Finally a staircase, hinged at the base of the litter’s entrance, was tipped outward, and he saw a tiny hand as it separated the curtains and took a proffered arm as support in her descent.
He had expected her to be altered but still lovely; he was not disappointed. The raking scars and the empty socket were a shock, but the harsh suns of Rakhat had rendered her face so finely creased that it seemed made of gauze; the seams of scar tissue were now merely three lines among many, and her remaining eye was lively and observant, and seemed to sweep her surroundings in continual compensation for her halved field of vision. Even the arc of her spine seemed graceful to him: a curve of curiosity, as though she had bent to examine some object on the ground that had caught her attention on her way to the camp chair. She sat, and looked up, her head tilted almost coyly, waiting for him. Delicate as a wren, with her small spare hands in her lap, she had in repose a skeletal purity: elegant and fleshless and still. "Thou art beautiful," he thought, "comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners…."
"Sofia," he said and held his hands out to her.
Her’s remained quiet. "It’s been a long time," she observed coldly, when he drew near. "You might have come to me first." She held his gaze with her one eye until his own dropped. "Have you seen Isaac?" she asked, when he could look at her again.
"Yes," he said. She stiffened slightly and took in a breath, and he understood then that Sofia had believed her son long dead, his name used heartlessly to lure more hostages to the djanada stronghold. "Isaac is well," he began.
"Well!" She gave a short laugh. "Not normal, but well, at least. Is he with you?"
"No—"
"They are still holding him hostage."
"No, Sofia, nothing like that! He is a person of honor among them—"
"Then why isn’t he here, with you?"
He hesitated, not wanting to wound her. "He—Isaac prefers to stay where he is. He has invited you to come to him." He stopped, looking past her to the troops visible beyond the golden tenting. "We can take you to him, but you must come alone."
"Is that the game?" she asked, smiling coolly. "Isaac is the bait, and they’d have me."
"Sofia, please!" he begged. "The Jana’ata aren’t—. Sofia, you’ve got it all wrong!"
"I have it wrong," she repeated softly. "I have it wrong. Sandoz, you’ve been here, what? A few weeks?" she asked lightly, brows up, one twisted by scar tissue. "And now you tell me that I have it all wrong. Wait! There is a word in English for this—now let me think…" She stared at him, unblinking. "Arrogance. Yes. That’s the word. I had almost forgotten it. You have come back, after forty years, and you have taken almost three whole weeks to get to know the situation, and now you propose to explain Rakhat to me."
He refused to be intimidated. "Not Rakhat. Just one small settlement of Jana’ata, trying not to starve to death. Sofia, do you realize that the Jana’ata are nearly extinct? Surely you didn’t mean—"
"Is that what they told you?" she asked. She snorted with derision. "And you believed them."
"Dammit, Sofia, don’t patronize me! I know starvation when I see It—"
"What if they are starving?" she snapped. "Shall I regret that a cannibal starves?"
"Oh, for crissakes, Sofia, they aren’t cannibals!"
"And what would you call it?" she asked. "They eat Runa—"
"Sofia, listen to me—"
"No, you listen to me, Sandoz," she hissed. "For nearly thirty years, we-but-not-you fought an enemy whose whole civilization was the purest expression of the most characteristic form of evil: the willingness to erase the humanity of others and turn them into commodities. In life, the Runa were conveniences for the djanada—slaves, assistants, sex toys. In death, raw materials—meat, hides, bones. Labor first, livestock in the end! But the Runa are more than meat, Sandoz. They are a people who have earned their liberty and won it from those who kept them in bondage, generation after generation. God wanted their freedom. I helped them to get it, and I regret nothing. We gave the Jana’ata justice. They reaped precisely what they sowed."