The translator grinned at her. His curiosity and humor would make him a fine ally, Zanja thought, as he turned to participate in the rapid, complicated discussion that Zanja could not follow. The fleas continued to bite, and Zanja practiced her deep breathing, while the people talked interminably. She understood that they were still, after all this time, arguing about Karis’s name. She put herself into a listening trance, and came awake only when the man said, Tarwein‑zan‑ja, does Ka wish to continue to be known as Ris?“

“Of course. Why wouldn’t she?”

“Ris is a lost‑name, a wilderness name. And now she has come home.”

Zanja said, “Would it be wrong for her to remember that she once was lost?”

“No, no,” he said. “It is her choice, but she may ask her clan to give her a new name, now that she has come home.” The people talked some more. The man asked Zanja how many of the people she named were dead. When she told him that Dinal had died in the Fall of the House of Lilterwess, the translator shook his head morosely. “Then Karis’s name is too short.”

Zanja named some of the still‑living people who had befriended Karis in Meartown: the forge master Palo who taught her all he knew, and Mardeth who had watched the gate and reminded Karis to eat. More argument ensued, but at last the people gathered there seemed satisfied. “We will call her Ka‑ris‑ri‑lo‑seth‑ja‑han‑il‑ric‑ba. It is a very short name for a woman her age. But since she has a child in her shu’shan,perhaps she will avoid losing her name entirely as her friends die.”

“I will urge her to increase her shu’shan,”said Zanja gravely, though in her opinion Karis was not doing so badly for a woman whose life had hardly begun until five years ago. Unlike Karis, Zanja would have had a very lengthy name if the Sainnites had not killed her entire shushanin a single night’s work. Now her Juras name would be shorter than Karis’s. She knew from harsh experience that it was indeed a dreadful fate to be, by Juras standards, nameless, for so she had been for the months after the massacre, before she met Karis and her own shu’shanbegan to increase. Then she smiled a little, realizing that despite the fleas and smoke and weariness, her fire logic had not failed her, and she was starting to understand these people. She said, “Will your people hear what I have to say now?”

“They are listening to you, Tarwein‑zan‑ja.” Indeed, the people had all fallen silent, and even the children had ceased to fret.

“I will tell you a story,” she said in the Juras language. Her pronunciation, she knew, could only be atrocious, and the vocabulary provided in the book she studied had not taught her even half the words she needed to know. She did what she had always done: she improvised, while her ally aided her by re‑saying the words she terribly mispronounced, or offering other words that carried her meaning more clearly.

“There was a tiny man who wore a black coat and was named Little‑Biting‑Dust. I am afraid I cannot tell you all his names, for his shushanis very great, and saying his name would take all day. One day, Little‑Biting‑Dust found a dark magic in his dinner, and he ate it. Though he was just a tiny man, so tiny that he hardly could be seen, this dark magic made him powerful, for from that day forward everyone he bit with his little teeth sickened and died. You see, the dark magic had become part of his blood, and when he bit someone, the magic went into their blood too, and killed them.

“Little‑Biting‑Dust boasted to his shushanthat although he once had been almost nothing, now he was a man of great importance. They begged to know his secret, and he said, ‘You must follow me, and watch. When I bite someone, wait for that person to fall sick. Then you bite that same person, and the dark magic will go into your blood, and you will be as powerful as I.’ So his numberless shu’shanall did as he said, and soon they all had his power. His clan became the most important people in the north. People came and bowed down to Little‑Biting‑Dust and gave him everything they owned, even their clan goatherd, in exchange for his promise not to bite them. But as you can tell, he was a very evil man, and he broke all his promises, and he bit everyone.

“Soon, Little‑Biting‑Dust’s clan began to starve. They had killed every person and animal in their town, except for the rats, and now they had nothing to eat, for even they would not eat rats. ‘What shall we do?’ they cried.

“ ‘We must go to a new town,’ said Little‑Biting‑Dust. Now, as I said, these people were very small, so they could ride the rats to the next town. Soon, the people in that town also began to sicken and die. There was nothing they could do to fight back, for Little‑Biting‑Dust’s people were so small and fast that nobody could catch them.

“But then one day, there came into that town a woman with a short name who had a lot of goats she did not want, who had the gift of the Ka‑clan and was a sham‑re.Her magic was stronger than Little‑Biting‑Dust’s magic, and soon the people who were sick began to get better, rather than dying. Little‑Biting‑Dust was angry, and he jumped onto her leg to bite her, but she reached down and caught him by the coat collar. ‘Now I have you, you evil little man,’ she said, and she put him in her mouth and cracked him open with her teeth. And so died Little‑Biting‑Dust, and not a day too soon!

“But by now, Little‑Biting‑Dust’s shushanwere numerous as the blades of grass that sprout up during the spring mud, and they all fled the wrath of the short‑named woman, riding on the rats. Some went east and some went west, and she chased them and found them and killed them all. But some went south and they hid in a place they thought they never would be found: a good place where the skies are big and the people sing with loud voices, a place far away from the short‑named woman’s home. ‘She will never find us here,’ they said, and they started to bite the people, and the people began to fall ill. ‘That sham‑rewill not stop us from becoming the most important people in the world!’

“But then one day the sham‑rearrived, for Little‑Biting‑Dust’s relatives had settled in the home of the short‑named woman’s mother. And there was nowhere left for the little people with the dark magic to run, for after the grassland come the steppes, and after the steppes comes the waste, and no one has ever crossed the waste alive. So they all prepared for a great battle, and today that battle begins.”

Zanja awoke from a long nap and found herself alone beside a smoldering fire. Her sleep had not relieved her weariness, but instead had sent it deeper, into the center of her bones, where it filled her marrow with lead. Yet, like all her weary awakenings during this long winter and spring, she awoke satisfied. At last she had something to do, and it required all her faculties, body and mind. She got up, groaning but not complaining.

The rain had eased, and the Juras had built a bonfire in which they were burning everything that might shelter a flea. The children danced; the young people wildly flung objects into the fire. The old people sang: a wild, big noise that issued from the deep of their chests and made Zanja feel giddy and powerful. Inside the main hut, she found a pot of something and helped herself to it, then ducked outside to avoid the dust of cleaning. A woman told her that J’han was in the sick hut, but Karis had gone away. Zanja’s informant gestured vaguely.

Bringing their rain capes, Zanja climbed the cliff and looked out over the empty land, where the sky still hung so low she felt that she could touch it with her hands. Karis was easy to spot: the tallest thing between Zanja and the horizon. As Zanja drew closer, she saw that Karis sat beside a long, shallow stretch of standing water. An ecstatic cacophony of toad voices croaked the praises of this temporary pond. A pair of long‑legged birds, white as clouds, stalked through the clear water, snatching up the love‑frenzied toads to feed their own hatchlings.