The au’it had moved up beside them. She wrote as she had written all the conversations before, all of which the Ila now knew—at least those the au’it might think most important.

It was their au’it, he decided, in one glance, and then in the next, had his doubts return.

He knew their own au’it’s face, her mannerisms. And how often in the past had it been some different woman, when the au’it frequently wore the veil, against the unkind sun and the drying wind? Their own au’it might still be reporting. The Ila, riding with the au’it, ahead of them, might be making her own plans, outside Memnanan’s knowledge.

The Ila had no need to ask him questions, if that was the case. In the au’it’s report she proved to herself whether he would lie to her, or to his companions, and when he posed himself that question he grew calmer: he never had lied, so far as he recalled. If she was sane, she would know he had never worked against her.

Perhaps the Ila even trustedhim, as far as she trusted anyone, even Memnanan. That was an unlooked-for conclusion.

But whatever the Ila thought, whatever she schemed, whatever she intended toward him, if her intentions agreed with his, getting this mass of people down off the Lakht before the hammer came down, he decided not to confuse the issue any further with questions.

Or reports.

Or speculations.

For the next number of hours, her motives and his motives might both demand they get off the Lakht and stay alive.

For the next number of hours, if that was her thought, it was good enough.

Chapter Twenty-Three

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In the abyss above the sky, I saw death. Below the heavens, I have made all choices I could make not for lives, but for life itself.

—The Book of the Ila

They rested for two measured hours on the tribal clock, simply looking at the sun and trusting the sun, no matter the fate of the world, to stay on its course. They pitched no tents, only unrolled their mats. The Keran and the Haga drank very, very little, allowing the water to stay in their mouths for as long as possible. They gave sweet water to their beshti, as much as they could give, to sustain the legs that carried them. They sorted even the sparse goods that a tribe owned, paring down the weight the beshti carried to the least possible, while the sky above them was blue.

At that stop, the horizon of the world was closer than it ever had been. The drop into the rolling flat of the east was clear and distinct to see, seeming so close that Marak would have driven himself and his own to keep moving and to reach it, and to go down, but the distance in that vision was deceptive because of the scale. It was another long walk away, and desperate as they were, they had no choice but to rest—and to ask the Ila, through Memnanan, to be wise: to do as the tribes did, and to cast away anything that could be cast away. The tribes made a small heap of what they abandoned. Yet nothing from the Ila’s baggage joined it, and for the Ila, her servants spread a side flap as a canopy and a curtain for a wind-break: the Ila would not lie down in the witness of others, and what she owned, she would not cast away.

Hati had lain down with her veil pulled over her face, like the dead. Norit rocked Lelie… rocked sometimes, simply because she was mad, but it chanced to calm Lelie, all the same, while it calmed Norit.

“Soon, soon, soon,” Norit said to no one in particular, and exhausted herself, refusing rest. Marak saw how worn she had come to look, how the bones stood out in the hand that rested on Lelie’s back.

It was no wonder. He had watched it happen. He blamed Luz, and hoped Norit had strength enough to carry her down the cliffs. The child—Lelie—was a hazard on the descent, when a suddenly ill-placed weight, like too much weight, could cause a besha to miss its footing, and where one besha falling could wreak havoc on those below. But Norit had taken Lelie back. And he summoned up faith that Norit would make it—hope that she would make it. She was a better rider than Patya: she had become so, on their ride. He appointed the man to go beside Elagan, and keep her steady, and he appointed another to go beside Memnanan’s mother and his two frail aunts.

He trusted them. He trusted their own party to get down intact: the tribes knew what they were doing, if the Ila’s men did not.

But what disasters would happen after, what would happen if the hammerfall overtook them on the descent, what would happen if the weather turned, what would happen when inexperienced villagers attempted to ride down the cliffs under adverse conditions—during earthquake, or in storm… those were questions with one plain answer, and he blotted it out, as far as he could, while anger at the Ila’s obstinacy churned in him—about her decisions, he could do nothing.

He thought he should station someone to check the villagers’ loads before they started down. He should have someone to advise certain villagers, inexpert riders, to walk, and certain others to adjust their packs and lower the height of them before attempting the descent.

He might find some tribesman that brave, to linger back behind the tribes, to stand among the damned and save those he could. It galled him to have to ask that of the tribesmen who knew better and had managed better all their lives, and one part of him said he should not; but he imagined the calamity among the helpless and the weak, the unjust, undeserved calamity of villagers who had never learned the Lakht and had no reason to know, and the ondat, serene in the heavens, hurling stars at men and women as innocent as the old slaves in the garden. There were gods-on-earth, and gods in the skies, so far as men of his ability could ever deal with them, and reasongave way to blind luck and justicehad no place in the reckoning: like the wind, death just was, and he knew he was going to fail to save some—and more than some.

His orders from Luz were running out. He had gotten them this far. He considered the Ila’s arrogant canvas, and began to ask himself what he himself was worth, more than the rest, and why should hetell another man to stand back at the beginning of the descent and advise villagers on the way to get down?

His job was to save lives and get them on their way. But he had done that. Norit would see the rest to safety. She was their guide. Anything he could do, Hati could do.

Was he holier and more righteous than the Ila in her shelter?

And then he looked at Hati, asleep beside him, and knew in his heart that Hati would stay with him, no matter what. It was never just one life that he would risk, taking that hazardous post for himself: he would kill Hati by that decision.

And if Norit was not enough, if they lost Hati, too, what application of common sense were all these people going to get in their leadership?

None from the Ila, nothing that did not favor her own comfort, her own survival above all. The people deserved some leader who cared about them? And did that attribute make him holy? Or better?

He ceased to have answers. He thought that he should go down. He thought that he should stay alive as long as he could, and do the most that he could, because he had no way of knowing what might happen after they reached the bottom, or where he might find a use.

But if he went down, what man couldhe ask to stay? Or should he ask any man who might live to risk his life?

He was looking at the ex-slaves, at Mogar and Bosginde, men who least of all had relatives depending on them, but they had each other, and could he ask those two men to risk their lives, even when no village would value those two lives? Heknew what good men they had come to be, and how, in any other time, if there weretime left in the world, those two would turn up masters of their own caravans… but there was no time left for good men to do anything but scramble with the rest and stay alive. If all the good perished, it left only the rest to have their way. And was thatgood?