“What should I do, sweet angel?” she asked him in the dream.

  In answer, the angel threw himself backward onto the ground before her, and lay there in the dust. And as he lay there, exposed and helpless, his wings useless and vulnerable and slack, there came creatures that at first seemed to be baboons, from their size, but then seemed to be rats, from their teeth and eyes and snout. They came to the angel, and sniffed at him, and when he did not move or fly, they began to gnaw at him. Oh, it was terrible indeed, and all the time his eyes looked at Thirsty, so sadly.

  I must save him, thought Thirsty. I must shoo away these terrible enemies. Yet in the dream she could not save him. She could not act at all.

  When the fell creatures finally left, the angel was not dead. But his wings had been chewed away, and in their place were left only two spindly, fragile arms, with barely a fringe under them to show where once the wings had been. She knelt by him, then, and cradled him up into her arms, and wept for him. Wept and wept and wept.

  “Mother,” said her middle son. “Mother, you’re weeping from a dream, I think. Wake up.”

  She woke up.

  “What was it?” asked the boy. He was a good boy, and she did not want to leave him.

  “I must take a journey,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “To a far place, but I’ll come home, if the Oversoul will let me.”

  “Why must you go?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “The Oversoul has called me, and I don’t know why. Your father is already working in the fields. Don’t tell him until he comes home for his noon meal. By then I’ll be gone too far for him to pursue me. Tell him that I love him and that I’ll return to him. If he wants to punish me when I come back, then I will submit to his punishment gladly. For I would rather be here with him, and with our children, than to be a queen in any other country.”

  “Mama,” said the boy, “I’ve known for a month that you would go.”

  “How did you know?” she asked. And for a moment she feared that he, too, might be cursed with the voice of the Oversoul in his heart.

  But it was no god-madness the boy had—instead it was common sense. “You kept looking to the northwest, and Father tells us sometimes that that was where you came from. I thought I saw you wishing to go home.”

  “No,” she said. “Not wishing to go home, because I am home, right here. But there’s an errand I must tend to, and then I’ll come back to you.”

  “If the Oversoul will let you.”

  She nodded. Then, taking a small bundle of food and a leather bottle filled with water, she set out on foot.

  I had no intention of obeying you, Oversoul, she said. But when I saw that angel, with his wings torn away because I did nothing to help him in his moment of need, I did not know if that angel represented my daughters or the man who gave them to me, or even perhaps yourself—I only knew that I could not stand in my place and let some terrible thing happen, though I don’t know what the terrible thing will be, or what I must do to stop it. All I know is that I will go where you lead me, and when I get there I will try to do good. If that ends up serving your purpose, Oversoul, I will do it anyway.

  But when it’s done, please, oh! Please, let me go home.

  IN BASILICA, AND NOT IN A DREAM

  It had come now to getting permission from Rasa, and Elemak was by no means certain she would grant it. Word throughout the house was that she had come home from her meeting with the Gorayni general in a foul humor, and no one could miss the fact that there were Gorayni soldiers in the street outside the house. Yet no matter what happened in Basilica, Elemak would not go back into the desert without a wife. And since she was willing, it would be Eiadh, with or without Rasa’s permission.

  But better with her permission. Better if Rasa herself performed the ceremony.

  “This is an inauspicious time,” said Rasa.

  “Don’t speak like an old woman, please, Aunt Rasa,” said Eiadh. Her voice was so soft and sweet that Rasa showed no sign of being offended at what could only be regarded as sauciness. “Remember that young women are not timid. We marry most readily when our men are about to go to war, or when times are hard.”

  “You know nothing of desert life.”

  “But you have gone out into the desert with Wetchik, from time to time.”

  “Twice, and the second time was because I failed to trust my memory of how much I loathed the first time. I can promise you that after a week in the desert you’d be willing to come back to Basilica as a bondservant, just so you could come back.”

  “My lady Rasa,” began Elemak.

  “If you speak again, dear Elemak, I will send you from the room,” said Rasa, in her gentlest tones. “I’m trying to talk sense to your beloved. But you needn’t worry. Eiadh is so besotted with love of—what, your strength? I suspect she has visions of perfect manhood in her heart, and you fulfill all those fantasies.”

  Eiadh blushed. It was all Elemak could do to keep from smiling. He had hoped this from the start—that Eiadh was not a girl who looked for wealth or position, but rather one who looked for courage and strength. It would be boldness, not ostentation, that would win her heart: So Elemak had determined at the outset of his wooing, and so it had turned out in the end. Rasa herself confirmed it. Elemak had chosen a girl who, instead of loving him as the Wetchik’s heir, would love him for those very virtues that were most evident in Elemak out in the desert—his ability to command, to make quick, bold decisions; his physical stamina; his wisdom about desert life.

  “Whatever dreams she has in her heart,” Elemak said, “I will do my best to make them all come true.”

  “Be careful what you promise,” said Rasa. “Eiadh is quite capable of sucking the life out of a man with her adoration.”

  “Aunt Rasa!” said Eiadh, genuinely horrified.

  “Lady Rasa,” said Elemak, “I can’t imagine what cruel intent you must have, to say such a thing about this woman.”

  “Forgive me,” said Rasa. She looked genuinely sorry. “I thought my words would be taken as teasing, but I haven’t the heart for levity right now, and so it became an insult. I didn’t intend it that way.”

  “Lady Rasa,” said Elemak, “all things are forgiven when Wethead soldiers stand watch in the street outside your house.”

  “Do you think I care about that?” said Rasa. “When I have a raveler and a waterseer in my house? The soldiers are nothing. It’s my city that I fear for.”

  “The soldiers are not nothing,” said Elemak. “I’ve been told how Hushidh unbound poor Rashgallivak’s soldiers from their loyalty to him, but you must remember that Rashgallivak was a weak man, newly come into my brother’s place.”

  “Your father’s place, too,” said Rasa.

  “Usurping both,” said Elemak. “And the soldiers that Shuya unbound were mercenaries. General Moozh is said to be the greatest general in a thousand years, and his soldiers love and trust him beyond understanding. Shuya wouldn’t find it easy to unweave those bonds.”

  “Suddenly you’re an expert on the Gorayni?”

  “I’m an expert on how men love and trust a strong leader,” said Elemak. “I know how the men of my caravans felt about me. True, they all knew they would be paid. But they also knew that I wouldn’t risk their lives unnecessarily, and that if they followed me in all things they would live to spend that money at journey’s end. I loved my men, and they loved me, yet from what I hear of General Moozh, his soldiers love him ten times more than that. He has made them the strongest army of the Western Shore.”

  “And masters of Basilica, without one of them being killed,” said Rasa.

  “He hasn’t mastered Basilica yet,” said Elemak. “And with you as his enemy, Lady Rasa, I don’t know if he ever will.”

  Rasa laughed bitterly. “Oh, indeed, he removed me as a threat from the start.”

  “What about our marriage?” asked Eiadh. “That is what we’re meeting about, isn’t it?”

  Rasa looked at her with—what, pity? Yes, thought Elemak. She hasn’t a very high opinion of this niece of hers. That remark she let slip, that insult, it was no joke. Suck the life out of a man with her adoration—what did that mean? Am I making a mistake? All my thought was to make Eiadh desire me; I never questioned my desire for her.

  “Yes, my dear,” said Rasa. “You may marry this man. You may take him as your first husband.”

  “Technically,” said Elemak, “it wasn’t permission we were seeking, since she’s of age.”

  “And I will perform the ceremony,” said Rasa wearily. “But it will have to be in this house, for obvious reasons, and the guest list will have to consist of all those who find themselves in residence here. We must all pray that Gorayni soldiers do not also choose to attend the ceremony.”

  “When?” asked Eiadh.

  “Tonight,” said Rasa. “Tonight will be soon enough, won’t it? Or does your clothing itch so much you want it to come off at noon?”

  Again, an insult beyond bearing, and yet Rasa plainly did not see that she was being crude. Instead she arose and walked from the room, leaving Eiadh flushed and angry on the bench where she sat.

  “No, my Edhya,” said Elemak. “Don’t be angry. Your Aunt Rasa has lost much today, and she can’t help being a little mean about also losing you.”

  “It sounds as though she’d be glad to get rid of me, she must hate me so,” said Eiadh. And a tear slipped from Eiadh’s eye and dropped, twinkling for a moment in the air, onto her lap.

  Elemak took her in his arms then, and held her; she clung to him as if she longed to become a part of him forever. This is love, he thought. This is the kind of love that songs and stories are made of. She will follow me into the desert and with her beside me I will fashion a tribe, a kingdom for her to be the queen. For whatever this General Moozh can do, I can do. I am a truer husband than any Wethead could ever be. Eiadh hungers for a man of mastery. I am that man.

  Bitanke was not happy with all that had happened in Basilica these past few days. Especially because he could not get free of the feeling that perhaps it was all his fault. Not that he had had much choice in those moments at the gate. His men had fought valiantly, but they were too few, and the mob of Palwashantu mercenaries was bound to win. What hope, then, would he have had, standing against the Gorayni soldiers who came out of nowhere and promised alliance with him?

  I could have called to the Palwashantu mercenaries and begged them to make common cause with me against the Gorayni—it might have worked. Yet at the time the Gorayni general had seemed so earnest. And there were all those firelights out on the desert. It looked like an army of a hundred thousand men. How was I to know that their entire army was the men standing at the gate? And even then, we could not have stood against them.

  But we could have fought. We could have cost them soldiers and time. We could have alerted all the other guards, and sent the alarm through the city. I could have died there, with a Gorayni arrow through my heart, rather than having to live and see how they have conquered my city, my beloved city, without even one of them suffering a wound serious enough to keep him from marching boldly wherever he pleases.

  And yet. And yet even now, as he was called into the presence of General Moozh for still another interview, Bitanke could not help but admire the man for his audacity, his courage, his brilliance. To have marched so far in such a short time, and to essay to take a city with so few men, and then to have his way when even now the guard outnumbered his army significantly. Who could say that Basilica might not be better off with Moozh as its guardian? Better him than that swine Gaballufix would have been, or the contemptible Rashgallivak. Better even than Roptat. And better than the women, who had proven themselves weak and foolish indeed, for the way they now believed Moozh’s obvious lies about Lady Rasa.

  Couldn’t they see how Moozh manipulated them to divide against each other and ignore the one woman who might have led them to effective resistance? No, of course they couldn’t see—any more than Bitanke himself could see that first night that, far from helping, the Gorayni stranger was controlling him and making him betray his own city without even realizing it.

  We are all fools when one wise man appears.

  “My dear friend,” said General Moozh.

  Bitanke did not take the offered hand.

  “Ah, you’re angry with me,” said Moozh.

  “You came here with Lady Rasa’s letter, and now you have her under arrest.”

  “Is she so dear to you?” asked Moozh. “I assure you that her confinement is only temporary, and is entirely for her protection. Terrible lies about her are circulating through the city right now, and who can tell what might happen to her if her house was not cordoned off?”

  “Lies invented by you.”

  “My lips have said nothing about Lady Rasa except my great admiration for her. She is the best of the women of this city, with the wit and courage of a man, and I will never permit a hair of her head to be harmed. If you don’t know that about me, Bitanke, my friend, you know nothing about me at all.”

  Which was almost certainly true, thought Bitanke. I know nothing about you. No one knows anything about you.

  “Why did you summon me?” asked Bitanke. “Are you going to strip away yet one more power from the Basilican guard? Or do you have some vile work for us to do that will humiliate and demoralize us all the more?”

  “So angry,” said Moozh. “But think hard, Bitanke. You feel free to say such things to me, and without fear that I’ll strike your head off. Does that seem like tyranny to you? Your soldiers all have their arms, and they are the ones keeping the peace in this city now—does that sound as though I’m a treacherous enemy?”

  Bitanke said nothing, determined not to let himself be taken in again by Moozh’s smooth talking. And yet he felt the stab of doubt in his heart, as he had so many times before. Moozh had left the guard intact. He had done no violence against any citizen. Perhaps all he meant to do was use Basilica as a staging area and then move on.

  “Bitanke, I need your help. I want to restore this city to its former strength, before Gaballufix’s meddling.”

  Oh, yes, I’m certain that’s all you desire—Moozh the altruist, going to all this trouble just so you can help the city of women. Then you’ll march your men away, rewarded with a warm glow in your heart because you know you leave so much happiness behind you.

  But Bitanke said nothing. Better to listen than to speak, at a time like this.

  “I won’t pretend to you that I don’t intend to turn things here to my own purposes. There is a great struggle ahead between the Gorayni and the miserable puddle swimmers of Potokgavan. We know that they were maneuvering to take control of Basilica—Gaballufix was their man. He was prepared to overthrow the city of women and let his thugs rule. And now here I am, with my soldiers. Have I or my men ever done anything to make you think our intentions are as ruthless or brutal as Gaballufix?

  Moozh waited, and at last Bitanke answered, “You have never been so obvious, no.”

  “I will tell you what I need from Basilica. I need to know, securely, that those who rule her are friends of the Gorayni, that with Basilica at my back I don’t have to fear any treachery from this city. Then I can bring supply lines through the desert to this place, completely bypassing Nakavalnu and Izmennik and Seggidugu. You know that this is good strategy, my friend. Potokgavan counted on our having to fight our way south to the Cities of the Plain; they counted on having at least a year, perhaps several years, to strengthen their position here—perhaps to bring an army here to try to stand against our chariots. But now we will command the Cities of the Plain—with my army in Basilica, none of them will resist. And then Nakavalnu and Izmennik and Seggidugu will not dare to make any alliance with Potokgavan. Without conquest, without war, we will have secured the entire Western Shore for the Imperator, years before Potokgavan would have imagined possible. That is what I want. That is all I want. And to accomplish it, I don’t need to break Basilica, I don’t need to treat you as a conquered people. All I need is to be certain that Basilica is loyal to me. And that purpose is better accomplished through love than through fear.”

  “Love!” said Bitanke derisively.

  “So far,” said Moozh, “I have not had to do anything that was not gratefully received by the people of Basilica. They have more peace and security now than in the past several years. Do you think they don’t understand that?”

  “And do you think the worse men of Dogtown and Gate Town and the High Road aren’t hoping that you’ll let them come into the city and rule here? Then you’d have your loyal allies—if you give them what Gaballufix promised, a chance to dominate these women who have barred them from citizenship for all these thousands of centuries.”

  “Yes,” said Moozh. “I could have done that. I could do it still.” He leaned forward across the table, to look Bitanke in the eye. “But you will help me, won’t you, so that I don’t have to do such a terrible thing?”

  Ah. So this was the choice, after all. Either conspire with Moozh or watch the very fabric of Basilica be destroyed. All that was beautiful and holy in this place would now be hostage to the threat of turning loose the covetous men from outside the walls. Hadn’t Bitanke seen how terrible that would be? How could he let it happen again?

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Advice,” said Moozh. “Counsel. The city council is not a reliable instrument of control here. It’s fine for passing laws governing local matters, but when it comes to making a firm alliance with the army of the Imperator, who’s to say a faction won’t arise within a week to strike down that policy? So I need to set up a single individual as . . . what . . .