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sword and dagger she held out to him. Tarani did not look back as she walked through the gateway, but I could guess what she was thinking.
    The Fa’aldu claim to be uninvolved in the world, totally neutral
, I thought.
But they seem to know everything that goes on. They’re sworn to aid anyone in survival-type need, but they’ve helped us far beyond that oath. What do they think of Tarani becoming High Lord? How do they view their own role in that?
    These thoughts ran through my head as I poured water from the pouch into one of the troughs built against the outer wall of the compound. The troughs were made of nested semicylindrical tiles, supported by small salt blocks the size of large bricks. The main watering troughs were inside the walls, down the center of the large open space between the family residence and the line of cubicles that served as overnight lodging for travelers. These on the outside were provided for the use of caravans so large that both vleks and people could not be accommodated inside.
    I petted all the sha’um once more, as they drank, and told my three to put some distance between them and the Refreshment House before they settled down. After Keeshah finished drinking, he rubbed the top of his head across my midsection, then waited to lead his family away.
    When I returned to the gate, the older boy was waiting for me. To my surprise, he bowed and said: “The Captain of the Sharith honors us.”
    “What is your name?” I asked him.
    “I am called Thuren, sir,” he said, a little uncertainly.
    “I expect to speak with Charol tomorrow, Thuren. I will tell him how responsibly and graciously you represented him tonight.”
    The boy led me to one of the cubicles on the “visitor” side of the compound. “The High Lord refused to let me rouse anyone else, in order to offer you Fa’aldu shelter,” he explained in a whisper. He pulled aside the fabric curtain that hung across the doorway. Light spilled out, and he avoided looking inside. “Rest well, Captain,” he said.
    I wished him good night and stepped inside, letting the fabric fall behind me. The cubicle was lined with three large salt blocks which, covered with thin pads, served as sleeping ledges. Tarani was already stretched out on one, and the sight of her nearly asleep made my own eyelids feel heavy. I lifted the glass chimney from the lamp which stood in a niche in the wall, sighted the ledge I had chosen for my bed, and blew out the candles flame.
    The vleks woke us just past dawn, when their handlers stirred and began packing the caravan to move out. The vleks could draw small carts or carry baskets which were tied into a brace and rested across their backs.
    I sat up, rubbing my eyes, then stretched. Across from me, Tarani’s eyes opened. She smiled.
    “It is a good sound, is it not, when we are not causing it?” She sat up. “I cannot claim that I have ever led an easy life,” she said, “but those days disguised as a vlek handler, always smelling of the beasts, always struggling with them, are ones I would not care to relive. I always had the fear that I would come to think like them, to be stupid and stubborn and nasty.”
    I laughed. “Well, that’s one thing I didn’t have to fear,” I said, picking up the belt and baldric I had laid aside sometime during the night. “I started out that way.”
    “I shall not deny that,” she said, and for a moment her eyes held mine.
    I wondered what she was thinking.
She could be remembering any of a hundred painful moments
, I thought,
when my words struck at her from distrust and jealousy, when my silence limited her knowledge of herself, when my needs took precedence—not gently—over hers and Yayshah’s.
    Suddenly she took her eyes away and dragged her saddlebags up from where they had lain on the floor into her lap. She opened one and began digging in it carefully with her hands. “We have grown a great deal, each of us,” she said, and looked up, smiling again.