Our Akhian rescuers were in good spirits overall, even when the skies opened the next night and drenched us in chill rain. They laughed and clapped one another on the back, showing a gaiety wholly at odds with my usual impression of the nomads. I gathered that nobody of the Aritat had carried out that sort of secret, nighttime raid in generations; their enemies thought them incapable of it. Such efforts were not deemed as glorious as the more public sort of raid, charging into battle atop a spirited horse—but there was a romance to the activity that could not be denied. One of the fellows seemed to think this would impress the girl he hoped to marry, and preened as he rode.
It certainly had impressed me, to the point where it robbed me of anything resembling eloquence. When I attempted to thank Suhail for the risk he had taken on our behalf, it came out pure stammering incoherence. He fixed his gaze between the ears of his mount and said, “I should have moved more quickly. When you ran…”
Startled, I turned to stare at him. That figure I had seen in the distance—in my fright, I had not looked properly, had not recognized him as I ordinarily would. Not a Banu Safr guard after all.
“Perhaps it was for the best,” I said, swallowing. “Had you come to my aid then, who knows what would have happened to Tom.”
“You would not have been beaten,” Suhail answered, gaze still fixed. “But the attempt showed us which tent you were being kept in, which we hadn’t known. I am grateful to you for that.”
The robe and headscarf they put on Tom when he left the tent had not merely been for propriety; the clothing was a security measure, designed to conceal him from watching eyes. “How long were you out there?”
“Since the day before.” He straightened his shoulders and managed something like a smile. “And hardly needed, it seems. You were halfway out of the tent by the time I got there. All we did was provide camels for the ride home.”
That came far short of the mark—but I could not find the words to say it. Instead I asked, “Has anyone been told that we vanished? Outside of the camp itself, of course.”
I had not meant to make him look at me, but I succeeded. His head whipped around, the damp ends of his scarf swinging loose. “No. What could they do in time? I knew we could get you back.”
This last was said with more than a little bravado—but as he had indeed gotten us back, I could hardly argue. It was a relief to know the Scirling cavalry would not soon go thundering across the desert to start a war that was no longer needed… or at least, I hoped it would not be. “We’ll have to tell them now,” I said with a sigh. “If only because I’m certain there is more going on here than a few raids born of traditional grudges.” I told him what Tom and I had observed in camp: the signs of wealth, the unusual quantity of guns.
He frowned especially over the guns. “I thought they had too many,” he muttered, twisting to glance over his shoulder as if he could count the firearms from here. “Who could be paying them? The Muwala? Or—” He stopped himself, shaking his head. Such names would mean nothing to me, ignorant as I was of Akhian politics. What mattered was that we had evidence of conspiracy; others would be better positioned than I to investigate it.
The Aritat camp was not where we had left it. I was grateful anew for our rescuers, who saved us not only from the Banu Safr but also from wandering in the desert like something out of Scripture. I nearly lost my composure when I saw that Umm Azali had pitched our tent alongside her own, so that it was ready and waiting for Tom and me to collapse into it. She inspected our burns and other ills, pronounced them not so serious as to need Ghalbi attention, and doctored us as necessary, while Suhail reported to Hajj Nawl.
He returned to us just before sunset, when Tom was asleep and Andrew was in the tent next door obtaining our supper. I met him outside, so as to avoid waking Tom. “You will both be well, I hope?” he asked in a low voice.
“Yes, with a bit of rest,” I said. “A few of the blisters need care, but we will heal.”
“Good,” he said. “It will help if I can say that to my brother and your colonel.”
The words caught me unprepared, though they should not have. “You mean—you are going back to Qurrat?”
Suhail shrugged, looking away. The tents cast elongated shadows across the ground, and I could not help but think how much this camp resembled the one I had just fled. Nomads can tell the difference between the tribes based on little more than camel tracks, but such skill is well beyond me. “I have to,” he said. “I can’t write a letter saying, ‘misplaced your naturalists, so sorry, but got them back mostly in one piece.’”
When he put it like that, I supposed he could not. “I see.”
He hesitated, then said, “I do not like to abandon you, though.”
I could imagine what was going through his head. He went off to chase raiders, and came back to find us missing; now he proposed to leave us again. Who knew what might happen in his absence? “Do you think the Banu Safr will attack again?”
“Yes. We killed one of their own; they’ll want revenge for that. But we alerted the Firiyin when we were chasing the camel thieves—they’re another clan of the Aritat, and they’re nearby. They’ll keep an eye on the Banu Safr, and send warning if they see a force headed this way.”
How the nomads remained so aware of each other’s locations and movements in the vast expanse of the desert, I could not comprehend. I trusted his trust in them, though. I therefore said, “You would not be abandoning us. Your duty is to your brother, not to Tom or myself. And as you said, people in Qurrat need to know what happened here.”
During our previous travels, I had often thought of Suhail’s expression as being open and sunny. That was less true in Akhia, however, and now it closed off into a polite mask. “If you are certain.”
“The language is a difficulty,” I allowed, “but we have dealt with that before. Your responsibility lies in the city: I would not keep you from it.”
“Very well,” Suhail said—and he left the very next morning.
ELEVEN
It took two weeks and a pointed comment from my brother before I realized I had made a mistake.
Those two weeks were rather busy. We moved camp soon after our return, heading farther from the Banu Safr, even though the grazing to the south was not as good. (I later learned that the other Aritat clans mustered a force of fighting men, and these kept their enemy usefully occupied while we got away.) Our status as guests meant that Tom, Andrew, and I would not have been expected to assist, even had Tom and I not been recuperating from our injuries—but I chafed more than I expected to at the idleness. “At least there are camels to carry things for us,” Tom said wryly. He remembered as well as I did the challenge of shifting our gear through the Green Hell of Mouleen, with nothing more than our backs (and those of the Moulish we could persuade to assist us) to bear it.