“What are you going to do?” Martien asked.
“I don’t know. Try to get to whoever’s in charge. Sliffisunda, maybe. Gendra, maybe. Or that Laugher, Ilze. The message I got said he was involved.”
“How did the general get so far down the river? He couldn’t have left more than a few hours before you.”
“He’s in better shape than I am, Martien. I have to face it. I’ve been a fool. Starving myself. It felt right, you know. Light. As though I were taking off weights, enabling myself to fly. I saw everything so clearly. The light was limpid. Nothing was complicated. I’d half convinced myself God was talking to me through Pamra Don. All the time it was only pride pretending to be something else. And Pamra Don the same. Familial stupidity, maybe. Well, I sent her into this. Now I have to get her out.”
Far down the valley, Queen Fibji heard the reports of her own scouts. They had not expected this great mob of people. They had not expected to find the originator of the anti-Noor doctrine here, either, but Peasimy Plot was said to be present as well.
Though mobs were always dangerous in the Queen’s opinion, and Strenge agreed with her, this one on this occasion was doubly, trebly dangerous. No matter what the general had said. She was not sure she believed him. If she believed him, she was not sure he could do what he promised. Too late, she told herself. His pleas for forgiveness had come too late.
“I think we’d better move south, away from this, don’t you?” she said to Strenge, breaking into his musing.
“I think it would be wise,” he agreed soberly. “I’ll call Noor-count and march.” He was out of the tent before she could say anything more, and she had to summon her own people with a trembling hand on the bells. “Pack it up,” she said. “We’re moving within the hour.”
She did not want to think about the mob. General Jondrigar had just left her, and she did not wish to think of what they had said to one another, either. She distracted herself by helping with the packing, scandalizing her people thereby.
From the air, the steppe looked like a carpet of ash and dun and grayed green. Pamra Don stared down at it, fascinated despite herself. If she could convince some of the fliers to carry her like this, her crusade could grow that much faster. Less time would be spent in travel. Though perhaps it was not necessary for the crusade to grow any more than it had. She had not spoken to Lees Obol yet, and when she did, perhaps he would believe her all at once as the general had done. Neff flew beside her, turning his shining face toward hers in the high, chill air. “Don’t you think so?” she cried. “Neff?”
He didn’t answer but merely sailed there, driven on the wind, just out of her reach.
Tharius and his men continued their descent, the plain coming up to meet them as they twisted back and forth along the downward road. When they arrived at the bottom, a breathless runner confronted them with the general’s message. “Wait for him here, Lord Propagator. He follows close behind me.”
It was an hour before the general arrived at the head of his battalions, during which time the fliers went on clustering at the butte tops and nothing changed.
“Did you see Queen Fibji?” Tharius asked, wondering at the expression on the man’s face. It was full of pain.
“I saw her,” heavy, without intonation. For a time Tharius thought he would not explain, but then he went on, “She heard me. She said if the God of man forgave me, ever, then so would she and her people. I do not know if the God of man has forgiven me or ever will, Tharius Don.”
“I think—I think he probably has,” Tharius said, astonished. Whether the God of man had forgiven Jondrigar or not; whether there was any such deity, they could not afford the time to worry about it now. “What is Queen Fibji doing here?”
“It was the shortest route to Northshore from where they were, because of the good roads along Split River. The Queen said they would be leaving very soon. South. While there is time.”