Behind them, the wash lay empty in the sun, and far to the south, a thin plume of dust marked where Murdock's men rode away, back toward their well, back toward a price that had not been paid β and a route that, Ethan realised with a cold tightening in his gut, Murdock already seemed to know far too much about.
That night, the band camped in a hollow between two low ridges, with fires kept small and sentries posted double, and Kani did not sleep.
He had volunteered for the last watch, the coldest and loneliest hours before dawn, when the stars faded and the desert held its breath. He sat on a flat rock above the camp with his blanket around his shoulders, watching the sleeping column below: the humps of blankets, the dark shapes of the cattle, the dogs curled nose to tail, the faint red eyes of the banked fires. He watched, too, the trail that led back south, the way a tracker watches a path he already suspects will be walked.
He did not have long to wait.
In the hour before dawn, when the sky was still black but the eastern horizon had begun to pale, a figure came up the trail from the south, moving low and fast, trying to be silent and not quite managing it. Kani knew the walk before he knew the face: the hurried, guilty shuffle of a man carrying something heavy and trying not to spill it. He rose silently, his knife in his hand, and stepped out onto the trail, and the figure stopped dead.
It was Jolon.
The young father stood frozen in the thin gray light, a small skin of water clutched to his chest, his clothes dusty, his eyes wide and wild. He was twenty-one, Sani's husband, father of the infant Lula, eight months old, and his face in that moment was the face of a man caught between two terrors: the terror of being discovered, and the terror of what would happen to his child if he stopped.
Kani, Jolon whispered. "Kani, please. I was only β I went to β"
You went to Murdock's well, Kani said flatly. It was not a question. The water skin, the southern trail, the hour β there was only one answer, and they both knew it. "Again. This is the second time."
Jolon shook his head violently, the lie already forming on his lips and already falling apart. "No. No, I was β I went to look for β for a seep, to the south, I thought β"
A seep? Kani said, and his voice was quiet, but there was steel in it. "At night? Alone? With no tools? And you come back with a full skin from the direction of a guarded well?" He stepped closer, and Jolon flinched. "Jolon, do not lie to me badly. I have tracked men who lied better than this, and they were still caught. Tell me the truth, or I will tell the chief what I saw and let him decide what it means."
For a moment Jolon said nothing, and his shoulders sagged, and the water skin slipped a little in his arms. Then he looked up, and his eyes were wet, and his voice broke. "Lula," he said. "She was fading. Sani could not β her milk was failing, and the child was so small, Kani, so small. The first time, Murdock gave me a barrel and coin for β for telling him which way we were headed. I thought it was a small thing. A direction. He already knew we were moving. I thought it would not matter. And Lula drank, and she lived, and I told myself it was worth it. And then she weakened again, and I went back, and I told him more, and now β"
He stopped, choking on the words, and Kani felt a complicated anger rise in him: anger at the betrayal, and a sick, unwilling understanding of it, because Kani had held his own dying kin in his arms once and knew what a man would trade in the dark.
You traded our route, Kani said slowly. "That is why Murdock was waiting at the wash. That is why he knew."
Jolon nodded, his face in his hands. "I did not know he would come with rifles. I swear it. I thought he only wanted to sell us water. I did not think β"
You did not think, Kani said, "because you were thinking only of Lula. And that is why you are not a villain, Jolon. But it is also why you are dangerous."
Kani took the water skin from Jolon's unresisting hands and led him back into the camp, to where Dzeni was already stirring at the edge of sleep, his warrior's instinct waking him at the sound of voices. Kani told Dzeni what he had seen, plainly and without embellishment, and Dzeni's face darkened instantly, the old fury rising in him like a tide.
He sold us, Dzeni said, his voice low and dangerous. "To Murdock. For coin."
He sold a direction, Kani corrected, though it cost him to say it. "And he did it for his child. There is a difference, and the chief will see it, even if you do not."