I did. I fancied that Eiadh was exactly what I needed and wanted. But I understood nothing then. Luet believes she's already pregnant. Luet and I can talk about everything. We've only been married for a few days, yet she understands my heart even better than you do, and I can speak her thoughts almost before she thinks them. Does Elemak imagine that I could desire a mere woman, when Luet is my wife?
(He knows that Eiadh is attracted to you. He remembers that you were once attracted to her. He also knows that I have chosen you to lead. He's mad with jealousy. He hungers for your death. It consumes him so that even the act of making love to her is a kind of murder in his heart.)
Don't you realize that this is the most terrible thing of all? If there's anything I want in my life, it's for Elemak to love me and respect me. What did I do, to turn him away!
(You refused to let him own your will.)
Love and respect have nothing to do with controlling what other people do.
(To Elemak, if he doesn't control you, you either don't exist or you're his enemy. For many years you didn't exist. Then he noticed you, and you weren't as easy to manipulate or intimidate as Mebbekew, and so you became a rival.)
Is it really that simple?
(I glossed over the hard parts.)
His tent isn't bouncing. Does that mean he's coming out soon?
(He's getting dressed. He's thinking of you. So is Eiadh.)
At least she doesn't want to kill me.
(If she ever got what she's wishing for, it would end the same, with you dead.)
Don't tell Luet that Elemak is planning to kill me.
(I'll tell Luet everything, exactly as I tell you. I don't lie to the humans who serve my cause.)
You lie to us whenever you think it's necessary. And I don't want you to lie to her, anyway - I just don't want her to worry.
(I do want her to worry, since you refuse to. I think sometimes you want to die.)
You can relieve your mind on that score. I like being alive and intend to continue.
(I think sometimes you look forward to death, because you think that you deserve to die for having killed Gaballufix.)
Here he comes.
(Notice how he makes sure you smell his hands.)
Nafai didn't appreciate the Oversoul's calling attention to that - he might not have noticed, otherwise. But, truth to tell, that was unlikely, because Elemak made a point of putting both hands on his shoulders, and even of brushing his fingers across Nafai's cheek as he said, "So you did stay awake. Maybe you'll amount to something in the desert after all."
"You didn't leave me on watch all that long," Nafai answered.
The womanly smell was plain enough. It was vaguely disgusting that Elemak would use his intimacy with his own wife this way. It was as if she had become nothing to him. A tool. Not a wife at all, but just a thing that he owned.
But if the Oversoul was right, then that was how Elemak experienced love - as ownership.
"Did you see anything?" asked Elemak.
"Darkness," said Nafai. He did not tell Elemak about the bandits only a few hundred meters away. First, it would only make him furious that Nafai was getting information from the Oversoul. And second, it would humiliate him that he chose as his campsite a place where bandits could conceal themselves so close. He would probably insist on searching for them, which would mean battle and bloodshed, or waking everybody up and moving on, which would be pointless, since the Oversoul was having no trouble keeping this spineless group of cutpurses under control.
"If you ever looked up, you'd notice there are stars," said Elemak.
Elemak was baiting him, of course, and Nafai knew that he should just ignore him, but he was filled with anger already, knowing that Elemak was plotting to kill him and yet still pretended to be his brother, knowing that Elemak had just made love to his wife in order to try to make Nafai suffer from jealousy. So Nafai could not contain himself. He flung a hand upward. "And that one is Sol, the Sun. Barely visible, but you can always find it if you know where to look. That's where we're going."
"Are we?" asked Elemak.
"It's the only reason the Oversoul brought us out of Basilica," said Nafai.
"Maybe the Oversoul won't necessarily get his way," said