I’d forgotten the sort of presence she commanded. She stood across from a woman of height with her, though significantly older and with silver strands in her hair. They were all dressed for the desert, voluminous black and white robes, and loose trousers and blouses bound at the waist with cotton sashes. The woman next to Arinaas wore a black turban, with a silver brooch attached in the shape of a diamond, with a crescent moon piercing its uppermost angle.

“Your spy arrives,” she said when she caught sight of me.

Arinaas turned and grinned when she saw me. “Not my spy,” she said with a laugh. “A free agent. Perhaps a general.”

Like the turbaned woman Arinaas wore black, though her robes were stitched with gold. She seemed, somehow, taller than I remembered, her presence weightier. She put me, strangely enough, in mind of Aghraas. As if the very air would catch fire at her say-so.

She held out a hand—it had been a long time too since anyone asked a soldier’s handshake of me. But when I grasped her arm with mine, she drew me in for a hug.

“It is good to see you alive,” she said. “I did not like our last meeting.”

“It is good to see you at all,” I replied. “It is too dangerous for you to be here.”

“Your free agent is sensible,” the woman said to her, then turned to me. “Would that my daughter would listen to sense.”

“Uma.” No one in the worlds or in heaven would accuse the rebel leader of whining. But calling her mother came dangerously close. “This is my mother—Tinit, Queen of Queens, leader of the Tazalghit. Uma—Amani. Of whom you know much.”

The turban and pin began to make sense.

“Your Grace—”

She shook her head. “Tinit al-Hurra is fine,” she replied.

I inclined my head. “Tinit al-Hurra, then—it is good to meet you.”

“You look very much like your mother,” she said.

My eyes widened. “You know my mother?”

“She is overseeing her relocation,” Arinaas said. Tinit said something in Izilghit, and Arinaas replied, but neither let me in on their conversation.

“Are they…” I interrupted.

“Yes,” Tinit said with a smile. “They are safe. We have a recording, if you would like?”

For a moment it felt as if the whole world stopped. I knew the ocean was just beyond the cavern, and that there were dozens of women in this cave, but I heard none of it. All I heard was the beating of my own heart and the blood rushing in my ears.

“Really?” I gasped. “They’re safe?”

“We are women of our word, Amani,” Arinaas said. “You kept your end, and we have kept ours.”