Her second mistake had been ignoring Usha’s warning.

One of your kitchen boys was questioned by a nobleman, Usha had said. Somebody knows, or thinks they know the truth about you. You should run now, while you still can.

But Lalita had not held her grandmother’s advice as close as she should have. She had wanted to say farewell to Mehr. She’d needed time to arrange the transport of her possessions. Excuse after excuse had kept her feet firmly on the city’s ground, when in truth she’d simply wanted to cling to the life she’d worked so hard to build. Ah, she was a fool.

“We’re no petty lords. We have a higher purpose than most of the nobility,” he boasted. “We’re devotees of the Saltborn. Do you know what that means?”

Farida whimpered out a no.

“We serve the Emperor’s will. You know who the Emperor is at least, don’t you?”

There was a chorus of ugly laughter.

She was not sure how many men stood below her. She didn’t dare look through the lattice window facing the courtyard, for fear they would see her. She wondered if these boastful lords—these squabbling Ambhan children, who had no higher purpose in life than wreaking destruction on their Emperor’s behalf—would have thought to set guards on all the exits from the household. She considered whether men who had never worked for their survival would think to look in the servants’ corridor she now stood in, a narrow passage lit by one latticed window and guttering candles set into alcoves along the wall. She hoped not.

Her third mistake had been carelessness. She’d grown soft after living all these years in Jah Irinah. She’d made no secret of her visits to the Governor’s half-Amrithi daughter. She had danced her rites in her room alone at sunrise, and kept her Amrithi dagger close. Taking on a Chand name had only provided her a thin veneer of security. She should have given up her rites. She should have discarded her dagger. She should have left Mehr well alone.

But Mehr’s mother had been her friend, once—her only friend, in fact, when she had returned to Jah Irinah as a young courtesan heartsick and hungry for home. Ruhi had asked her to care for Mehr—begged her—and Lalita had loved both mother and daughter too well to refuse. She’d never found the will in her heart since to untangle Mehr from her life.

There was more shouting—and more sobbing—from below her. Through it, Lalita heard another noise. To her right, the candle flickered. She heard the scuff of a footstep. Lalita turned sharply, her hand reaching instinctively for the dagger in her sash.

The flash of a familiar face in candelight. Usha.

Ah, Gods.