Most of these guys—and most of them were guys—didn’t have the kind of jewelry she wanted. Rings too new, or the metal too cheap to hold much soul. This one with the long mustache had a nice ring, but he was too fat to pull it off. When she tried, he reared out of the dark like an albino whale and grabbed her, groaning in a language she didn’t know. She slipped from his clammy grip, and continued through the labyrinth as he settled back into drug dreams.

In a corner she found a dark man with dreadlocked hair and indigo tattoos on his wrists, of suns flanked by geometric symbols. He wore a thick gold ring on his forefinger, inlaid with cursive Talbeg script in mother-of-pearl. The inscription: Hassan, with a love constant as wind. Ring and tattoos didn’t match—the tattoos from the Southern Gleb, the ring from the north, the script a dot and slant off from the one Izza’s mom had taught her.

Which by itself meant nothing. Dead men’s jewelry was stolen and traded all the time. A sailor stopped in port might buy a bauble he fancied and not know what it meant. One way or another, this was the ring she wanted. Well-worn, scraped by time. Full of hardened soulstuff from hungry and desperate owners. A find.

She touched the ring. The man snorted in his sleep, snored, moaned a long, drawn-out “Yes.” The ring twisted fine, but when she tried to pull it over the knuckle the band stuck. The dreaming man brushed his free hand toward her like a kitten pawing at string, fingers and wrist limp. He didn’t hit her. She spent a few seconds not breathing.

A light flickered in the stairwell, and she heard footsteps. A tender or a guard, come to check on the clients. They had three floors to check, and were rising up to the second now. A few minutes, no more.

She slicked the man’s finger with oil from a vial she kept in her pocket. Two drops wet against his skin, and a light touch to either side of the ring, holding his finger in place so she could guide the gold loop gently, gently over the knuckle. He was feverish, and dreams tossed through his head.