Kage reached about for her gun, and felt a rising panic when she could not find it. “Where is it?” she asked.

Eshe and Ahmed exchanged a glance.

“It’s here,” Ahmed said. He reached behind him and handed her gun back to her. “Nyx needed to get the position on some movement southwest of here. She needed to use your scope.”

Kage pulled the gun close. It would need to be cleaned.

Eshe brought over a thin gruel of mealworms and gravy that made her gag, but she choked it all down. The world was jumping back into focus. The fear began to set in. She had been unconscious, totally vulnerable, with these people. She stood and walked farther away from the fire, though the air was cool, almost cold.

“Where are you going?” Ahmed asked.

“I need to clean my gun.” She dragged her gun and her pack as far away from the camp as possible, deep into the black. She found an outcrop of stone a dozen paces distant. She crouched behind it. Removed all her clothes. Rubbed herself with sand until her skin burned. Shivering, her skin tingling, she dressed herself once again and then sat down to clean her gun.

How long this all took, she wasn’t certain, but as she was beginning to put the gun back together, she heard heavy footsteps approach. She turned to see Nyx coming up behind her. She froze in the middle of locking her scope to the barrel, fingers still.

Nyx paused a few steps behind her. She was chewing sen. Kage could smell it. The old mercenary just stood there for several minutes. Chewing.

Kage did not move. Did not speak. It was easy, to wait out Nasheenians.

“You need water, you ask for it,” Nyx said.

Kage firmed her mouth. Saying anything at all risked exposing weakness.

“You heard me?” Nyx asked.

Kage nodded, once. Then realized the Nasheenian would not be able to see her, in the dark. Not like one of her people.

“I understand you,” Kage said.

“I have too much at risk here. If you can’t take care of yourself, then I’ll stake you out on the sand and leave you. You understand that, too?”

“Yes, master.”

“I’m not your fucking master.”

Kage gritted her teeth. The words bubbled up, something fearless, from the darkness. “You say you are not my master, but you threaten me with violence for not complying to your will. What else is that, but the act of a master over a slave?”

Nyx was quiet a long moment, chewing. Then, “You could shoot me here. Any of you could. Hardly slavery when I arm you, is it?”

“Then why threaten me?”

“So you know I’m serious.”

“I don’t understand.”