They spoke for a few minutes more, and she ensured that he was calm and composed when he left her office. This evening, she would speak to three more cell leaders like this one. Softly, carefully, she would share this same message. And each time she said it, she had to believe in it just a little bit more. Because if her own faith wavered they would know it. And it would all come undone.

Inaya rose from her seat and stretched.

“Madame?” A knock at the door.

“Yes?”

Adeliz cracked the door and peered in, revealing only her face, as if seeking to present a smaller target. “I have a missive for you, Madame. Michel has asked to meet you.”

“Where?”

Adeliz held out her hand.

Inaya pressed her palm to Adeliz’s. When she pulled it away, she could see a faint line of characters, encoded in her and Michel’s ciphered script. It read:

Meeting urgent. Cannot return without being compromised. I have found the girl. Saint Affia.

“Thank you,” Inaya said to Adeliz, and quickly excused herself to her room to dress.

As a rule, she did not like to leave the sanctuary of their quarters often, but Isabet’s identity was of such extreme importance that she trusted none but Michel and her secondary general in the capital, Gabrielle, with the information.

She slipped out into the cool night, grateful for air that did not stink of wet dog and roasted meat. The sweet air lasted only until she cleared the warehousing district, and then the powerful stench of curry mixed with open sewer became nauseating. Some day she would retire to the country, with enough wealth to fund a filter that kept out the worst of the wild contaminants. She had visited a farm once belonging to an uncle, and reveled in the vast greenery, the open spaces. Clear water and knee-high grass spoke to her of some childhood she never had.

The statue of Saint Affia lay on the other side of the city square. This time of the evening, a few families were still out, some making prayers and pledges to the four-dozen saints given niches in and around the city center. Affia was a little-loved saint, known for just four miracles and reviled by some revisionists as a fraud. Every decade, some group of priests petitioned to have her sainthood revoked. Yet here she stood, defiant in her niche.