Radeyah wrapped her arms around Nyx. Nyx pulled her close. They made love there on the floor as the light purled through the billowing curtains. Nyx traced Radeyah’s scars from her two births, all dozen children lost to the war. When Radeyah came, she bucked beneath Nyx’s hand, revealing the twisted collection of scars on her backside where the magicians had pulled shrapnel from her after a commuter train accident north of Mushirah. There were more scars, more blemishes, a lifetime of Nasheenian living mapped out on her body. Nyx loved her for it, a little. And feared for her—far too much.

Radeyah stroked her hair, after. “I won’t wait for you,” she said.

“I know,” Nyx said.

Even as they lay together in the cool breeze, Radeyah soft and comforting next to her, Nyx felt herself pulling away, boxing herself back up, until soon she was nearly numb, and the spidery tattoo on Radeyah’s ankle that still bore Nyx’s name no longer gave Nyx the same flutter of affection. It was easy to become everything she hated again. Remarkably, maddeningly easy.

Nyx closed her eyes, and stepped into the ring.

2.

Eshe put his shotgun down on the battered table between him and the priest. The priest was a fastidious little man, clean and neat, with long limbs and balding head that put Eshe in mind of a dung beetle. He was Ras Tiegan, flat faced and broad nosed, with a pale as piss complexion that was a little ruddy in the nose and cheeks. He was already halfway through a pint of hard ale, and Eshe guessed he’d started drinking well before Eshe showed up.

The priest’s eyes bulged at the shotgun. Eshe figured the old guy had never seen a gun up close. Eshe was prepared to get him a good deal closer to it.

“You have a license for that?” the priest asked, hissing around his drink like there was anyone else in the tavern who cared about their business.

The sticky sweet smell of opium seeped in from the bunkhouses upstairs. A woman wearing a muslin habit with the back torn out slipped into the front door and scurried into the kitchen on bloody, swollen feet. Someone cried out from the gambling room in back. The distant gong of church bells called the faithful to midnight prayer. Just another dark Ras Tiegan night at the edge of the protected territories.

“You think I’d need a license here?” Eshe said.

The priest mopped his brow with a yellowed handkerchief. “There’s no need for that, boy. I came here, didn’t I? What kind of whore’s dog are you, to throw weapons around at a holy man? I need another drink.”