“We’ve saved a fair number of women from Genevieve. You know she wants to die, right? It’s the priests who keep sacrificing you all to her.”

“I know. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but Inaya didn’t want me to tell anyone who I was.”

“Why does it matter? Some organic fodder for one of the saints. There’s plenty more where that came from.”

“I’m… I’m a bit more than that, I’m afraid.”

“I’m sure this is good.”

“I’m her daughter. She’s paralyzed now, you know. She speaks directly to God, but since the stroke she speaks through me. She advises a good many people, Eshe. Priests, magistrates…. Even the Patron himself once came for advice.”

“If all that’s true, Inaya wouldn’t have sent you here. She’d have kept you under a rock in Ras Tieg.”

“I… It’s just all very complicated, Eshe.” She half-reached for her left arm with her right, then hesitated. Rested her fingers on her belly. Gazed long at them.

“Let me tell you about something complicated,” Eshe said. He had seen enough mangled people. Why should he have any sympathy for her? “My first partner was a woman named Corinne. She wasn’t a shifter, but her sister was. So she joined up with us. Thing was, she was pretty enough to catch a priest’s eye. One of the ones who worked for your mother. They took Corinne one day, at the market. I wasn’t even there. Heard about it later. I tracked her down. Killed a lot of people to do it. When I told Inaya where she was, Inaya sat on that information for three weeks. Why? Because she was with Genevieve Leichner, the living fucking saint. Your fucking mother.” Eshe snorted. “I can’t believe Inaya put me with you.”

“It’s not my fault that—”

“I’m not finished. Inaya never mounted any kind of raid. Never bothered to try and help her. The living saint was too important to piss off, she said. She said we needed her on our side.”

“My mother could be a powerful ally for the movement. I won’t pretend—”

“Can you shut up for five seconds?”

“Sorry.”

“Corinne is dead,” Eshe said.

“I don’t understand.”

“See, you Ras Tiegans have this thing about being a virgin. Especially women. And especially those serving a living saint.”

Isabet seemed uncomfortable, finally, with more than the passing haze of the drugs. “Eshe—”

“Corinne wasn’t a virgin. So they didn’t need her. And they killed her. I never saw the body, but I know.”

“Eshe, you have to understand—”

“I understand everything I need to,” Eshe said. “You thought it would be fun, running off into the desert, because you’re so bloody fucking special where you come from. Well, I have news for you, Isabet. Out here, you’re nobody special.”