The priest had come wearing the long brown robe and tattered cowl of his order. His was one of the less popular sects, populated by cowardly little men instead of the more fit, robust types Eshe was used to. He had a golden cord looped about his waist and neck, fashioned into a crude X at his collar, but the garb didn’t mean much out here. In the larger cities, the less contaminated ones, maybe, a priest’s robe was enough to save a pious man’s life. But when bugs crawled through your filters every night to lay eggs in your flesh and noxious air killed off your babies if you kept them too close to the ground, there was less reverence for a man of God who did not also wear the bloody apron of a magician. Magicians saved lives. You only called on a priest when you knew your life was over.

Eshe leaned toward the priest. “Tell me what I need to know or your next drink will be leaking out a hole in your gut.”

“I only meant—”

“It’s my people in this place, old man. I could skin you alive right here and they’d help me chop you up and feed you to the flesh beetles.”

The priest swallowed. “They’re moving her next week, before the Feast of the Blood. I don’t know where they’re keeping her, but I know where she’s going.” His gaze lingered on the gun, darted away. “It’s Jolique so Romaud’s house. You know it? He has a… collection… of those like her. He felt that, with her mutation, she would be an excellent addition to his collection.”

Eshe should have known. Jolique was cousin to the Queen of Nasheen, and all but untouchable in Ras Tieg. No magistrate or God’s Angel would dare raid his house looking for captive shifters. Abuses committed by the rich and powerful were overlooked in Ras Tieg, just as they were in every country.

“What road?” Eshe asked.

“Rue Clery. She should arrive around fifteen in the morning.”

“Staff?”

“Four men and a wrangler.”

Eshe leaned back in the chair and lifted the gun off the table.

The priest sighed. The shadow of a smile tugged at his lips. He didn’t know that he’d been dead from the moment he sat down.

Eshe pointed the shotgun into the priest’s mealy little face and pulled the trigger.

The gun popped. The priest’s head caved in. Black, bloody brains splattered the wall behind the priest.

Eshe stood and wiped the blood from his face with his sleeve. The mostly headless torso of the dead priest slumped sideways. Eshe expected he’d feel happier about it, after all this man and his kind had done.

The bar matron, Angelique, tsked at him. “Did you need to do that?” she said. “That’s four priests in as many weeks.”