Kage nodded. “There will just be one pair. Just two.”

“Good,” Nyx said. “And if they’re anything like you… they’ll have a lot of water with them, won’t they?”

Kage nodded again.

Also good. Stealing from these shadowy hunters could give them four more days of water, or more, if she could keep Kage upright on a little less. Staking out teammates to die in the desert this early on was bad for morale.

“And? What else? What can I use against them?” Nyx asked.

Kage raised her head, just a fraction, but it was enough for Nyx to see her eyes directly for the first time. Kage’s gaze met hers for a moment, so quickly Nyx half thought she imagined it.

“They want me alive,” Kage said.

It was the best thing Nyx had heard all day.

There was very little high ground in this place, just one more reason Kage found to hate it. She had volunteered to scout out the position of the fukushu-sha, but Nyx had Eshe do it. For once, the mewling magician made herself useful putting together bugged transceivers for them. Kage held the mealy little wire-threaded worm in her hand, dubious, as the others stuck the things in their ears like it was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

“Let me help,” the Ras Tiegan girl said in mangled Nasheenian. She was standing just behind Eshe, like a lost dog.

Kage glowered at her.

“I can be very good at scouting,” she said. Trying so hard to be useful.

“You aren’t welcome,” Kage said.

“What if assassins wander into camp? Kill me and Eskander?” Isabet said.

“Can’t say I’d cry over it,” Nyx said. She passed something to Eshe. “We’ve got exactly one pair of thermal specs. Don’t lose them.”

The girl spouted off, then, in Ras Tiegan. Kage knew a few words of it, but not enough to make sense of what she was saying. Instead, the syrupy sounds of the language just put her in mind of another night, another band of Ras Tiegans. She very nearly jammed the butt of her gun into the girl’s face. She took a deep breath instead, and focused on the toes of her sandals until Nyx gave the order to move.

Kage brought the worm up to her ear, then palmed it into the pocket of her trousers. She could speak to them just as well with the worm set on the end of her gun once she was in position.

Kage broke away from the group and made her way southeast toward what they hoped, from a distance, was a decent perch. Nyx and Ahmed gave Eshe a head start, and he went northeast, to come at the fukushu-sha from the opposite direction.

In truth, none of them were certain where the fukushu-sha were now. It would be a long night.