The filter was released on the sixth day. A woman entered. She wore a long black habit and blue wimple. Inaya paid special attention to the woman’s feet, because they were closest to her from where she sat on the bug-ridden floor. Some ant nest had spawned its queens overnight, and they tumbled into her cell from the narrow skylight. Their abandoned wings littered the floor, and made shimmering patterns across her own soiled habit. She had lost one of her shoes in the tussle with God’s Angels. What most interested her was not the woman’s sturdy, square-toed shoes, but the fact that she was not wearing any type of stocking. From far away, that fact may have been easy to miss, but from where Inaya sat, it was a glaring inconsistency in a Ras Tiegan woman whose hygiene and decorum had to be immaculate in order to gain a place as one of God’s Angels. It told her immediately that there was a chance she was still in Inoublie with lesser Angels. No woman in a major city would dress without stockings.

The woman wrinkled her nose, presumably at the stench of the cell, and said, “I’m to get you cleaned up. You’ll be meeting with one of the Arch Angels.”

Inaya’s eyes filled with tears. “Please, will someone tell me why I’m here? I went out to pray and these… men… I’m so frightened.”

“It’s not for me to say. The Arch Angel will see you. Stand up. Stand up or I will have you dragged out.”

Inaya stood. She let the tears continue. Her hands shook. She was suddenly self-conscious next to this clean, primly dressed matron. It took all the self-control she possessed to calm her nerves, and bite back her fear, shame, humiliation… This was a game. She must play her part consistently, or it would be her body getting cut up in some magician’s laboratory, dissected on a slab—possibly while she was still alive. And then the Fourré would break. Michel and Gabrielle could not tolerate each other at the best of times. Without Inaya as a go-between, it was quite possible the whole movement could become fragmented. In her mind’s eye, she saw all of her first-tier cadres devolve into violence and murder. She saw them give her away by demanding her release. What if they had already done it? What if that’s what the rioting was about? What if Michel had used her abduction as an excuse for going back to the tactics she explicitly wanted to move away from? She did not doubt for a moment that her abduction was a calculated one, but she did not yet know how or who. Michel, Adeliz, even Isabet could be suspect. And then there was Gabrielle. And the top tier of cadres. All eight of them had reason to doubt her new direction. To hate her for it.