The supplies at the local trade house varied considerably by the day. It depended on what caravan had come in. Many had been delayed by early spring sandstorms. Others were diverted by the mine cleanup efforts now that the ceasefire had begun. Chenja had issued the ceasefire first. They were also the first to pardon their deserters and criminals, a full two years before Nasheen. It was why he agreed to come out here to a Chenjan-held Khairian outpost—that and the promise of fast money. He hoped it would be like coming home again. He hoped that maybe, away from Elahyiah’s family and the bad memories in Tirhan, things would be easier.

He had been very wrong.

“Have you asked the mullah if he needs help during prayer days?” Elahyiah said.

“There’s no money in that.”

“I thought you would enjoy teaching the Kitab to children. It has been… many months since we sat and read together as we once did.”

“I have been busy, Elahyiah.” Trying to make sure they didn’t starve.

Elahyiah averted her eyes. “I understand,” she said. “I just thought it may soothe your nerves more to read the Kitab than… other things.” She ducked back inside.

Rhys put out his cigarette on the rail and followed her. The girls were awake. Mehry was nearly seven now, and far too precocious for a girl growing up in a Chenjan settlement. Always full of questions. Her sister Nasrin was two, and sat up in her basinet watching Mehry pray. Rhys saw nothing of himself in either of them. Like the two girls he and Elahyiah had raised before, these resembled their mother. But now he could not help but compare them to their dead sisters as well.

Elahyiah paced back and forth with Rahim, admonishing Mehry to finish prayer, though by all counts Mehry was still too young for anyone to insist that she observe so many of them. Mehry studied at the madrassa at the end of the street, one of only six girls. They learned from the same teacher as the boys, a balding old mullah who had not, blessedly, asked that Mehry learn her lessons from behind a screen. But she did have to go to school in a uniform that was becoming less modest as she grew, tall and lanky as a mantis. The madrassa and uniform were not cheap. Nor was the two-room flat that stank perpetually of cabbage and peppercorns from the Heidian family on the floor beneath them.