“Let’s go,” Ahmed said to Eshe. “I’d like one more drunk night before some magician turns me into a cicada.”

Eshe and Ahmed asked around and found what the locals called a shebeen, just a knotted hunk of stone piled against the side of the Wall where a man sold bitter liquor from the carapace of a monstrous insect head the size of a small incendiary burst.

The liquor hit Eshe hard, harder than he expected, and two rounds later, the desert was a soft, gauzy sea of delight. He hadn’t felt this pleasant in a good long while. It made him want to buy more of whatever the liquor was to take with them over the Wall.

Ahmed didn’t seem to be faring much better. Eshe bought another round and finally asked him.

“So who was that woman tried to kill you? You tell Nyx yet?”

“It doesn’t matter. She’s dead. Did you see how fast Nyx was with that shot?” He held up his hands as if he were sighting down the barrel of a gun. “She moves faster that you’d expect, a woman her size. If I could move that fast I wouldn’t have been in intelligence.” He sighed into his drink. “It took the best people.”

“What, and left people like you and Nyx?” Eshe said.

Ahmed snorted. “Yeah. Bad guys.”

“I never wanted to be a bad guy,” Eshe said.

Ahmed raised his glass. “Sorry, kid. You are.” He drank. “I never wanted to be a hero. I wanted to be a farmer.”

“You ever worked a farm? I have. Forced into it by my house mothers. It’s shit work.”

“I did the same. I liked my house mothers a good deal more than you, though. They had a farm. It was a good life. Predictable.”

“Dull,” Eshe said.

“How’d you get out of it?”

Eshe shrugged. “Same as any boy. Dressed up like a girl and ran away.”

Ahmed ordered them another round.

Eshe shook his head. “I think that’s enough for me.”

“One more,” Ahmed said. He leaned toward him. “What are you going to do, at the end of this? Run off with your girl?”

“Who? Isabet? She’s not mine. Or anybody’s. Stay the fuck away from her. She’s trouble.”

“It’s not her I’m interested in.”

A veiled woman came over and refilled their drinks from a burnished brown vessel. Eshe could practically see the fumes coming off the stuff.

“Why’d you run away?” Ahmed said.

“You know why,” Eshe said. “You know what they do to boys.”

“My childhood wasn’t yours. I stayed with the same family my whole life. Sounds like you didn’t.”

“It was just like anybody else’s shit. You know, hired out to other people. Like a dog. Like a slave. It was a long time ago.”