Outside, the second dawn touched the world. A blaze of fiery red scorched the eastern sky, banded in deep purple along the horizon. He made his way to the settlement’s only tea house, a squat mud-brick building set with cracked amber tiles that spoke of better days. As he walked, an arthropod as long and thick as his leg uncurled from the nearest ditch and moved across the road in front of him. His skin crawled. Khairians called them mauta kita, and killed them at every opportunity. They were purported to grow large enough to swallow a wagon of goods whole, further north. Most of the wagons in this desert were pulled by native armored caterpillars instead of sand cats—both because the mauta kita were more likely to eat the cats and because the caterpillars lasted longer on the open sand without water.

As he walked, he paused at the window of a clothier. Displayed there were two headless mannequins wearing brilliant red and amber burquas. The burquas themselves were not strange. What made him stop was that he noticed that the mannequins had hands. In his childhood, mannequins were sexless, formless things—the less lifelike, the better. Most store windows simply put clothing on vaguely human-shaped leather hangers. The few mannequins he did see were just torsos. No legs. No hands. But these had hands, and as he got closer, he saw something like feet and legs as well.

Elahyiah had told him for many years that things in Chenja were changing. Her parents still had family there. Words were one thing, yes, but seeing these mannequins and their hands was quite another.

Rhys turned away from the window, and ducked into the tea house opposite. There were prayer wheels hung at each of the windows. He heard the sound of someone reciting from the Kitab, voice low and beautiful, almost musical. It calmed him.

Payam already waited for him at a far table. He dressed like a Tirhani businessman in a long white khameez and somber bisht, but his scarlet turban was a more local affectation. Payam was younger than Rhys by nearly a decade, with a fleshy face and soft hands that marked him as a Tirhani, not just a Chenjan in Tirhani garb. Most Chenjans bore bodies that had seen the war.

He was speaking to a swarm of red beetles at his left elbow—not something he had called but sent to him by one of his caravans. He concluded whatever his message was and waved the bugs away. The swarm buzzed past Rhys and out into the dawn.

“Punctual as ever,” Payam said.

Rhys sat opposite him and ordered green tea with honey from a woman wearing a creamy burqua.

“What do you have for me today?” Rhys asked.