“They can do more than just control bugs,” Safiyah said. “They can combine… let’s say, small particles, elements, to create new elements. It’s quite a trick.”

“This is getting worse and worse,” Ahmed said.

“How far to Bomani?” Nyx said.

“Funny you ask,” Safiyah said. “It’s just on the other side of this forest. One problem, of course. We never did consider how it was we were going to get in.”

35.

Hanife paid him often, and well, in Tirhani currency, all of which Rhys paid him back at the end of each week, to pay back the blood debt.

Rhys thought it funny. He had no use for Tirhani currency out here beyond the Wall anyhow. No one took it. So instead he gladly gave it back at the end of each week, and tried to figure out how he would escape from Hanife’s stranglehold.

The world beyond the Wall was worse than he anticipated. Hanife needed a translator for all sorts of business, most of it sordid. Interrogations, treaties, remediations. He had no idea there was this much politicking going on in the far north of the world. He thought the world ended at Khairi. He had been very wrong.

Rhys spent most evenings with some of the Aadhyan men, watching them sing to insects the way Khairians did. He tried to understand what they did beyond the song to call the insects.

“How’s it done?” he asked as one man called a small arthropod to him from across the courtyard.

The man laughed. “It’s not something you teach. It’s something you do.”

“I have some talent with bugs, though,” Rhys said, and with some effort, called a small swarm of beetles.

The men regarded one another. One of them nodded.

“Come,” they said. “We’ll teach you to sing, but only if you teach us Yazdani.”

That was how Rhys came to learn why it was he only saw Aadhyan women in the desert, but only men out here.

“Hanife has asked us to join his army,” one man, Jahrin said. “We’re outcasts, mostly. That’s the Khairian word. Ours is… far worse than that. Women rule the sand, because it rarely eats them.”

“If they bleed with the moons, it won’t attack an entire party,” another man, Tarik, said. “That’s why only women can become Circle leaders. They become fighters. If we spill blood on the sand, we’re sure to be eaten.”

“I don’t understand,” Rhys said. “If you’ll die spilling blood out there, how is it any different than spilling it as part of Hanife’s army?”

Jahrin said, “You can’t come here for a few weeks and expect to understand everything. Think less of politics and more about singing. Foreign fools. Always thinking they’ll know a thing after a few questions. You won’t know the Aadhya.”

Tarik laughed. “Come. You have a terrible voice.”