“I called it,” Khatijah said, walking up behind the two of them and holding out her hand to Nyx. “They totally fucked. You owe me a note. I won the bet.”

“Goddammit,” Nyx said, and pulled a note from her burnous.

“Is this all some kind of a fucking game to you?” Ahmed said. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Both of you? Bloody fucking bel dames. You make up all the fucking rules and then you break them like they’re nothing. Like it’s all so much catshit. Is life just catshit to you? Do you feel anything at all?”

Khatijah pointed toward the forest. “Check that movement. It’s them.”

Ahmed raised the specs to his eyes. Three dark shapes lumbered at the edge of the forest. He saw a fourth just beyond them, small and willowy. He had to look away.

“Safiyah,” Nyx said. “Your turn.”

Nyx thought she’d prefer approaching Bomani in the dark.

She was wrong.

There were wispy green lights in the towers, speckled along what might have passed for a parapet of some kind that ringed the hold. But for the most part, the world was a wash of darkness, and Bomani was an inky blob of black against the night.

She and Khatijah waited until the lumbering bodies made contact with the far end of the hold. More lights flickered up top. She heard voices.

Then Nyx ran in the opposite direction, hoping to make it into the shadow of the building before anyone noticed.

Khatijah trailed her.

Nyx didn’t think about the bodies. Or the lights. Didn’t think about anything until she made it to the wall. She pushed herself against the wall, and her hands came away wet and sticky. She grimaced as she put her back to it and crouched low.

Khatijah caught up to her, and did the same.

They waited in the darkness, breathing heavily. Nyx listened to the spatter of voices above her. She couldn’t make out a damned word. Someone was shouting. At least the giant, flesh-sloughing beetles were making an impression.

Nyx glanced back to the front of the structure, where the beetle-bodies were clicking and slavering at the organic matting of the hold. She appreciated that they looked like beasts, in the dark. Just beasts. Shambling things.

Safiyah finally made her way toward them from the top of the rise. The hail of voices had gotten louder. Nyx heard shots. She wondered if dead beetles would draw the blood-thirsty sand. Probably. Probably time to go.

A fine skein of translucent mayflies surrounded Safiyah’s head. Her look was stern. “I must release them now,” she said. “Be ready to slip into the skin once it’s open.”

She flicked her hand, and the mayflies dispersed. Then she put her hands onto the squelchy wall and murmured something that sounded to Nyx a lot like a prayer. Not a good sign.