“A man you’ve not heard of. Has some renown further north, beyond the Wall. Doing a fine job bringing order to the nomads up there. Name of Hanife. He speaks Khairian all right, and whatever his bastard native tongue is, but nothing else. When I heard he needed somebody he could trust, I thought of you. Who better than a devoted Chenjan family man who has worked for the Tirhani government?”

Rhys showed his teeth—more grimace than smile, but he had never seen a Khairian smile. Just the grimace. “How much?”

“One thousand Tirhani notes. That’s three hundred now, and the seven hundred when you get there. Another five thousand at the end of the job.”

The serving girl brought Rhys’s tea. He hardly noticed. He had never seen that much money in his life. “Is that with or without your commission?”

Payam laughed. “My friend, I am pleased to tell you that that is after my commission.”

Rhys felt the knot of anger and worry that he had been harboring all morning begin to ease. He did not trust the feeling, though, because he did not entirely trust Payam. For all he knew, it was one of Payam’s conquests that left her child to die in the privy in Rhys’s tenement. Such an immoral man could not be trusted.

“Why didn’t anyone else take this job?”

“I have four translators out on jobs. The other two don’t know Nasheenian. And he was very specific that the translator speak Nasheenian.”

Rhys wrapped his hands around the teacup. The warmth was soothing, familiar. The last time someone wanted him to translate Nasheenian, bloody bel dames hacked off his hands and murdered his children. But the money…

“Did he say why Nasheenian?”

“He does dealings with them. Not sure if you’ve kept up with Nasheenian politics, but there’s a big rift over there. The Queen, First Families, bel dames, all looking to take over if it turns out the war’s really ending. But the magic has turned against them. His man tells me Hanife does quite a lot of black market business with Nasheenian First Families.”

“First Families? Not bel dames?”

Payam shrugged. “He said nothing to me of bel dames. Why? Have some trouble with them?”

Rhys stared at his hands. The long sleeves of his burnous covered the scars at his wrists where he had lost his hands. The ones fixed to his body now were not his, but some dead laborer’s. Short, thick fingers. They had been rough and calloused when he first got them. He had not been able to touch his wife without cringing for more than a year.

“Three hundred now?”

“Yes. I know I have two-thirds of your mind. You’ll do it?”

“You knew I would.” Payam also ran the local trading post. He would have seen how long Rhys’s credit list was, and how desperately his family needed to eat.