“I don’t know. It’s hard to ask around without looking suspicious. All I know is he’s been here a few months, kept not far from where you were. No one’s allowed in to see him. A group of people brought him in, then just… left him. Jailer says he had orders to just hold him until told otherwise.”

“That’s… suspicious.”

“It is.”

She saw him reach into his burnous and pull something out. Her eyes widened. “Is that… a cigarette?”

“You want one?”

“Bloody fuck, things do change.” She held out her hand.

He broke the carapace of a fire beetle, and lit both their cigarettes. Nyx inhaled deep. They were laced with sen. Almost immediately, she felt the pain that had been riding with her the last few weeks begin to fade. The throbbing at the back of her head and jaw eased. She had missed sen.

“What else do you know about the ocean guys?”

“There was some split up here, they say. Some great catastrophe the magicians created. That’s what made the desert. After they walled it in, there were still some people left on the other side of that wall. The Yazdani. Not a surprise they’d want to forget people they left behind, I suppose. Their ports up there are frozen most of the year, and I can’t imagine they have a lot of materials for ship building. We certainly don’t.”

“Why the fuck would they want to take Raine that far north, though? There’s no bringing him back from there. If they wanted to kill him, why not kill him?”

Rhys shrugged. “Maybe they anticipated you coming?”

“I don’t like this,” Nyx said.

“Who are you running this note for?”

Nyx shook her head.

Rhys sighed. “The bel dame council asked you, didn’t they?”

“Fatima mentioned it.”

“And you just believe everything Fatima tells you?”

“I don’t take any job without questioning it.”

“She didn’t… Did she make you a bel dame again, Nyx?”

Nyx worked her mouth a bit, considering. “No,” she said. “She offered it. I didn’t take it.”

Rhys studied her closely. His eyes were dark, piercing. He could always read her. She hated it.

“So you aren’t a bel dame?”

“No.”

“You’re just doing this for fun? Not enough blood in your life?”

“I haven’t had any blood in my life in near on seven years, Rhys. It suited me fine. It’s not the blood I missed.” She got to her feet.

He gazed up at her. “What, then? What is it you missed?”

She stared into the blackness. “I missed being useful.”

“I can’t imagine you never being useful, Nyx.”

“I’m almost a decade older than you, Rhys. When you’re my age, you’ll feel it.”