It took a powerful belief in God to pretend that your children were not destined for something else in Nasheen. She had almost convinced herself that Eshe would live, that she had saved him from the fate she saw for him. But no, it came for them all the same, certain as a swarm of locusts in the dry season. How long had it been since she had faith in anything? Not since she burned it all away at the front.

Isabet woke Ahmed well before his watch.

“I know where we are,” she said.

Her face had mostly healed, though he still caught her putting unguent on it every morning. She had wept over Eshe’s death, and confessed at least a dozen things in Ras Tiegan, so quickly, and sobbing so hard, they he could barely keep up. Somehow, she was pregnant, though he couldn’t imagine when it was she and Eshe would have had time to fuck. Maybe the same way Eshe and I did, he had thought, and gnawed on that all over again.

She had clung to him the way she clung to Eshe, and he was annoyed by it. He missed Kage’s easy silence. He would even have taken Khatijah’s curt attitude over Isabet’s terrified neediness.

“Where are we, then?” he asked. He rubbed his eyes and sat up. It was still a long time until dawn, but Nyx would have them moving again soon. If Raine and his captors were still sleeping, it gave them time to catch up.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “This is Inoublie. I think I know where they’re taking him.”

“What?”

“There is a man here who collects shifters. Eshe and I were tracking him.”

“How does a man who tracks shifters—”

“Just listen. I’m not stupid. You all keep treating me as if I’m stupid. The reason the government never moved against him is because he’s cousin to the Queen of Nasheen. She is half-Ras Tiegan. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that your politician is being brought to Inoublie where he lives.”

“Are you sure about this? You know where he lives?”

“No, but I know someone who does.”

“Who?”

Isabet glanced over at Nyx. “She’s not going to like it,” Isabet said.

41.

Inaya blew into her headquarters as a sea-green gale, stirring dog hair and feathers, sending coded papers and discarded napkins flying off desks and tables. The halls were filled with the dead and dying, the partially shifted, the mangled, the bloody, the mad. Inaya took them all in as she passed. Her anger mounted.

She slid under the door of the communications room, and found Michel and Gabrielle in a heated discussion with two local cell leaders. The rear door was open, so their bickering was on display for half the desperate people in the hall.