The patrol leader regarded her coolly for a long minute, then looked back at the road, toward Amtullah. “You will.”

When Nyx was growing up, people talked about Amtullah like it was a shining pillar of wisdom and learning, a haven for com technicians, hedge witches, and paltry magicians of all sorts with a desire to concoct potent war potions to decimate the Chenjans. Back then, it was a sprawling, well-kept city of organ galleries, state-sponsored theaters, historical facades, and the oldest mosque in the country. But over the years it had become a raucous mass of humanity, full of half-breeds and chained cats and corrupt order keepers and organ hawkers and gene pirates. It was also a hive of corrupted First Family heretics, half-breed laborers who barely spoke Nasheenian, and a peculiar native organic grit that ate the flesh between your toes if you didn’t clean up regular. That wasn’t to say the city wasn’t clean as a Tirhani kid’s ass, aesthetically speaking. The pretty streets in the good parts of town were impressive, as Nyx recalled—etched in geometric designs and prayer script. The gaudy theaters with their domed roofs took up a whole district, and most public buildings were still faced in detailed stained-glass windows that threw rainbows of light across the streets. Foolish, all those windows, but the interior could get away with having some finery on display. Nyx wondered how much of that had changed.

As they approached in the darkness, Amtullah rose up from the hilly white plain like a thorny, blackened crown capped in a giant soap bubble that wavered and shimmered in the ruddy light of the moons. The filter went red, then pale purple, then black, colors mixing and swirling like a captured aurora.

But it wasn’t the city itself that drew her attention. It was the conspicuously bright light in the sky. It did not shimmer like starlight, and it was no planet she recognized. No, this was something else. Something she generally only ever saw over Punjai.

Stragglers appeared along the road as they got closer, long-legged boys and men swathed in turbans that covered their heads and faces. Most carried duffle packs and some still wore government-issue slicks. Two boys about Mercia’s age lunged at the caravan as they passed. One of the patrol women shot off a few rounds in their direction. Nyx was surprised the woman let the bullets go wide, then remembered these men weren’t deserters. They were, by rights, discharged and full citizens. Watching the boys spit and swear at them as the caravan coughed along, Nyx found the idea that these vagrant squatters now had full independent personhood and voting rights rather appalling.

The entrance to the city was worse.