Inaya paced the parapet as the tide of sand lapped at the base of the church. There were hundreds of people up on the roofs now, watching as the sand bled the streets dry. The public buildings went down first. Inaya watched over a dozen people devoured as it succumbed.

She looked again to the jungle. It would spread without end, eat the entirety of Ras Tieg. And then what? The world? She knew there were contagions bred to engulf certain people, or certain areas. Had this been tailored to the city, the country, or the world?

“Mother Mhari, full of grace,” she muttered. She got down on her naked knees and prayed. She thought of God’s Angels, mutant shifters like her who had been trained only to hurt and destroy. She thought of her husband, Khos, and her children. She had told them she would make a better world. And instead, she had brought some spider into her house and now everything was disintegrating around her. She gazed up at the cloudy sky. No light, no signs, no miracles. Just her, naked on a roof in a tiny town at the edge of everything, with a choice to make.

She got to her feet. When she shifted, she was able to move the matter she was not using… somewhere else. It was how she moved organic and inorganic objects… like a bakkie that she needed to get across a border. She didn’t know where the bits of her went when she did not need them, but she knew she could recall them at will. Or leave them, if she chose.

Now she must do something very terrible, something that could upset everything, because though she was able to put pieces of herself into that other place, she had no idea what would happen if she tried to put something like… this there.

Inaya drew a deep breath—

and broke apart.

“We’ll do with politics what we tried to do with blood,” Alharazad said. “You’ll see. Where’s Raine?”

“You should know better, Alharazad. Nasheenian politics will always be full of blood,” Nyx said. “And Ras Tieg, too, it looks like.”

Fatima sighed. “The girl was just one of Genevieve Leichner’s virgin maids. I’m astounded you didn’t see her for what she was immediately.”

No, Nyx admitted, she always overlooked people who played at being weak. She’d made the same mistake with Inaya, way back when.

“They were dispatched to infiltrate the Fourré some time ago,” Fatima said. “It’s not my pet project, but the Queen was very hopeful about the outcome. I told you we have been working closely with her on this. Ras Tieg has been highly unstable since the rise of the Fourré. Before then they were not much of anything. But when the Queen realized a simple trade could help us solidify our relations with Ras Tieg, she agreed.”

“She traded them Raine for political stability?”