“I bet she did,” Nyx said. She walked up to Ahmed and put a hand on his shoulder. Oddly comforting. He understood what the Chenjan liked about her. “I just came from speaking to Fatima Kosan,” Nyx said. “Rumor has it you’re all going to be out of a job soon.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Who was your first?” Nyx asked.

The girl firmed her mouth.

“That young, are you?” Nyx walked toward the girl. “Let me tell you a secret. They forgive you when you let your first one go. There are boys out there threatening to riot. There’s a new government to put together. A whole country to run. A world to fix. And you’re fucking around in here swinging a knife at a war vet. There are no more deserters, honey pot. There’s no war. We’re just people now. You get that?”

The girl stared at her knife.

Ahmed held his breath.

“Go home,” Nyx said. “There’s been enough blood spilled in Nasheen today.”

In another life, Ahmed would have lost his head. He could see it, staring back at him from the floor.

But as Nyx put her hand on the girl’s shoulder, the girl’s expression crumpled.

“It’s all right, Nyx said. “They’ll be another one.”

“You’re Nyxnissa so Dasheem,” the bel dame said.

“Yeah. No note on me either. I checked.”

The girl pulled a red letter from her burnous and handed it to her. “I pass his note to you,” she said. “I don’t give up notes either.” And she walked out.

Nyx held the red letter. Sighed.

As Ahmed watched, she tore up the red letter and threw the remnants onto the floor. “I’ll tell the bounty office it was passed to me. Even if it’s not wiped clean, well, it’s mine now. And I’m retired.”

“I thought you weren’t a bel dame anymore.”

“I’m starting to realize it doesn’t much matter what the truth is, only what people think is true.”

Ahmed took a breath.

“Don’t go thanking me yet. I can’t pay you any currency. I’m flat broke. But I hope you’ll accept that instead.”

“I will,” he said.

“Pack your things,” she said, and opened up the safe. She passed him what was inside.

It was a train ticket to Mushirah, and a government-stamped land deed made out to a woman named Bakira so Dasheem, passed to Kine so Dasheem, then Nyxnissa so Dasheem, and then Eshe al Khazireh. The final name, scrawled in at the bottom and sealed with a shimmery organic stamp, was Ahmed al Kaidan.

“I’ve been holding onto that a long time,” she said. “My sister fought for a decade to get our mother’s farm back from the government. Maybe you can make some use of it.”