He raised his brows. “There is, Madame. One moment.” He walked to the back and returned with a sealed envelope.

“Thank you,” she said.

She walked outside and went to a nearby café to open the letter. Inside was a picture of her children and a train ticket to Shirhazi, the capital of Tirhan.

Inaya stared long at the photo. When she last saw her children, Taite and Isfahan, they were six and three. That made Taite thirteen and Isfahan ten now. They were serious children, more serious than she remembered. They stood together on a balcony overlooking Shahrdad, the salty inland sea in Shirhazi. Isfahan covered her hair, and Taite’s hair was already tangling into dreadlocks like Khos’s.

She wept there at the table.

The serving girl came to her table with more tea, but said nothing. Inaya expected they had seen a great many weeping people here the last few days.

She placed the photo on the table and stared at the train ticket. It should be so easy to go home. She remembered life in Tirhan, before the bel dames came, before she realized everything she lived there was a lie. The streets in Tirhan were safe. She left her garden door unlocked. She could walk anywhere she wished, be employed wherever she wished. The festivals were colorful; the people friendly, the food plentiful. It was like a dream of a place. And the reason it existed was because the rest of the world was like this. The people there could live that way because they sent weapons to countries like hers, and dared them to tear each other apart.

Inaya tore up the train ticket. She finished her tea. Took the photo from the table.

“Madame?” Adeliz said.

Inaya glanced up and saw her waiting in the doorway. “Yes, I’m coming,” Inaya said. She pushed the photo into her pocket and placed a few chits on the table for the tea.

“There is a message from Alix,” Adeliz said as they stepped onto the street.

“And what is that?” Inaya asked.

“She says the bakkie’s waiting.”

“Then we best not keep her waiting,” Inaya said, and buttoned her coat against the cold.

49.

Rhys sat in his new home in Bahreha, in Chenja, unpacking boxes of linens from Tirhan. He had always preferred Tirhani clothes. Better made, more beautiful. For so long, he had thought himself as a poor nomad, a drifter—he had forgotten what it was to build a home. The terror of losing it again had cut too deep to risk that loss again.

But the alternative…

He imagined Elahyiah singing in the other room. Heard Rahim’s wailing. But it was all fantasy.

He had no family now. No path. No purpose.