Inaya was never alone these days, and, it seemed, never free of Eshe’s sudden and dramatic entrances. She looked up from her glowing table slide, and quickly tapped out the obfuscation code that turned the correspondences and schematics into an imperceptible gray haze. In the hall beyond Eshe, she watched runners, agents, and two hooded bodyguards move through her headquarters with bug casings and supplies. Never alone, and never a quiet moment here.

Michel, her second, perched on her right shoulder in his blue-gray parrot form. She felt his one good claw tighten painfully on her shoulder at Eshe’s voice. The floor stirred with feathers and dog hair, and the air was heavy with the smell of cooking meat from the makeshift kitchen a level below. The stink of meat and feathers and damp dog hair turned her stomach, but this was the most secure room in the compound. For all the good it did at dissuading Eshe.

“I see someone finally told you,” Inaya said. She reached out and slid open a schematic of the district around the southern edge of Rue Rosalie, the city’s main thoroughfare. “Perhaps it will encourage you to read the papers more often.”

Eshe stepped further into the room and closed the door behind him. Michel squawked.

“Those rags are full of lies. Sorting out the half-truth from the catshit isn’t worth the time,” Eshe said.

“Then perhaps you will make time,” Inaya said.

Eshe put on his little pout, the one that made her want to smack him. She had never considered herself a violent person, and she had not raised her hand to even one cadre here, but the sight of this capable young man playing at being a child sometimes enraged her. Of all the people in her circle, she had come to rely on him the most, at least in the beginning. She expected more of him.

“If they’re pardoning political criminals,” Eshe said, “it means…” He shot a quick glance at Michel. “It means they’re pardoning us, too.”

Inaya waved her hand over the slide. The misty images flickered and dispersed, filling the room with the faint smell of burnt lemon. “It was my understanding that you came here to save Ras Tiegan shifters from genocide,” she said. “That’s what I came here to do.”

“I—” He hesitated. “I did. But it would be nice to know—”

“I have other responsibilities, Eshe. As do you. I’m far more concerned about you murdering priests in taverns. What would you think of it if I went around Nasheen murdering mullahs without cause?”

“That’s a different thing entirely.”

She had never been partial to these backwater priests, herself, but she had not liked his mullahs, either. She had sense enough to know that shooting a religious leader or teacher in the face would do the cause no favors.