“It’s not,” she said. “We worship the same God and we carry the same sins. Every time you walk into a tavern and kill one of our contacts without provocation, you soil that. Senseless death may be what she taught you in Nasheen, but that’s not how I do things here.”

“I forgot. You just let your priests fuck you and abort your babies.”

Inaya stiffened. She remembered young girls she had nurtured after they were cut open and their shifter children smashed. And the others, the terrified twelve-year-olds raped by priests and forced to bear non-shifter children. It was a helpless feeling, to know you could not protect the women you cared for. To know that women’s bodies here were co-opted so fully and completely that they had ceased to be fully human in the eyes of the priests.

“I had hoped that Isabet’s influence would soften you,” she said coolly.

“Soften me? That rich snot? It’s like trying to teach a tax clerk to be a bel dame. She isn’t meant for this work. You should have her doing intelligence.”

“I do,” Inaya said.

“On who?”

Inaya waved away Michel at her shoulder. He squawked and flapped away, settled onto a perch at the corner of the room.

“Come with me,” Inaya said.

She led him down another level into the cramped quarters she had called home the last six months. There was a single cot, two three-legged stools, some storage bins. She had hung a large red tapestry inscribed with the mark of the martyred messiah above the cot. Her quarters had gotten narrower and narrower over the years as God’s Angels and government enforcers had hounded them further and further outside the primary cities. Her nom de guerre, Madame de Fourré, was on the list, but her face wasn’t. Nor was her true name—Inaya il Parait. She had gone to elaborate lengths to change her blood code in every city they settled in, smoothly taking on a different pattern in each one. She supposed she could have changed her face as well, but there was only so much she was willing to give up. Eshe and the others in the Fourré had risked much to allow her to keep her face. And killed a lot of priests. She reminded herself of that as she prepared what she had to say.

“Please sit, Eshe,” she said.

He sighed and sat on the edge of the bed.

Inaya sat next to him. From this close, the smell of him was stronger—bitter red wine laced in milky hybrid oak and stale sweat. He wore a simple habit like hers, calf-length instead of ankle length, and he sported a spotty beard and long hair, as was the fashion in Ras Tieg.