She thought to call Michel, or Adeliz, someone who could talk some sense into him. He needed to lie low now, preferably in shifter form, until the blowout from the priests’ murders was done. But Adeliz had gone out, and Eshe had never listened to a word Michel said, not since the rumor started that he spent nights in Inaya’s quarters. She had denied those rumors, but they persisted.

She walked back into her communication room and opened the slide. She needed to decide what to do with Isabet if he left. Putting her with Eshe had been the safest place, the one least likely to result in anyone discovering who Isabet was. Eshe knew little of what happened at the higher levels of Ras Tiegan politics. What motivated Eshe was nurturing a woman he still believed needed saving. Isabet was a fine choice to play that role. But now God’s Angels would round him up, and Isabet would need another protector. Because if Inaya had to choose between the Nasheenian boy shifter who had loyally stood by her side for seven years or the renegade rich girl who could win her people the revolution… she would choose the rich girl. She had been in Ras Tieg so long now, making so many choices just like this one, that the guilt was easy to suppress. She tucked it into that part of her where she kept the memory of her children, and all that she had given up to see this through.

They were sacrifices she did not intend to make in vain.

“Inaya?”

One of her cadre commanders waited in the doorway. “We’re ready to start the recovery of the missing operatives.”

Inaya nodded. “Let’s begin.”

7.

Nyx had saved a lot of women in her time. Killed a few, too. But most of the people she killed were men. That was the way of the world. Or at least the one she remembered.

Until after morning prayer, the streets were strangely quiet. She saw a few in doorways and alleys and heard the far-off scuff of order keeper boots on cobbles. The soft buzz and whir of bakkies puttering off through the city. Saw a spotlight searching the skyline.

But as the suns rose, the streets filled, and Nyx stepped into a heaving mass of men the likes of which she hadn’t seen since her days at the front. The roads further inside Amtullah were too narrow for bakkies or rickshaws, so Nyx walked.