The crowds for the time of day were unexpected. The warm morning air was invigorating, but the potential threat was more so, especially with the tarry stink of the night’s riots still in the air. Boys and young men clotted the sidewalks. Most were just making their way to tea houses or bars or pushing back home from the mosque after morning prayer. But others had made the street their permanent home, and they lurked in doorways, slumped in alleys, begged for handouts, or talked up passersby in the hopes of selling grapes or prayer rugs or bootleg whiskey. Nyx wondered where all the itinerants went at night. The stink of them as she passed hinted that they took up residence in the sewers.

Nyx raised a hand to push a boy out of the way, but he darted back before she could touch him. Old women who walked like bel dames had always put Nasheenian boys on guard. It was good to know some things hadn’t changed.

Someone was yelling from the direction of the mosque. Nyx rolled her shoulders and glanced to her right. The crowd stirred. A few heads turned. She rested a hand on her pistol.

Then she moved down another street, the main way running outside the square, and some of the noise died down. Nyx waited another breath before pulling her hand away from her pistol. Ahead of her, she saw a dozen blue-clad order keepers swarming the sidewalk. She was close to the address Mercia had given her.

She turned down another thoroughfare. There were more order keepers here, and something else—women dressed in deep brown and crimson burnouses who had the arrogant stance of bel dames. She couldn’t ever remember seeing bel dames and order keepers congregating together. Order keepers hated bel dames, and bel dames thought order keepers were a bad joke.

She stepped up to the banded gate bearing Fatima’s address and presented the invitation Mercia had given her to the bel dame at the gate.

The bel dame keyed Nyx into the filter and opened the gate. “Sorry for the filter. Three boys got in last week. We’ve had to tighten it a lot. No more boys get in, though.” She gestured for Nyx to go in. “Welcome to Blood Hill.”

“Blood Hill, huh?” Nyx said. Bel dames were never much for creativity. She’d bet her left lung Fatima had named the place. Bloodmount in Mushtallah was mostly abandoned now, she heard. Kept on for show, but the real shit went down here, far from the Queen’s most supportive city.