The bel dames who moved through the halls were all hard-bitten, straight-backed women with ropy muscles and keen stares, but for all their mental maturity, they were—physically—young, including the four escorting Nyx to Fatima’s office. They passed strutting sixteen-year-old novices and bitter veterans with scarred twenty-year-old faces. The cranky weapons teachers and protocol specialists—the ones Nyx always thought looked like the desert had eaten them up and spit them out—were a ripe old thirty.

Nyx was painfully aware that she was the oldest person in every room by nearly a decade. Every room but the last.

The one Fatima waited in.

Fatima sat at a deep mahogany desk of real wood. Her backless chair was padded in deep umber brown. The name of God was scrawled along the top border of the room, repeated endlessly like something from a Chenjan prayer wheel. No windows in this room—not surprising. It was nicer, but smaller than the bel dame’s former quarters on Bloodmount.

“Have a seat,” Fatima said, gesturing to one of the padded, backless chairs. There was a large slide hung against the far wall, blank now. Nyx wondered what they planned and plotted on that monstrosity. She had never seen a slide so big, and wondered how many new magical gadgets and super weapons had been pushed through production in her absence.

Watching Fatima’s savage, skinny frame easily inhabiting the space behind the desk where she picked over government policy made every muscle in Nyx’s body tense. Fatima had done well for herself, she’d give her that. Sucking at the government’s tit was a good way to make a living. But Nyx liked to think that remaining a free agent helped preserve what little honor she had left.

Nyx nodded at her bel dame escorts. “You want to keep them around?”

“I think we’ll be all right. Won’t we?”

“You tell me.”

Fatima dismissed the bel dames. They shut the door.

Nyx sprang across the table.

It was not the action of a young woman, and as soon as she leapt, she regretted it. She had expected to move a lot faster.

But then, Fatima wasn’t young either.

Fatima ducked left, twisted right, and snapped her elbow back. Nyx dodged. Fatima’s elbow glanced off Nyx’s brow instead of her temple. Nyx slammed her full weight into Fatima’s torso. The two went down together.

Nyx pinned Fatima between the desk and the wall, one knee pressing hard into the small of her back. She got a good grip on Fatima’s free hand and twisted her arm behind her, pulled it taut.

Fatima made a strangled sound, somewhere between a bark and a snarl. She tried kicking at the back of Nyx’s head, but Nyx caught her leg and pinned it with her own.

“Give me a reason,” Nyx said.