“Kage, then,” Nyx said. Second name first, with Drucians. “It’s a deal.” Certainly the best deal she ever made for a sniper, but then, Drucians didn’t know how to deal properly. It put them at a disadvantage, one she was more than happy to exploit.

“You don’t know he was a threat,” Ahmed said.

Nyx stood with him at the window downstairs as the shadows lengthened in the street. “No? You see tomorrow. They’ll be another beggar out there. Another addict, or worse. Somebody so hungry they don’t care about the risk. Some dumb body. You wait,” she said.

But the next morning, there was no new beggar.

Not until dark.

Nyx called Ahmed over. She watched as the young beggar pulled at the sleeves of his tattered slick to hide the venom scars on his arms.

“Satisfied?” Nyx asked.

Ahmed’s eyes were half-lidded, his face—unreadable.

“You’re the boss,” he said.

“I am. Don’t forget it.”

She turned and went back into her office. Shut the door.

Nyx sat behind the desk and took a deep breath. Loyalty was a tricky thing. Aside from Eshe, her team was brand new, and she needed to win their loyalty. This was always the hardest part, being right all the time. Not fucking up. Killing stuff had always been easy for her, but getting a bunch of vets and outcasts to fuck around with her to the ends of Umayma—that was tough, and she didn’t have a lot of time on her hands to make it all right.

Somebody was having her storefront scouted, somebody who thought they could follow her into the desert. If it was one of Fatima’s bel dames, Nyx decided then and there that she would burn Blood Hill to the ground.

If it was somebody else… well, then she was already way behind in this race, and her chances of catching up were getting slimmer by the day. I’m being played, she thought, but I have no idea by who, or what the fuck for.

10.

The sky overhead was on fire.

Rhys stood just outside the circled carts and pitched tents of the caravan, smoking. It was the only way he could get warm. Above him, purple waves of mist billowed in the sky like a massive shroud. He had spent most nights out here at the edge of camp, watching the sky, since the lights started. The caravan was one of Payam’s, led by a caravan leader named Araok who told him that’s just what the sky did out here. During the day, the caravan was a sprawling, noisy affair—eighteen sand caterpillars, four sand cats, seven carts, and twenty-six people.