He dove behind the rise a bare second behind Nyx, but she already had her arm around the woman’s throat.

Eshe saw the woman’s pistol on the ground. She had not been caught totally unaware, then. He needed to work on his stealth. Or not sneak around with Nyx.

Nyx shoved her gun to the woman’s head. Not even so much a woman, really. She was petite, not too much larger than Kage, and swaddled in a large burnous and too-big trousers. But it was the pistol that gave her away.

“Wait! Nyx, let her go.”

“What? Fuck?” Nyx said.

“Let her go. Please. Her pistol. It’s Ras Tiegan.”

“The fuck is that supposed to matter?”

“I know her, Nyx. Please.”

Nyx let her go. Tore back the hood of the girl’s burnous.

Isabet gasped.

“Who the fuck are you?” Nyx said.

“Isabet Softel. I’m…” She blustered a bit, seemingly trying to find the Nasheenian words for what she needed to say. Finally, in Ras Tiegan, she said, “Eshe, tell her who I am.”

“I can tell her who you are, but not what you’re doing here,” he said, also in Ras Tiegan.

“None of that curry-mouthed catshit,” Nyx said, waving her gun at them both now. “The fuck is going on?” She grabbed Isabet’s discarded pistol and sneered at it.

“Inaya sent me after you,” Isabet said, in Ras Tiegan.

“Give me a minute,” Eshe said to Nyx as she popped open the chamber on the Ras Tiegan pistol. He switched languages again. “Catshit,” Eshe said to Isabet. “What the hell are you doing here? Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in? How long have you been tracking me?”

“Since you left. Michel helped me across the border. He said that Inaya insisted that I bring you home. I thought it was a fool’s errand, but—”

“For a very great fool,” Eshe said. “Are you alone?”

“Yes, I told you—”

“How are you going to get back?”

“I told you. You’re to come with me, and together—”

Eshe shook his head. He had to walk away from her, just a few paces, to try and clear his head. They were a long way from the Nasheenian border, an even longer way from the Ras Tiegan one. How she made it this far on her own baffled him. There was no way she’d make it all the way back alone. If Inaya had wanted him to return so badly, why send Isabet? Did she want to murder the girl? He closed his eyes, and thought of Corinne. Anything was possible with Inaya. Who knew what she was playing at?

Eshe said, in Nasheenian, “She says Inaya sent her after me. She says she can’t go home unless I go with her.”

“Tell her to wait in Nasheen then.”

“I… Nyx, look at her. I can’t send her back alone.”