“She bring anyone else with her?”

“No.”

Nyx regarded Isabet. In the dim light, he couldn’t make out Nyx’s exact expression, but whenever she went quiet it meant she was actually thinking something through, weighing her options. It was usually a good thing. Fewer people died.

“She do anything useful?”

“We worked together in the shifter rebellion. Inaya’s Fourré. She comes from a rich family. Has a lot of connections.”

“In Ras Tieg?”

“Yes.”

“We’re not going to Ras Tieg.”

“No.”

Nyx holstered her pistol and started to walk away. “Get rid of her.”

“No, wait,” Eshe said. “She’s not going to give up, Nyx. She’s going to keep following us.”

“Let her follow.”

“She’ll die.”

“Most of us probably will.”

“Then why can’t she die with us?”

“Because she’s dead weight. I’m not feeding and watering somebody who’s just going to end up a body later without giving anything back. You see how easy it was to jump her? We don’t need any of that.”

“Wait,” Eshe said. He searched for something about Isabet that Nyx could understand. You couldn’t appeal to morality. One body was very like another, to Nyx.

“She’s trustworthy,” Eshe said.

“What?”

“I trust her,” Eshe said. “Isn’t that exactly what we need right now? Somebody we can trust? Fatima’s people are just spies, and that Ahmed guy, and the Drucian. We don’t know them well. Listen, this girl is smart. She may not seem like much, but she has… she has tact. And she can handle herself when things get bad.” He remembered pulling the sack off her head after he killed the priest and seeing the shock on her face when she saw the priest’s body. But she hadn’t gone to pieces.

Nyx chewed on that awhile. Shook her head.

Fuck, he thought.

Nyx said, “She comes with us, blood’s on you. And so’s her loyalty. That honey pot turns on us and I’ll have you kill her. You understand me?” She reached out, took his chin, the way she had when he was a kid stealing bullets from the hub. She made him look at her. Hard black eyes.

“I understand you,” he said.

Nyx walked back to camp.

Eshe went to Isabet. She was packing up her things. Some food, a copy of the Ras Tiegan Good Book stuffed with documents of some sort, and a small camping stove. He thought the documents were a little odd, but didn’t say anything.