Though they weren’t looking for Iltani as far as we knew, she couldn’t saunter right in with Nanaea, Dagan, and me in tow in case Uruku had instructed the guardsmen to watch out for us. So we’d had to devise a plan. Iltani had suggested setting fire to the sycamores outside the gate to create a diversion because of course she had. But that would create a scene, and the last thing we wanted was to make too much of a fuss. We wanted to slip in easily, unnoticed, like ghosts.

“You’d think one of them would at least have to relieve themselves or something by now,” Nanaea whispered as we crouched along the Libbu wall in the trees. “Make it at least a little easier for Iltani to talk our way in.”

“Exactly. What are they, camels?” Iltani tugged her costume down over her hips. Nanaea had painted lines on her face and wrapped her hair in scarves, pulling scraggly strands out the front, darkening them with mud so she’d look unkempt. Iltani would be a traveling prophet, and I would be her veiled apprentice. Failing to offer assistance to one of Selu’s prophets could bring about bad luck, so we’d use the Alu tradition to our advantage. Nanaea would lie hidden in the cart under folded blankets, while Dagan was to be wrapped like a corpse and would ride in the back. Dagan had killed a gazelle on the journey from Wussuru, and we’d saved the parts of the carcass we hadn’t smoked to arrange across the top of him to add bulk.

And stink.

“It would be ideal if we could get two of them away from the gate with a small fire.”

“Iltani, we already said no to the fire.”

She winked at me lewdly. “Fine. Maybe I’ll have to start a fire of my own with one or two of them.”

“We’re not going to be bartering with—” I gestured to the length of her body.

She cackled. “I’ll be the one talking, now, won’t I?”

Dagan scowled at her as he slipped the burlap sack up to his waist. “No one has to barter with…anything. I brought coins. You can pay them to look the other way if they don’t buy your story. And I will be waiting with my daggers drawn if things go wrong.”

Iltani opened her eyes in mock indignation. “As if I couldn’t defend myself and my dear addled apprentice over here. How dare—”

“Be quiet.” I wrapped the scarves we’d borrowed from the Koru around my waist.

“None of you are any fun at all.” Iltani elbowed me in the side, her eyes clear and bright. I’d asked her not to drink from her flask so she could be watchful and wary, and more than once, I’d seen her hand straying to her belt where she’d stored it. She’d sworn there was only water in there, but I had my doubts.

“I’ll feel more fun when we’re through the gate and on Dagan’s farm.”