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stew himself to death while his people starve in the trenches.
    “Would you like some tea?”
    The segue was abrupt, and familiar. The Minister pulled a cup and saucer from her desk, a strainer, a tea bag. Business was concluded for the day.
    Rhys rose. “Thank you, but I must humbly decline,” he said.  
    “Oh, no, I insist you sit and have a drink,” she said. She ladled a teaspoon of fire beetles into a water shaker and shook it up to heat the water. “I cannot allow you to part ways without a drink.”  
    Tirhani false politeness.
    “I respectfully decline. I am not thirsty. Thank you for this reception. I do look forward to hearing from your consul.” Rhys bowed his head and waited. They had still not discussed the matter of payment.  
    “It is really too much,” the Minister said, taking her cue. “You do too much for us.”
    “I am, as ever, pleased to offer my services to the benefit of this great country,” Rhys said.  
    “And how much is it I may reward you for those services you’ve provided today?”  
    “It is nothing,” Rhys said. “It is my pleasure.”  
    He continued waiting.  
    “No, indeed, I insist. It is the least I can do.”
    “I am pleased to serve such a pleasant employer.”  
    “I must redeem you. Come now.”  
    “A day’s work, twelve hours, correspondence with a Chenjan minister,” Rhys said. “God willing, the price for such work is sixty notes.” It was a price ten percent higher than he believed she would pay.
    “That is too much,” she said, and her expression soured further. “I could have had a boy from the Chenjan ghetto do the same, for far less.”
    “And you would have gotten work of an equal quality to the price you paid. You will not find a boy familiar with Chenjan politics and the workings of the minds of her war ministers begging for bugs at the corner.”  
    “Yet I have had Chenjan men provide me with just such a service at half the cost.”
    “Half? Then they are beggars, and scoundrels, and it is no surprise that they are no longer in your employ. Instead, you have found my services more than adequate for several seasons.”
    “It is adequate only when it is fair. I’ll pay you forty, no more.”  
    “I do appreciate proper recompense for the valuable work I provide for Tirhan. If you wish my family and I to soil ourselves in the Chenjan ghetto, please pay me what you would a dockworker, and excuse the state of my soiled bisht,” he said, taking a handful of the gauzy outer robe he wore and holding it out to her. It was not, indeed, soiled, but it was a bit dusty. “I cannot ask for less than fifty-five.”
    “I, too, have mouths to feed, and a public to serve. Do you wish to bankrupt my country? Fifty notes will fill the bellies of half the children in the Chenjan ghetto.”
    “For fifty-two notes, I can feed my children and perhaps excuse the Minister’s insults as to my ethnicity.”
    The Minister leaned back in her chair and regarded him. “You’re very Chenjan,” she said.  
    “It’s why you hired me,” he said.  
    The Minister pressed her hand to the upper left corner of her desk. Rhys felt the air fill with the soft chatter of wood mites. The mites in the desk vomited up the Minister’s pay tickets. She wrote out a receipt for fifty-two and handed it to him.
    Rhys accepted the receipt and bowed his head.  
    “Peace be with you,” the Minister said, “and may God bless your house and family.” She raised her teacup.
    “And yours,” Rhys said, “God is great.”
    He walked out of the Minister’s cool office and into the grand hall of the Public Affairs Ministry. The building’s gilt-domed mosque was on the top floor, two floors above him. He had gone to prayer before his meeting with the Minister, and now he took the stairs back to street level. It was a long descent, but he preferred it to the lifts, which were encased in an opaqued glass shaft that made him nervous. He knew too much about how easily a