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now, and the seven hundred when you get there. Another five thousand at the end of the job.”
    The serving girl brought Rhys’s tea. He hardly noticed. He had never seen that much money in his life. “Is that with or without your commission?”
    Payam laughed. “My friend, I am pleased to tell you that that is after my commission.”
    Rhys felt the knot of anger and worry that he had been harboring all morning begin to ease. He did not trust the feeling, though, because he did not entirely trust Payam. For all he knew, it was one of Payam’s conquests that left her child to die in the privy in Rhys’s tenement. Such an immoral man could not be trusted.
    “Why didn’t anyone else take this job?”
    “I have four translators out on jobs. The other two don’t know Nasheenian. And he was very specific that the translator speak Nasheenian.”
    Rhys wrapped his hands around the teacup. The warmth was soothing, familiar. The last time someone wanted him to translate Nasheenian, bloody bel dames hacked off his hands and murdered his children. But the money…
    “Did he say why Nasheenian?”
    “He does dealings with them. Not sure if you’ve kept up with Nasheenian politics, but there’s a big rift over there. The Queen, First Families, bel dames, all looking to take over if it turns out the war’s really ending. But the magic has turned against them. His man tells me Hanife does quite a lot of black market business with Nasheenian First Families.”
    “First Families? Not bel dames?”
    Payam shrugged. “He said nothing to me of bel dames. Why? Have some trouble with them?”
    Rhys stared at his hands. The long sleeves of his burnous covered the scars at his wrists where he had lost his hands. The ones fixed to his body now were not his, but some dead laborer’s. Short, thick fingers. They had been rough and calloused when he first got them. He had not been able to touch his wife without cringing for more than a year.
    “Three hundred now?”
    “Yes. I know I have two-thirds of your mind. You’ll do it?”
    “You knew I would.” Payam also ran the local trading post. He would have seen how long Rhys’s credit list was, and how desperately his family needed to eat.
    Payam grinned. “Of course I knew you would. Have some more tea! This commission will finally send me on my haj to Chenja. Birthplace of the martyr, may she bless this transaction. A fine day for both of us!”
    Rhys stumbled outside into the warm dawn. The rest of the settlement was back from prayer, and the streets were alive with the hiss of cats and the song of Khairians. He had three hundred notes in his pocket. He went immediately to the trading post and paid two hundred and eighty five of it toward his tab, and used some of the rest to buy coconut milk, lizard eggs, protein cakes, rye flour, and a packet of sen-laced tobacco. He hid the tobacco deep in the pocket of his burnous and walked home.
    Inside, Nasrin played at the center of the main room with a dead grasshopper. He heard Elahyiah singing softly to Rahim in the other room. Mehry would be at school by now.
    “Da!” Nasrin said, and held out her arms. He stared blankly at her for a moment, because she suddenly reminded him so strongly of his dead daughter Souri that he experienced a moment of dissonance.
    His body went through the expected motions. He reached for his daughter. Picked her up. She patted his face with her little hand. But he was still numb. Disconnected.
    “Rhys?”
    He turned. Sometimes it surprised him how easily he answered to that name. It was not his given name, Rakhshan, the name that marked him as a Chenjan deserter. He wondered if he would ever hear his given name again.
    Elahyiah came to him. Her abaya was stained with spit up. She had a rag in one hand. Her skin was sallow, lusterless, and her tangle of dark hair was knotted back from her dark, gaunt face.
    “I brought groceries,” he said, setting Nasrin back down. The girl cried out in protest and waved