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look richer than she was.  
    Eshe pulled a battered, antique slide from the locked drawer of his desk and accessed a list of potential notes and clients that Suha had logged that morning. Nyx began taking off the most extraneous of her gear and set it out for cleaning. Her vision swam as Eshe spoke. She rubbed her eyes.  
    “So let’s get this straight,” Nyx said when he was done. “I can play babysitter to some First Family secretary, cut off a petty debtor’s head, or… What was that other one?”
    “Woman who owns a gambling pit in Ashad quarter wants you to evict some tenants.”  
    “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
    Eshe shrugged.  
    How the fuck else was she going to pay the bills? Nyx felt suddenly lightheaded, and put her hand on her desktop to steady herself.  
    “Sign me up for the babysitting job,” she said to Eshe. “I’ll sort out the details tonight, all right? Go get cleaned up. It’s fight night.”
    Eshe thumbed some notes into the misty slide and walked back into the keg. Nyx heard him crackle through the hub filter and batter around in the backroom with Suha. They started arguing about what kind of oil was best for rubbing down a double-barreled semi-organic Z1020 after disassembly.  
    Nyx pulled off her sandals. She hung her head between her knees. She closed her eyes and waited for her head to stop spinning.
    She didn’t want to go up the hill to the Orrizo and talk to some moneyed magician who looked at her like a broken anvil. She also didn’t want to spend any more nights with her head between her knees. She wasn’t doing herself or Eshe any favors, and Suha had a mother and three sisters to feed. For the first time in a decade, Nyx had money in the bank, gun and money caches for emergencies, and a team she was more than eighty percent certain wasn’t fucking around on her. So why was she so sick and miserable?
    Nyx sat up slowly and palmed open the sen box on the bottom left corner of her desk. A little sen with a morphine chaser cured just about everything.  
    When she was more coherent, Nyx accessed the day’s accounts on her personal slide and paid a couple of bills. Mercia’s mother had indeed deposited the promised fee. They’d all be able to eat for the next few weeks.  
    Winter days in Mushtallah were warm, but short. By the time she mostly squared her accounts it was already dark, and she had unshuttered both glow worm lamps; the one on her desk and the big cylinder near the door. She heard Eshe light the cheap lamps in the keg. Suha turned up the radio as a band of nighttime revelers passed through the alley on their way to a low-end brothel three streets over.  
    The local magicians were holding a boxing match later that night. Nyx figured she’d send out Eshe for food and then take him downtown after Suha packed up and went home to her mother. Payday nights were traditionally Nyx and Eshe’s food and fight nights.  
    She leaned back in her chair and stretched. The chime on the reception area door sounded, which meant somebody had stepped onto the porch. She figured Suha had punched up a food delivery.
    Nyx walked into the keg and slid her hand over the face of the door. The door went transparent—from her side, anyway—and she saw a girl on the stoop wearing a too-big burnous. Even with her face hidden deep within the heavy hood, Nyx knew it was Mercia. The kid had affected an awkward slouch, probably in an attempt to appear less like Mercia, but Nyx had spent all day staring at her ass-end, tracking her through crowds—she’d know that kid’s bony little ass anywhere.  
    Nyx opened the door and stepped into the threshold to block Mercia from getting inside.
    “Don’t you put a foot in here,” Nyx said. “Your mother likely has tags.”  
    Mercia tilted her head up a little, so Nyx could just see the stubborn end of her pale chin. “No one followed me.”
    “I’m not hiring,” Nyx said. “Cutting off heads isn’t nearly as glamorous as it