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wrinkled her brow. “Me? I’m not worried about me ,” she said.  
    “Why the hell not?” Nyx said.  
    “Because,” Mercia said, very slowly, as if speaking to a soft, educated idiot, “those bel dames weren’t after me. They were after you. ”

3.
    T he Tirhani Minister of Public Affairs was in a foul mood. In the three years Rhys had worked with her, he had come to know her moods better than those of his own wife. The Minister bore her moods more clearly in the severe lines of her face, the deepening crease of worry between her heavy brows. When her mood moved from severe to foul she would tighten and release her fist on her desk the way she was doing now—tighten and release, tighten and release—as if she were strangling kittens one by one and dropping them into a pail at her feet.  
    Rhys sat across from her at the center of the broad map of her office, a slide pulled open in his hands. A pattern of gilded palm fronds repeated along the border of the room, like the name of God in a prayer. The windows behind her were opaqued and filtered to keep out the sun. He could look just over the Minister’s shoulder and see the whole of Tirhani’s capital, Shirhazi, spread out across the flat plain below, crowded along the rim of the salty inland sea called Shahrdad. Tirhanis liked their buildings tall, and from this height, fourteen floors above the city, Rhys could share their enthusiasm. Being above this big city made him feel less small.  
    The Minister thumped her fist on her desk.  
    “These bloody black roaches think that covering up women’s faces makes the lot of them more pious. Piety does not determine price. I won’t part with the fruit of our labor for a brick man’s fee. Do they think we are a country of stevedores?”  
    Rhys pulled his attention back to the Minister and the pleasantly cool room. The slick semi-transparent screen of his slide displayed his notes on the translation of Chenjan contracts relating to an exchange of goods and services with Tirhan. Like many of the documents Rhys had dealt with during his translation work with the Tirhani government, the actual goods and services were not specified, merely the terms of the amounts agreed upon, the delivery dates and times, the payment milestones, and generic legal jargon.  
    “Are you going to have your assistant consul politely decline their offer?” Rhys asked. “I’d like to have an idea of the tone you wish to present before I receive the document for review.”  
    Though the goods were never named outright, Rhys suspected the Minister of Public Affairs was negotiating arms sales with Chenja, and had been for as long as he had worked for her. A third of the population of Shirhazi was employed in its weapons manufacturing plants. Most of Tirhan’s economy was tied up in arms deals that fueled the centuries-old war between Chenja and Nasheen. It kept Tirhan’s neighbors busy and made Tirhanis rich. It also required a significant ex-pat community of magicians to produce it. Shirhazi was a hodgepodge haven of refugee Chenjans and exiled magicians from Nasheen, Ras Tieg, even Mhoria. The Minister knew he knew her business, but they never discussed the movement of arms in such blunt terms. Some of this was merely the Tirhani custom of false modesty and false politeness. Rhys had spent much of his time as a child learning similar conversational rituals at the Chenjan court while on business with his father. He had picked up the Tirhani version easily. He found it much more comforting than brutal Nasheenian honesty.
      The Minister’s frown deepened. “You must decline their offer politely, but with a touch of disdain. This is the second time this new Minister has treated us as infidels during a negotiation. He must know his place before God. I will have my consul remove the offer completely, as a lesson. I will have him forward you our reply tonight, but do not trouble yourself about its delivery. I will have their minister