It didn’t matter. The Nuqaba was so befuddled in her intoxicated haze by suddenly losing control of her limbs that she didn’t even fight.

“What’s happening? Haruru?” Ironfist said, neck locked to the side. The helmet rattled. “Who’s there?”

Teia had almost wrestled the bigger woman back to the tub when the Nuqaba started trying to fight. Teia squeezed hard again, but her hold on the spine must have shifted because this time the Nuqaba’s body bucked and seized so violently they both went down.

But Teia held on to the paryl at the woman’s throat. Perhaps her very life depended on it. Her grip shifted to the right place again as the Nuqaba fell on her, and the woman went limp again.

Teia scrambled out from under the woman’s dead weight, careful to keep the paryl grip. It was like lifting a fish live from the river, losing the hook, and finding it both too big and too heavy for your hands, praying it didn’t slip or thrash before you got to shore.

She’d lost her invisibility, but maybe it didn’t matter. Ironfist’s face was turned away, and though his helmet rattled with his efforts to see what was happening, he couldn’t—at least as far as Teia could tell.

The Nuqaba’s eyes rolled in terror as she saw the hooded figure standing over her, and her mouth gaped to scream, but nothing came out. She had no control over her body below the neck.

With difficulty, while keeping the paryl hold on her spine, Teia lifted the woman and lowered her into the bathtub. She flopped the woman’s limp arms over the sides of the tub to keep her from sliding down.

Her first thought had been to simply drown the Nuqaba. Drunks passed out and drowned all the time, especially in hot water. It had seemed to be what the chief eunuch had been nervous about. But that wasn’t going to work now.

Not if Teia freed Ironfist.

If she freed Ironfist and the Nuqaba was found drowned, they would assume he’d done it. It wouldn’t matter that there were no bruises on her face, no signs of violence anywhere on her body.

Damn. It had been a good plan.

Teia stood frozen with indecision.

“Murder Sharp?” Ironfist said. “Is that you? Morteza? Is this you and Nouri Sharp? Speak to me, please. You can’t do this. Things are different than whatever the Old Man thought when he sent you, please…”

Teia didn’t answer. It was all true, then. Ironfist really was in the Order of the Broken Eye. It felt as if her world were coming down. The best man she knew was on the same side as the worst men she knew: Murder Sharp and the Old Man of the Desert.

“Don’t you dare hurt her!” Ironfist hissed. Teia had never heard him angry before, had never heard his voice skittering along the edge of control.

She approached him, pulling her invisibility back around her. It didn’t work fully. The master cloak had gotten wet from the Nuqaba’s soaking body and bathing robe, and the master cloak shimmered weirdly in the air where it was damp.

“I can convince her,” Ironfist said. “Whatever it is we need. I’ll make whatever deal you want. I’ve given my whole life and all my integrity for this. Please!”

Teia said nothing. She felt as if her heart had been ripped out. She couldn’t keep this up. She was still barely holding on to the Nuqaba’s spine, and this…

“You leave me no choice,” Ironfist said, and his chest lifted as he took a deep breath to shout an alarm to the guards. But Teia anticipated it, and she slid the spiky gag inside the helmet into his mouth as he opened it, and pinned it in place.

But he hadn’t been inhaling to scream. Instead he spread his arms, wrapping his hands around his chains, bracing his elbows against the wall.

Teia could only watch. There was no way he was going to break those massive chains.

Breath hissed out from the huge man. His muscles went taut throughout his torso and arms. Veins jumped out.

But the chains held.

A moment later, he gasped a breath and went limp.

Teia turned and picked up the knife the Nuqaba had dropped.

A moment later, Teia heard Ironfist’s manacles rattle as he flung himself against them.

Teia stepped close to the Nuqaba. She whispered so Ironfist wouldn’t hear her or recognize her voice if he did. “And now, you bitch, now you pay for your treason.”

She dropped the invisibility so that the last thing the Nuqaba saw would be Teia’s paryl-widened eyes, all black as the hell that awaited her. The woman blanched in terror, and Teia calmly pushed her arm under the water so there would be no spurting, and sliced her veins open from wrist to forearm.

A gush of blood incarnadined the bathwater.

The chains rattled again. Another grunt of expelled air and failure.

Teia grabbed the Nuqaba’s other arm and slashed it underwater, too. Then she lifted it just enough to drape it over the side of the tub. Blood poured onto the floor like wine from the slaves’ pitchers at the party downstairs.

Teia doused the blade of the Nuqaba’s knife in that already-slowing stream, and then dropped the knife onto the stones beside the tub, careful lest the blood spatter her cloak.

After the action came the horror of it. The Nuqaba was blinking wildly, eyes rolling, face contorting. She clearly wanted to scream. She wanted to weep. She wanted to run. But there was to be none of that, not for her. She was to watch herself die, knowing that her murderer would go free, that this would look like self-slaughter. If she could but yell a single word, she would live.

Teia held the woman, eye to eye, her own muscles knotting with the tension of holding the paryl grip tight on that spine, for long minutes. Under one fluttering eye was a tattoo in Old Parian: justice. Under the other: mercy. But neither winked, neither was any different from the other or different from any woman’s eyes. Haruru was no longer the Nuqaba. In her dying, she was no more a symbol of Orholam than she had been in her living. She was now only a victim of those stronger than she was. Now she was just a woman, dying in her bath.

Teia held the Nuqaba’s spine. The water was a deepening red when she heard Ironfist say around his gag, “Heeaa! Heeaa! Theeaaa!”

Teia.

Fuck!

With a muffled roar, he threw himself against the chains again.

Something gave. Not the chain, Teia saw. The bolt that held one of the chains to the wall had pulled forward.

No, not the bolt—the bolt had held—Ironfist had pulled an entire block nearly clear of the wall. Blood streaming down his arms, he threw them forward again, like an injured eagle flapping its wings, longing to be free.