In Tirhan, Nyx could not smell the war. On the other side of the pass, the first thing she noticed was the absence of the tangy reek of bug haze and burst residue. Tirhan was big and green and rolling, and as they descended into the grasses of the valley below, Nyx found herself suddenly claustrophobic, though the stands of twisty amber trees that clotted the landscape were huddled far off the roadway. Eshe rode on her shoulder in raven form. He slept most of the way, so she kept her burnous up to protect him from the worst of the cold. The air was different here. Cleaner. Colder. Drier than she expected, too, for such a green country. Suha’s gun-running sister, Azizah, had agreed to let them join her caravan. They stopped at a bustling road house at noon and waited out the heat. It wasn’t like the dry heat of the desert, but something mild and salty and altogether… different. Eshe and Suha prayed with the rest when the call came out from the muezzin on top of the flat tiled blue roof of the road house.
