“Huh,” Nyx said. “She didn’t know the composition of shifters?”
“Naw, she thought they were just like magicians. Called on certain bugs or something to change them up. I told her no, they were something else, something that got fucked up at the beginning of the world. Told her shifters live half in this world, half in the afterlife. Angels.”
Nyx nodded. It was a popular idea—shifters being angels or demons—but she had known too many shifters to buy into that one. So Nikodem was interested in knowing about shifters. Bugs and shifters. We’re all trying to cure the war, Kine had said. If shifting was genetic, in your blood, could you parse it out?
Do something dangerous with it? Use it to make other things? Gene pirates muttered about that kind of shit all the time, but Nyx had stupidly believed it wasn’t something Nasheen or Chenja would consider. Too fucked up.
“Thanks,” she said. “I better clean up and talk to my crew.”
“Yeah, I saw some of them come back in when you hit the mat. Isn’t much of a safe house if they keep wandering around in broad daylight,” Husayn said.
“Thanks. I’ll talk to them,” Nyx said.
“Nothing of it,” Husayn said. “You spend six weeks here, I could get you back into shape, you know.”
“We won’t be here that long,” Nyx said. The bel dames would burn them out.
Husayn shrugged. “Too bad. I keep wanting to whip that dancer of yours.”
“In more ways than one, I’m sure,” Nyx said.
Husayn winked. “That Chenjan accent turns me frigid. But you know, your little black man’s not a half-bad boxer.”
“Rhys doesn’t box. He’s a dancer.”
“He does box. He’s a magician, ain’t he? And he’s in good shape. A little small, maybe, but there are a lot of women at that weight. I’ve been working with him since he got in. I thought he was training with you.”
Nyx knit her brows. “Not with me.”
“Well, he’s not bad.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
So Rhys was boxing now, despite his long-suffering abhorrence for blood and violence. When had he started that up? It explained how he stayed in shape. He was probably taking lessons from Husayn just to spite Nyx. If she had fewer things to worry about, she might have let it get to her. As it was, she’d spent the last two nights mostly drunk and driving, trying to ward off nightmares of Kine lurching out of the tub, seeking her out with cold hands and bloodied eye sockets. It was not enough that she still dreamed of her dead brothers and her dead squad. Now her sister clawed at her as well. Too many dead.
Nyx hopped out of the ring. She landed badly and winced. She was hungover, and everything was starting to hurt again.
Nyx headed into the steam room. She cleaned herself up and slipped into the closet where Husayn had built a stairwell that went up into the attic.
Nyx found Anneke with her forehead pressed to the floor. Anneke prayed facing north in the center of a vast array of weaponry. Taite had set up a makeshift com center in a far corner, and he and Khos were playing cards on the console. It looked like they’d all slipped in while she fought. What, had they been at lunch?
Rhys had hung up a sheet to screen his sleeping area from the others. She heard him praying, too low to make out the words, as usual, and figured it must be about noon.
She was hungry. They must have eaten.
“What have you all got for me?” Nyx asked.
Khos leaned back in his chair. “What happened to the bakkie?”
“What happened to your face?” Taite said. They were playing for locusts, and one of the bugs was creeping off the table. They must have seen the bakkie in the garage.
“You still need me to fix that window?” Anneke said, coming up from her prone position.
Nyx found a seat on a threadbare divan at the center of the room. There were some deflated speed bags in one corner, and a lone punching bag hung from the long main beam of the ceiling.
“I missed you all too,” she said.
“Anneke and I checked out some of the mercenaries on the note,” Khos said, shoving his cards back at Taite. Taite poked at one of the locusts. If they were just a little harder up, he’d likely eat them. “Two more dropped their notes. If I didn’t know better, I’d say somebody was convincing them it was a good idea. We’re down to one bounty hunter and two mercenaries.”
“The ones who dropped had pretty good money in their accounts after they did,” Taite said. “I hacked into Raine’s com for about a day before he patched the leak. As of three days ago, he’s still after the note.” Nyx saw the statue of Taite’s little Ras Tiegan saint stuck up on the top of the com console. It was good to know that some things were constant.
“Where’s Raine at?” Nyx asked. She wondered how much of her own gear they’d managed to get out.
“He has someone doing recon in Chenja. But he was just in Faleen talking with Yah Tayyib.”
Yah Tayyib. Yeah, it was where she would have gone first too, if the old man would have seen her.
Rhys’s praying died off, and he walked in, buttoned down as ever, though the attic was stifling. He’d cut his hair again, shaved himself nearly bald. She hated that.
“She isn’t in any Chenjan districts I have contacts in,” Rhys said. “All they know is that a lot of bel dames are looking for an off-worlder.”
“Bel dames? Not bounty hunters or mercenaries?”
“Definitely bel dames.”
So bel dames were looking for Nikodem. And if they were looking for Nikodem, it meant they didn’t know where she was either. Were they trying to make sure Nyx didn’t get to her first? Why? To keep Nikodem away from the queen?
“How about that transmission on our dead bounty hunter? Did you decode that?” Nyx asked.
“It’s a transmission from someone who says they’re on the bel dame council,” Rhys said. He sat on the far side of the divan from Nyx. “They were asking him to drop the note on Nikodem in exchange for immunity. They knew he was smuggling out boys to Heidia and were threatening to cut off his head and turn him in unless he dropped out.”
Khos grunted.
“Any idea which bel dame?” Nyx asked.
“No,” Rhys said. “Taite ran it through our voice recognition reel and didn’t come up with any matches.”
Nyx raised her brows. “We should have every working bel dame’s signature on that reel.”
“Well, it was somebody from the actual council, not just a girl. Maybe she’s too old to be on the reel?”
“She’d have to be real fucking old not to be on that reel—or pretty new. It took some skill to pinch that.”
“Hopefully you didn’t pay too much for it, then,” Rhys said.
“I talked to Husayn,” Nyx said, before he got cheeky. “No off-worlder has been asking about boxers or about the magicians in Faleen.” She paused a minute and looked them all over. “She did say she’s losing some boxers to a big ring in Chenja.”
“You think Nikodem might be around boxers?” Taite asked.
“Either the Chenjans took her, with help from our magicians, or she went on her own to go sell something,” Nyx said. “In any case, the boxing is a good place to start. It’s something she was interested in last time, and if she’s got as much of a thing for violence as her sisters say she does, yeah, I’d start with Chenjan boxing.”
“If Raine’s doing recon in Chenja, he might have the same idea,” Taite said.
“We need to do better than Raine,” Nyx said. And Nasheen wasn’t exactly a friendly place to be right now. Not that Chenja would be an improvement, but she liked staying on the move, staying one step ahead of everyone. “I want to move operations to Chenja. Anneke, the bakkie is for shit, and you and I need to work on it tonight.”
“I don’t want to go into Chenja,” Khos said.
“Then don’t. I’ll get another shifter.”
“Nyx—”
A low, steady whine started outside. Fucking b
urst sirens.
Nyx raised her voice and shifted on the divan, turning back to Khos. “We already talked about this. You go or you don’t. We’re moving the day after tomorrow. Dawn prayer.” She was done with all the sniveling. They were out of time for that.
Khos snorted and hunched in his chair.
The whump-whump of the anti-burst guns shook the building. A pause. Another thump.
Nyx tried to measure Rhys’s reaction, but he was staring off into the air.
“Taite, I’ll need you to stay here and work the com, keep an ear on what’s going on in Nasheen. All right?”
“Sure thing,” he said. “Does Husayn play cards?”
The siren started to mute out, then died.
Clear.
“No, but she can teach you to box,” Nyx said, looking pointedly at Rhys. He didn’t react, but Taite made a face at her. The idea of Taite doing anything involving vigorous physical movement was a running joke.
“Anneke,” Nyx said, “let’s go get that bakkie running properly. We’ll need to give it new paint and put on the new tags. Rhys?”
He looked over at her. “Yes?”
“You here?”
“I’m here,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “We’ll need you. I want to talk to you about some things.”
Nyx pushed Khos and Taite away from the com and laid out the papers she’d taken from Kine’s office. She motioned Rhys over. He walked up next to her. She opened her mouth to say something stupid about him, about gravy or prayer wheels or picnicking on the graves of the dead, but she realized she was too tired, and all she really wanted to say was that she’d missed him and his buttoned-up coat.
“When I went over to Kine’s, I saw that they’d gone through her papers looking for something,” Nyx said. “What they didn’t know is that she doesn’t keep her private papers in plain view, not when it has to do with her work in the compounds.”
“So what is this?” Rhys asked, paging through the ciphered sheets.
“Her private papers. I figured you and Taite could decipher them and see what my bel dame sisters wanted from her. It could have been a hit on Kine just to get to me, but… well, they knew Kine and I weren’t close.”
“They aren’t all ciphered,” he said, pulling out a bound record book. “Looks like compound records. I’d have to know more about the technology they’re using.”
“Taite can look that up. You’ll try?”
“I’ll try.”
“Good.” Nyx made to move away from the com. They had a tight deadline, and she already had the litany in her head: papers, bakkie, call the contagion center, go to the bank, pick up gear and supplies.
“Nyx?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry about Kine.”
“Me too,” she said. She saw the body again when she blinked: the sightless eyes, the rusty water, the white feather. “I’m going to go help Anneke with the bakkie.”
“Nyx?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m a dead man in Chenja.”
Something inside of her hurt, something she kept trying to dull with sen and whiskey. She pressed her fist to her gut.
“We’ll be all right. Nobody out there knows you anymore. I can get you over the border and back.” When she said it out loud, she almost believed it.
The way you got Tej over the border?
Rhys pursed his mouth and went back to the papers.
Nyx took Anneke by the collar, and the two of them went down into the garage and looked over the bakkie.
“Who the hell did you have go over this?” Anneke asked. She unshuttered the overhead light. The worms in the glass were dying, and the light was bad.
“Local mechanic in Jameela.”
“I can heal up the front end, maybe replace the bumper if you want to spend the cash.”
Anneke wrenched at the hood. It hissed open. She rolled up the long sleeves of her tunic, showing off the jagged black lines of her prison tattoos, the most prominent of which was a shrieking parrot clutching a bloody heart. She leaned in. She swore. “Shit, how’d you get this back here? You need a new cistern. And your brake line is leaking. Fuck, that coagulant stinks. Who cut this line? You sewed it up twice.”
“Rasheeda. The tissue mechanic patched it the second time. I didn’t have the cash to replace it.”
Anneke sighed and straightened. “You should just get a new bakkie, boss. A proper one with a real flatbed instead of a trunk, one of those ones with the reinforced cistern.”
“Can’t afford it.”
“Can’t afford the repairs neither.”
Nyx handed her a portable light. “Lucky for me, my labor’s cheap.”
Anneke grinned. “Yeah, I know. I get the receipts.”
“At least we know you’re a good shot.”
“Naw, if I was a good shot you’d have died in Faleen, proper.”
“I hired you anyway.”
“Bad judge of character.”
“I know.”
“Huh.” Anneke moved to the back of the garage and pulled out a giant needle, some hoses, and a pair of clippers from the supply cabinet. She had to stand on a box to reach it. “You think you can get the boys back over the border?”
“Raine did.”
“Raine had a lot of contacts.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Hand me some clips and some lube,” Anneke said.
Nyx handed them over, and Anneke disappeared under the hood. Nyx heard the wet slurping of organic tissue as Anneke slid her hands among the guts.
“Why’d you keep running with Raine, after?”
“After what? The thing with you?”
“Yeah.”
“Eh,” Anneke said. “I’ve seen him do worse.”
Anneke reappeared, poked her head around the hood to look at Nyx. She was covered in lube and bakkie bile up to her elbows. “We won’t be able to get Rhys back over the border.”
“Don’t be so dry.”
“I know your count. You never got a guy back over the border.”
“I’ll get Rhys back over.”
“Yeah. Huh.” Anneke leaned back into the guts of the bakkie.
“I’ll get him over.”
“Doesn’t sound like it’s me you’re trying to convince. Hey, I get some cigars for doing this, or what?”
“Just remember to fix the window,” Nyx said. She set the new tags for the bakkie on the front seat. “And put the tags on. I’m going to go look into getting a cistern.”
“Hey, Nyx?”
“Yeah.”
She straightened. “I’ve seen Raine do a lot worse.”
“Me too,” Nyx said.
“So how are you getting us across the border this time?”
“It’s a surprise,” Nyx said.
Anneke grunted. “I hate surprises, boss. The last surprise I got, somebody died.”
“Yeah, well, the last surprise I got, I went to prison,” Nyx said. “I sympathize.”
17
Rhys woke in a bad mood, and morning prayer didn’t make him feel much better. He needed a clear head, but even after going through the salaat, his mind was still stuffed with list after list of chemical compounds and vat numbers and bug secretions. Kine had been a copious note-taker, but none of the names and numbering in her records made much sense to him—it likely wouldn’t make any sense to anybody outside the breeding compounds. And he was out of time to decode it. He left most of it with Taite so he could work on it in their absence.
At least his immersion in Nasheenian organic tech had kept him from dwelling on the border crossing. Nyx kept telling him that she had a way to get over the border that wouldn’t involve any of them inhaling chemical vapor and burning out their lungs.
But somehow, he doubted it.
Anneke—who was dark to begin with—rubbed herself down in bug secretions to stain herself even darker. Anneke was skinny in the hips and flat-chested and could pass for a boy. She had don
e the same a half-dozen times with Raine’s crew, she said. She and Khos could drive right over the border—a particularly low-tech, low-security part of it, in any case. She had a couple of her relatives on the other side scout out a good stretch and assured everybody twenty times over that she could handle herself.
They were packed at dawn.
Rhys stood with the others around the loaded bakkie. He had his Kitab in one hand. He watched Nyx standing next to him, her face a cool blank.
“You keep your head down and report any deviations to Taite, got it?” Nyx told Anneke. Anneke rubbed down her gun while they all waited for Khos to shift.
“Yeah, boss. Me and Khos’ll meet you in Azam, bright and shiny. You gotta take care of that wheel spinner, though.” She winked at Rhys.
Rhys watched Khos stow his clothes behind the front seat and start his shift.
Rhys had to look away when he did it. The contortion and contraction looked obscene. Wrong. As a magician, Rhys could feel the wrongness in the air, the bending of matter in ways it should not bend.
Anneke opened the passenger door, and Khos-the-dog jumped inside and settled onto the seat, tongue lolling. He was a yellow, blue-eyed dog now, cleaner than the wild mutts that scrounged for garbage in the streets but otherwise no different in appearance.
Nyx sidled up closer to Rhys and crossed her arms, and the two of them watched Anneke and Khos drive out of Husayn’s garage and into the violet double dawn.
Rhys took a step away from her, to give himself some room. He was angry at her again, angry about this, about all of it. He wanted to find some way to tell her why he was angry, to explain it, but she tended to believe that every conversation involving strong emotion was full of words and resolutions that were not meant, as if he were a raving drunk. She saw every stated emotion as an admission of weakness.
“So where are we going, Nyxnissa?” he asked.
She spit sen on the garage floor. “The morgue,” she said.
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