Rhys’s fingers twitched. He searched for a local swarm of wasps.
“Let’s not be hasty,” one of the other figures said, and something rolled toward him, blowing smoke.
Rhys coughed and raised his hands.
The large man grabbed Rhys by the burnous and dragged him to his feet. Rhys reached for his pistols, but the man twisted both of Rhys’s arms neatly behind him.
A magician stood just to the left of him, one hand raised, a swarm of wasps already circling her head.
“So you’re her beautiful boy,” the man said. “I didn’t see you much at the Cage. Thought you were just a rumor.”
“You’re mistaken—” Rhys began.
“No, I think not,” Raine said. “Let us see if she cares any more for you than she does her little half-breed.”
29
Khos sat outside the diner in a too-small wicker chair, a pistol at his hip and the taste of excrement still in his mouth. Children played in the dusty street beyond the cool shade of the billowing red awning that cloaked the sidewalk. Little Mhorian girls, too skinny and already veiled, scurried among the poles that propped up the awning, shooing hungry bugs from the twine grounding the poles. The girls slathered a thick bug-repelling unguent on both pole and twine. The acrid stink of the repellent made Khos’s eyes water.
It wasn’t much past dawn, but the day was already hot. Khos sweated beneath his burnous. A girl came by with a tray and served him a tiny cup of tea, black as pitch. She lowered her eyes as she served him. He was careful not to touch her. She tucked the tray under her arm, pressed her palms together, bowed, and backed away from him.
Khos wished the chair was larger. He stared out at the children and the passersby. This early, the only people on the street besides the dirty children were the creepers. They slunk along the sidewalk with giant nets over their shoulders, their faces hidden by their floppy hats.
He saw Mahrokh crossing the street. She stood out easily among the dregs of the blue dawn. She went veiled when she wasn’t working, and that was just as well. Chenjans—male and female alike—had been known to stone whores in the streets when they appeared during the day without an escort. But he marked Mahrokh by her significant height—nearly as tall as he was—broad shoulders, and confident walk which reminded him of Nyx. She carried a rectangular package under one arm, and the sight of it made his heart skip. He looked back up the street she had appeared from and into the long morning shadows between buildings, but saw no one following her.
She stepped around the refuse in the streets and up onto the sidewalk, and then he saw her eyes: blue-black and already squinting to make out his countenance, though he couldn’t imagine she would mistake him for anyone else, even with her fuzzy sight.
He stood and pressed his palms together, bowing.
Mahrokh set the package on the table, and did the same.
They sat, and Khos called over one of the Mhorian girls. “Another tea,” he said.
“No honey,” Mahrokh added.
When the girl had gone, Mahrokh turned to study him. “You look better. Still terrible, but better.”
“I hope that improves,” he said. He sipped at his tea to clear the taste from his mouth. Shifting into a dog to bathe had its advantages, but a clean tasting mouth wasn’t one of them.
Mahrokh reached beneath her burnous and pulled out several glossy papers. She pushed them across the table to Khos.
Khos stared at them. The edges were already beginning to disintegrate.
“They’re tailored to destruct in several hours,” Mahrokh said.
Khos fanned the images out on the table. A few pieces from the ends of each flaked away as he did. A beaming young boy, seven or eight years old, peered out from the pages. He was the color of the desert—far too pale and flat-nosed to pass as anything but what he was. And though his hair was dark, his eyes were unmistakably blue.
“We’ve had to transfer him,” Mahrokh said. “To avoid the Chenjan draft.”
“They’re drafting half-breeds here as well?”
“Yes. It started last year.”
“Where is he going?”
“Tirhan. They’ve been a neutral country since they broke away from Chenja. We send our highest risk boys there.”
Khos tentatively touched the face in the picture. He imagined what it would be like to grow up in fear. His heart ached. He pushed the pictures back at Mahrokh.
“Keep them,” she said. “They’ll be gone soon enough.”
“Is there danger in the crossing?” Khos asked. “I’ve never tried to get into Tirhan.”
“Our network extends deep into Tirhan. I already have an interested family. His look is a little off for Chenja and Nasheen, and no doubt he’ll be a little odd in Tirhan, but he will not stand out as much. I think he’ll be happier there. And certainly safer.”
Khos nodded. He did not trust himself to speak. He slipped the pictures into his vest pocket.
“And do you have news for me?” she asked.
“Three boys are coming in from Nasheen in three days,” Khos said. “One of my contacts will be escorting them from Azam to Dadfar. You’ll need to take them from there.”
“I will tell my women,” Mahrokh said.
Khos nodded at the package. “Should I ask about that?”
Mahrokh’s body seemed to shrink. She gazed long at the package. “That was sitting on our porch this morning. Addressed to your woman.”
The Mhorian girl arrived with Mahrokh’s tea, then pressed her palms together and bowed her head. Mahrokh returned the gesture and drank.
Khos continued to stare at the package. “You and your women need to be careful,” he said.
Mahrokh did not look at him. “We are careful. Those who trouble your woman would not trouble us. We have protection.”
“Protection? You mean Haj?”
Mahrokh looked up at him. “You know of Haj?”
Khos felt his cheeks flush. He tugged at the hood of his burnous in an attempt to hide his face. Why did he still react like that, after all this time among women? Haj, who knew something about Nyx and just enough about Inaya—and too much about him.
“I’ve met her,” Khos said. “How much do you know about her?”
“She’s quiet. Since she’s sympathetic to the cause, I assume she lost a man at the front. All of us have.”
“What do you know about who she runs with?”
“Those she uses to protect us?”
“Yes.”
Mahrokh shrugged. “Very little. Mostly Nasheenian women, as she is. They’re reliable, efficient, effective.”
“Could you ask around? Tell me what you can find out about her?”
“Certainly. Does she concern you?”
“I’m just interested. Thank you, Mahrokh.” Khos finished his tea and stood. “Would you like me to walk you to your street?”
“No, no. I know my streets far better than you do. I’ll finish my tea.”
He reached for the rectangular package, and tucked it under his arm. He bowed his head to Mahrokh. “Take care. And remember what I said about being cautious.”
“I am always cautious, my Mhorian.”
Khos walked back onto the street, through the cluster of children. They held out their hands to him as he passed and called to him in Chenjan. He had no money to spare, or he would have spilled it into their hands. Looked into every beaming face, and thought of his boy.
Tirhan. On the other side of the continent. The end of the desert.
The way to the safe house was long, and by the time he arrived, the package was starting to stink. His stomach knotted.
Khos went up the narrow stairs. As he climbed, the air got hotter and closer until he longed for a window, a breeze, a view of the ocean. When was the last time he’d seen the ocean? He pushed into the room.
Nyx sat on the divan with her feet curled up under her. Her cropped hair was loose. She had just washed it. She and Anneke sat over a set of what looked like blu
eprints for a residence. Anneke was scribbling things onto the margins.
Khos set the box down in front of Nyx, on top of the map.
Nyx stared at the box.
“What the fuck is this?” she asked.
“From the brothel mistress. Addressed to you.”
Anneke grimaced.
Nyx reached for the box and pulled off the brown paper. The stink coming from the box got stronger.
“Shit,” Nyx said, and yanked the lid free.
Inside was a severed hand lying in a pool of blackish congealed blood.
No note, this time.
Khos looked away. “What are you going to trade for him?”
“Throw that out,” Nyx told Anneke. She thrust the box at her.
Anneke frowned at it. “Better not tell Inaya.”
“She’s sleeping?” Khos asked.
Anneke nodded.
Khos looked toward Inaya’s door, and the worry crept up on him again. A stupid promise he’d made, to protect a woman who did not want his protection, but a woman who had nothing in the world now. He could buy her freedom, and his, but he feared that would cut her heart far worse than losing her boy to the front when he came of age. Khos wasn’t so sure he liked his solution either.
“I don’t give a shit about Inaya right now,” Nyx said. Anneke took the box outside. “We need Nikodem to trade for Taite. If we’re going together, we need to go now. I can walk well enough. I’ve waited too long.”
“You’re just going to let Taite die?” Khos asked.
“Nobody’s dead yet. Did you hear what I said?”
“He will be dead. How are you going to get Nikodem after all this waiting?”
Nyx regarded him as if he were an annoying insect, something she’d found plastered to the bottom of her sandal. “Have some faith.”
Khos clenched his fists. “In what? You? You don’t even have faith in yourself.”
“Remind me again, did I renew your contract?”
Khos walked away from her, and sat in a ratty chair. Too small for him. Nothing fit him in any country.
Anneke returned and squatted next to Nyx. “If he ain’t already dead, boss, we should bring him in like we brought you in. Fair’s fair.”
“Life isn’t fair,” Nyx said.
As he looked at Nyx, at her mutilated hand and scarred legs, Khos realized that Rhys, her shadow, wasn’t in the room. Unless Rhys had gone out for food, that made him late from his trip to Bahreha. Khos looked again at Nyx and tried to read her. Was she worried about her tardy magician? Or did she care as little for him as she did for the rest of them? They had risked their lives to go after her, pitted themselves against bel dames. But she sat here on the divan and refused to bring back Taite? It’ll be me who has to tell Mahdesh, he thought. Me who has to tell him his lover is dead.
And Khos would be the one left with Inaya.
“So lay this out for me again,” Nyx said to Anneke.
“Low security up front,” Anneke said, pointing to the hand-drawn blueprints on the table. She’d been running recon since Khos and Rhys came back from the waterworks. “The back has an emergency exit. The alarm’s working, so we can get out, but our getaway needs to be right outside the door, ’cause if security don’t know we’re there by then, they’ll know once that alarm goes. Nikodem has magicians with her. All the time. Mid week, all but one of her magicians goes out to socialize at the local boxing gym. That’s the best time to move.”
“When does she go out with the magicians?” Khos asked. “Just during fights, like when we saw her?” Nikodem would get them Taite. He needed to keep his mind on the fucking note.
“So far as I can tell,” Anneke said. “It’s not like I’ve had a lot of time for recon, and you’ve been… occupied.”
“So once we get past the security at the desk, we need to separate Nikodem from her magician,” Nyx said.
Khos ignored Anneke. “That’s a tall order,” he said. “We don’t have a magician.”
“No, but Anneke and I have firepower and some bug repellent. It could give us the time we need.”
“How do you want to get in the back?” Anneke asked.
“We’ll go in the front.”
Khos shook his head. “How we going to get past security?”
“Trust me,” Nyx said.
Khos sighed. Trusting Nyx never turned out well.
From the other side of the door, Inaya’s son began to cry.
Evening prayer came and went, and Nyx found herself standing at the window of the main room, looking out over Dadfar through the lattice. Looking for Rhys.
Inaya crawled out of her room for the first time all day and sat with Anneke and the kid. She looked skinnier—and paler, if that was possible. Anneke fixed her some condensed milk and force-fed her a roti.
Khos walked up next to Nyx. “See him?”
“He’s tougher to see in the dark,” Nyx said, and smirked, but something clawed at her belly. Rhys was late. Very late. How long until Raine started to send him back in pieces too? She’d been a fool to send that stupid magician out on his own. A bloody fucking fool.
“He’ll be all right,” Khos said. “He’s a magician.”
Khos towered over her. Even in the warm room, she could feel the heat of him next to her.
“We both know what kind of magician he is,” Nyx said. They stood a long moment in silence. Then, “You know I intend to bring Taite back.”
“Sometimes I don’t know you, Nyx,” he said softly.
She looked up at him. The light in the room was low. Anneke kept a couple of glow worms in a glass. Lanterns used fuel, and gas was expensive. In the dim light, Khos’s expression was difficult to read, but Nyx always thought he looked sad. She had signed this big sad man because she had sensed something in him that she’d never had—a protective loyalty toward her and the team that transcended petty disagreements about sex, blood, and religion. When she looked at him now, she wondered what would happen when those loyalties conflicted. Would he choose to side with her or with Taite? Taite or the whores? And where did Inaya fit into this? She had seen him stare long at her door and go rigid when her baby cried.
“Nobody knows anybody,” she said. “We’re all working on blind faith.”
She watched a hooded figure come down the street and strained to see, but the figure passed by their building.
“You’re saying your secret to getting up and going forward is blind faith?” he said, and she heard the amusement in his voice.
“No,” Nyx said. “Lately, it’s been whiskey.” She peered down at the street again.
“I’ve been thinking about how to get past the desk,” Khos said. “I think I know some people who will help us.”
“Khos, the only people you know in Chenja are whores.”
“Exactly,” he said.
“We’ll have a problem with com, not having Rhys and Taite.”
“So we’ll put together something else.”
“Is there something wrong with your communications?” Inaya said from behind them.
Nyx and Khos both turned. Anneke was lying in a pile of blankets on the floor, working with her guns. Inaya stood at the end of the divan, her son in her arms.
“We usually use Rhys. Taite receives his transmission through the com,” Nyx said.
Inaya hadn’t washed her face in a while, and her hair was greasy. She looked like some street beggar. “You don’t have regular transceivers?”
Nyx shrugged. “Anneke, Taite give you any manual transceivers?”
“I have a box of com gear,” Anneke said, “but transceivers take a long time to synch up. Don’t have the time or the money to take them in and have somebody do it.”
“I can do it,” Inaya said.
Nyx smirked. “You can do it?” She looked her up and down, pointedly.
Inaya narrowed her eyes. “Where do you think Taitie learned to repair a console? Did you think that fat man employed him for his looks?”
“You’re kidding me,” Nyx said.
Inaya said to Anneke, “Show me the box.” She glanced back at Nyx. “I assume Taitie didn’t tell you why we had to leave Ras Tieg.”
“I don’t pry into the affairs of my team,” Nyx said.
Anneke walked over to their pile of gear and started moving boxes and duffel bags around.
“Our parents handled communications for the Ras Tiegan underground, rebels against Ras Tieg’s tyrant, the uncle to your foolish Queen,” Inaya said. “They were also shifter-sympathizers. My mother was a shifter, and my parents’ politics were… frowned upon. When they killed my mother, my father took her place and trained Tiate and I. When things got bad politically, when the streets…” She choked up, and Nyx thought she was going to cry again, but, remarkably, she swallowed it. “I could marry. Taitie was too young.”
“So when things got hot, you smuggled him out of the country.”
“He did the same for me, later.”
“You don’t act like a rebel.”
“We rebel in our own ways.”
“Here,” Anneke said. She dragged a box toward Inaya. “Should be a couple transceivers in here. Some might be broken.”
“All right, then,” Nyx said. “If you can give us com, then maybe we’re ready to run. Anneke, I want you to get me a couple of empty cake boxes from that friend of yours who owns the teahouse.”
“Cake boxes?”
“Khos,” Nyx continued, “I want to talk to some of your whores tomorrow, early. I’ll need a half hour of their time and yours.”
“I’ll go down and tell them,” Khos said. “Where do we want to meet them?”
“That diner in the Mhorian district, just before dawn prayer.”
Khos put on his burnous and headed out. “It’s about fucking time,” he muttered.
“Anneke?” Nyx said.
Anneke straightened. “Eh, I’ll go get her up. The teahouse is still open.” She concealed her shotgun beneath her burnous and followed Khos.
“Hey, you fucker!” Anneke called after him. “Give me a ride!”
Nyx turned and watched Inaya open the box and pick through its contents. She kept the kid in a sling so he had easy access to her breast. Unlike a Nasheenian woman, she didn’t keep the breast bared. Instead, she kept an old tunic slung over one shoulder so it covered the kid’s head and her breast. An odd affectation, as it wasn’t as if Anneke, Nyx, and Khos hadn’t seen breasts before.
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