“I don’t like this,” Nyx said.
“Who are you running this note for?”
Nyx shook her head.
Rhys sighed. “The bel dame council asked you, didn’t they?”
“Fatima mentioned it.”
“And you just believe everything Fatima tells you?”
“I don’t take any job without questioning it.”
“She didn’t… Did she make you a bel dame again, Nyx?”
Nyx worked her mouth a bit, considering. “No,” she said. “She offered it. I didn’t take it.”
Rhys studied her closely. His eyes were dark, piercing. He could always read her. She hated it.
“So you aren’t a bel dame?”
“No.”
“You’re just doing this for fun? Not enough blood in your life?”
“I haven’t had any blood in my life in near on seven years, Rhys. It suited me fine. It’s not the blood I missed.” She got to her feet.
He gazed up at her. “What, then? What is it you missed?”
She stared into the blackness. “I missed being useful.”
“I can’t imagine you never being useful, Nyx.”
“I’m almost a decade older than you, Rhys. When you’re my age, you’ll feel it.”
“No,” he said, and stood, brushed off his dusty trousers. He had cleaned them of Khatijah’s blood. “I don’t fear peace, Nyx. There’s always a place for men like me during peace. What destroyed me was this war, and the expectation that I protect my family at all costs. I was tested, Nyx, and I failed.”
“Any man would have failed in your place, Rhys,” she said, low. It didn’t come out as nice as she wanted it to, but it was the truth.
“Is that meant to be comforting?”
“You know, Rhys, I let a whole squad of men die. Men I failed to save. I spent my whole life hearing all about how I was supposed to protect men. My brothers. My squad mates. My team. Then my brothers died, I let my squad get blown up, and I lost some of my best male partners. I lost Taite, and Tej before him. Then you fucked off too. When it all came down to it, I failed again and again. But I didn’t give up like you did. I didn’t walk away from my people. Not when there was something else worth protecting.”
“Didn’t you? You didn’t just run away to the coast?”
“It was that or prison. You fancy prison?”
“You run away from your failures too, Nyx.”
“So we have something in common now?”
“I wouldn’t go that far.” He sighed and started back the way he had come. “Peace be upon you,” he said.
“Yeah, fuck off,” Nyx said. She nursed her cigarette.
“Nyx?”
“What?”
“If you want to get Raine, we should probably have some kind of plan.”
“Should we?”
“One condition.”
“What now?”
“If you take Raine out of here, you need to take me too.”
She didn’t want to tell him that—Raine or no Raine—she would have taken him anyway.
39.
Breaking into Bomani was a lot easier now that they had some idea of what they were doing and a guy on the inside. Rhys pointed them to the least-patrolled portion of the wall, and provided a fine distraction by telling the guards on duty that Hanife had need of them elsewhere. The “corridor” that Nyx had tunneled her way into from the prison cell was actually something like a giant ventilation chamber. Once they slipped back inside, it was easy to move around in and connected most of the major areas inside of Bomani.
Safiyah said she could get them back to the vent they hauled Nyx out of, which meant all Nyx needed to do was extract Raine, haul him into the vent, and then get the whole happy fighting party the hell out of there.
Nyx kept Kage back at the camp with Isabet, insisting that she’d need her on point in case they came running out of the place with thirty desert men on their asses. Safiyah argued against it, insisting that Kage would be useful inside Bomani. But Nyx just didn’t see that. What she needed inside was her magicians, not her sharpshooter.
They went in during the deepest part of the night, the day after Nyx’s escape. The longer they waited, the more likely it was Hanife would find their camp.
Safiyah slipped Nyx and Ahmed back into the vent.
“Good luck,” Ahmed said.
“Don’t die,” Nyx said.
“Trying hard not to,” he said.
Nyx padded down the corridor, Safiyah behind her. Ahmed stayed behind to guard their escape.
“This should be it, if your little Chenjan is truthful,” Safiyah said. She called something within the structure, and a neat slice appeared in the tissue.
Nyx pushed herself into the mucus-filled cavity. She went face first so she could get a look inside. It was another interrogation room, much like the one she had seen the day before. Empty.
Nyx squirmed the rest of the way in. She went immediately to the cells and looked in. The first three were empty. Had they taken him already?
The fourth had somebody inside.
Nyx pulled the bar of bug secretions from the door and opened it wide.
In the dim blue light, she saw a skinny, pot-bellied figure hunched in the corner of the room, hands and feet bound together. He squinted at her. The face was filthy, and unrecognizable.
Fuck, they had come all this way for the wrong man.
The broken old man inhaled deeply, and there was something in the eyes, then, some flicker of recognition, a sharp inhalation of breath. “Well,” he said. “At least they sent their best.”
It was Raine.
“I’m flattered,” she said.
“If you will not honor me, at least show some respect with a quick death,” Raine said.
“I’m not here to kill you, old man.” Nyx pulled her dagger and stepped forward. He squeezed his eyes shut. He seemed so much smaller now. A grizzled old head, ragged beard. She cut his bonds.
“I’m here to save you,” she said.
“Is this some kind of trick?”
“I’d like to say it was. I’d be lying.”
Raine began to laugh. It was a deep, grating sort of laugh that put her teeth on edge. It reminded her of times best forgotten. As she sheathed her dagger, she thought—for the barest of moments—to stab him in the throat. End of the road. End of everything. Cutting off heads was so much simpler than saving them.
“God has a terrible sense of humor,” Raine said.
“Always did. Come on. The sooner we get out of here, the less likely somebody is to raise the alarm.”
Raine grunted and pushed himself forward. He had been a beefy man once. Now he was mostly sagging brown skin over knobby bones. He still had a bit of a paunch, but the rest of him was so thin he seemed terribly disproportioned, like he’d fall over. Nyx really didn’t want to help him get up.
“Come on, Raine. We have a long way to go.”
Raine was unsteady on his feet. Pressed a hand on the wall to hold his balance. “Let’s go then, bel dame.”
She was going to have to carry him. Fuck.
Nyx hauled Raine down the twisting corridors, half-dragging him along. He was in no shape to walk, let alone run, but it was hurry up or die now, and she had a long way to go yet. Raine sucked in breath hard and fast. After a time, he started to wheeze, but she did not stop. The flickering skin of the corridor began to change again, and she feared what it was trying to communicate now. Was it telling the guards about them? Was this place really sentient? It wasn’t the night she wanted to find out.
“Didn’t think it would be you,” Raine wheezed.
Nyx was sighting her way along the corridor, searching for the opening Safiyah had made in the skin, the one she’d told both Safiyah and Ahmed to wait for her at. It should be any time now. She heard a soft stirring of voices behind them. Tried to pick up the pace. There weren’t supposed to be people in these tunnels, Rhys said. But Raine was lagging now. Tripping o
ver his feet. She’d have to carry him soon. Fuck, where was that goddamn entrance?
“Thought they’d send… my mother.”
“Fuck your mother,” Nyx muttered.
Raine grunted.
They came to the soft pulsing opening in the skin. Nyx let herself slow down half a step. “In here,” she said. She unhooked Raine from her and pushed him toward the opening.
He gulped air as he tottered toward the opening. He paused in the hall. Nyx heard more voices. She turned, drew her gun.
“Nyx,” Raine said. “You should know… you should know I’m infected.”
“What?” Nyx said.
He gripped one edge of the seam. “They want you to bring me home. I’m infected.”
“Who wants it?”
“You wouldn’t have gotten this far unless they wanted it.”
“Just go,” Nyx said. “Save the drama for a safer space, all right? Bloody fuck. You have no idea what fucking shit we’ve been through to get you.”
Raine stumbled through the opening.
Nyx jumped through after him.
Safiyah was still there. Nyx wasn’t sure why she was so surprised about that, but she was. The magician neatly sealed the wound. As the last bit of organic light from the hall was shut out, the voices Nyx had heard earlier got suddenly louder. She heard steps across the spongy flooring approach, then retreat.
“Cutting it a bit close, aren’t you?” Safiyah said.
“I thought you loved all this excitement,” Nyx said.
“I love orange-flavored popsicles. Fried maggots on toast. Sunset in Ashura. This? This, I merely tolerate.”
In the semi-darkness, Nyx could see that Raine had his hands over his mouth.
“Come on,” she said. “We have a long way to go yet.”
Safiyah peered at Raine. “Nyx, that man is not… well.”
“I could have told you that back in Nasheen,” Nyx said. “Now shut up and move. Where’s Ahmed?”
“Guarding our way out.”
They moved down another series of sticky corridors. Safiyah led, and Nyx held the rear. After a few minutes, Safiyah stopped.
“What is it?” Nyx hissed.
“It’s been resealed,” Safiyah said. “A moment.”
Nyx gazed into the darkness behind them. The walls oozed and chittered. Beneath her, the floor itself felt unsteady. She hated this fucking place. Like being inside some half-eaten corpse being transformed by maggots.
“There. This way,” Safiyah said, and they were moving again.
They came back up in a dark hall. As Nyx stepped up, she didn’t recognize it.
“Where are we?”
“I’m not sure,” Safiyah said. “I had to carve out another path.” She murmured something else, and a small buzzing swarm of tiny mutant hornets appeared, as if from the walls themselves. The swarm buzzed off down an adjacent corridor.
“Come,” Safiyah said. “Our people are this way.”
Raine limped along, still too slow for Nyx’s taste. They needed to get him cleaned up and into some proper clothes. As it was, he stood out abominably here.
Safiyah turned the next corner. Nyx heard a shot. It was oddly muffled—a result of the spongy walls and floor. Safiyah’s arms windmilled back. She hit the floor like a tumbling mantis, all awkward limbs and angles.
Nyx swore and pulled her scattergun. She pushed Raine behind her and pressed close against the wall.
It was hard to gauge how many were waiting without taking a look herself. Safiyah was absolutely still—far too still for Nyx’s taste. Unless they’d gotten her directly in the heart or head, nobody was that still unless they were trying not to draw further attention to themselves. Nyx had seen stuff like that all the time with wounded soldiers on the field. Better to lie low and let the enemy walk all over you.
Nyx decided to just point and shoot. She shoved her scattergun around the corner and fired blindly. Heard a smattering of voices. Some squelching on the floor. Damn this place and its fucking acoustics. She could judge nothing by sound.
“Let them take me,” Raine said.
“Fuck you,” Nyx said.
“They won’t kill me. Just turn me over to them and run. Come another time.”
“You think this shit was easy the first time?”
“It will be more difficult the next time if you’re dead.”
“Fuck,” Nyx said. She fired again into the hall. Heard the steady squelch-squelch of approaching bad guys. Could she take them all by herself while keeping Raine intact? She decided to risk a peek. She fired again into the hall, then ducked her head out after it. One quick glance.
She pulled back behind the corner as six more guns went off. She heard the bullets sink into the soft walls. She had counted eight figures, with more behind them. Maybe a dozen total. She couldn’t fight a dozen, not even when she was twenty.
“Nyx,” Raine said softly.
“Shut the fuck up. I need to think.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She had been shot many times. It hurt. If she could just pass Raine off to one of her crew, she could take a few bullets—
“I’m here!”
Nyx opened her eyes.
Raine was on his feet and around the corner before she could grab him. She reached for his ankle, but he kicked away, surprisingly spry for a sick man.
He had his arms raised high over his head, little pot belly sticking out over his dhoti. He looked ridiculous. He would look more ridiculous riddled in bullets. But the shots didn’t come.
The people yelled something at him. He spoke back to them in whatever language they used.
Nyx wondered if she was being turned over.
Fuck this.
She chanced one last glance at Safiyah, decided the plucky magician could take care of herself, and then bolted down the corridor where they had come from. The place was a fucking labyrinth. She ran left, always left, hoping to loop back around to something familiar, preferably the corridor right behind where the men had caught them. That was the way the hornets were traveling.
Down a short flight of steps, up a steep ramp. And then she was well and truly lost. There were no windows. No sky. No open air. She turned down another corridor only to hit a dead end. What the fuck was the purpose of all these rooms? She turned back around and tried to retrace her steps. Her breath was coming hard and fast now. The halls were getting narrower. Where were the people? Was she lost in the guts of this great beast now? Another dead end.
She faced the blank, pulsing wall. Wiped sweaty hands on her trousers. Took long, deep breaths. I’m fine, she thought. Just fine.
But the narrow space was getting to her. I just need to rest. Just need to get my bearings….
She slumped to the floor. Curled up into a ball on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest. It was dark and damp and it wasn’t getting any better. She squeezed her eyes shut. Deep breaths. Calm. She needed to stay calm.
“Nyx?”
She wasn’t sure how long it had been. Her heart thudded loudly in her chest. Her breath was coming shallow. The stink of the hold was overpowering.
“Nyx?”
She stared up. There, outlined in the darkness, was a slim little woman holding a rather large gun.
“Kage?” Nyx said.
“Get up,” Kage said. “I know the way out.”
Nyx rubbed her face. “I… I’m having some trouble, here.”
“It’s fine. Come. Stand up. Just take some deep breaths. Come on. I know the way out.”
Nyx managed to get up on all fours. She clawed her way to her feet, using the gooey wall as leverage. Kage turned, and Nyx grabbed the back of the girl’s tunic.
Kage walked through the twisting darkness like it was a bright day in the desert. Nyx stumbled along behind her.
“Here,” Kage said. She slipped through some crevice that Nyx hadn’t even noticed. They stepped out into the open.
Nyx gulped air.
Kage patted
her back.
Nyx looked up. “Where are we?” She didn’t recognize the landscape.
“The camp is on the other side of Bomani.” Kage pointed. “Just go that way, back around the hold. They’re waiting. I told them I’d find you.”
Kage began walking, but not back around Bomani—she went north, into the desert.
“Where are you going?”
Kage glanced back. “I’m done now,” Kage said.
“What?”
“I came to help with this job. The job is over. You found your politician.”
“But… But I don’t have him yet!”
“You know where he is. My debt is paid.”
“Debt?”
“I have saved another life.”
“But… he’s not saved!”
“Not him,” she said. “You.”
“What?”
“They were not coming to get you,” Kage said. “They were going to leave you. Your team. But I couldn’t. You kept wanting me to kill things. But that wasn’t how I could discharge my debt. I had to save people. I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Kage, wait—”
Kage pressed her palms together and gave a little bow of her head. Nyx had seen Drucians greet one another that way. “I can’t say I like you very much,” Kage said, “but I hope you achieve an end most appropriate to the way you have lived.”
“Kage—”
“I must go,” Kage said, “before it ends for me, too.” She began to run. North. Into the desert.
The bloody fucking desert.
“They’ve taken him south,” Rhys said.
Ahmed sighed. He was getting really tired of listening to this Chenjan. First, he wanted to go back into that hive for Nyx. Now he still wanted to push her to pursue the politician. Nyx had stumbled back into camp an hour before, much to everyone’s surprise. But Kage wasn’t with her. Safiyah turned up a few minutes later, shaking flesh beetles from her robe and talking about how it’d been a decade since she’d last been shot.
Ahmed had to admit he was disappointed that after all the death he’d seen out here, not one of them had keeled over. And he’d lost Kage. At least Kage had been good company.
“That’s all I could find out,” Rhys said.
“What does south mean? Back across the bloody desert? We came all this way just to run back after them the same way we came?” Ahmed said. “Is this a joke?”
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