“Was he one of mine?” Nyx said. “Hard to keep track.”
“You’ll be in a holding cell at least a week.”
Nyx laughed. She reached up casually, as if to scratch at the back of her neck. Instead, she grabbed the end of one of her poisoned needles, and braced herself to get shot, hopefully some place non-vital.
Rhys stepped back. From the corner of her eye, she saw him raise his hand. Almira’s attention twisted to him.
The four jars full of watery insects exploded. Glass shredded Nyx’s right side. She moved left, flinging the poisoned needle as she surged away.
Almira brought up her hands, deflecting the needle and much of the glass. But just as she recovered, Nyx was on top of her. Nyx pounded her in the face once, twice, three times. Yanked the gun from her hand.
“Rhys!”
“Right behind you!”
Nyx bolted out the door, flying past Henye, who sat on the floor by the reception desk, hands covering her head.
“You just assaulted a bel dame!” Rhys said.
“Can’t take all the credit,” she said. “Nice distraction.”
Nyx slid out into the hot street. Jahar’s body was gone.
“Where’s the bakkie?” Rhys asked.
“You called Taite?”
“Yes!”
She took his hand. Pulled him forward, toward the narrow alley across the way. There was more cover between the buildings.
Nyx heard shots. Ducked. Looked back. Dahab stood in the open window six stories up, taking aim.
A bakkie rounded the street to Nyx’s left, spitting dead beetles from its back end as it belched toward them.
Anneke leaned out the passenger window of the bakkie, big gun at her shoulder, popping off rounds. “In, in!” she said.
Nyx used the bakkie as cover and pulled open the door on the far side. She pushed Rhys in ahead of her. Got her leg inside and yelled at Taite. The bakkie jerked forward so fast she had to hold on to the door to keep from flying out.
She swung herself into the back and slammed the door.
Seeing Rhys gawking at Dahab, Nyx pushed Rhys’s head toward his knees. “Keep your head down!”
Anneke sent off six more shots, then slid all the way back into the vehicle as it peeled down the next street.
Skinny, pocked-marked Taite hunched over the wheel, visibly shaking. His hands were smeared in old blood. He was in his mid-teens, and experienced with a lot of mercenary crews, even if he didn’t look the part in a fire fight.
“Body in the trunk?” Nyx asked.
“You’re bloody welcome!” Taite said.
Nyx chanced a look behind them. Her storefront address wasn’t listed anywhere, but she didn’t want to chance going back there.
“Drive us to the safe house,” she said.
“Which one?” Taite said.
“The one with the most whiskey.”
Anneke slumped in her seat, clutching her arm.
“You hurt?” Nyx asked.
Anneke shook her head. “Just pulled it. Don’t want to make a habit of this.”
“Then let’s go find Henye’s daughter before the bel dames do,” Nyx said.
#
The soaring Hazrat Ahmadin mosque at the edge of Bahora had been located at the center of the city a century before. That was before a Chenjan burst demolished three-quarters of the town, burying it in a stinking mire of contaminated sludge that hardened into a cakey powder, poisoning the air and the soil. Subsequent generations of magicians had made the area half-habitable again, but aside from poor squatters in the old trader’s mall, the place remained a sandy ruin. The Hazrat Ahmadin had been rebuilt on the other side of town, leaving the wreck of its ancestor where it had fallen the day of the incursion.
For Nyx’s purposes, the mosque was a perfect refuge – as one of the four minarets was still standing, and gave impressive views of the terrain in all directions. The hike up the winding stairs of the minaret with a body wrapped in muslin and a burnous-bound head was less ideal. Nyx hadn’t heard so much fucking complaining since she asked her sapper squad to blow up the Chenjan city of Bahreha – kids, cats, and all. It reminded her she was dealing with mercenaries and refugees, not professionals. It soured her mood.
Taite pulled out the whiskey, halva, and an assortment of dried fruit from their cache in the upper room of the minaret. Jahar’s body stank, so they left it on the landing just below and shut the door.
“What happened back there?” Taite asked.
Nyx said, “Got Rhys down on all seven bones outside of prayer.”
Rhys stood over her with a container of aloe-soaked cicada wings to plaster over the shredded skin of her right side. “You want me to patch you up, or throw this at you?”
“Notice you came out unscathed,” Nyx said.
“You said it was a good distraction,” Rhys said.
“She has a problem with thanks,” Taite said.
“I’ve noticed.”
“Enough, both of you,” Nyx said. She snatched the container of cicada wings from Rhys. She could do it herself. She nodded at Taite. “You know Anneke?”
Taite gave Anneke a curt nod. “Yeah. I’ll put some tea on for her.”
“Too early for tea,” Nyx said.
“I don’t drink liquor before sunset,” Anneke said.
Nyx looked from Taite to Anneke. “You both worked together on another mercenary crew, as I… recall. Anything I should know?”
Anneke shrugged. “I don’t have a problem with Taite.”
“Good,” Nyx said. “You’ll want to go to prayer with Rhys, then. I drink through prayer and Taite worships idols so–”
“Not with a Chenjan,” Anneke said.
“Saints, Nyx. They’re saints,” Taite said, setting Nyx’s whiskey glass in front of her.
“Whatever.”
“I don’t need watching,” Anneke said. “Especially not by a Chenjan.”
“I’ll decide that.”
“I don’t work for you.”
“We’re both working for Jahar. I’m still not clear on your motives. So let’s talk about that.”
Taite broke the carapaces of a handful of fire beetles and started a fire in the mud-brick oven. Nyx had slathered the thing together herself, back when she first came to town and was squatting here.
Anneke slumped in a rickety chair.
“Jahar tell you why he got reassigned?” Nyx asked. “Making a full body switch like that isn’t cheap.”
“Are you sure it’s related?” Taite asked.
“It’s expensive, Taite,” Nyx said. “I got burned up at the front, and I was indentured to the magicians for a year to pay for it. Only a First Family could afford a reassignment, or the government, not some breeder baby scuttled off to the front. If somebody reassigned him – especially if it happened a couple of times - it was because he did them a very expensive favor, or they thought he’d be a very expensive tool.”
“First Family security’s hard to hack, Nyx,” Taite said, “and I don’t have a proper com console here. If this goes that deep–”
“Why was Jahar in prison?” Nyx asked.
Anneke stiffened. “Leave that in prison.”
“Catshit,” Nyx said. “Don’t pretend it’s some honor-bound social club.”
“Tell me all about being a bel dame, then,” Anneke said.
“That’s different,” Nyx said.
“She…” Anneke crossed her arms. “She stole some things.”
“From government or First Families? If it was government, he wouldn’t be in a general prison.”
“First Family,” Anneke said. “They used it against her once she got out, too. She couldn’t shake them. Always owed them.”
Taite cursed in Ras Tiegan, something about shit and cabbages.
Nyx pointed at Jahar’s burnous-wrapped head. “Taite, I need you to get on that. There’s something in his head. Somebody took it off and set it up between two magnets.”
“Magnets?” Taite said. He pulled the head into his lap. Unwrapped it. Nyx saw his eyelids flutter, and put out a hand to steady him in case he fainted.
Taite shook his head, breathed deeply. “Sorry.”
“Anneke, can you cut the head open?” Nyx asked. “Taite, have a look at it.”
Anneke snorted. “This is what you get when you have two draft dodgers on your team instead of women.”
“I’m a Ras Tiegan citizen,” Taite said, indignant. “I’m not subject to the Nasheenian draft.”
“We can’t all be butchers,” Nyx said.
Anneke grabbed Jahar’s head and went to the low table on the other side of the room. She pulled a heavy knife from her belt. Nyx went over to help her, and together they sliced and pulled back Jahar’s scalp of dark, shaggy hair, then cracked open his skull.
Rhys stood a pace distant, peeking over Nyx’s shoulder. The blood had all coagulated by now; she knew Rhys didn’t much care for blood either, an even greater handicap for a magician.
On cracking open the skull, nothing looked immediately out of place to Nyx’s eye, but then, she only cut off heads. She didn’t often open them.
“The base of the brain,” Rhys said, pointing.
Anneke cracked off more bits of the skull. It was tougher than Nyx expected. At the base of the brain was a fig-sized green fistula. Nyx cut it open. Inside was a small copper-colored ball, covered in clear mucus.
“Taite?” Nyx said, holding it up between thumb and forefinger. “You know what this is?”
“Oh, shit,” Taite said. He took it from her. Pinched a pair of specs on his nose, and tapped them twice to zoom in. “Sure do,” he said. “That’s a polarized, semi-organic key. Must have given him horrible headaches.”
“Key to what?” Anneke said.
“A magnetic lock,” Taite said.
“Shit,” Nyx said.
“What?” Anneke said. “What’s that mean?”
“There was a safe in that rebuild shop,” Nyx said. “That’s why somebody attacked him in the street and walked his head up six floors.” She looked at Anneke. “Jahar ever tell you about having a safe? In prison, maybe?”
“You still suspect me?”
“He tell you about the key in his head? Tell you you’d get a cut of whatever’s in the safe?”
“She told me to meet her there this morning.”
“He looked a lot different after prison. How’d you find him?”
“She found me.”
“How?”
“Jahar got a lot of people new skins,” Anneke said, “after she got hers. New bodies, new faces. She liked switching bodies. Liked being anybody she wanted. But it doesn’t work for everyone. Lots of people don’t take to the switch. Always feel out of sorts.”
“You know more than you’re saying, Anneke.”
“Only saying what you need to know. Not more.”
“Jahar must have been some friend to you.”
“She was… an old boss.”
“You this loyal to all your bosses?”
Anneke grimaced. “Only the good ones.”
“Where was the safe?”
“Told you. Don’t know. Got up there right before you.”
Nyx gave a huff of displeasure and moved away from her. “Taite, what do you need to get me the address for a girl named Meiret bhin Heshel?”
“Regular public terminal,” he said. “But the bel dames are probably already headed in that direction.”
“If she’s in on this, she isn’t going to be at home,” Rhys said.
Nyx glanced over at him. Sometimes she forgot that for all his grimacing he knew what it was to be a fugitive, if not a criminal. He was, after all, a Chenjan in Nasheen.
Taite said, “If I can get a secure com console I can tap into her withdrawal records and monitor the surveillance drones. If she’s running, she’ll need money.”
“People who run take cash.”
“Only if they planned ahead,” Rhys said. “If she got into trouble she wasn’t expecting, she’ll make mistakes.”
“Then let’s hope she’s an amateur,” Nyx said. She squeezed the copper ball in her hand, and wondered what sort of collateral somebody kept hidden with a key buried in their skull. She had some guesses, none of them uplifting. For all her own mistakes and vices and black market bartering, she’d never betrayed Nasheen to the enemy. She’d never needed a drop box like Jahar’s. Jahar had been a good kid. Good kids didn’t sell bioweapons to Chenjans, did they?
She was going to find out, whether she liked the outcome or not. She set Taite on hunting down Meiret. Rhys started work on the locust they’d retrieved from Jahar’s palm. But after half an hour, Rhys hadn’t made any progress.
“You said you could fix it,” Nyx said.
“I’m sorry,” Rhys said. “Conditions aren’t ideal and I need–”
“You said you could fucking fix it!”
Rhys’s expression hardened. He turned away from her.
Nyx went outside on the balcony of the minaret to get some air and decompress. Too many voices.
She spread out her burnous and leaned back against the hot stones to take a nap. She pulled her hood close and dozed. She wasn’t sure how long. What woke her was the sound of Rhys’s voice. He was speaking in the same reverent tone most people used to recite the Kitab, but she didn’t recognize the words from the holy book.
She cracked an eyelid. When she didn’t see him, she leaned forward, just far enough to see him sitting around the curve of the tower.
“What is that?” she said sharply.
Rhys started. “I apologize-”
“No,” she said, standing, walking toward him. “It’s fine. But what is it?”
He cleared his throat. “Poetry.”
“Not Chenjan?”
“No, it’s Nasheenian. I’m…” he made a face. “…working on my accent.”
Nyx plopped down beside him. “Read me some.”
“All right,” he said. “But I don’t expect you’ll like it.”
She grunted, and watched him turn the pages with his delicate fingers. He had lovely hands. She’d noticed that first thing.
He recited, “’My mother was a bird of fire. She bore me swaddled over the ruined cities of my sisters. We rained a sea of flame upon our brothers, and brought them aloft again. Transformed. Our mothers burned the cities. We keep the ruins.’”
“Nice,” Nyx said.
“That was horrible,” he said.
“You read a lot of poetry in Chenja?”
He smirked, one of his you’re-a-stupid-Nasheenian smirks that set her teeth on edge. “Chenjans can read, yes.”
“Didn’t mean it like that.”
“I thought this was a business arrangement and we weren’t going to ask questions of one another.”
“What, it’s a personal question?”
“Isn’t it?”
“Not like I asked you what you’re running from.”
He sighed. “Nyx–”
“I don’t care if you’re a deserter,” she said, “or some poor rich kid run off to piss on his parents. I asked you about the fucking poetry.”
Rhys closed the book. “This is clearly not going anywhere.” He stood.
“Rhys?” She grabbed at the edge of his burnous.
“What?”
“No questions,” she said. “You remember that, when you hear things about me from bel dames, or Anneke, or anyone. I burned my past. I’m starting over. Everybody on my team gets to start over.”
“I understand that,” he said. “It’s why I signed with you. I think it’s you who needs to remember you’re supposed to be a different person now.”
“I was rebuilt,” Nyx said. “I can start over.”
“I don’t think it’s me you’re trying to convince,” he said.
She pulled her hand away.
#
Meiret bhin Heshel waited under the broad awning of a wait station for the local train shuttle. Lu
ck was with Nyx on this one – transportation hubs and waiting areas always had some kind of surveillance, and Taite had found Meiret easily after hacking into the delicate code that bound her government residency files.
The Body Project Page 3