He knew then that everything was falling apart.
22.
Rhys stood on the veranda with a cup of mint tea in one hand and a fruit knife in the other, looking like he wanted to cut something out or cut something up. The fruit tray itself was on the tea table between them. Nyx had her feet on the table. She’d left her cane back at the dive they were staying in in the Ras Tiegan quarter. Rhys had insisted on something more upscale for lunch, something a little more upscale than Suha and Eshe could stomach. She watched them standing out in the garden beyond the veranda, talking about something that had Suha making sweeping motions with her hands. How to blow shit up, likely.
Rhys looked good, Nyx conceded as she watched him standing at the railing. He stood with a straight spine now, like a full citizen, not a Chenjan exile. He dressed in a loose-fitting robe too, and a silly, gauzy bisht. No belted trousers, no pistols at his hips. She had a sudden, passionate desire to see the outline of his legs. God, how she missed Rhys in trousers.
“I’m married,” Rhys said.
Nyx moved her gaze up from his covered legs to his face. He still looked out across the garden. Two women wearing immaculate azure robes and scarves moved passed them across the stones of the garden path.
“I figured,” Nyx said. She had a memory of Yah Tayyib, then, who’d been at her side the first time she saw Rhys. He’d told her Rhys was worth two of her. Nyx couldn’t debate that.
“She virtuous?” Nyx asked.
“Yes, she’s virtuous,” Rhys said.
A serving boy in a neat white tunic came by to refill their drinks. Nyx waved him away from the half-empty bottle of red wine she kept next to her chair. She picked it up, took a long swig. The serving boy eyed her askance and then danced away. Inside the restaurant behind them, someone played a stringed instrument, one she had no name for. Some kind of harp, maybe?
“You’re scaring the help,” Rhys said. He watched her now with his dark eyes.
“I scare a lot of people,” Nyx said.
“I’m not joining your team again.”
“I’m not here for that.”
“No?”
“No.”
“But there’s no magician on your team.”
“I’m hiring one out of Tirhan, for as long as we’re here. Won’t be too long. Six weeks, maybe.” Much longer than that, and whatever she came here to stop would be over already.
“Then what?”
“Bugs,” she said.
“Ah,” he said, and moved away from the railing. He sat across from her, set the fruit knife back on the table. She wondered if he’d held it that long thinking to use it against her if she asked him to come back to Nasheen.
Silly magician.
“I need the transmissions Taite packed over the border. The one from the mercenary Khos killed and put in our trunk. When I got back to the garret, I saw you’d all stopped by and picked up your shit. I figured you took that transmission with you.”
“I did, I suppose. I picked up everything at the garret on the way out. I’ve got it in storage somewhere, at the house or at my translation office. How does that help you? I thought you’d want to know more about Kine’s research.”
“I have an interest in seeing how deep this goes. Wondering if our current roach is the same one looking to get me dead six years ago.”
“You’ll need an updated reel.”
“Alharazad gave me an updated reel.”
Rhys sat back in the chair. “Alharazad?” he breathed.
“There’s only one, so far as I know.”
“Nyx, what have you gotten yourself into?”
“Same shit, different day.”
He looked out into the garden. She watched him work it over.
“I’m not here to mess with your life,” she said. “I just need the reel. I got a team to take care of, rent to pay, my ass to save.”
“And you intend to save your own ass all by yourself?”
She shrugged. “I got a team.”
“You have a surly weapons tech and a pock-marked shifter who won’t be good at what he does much longer, from the look of his spine.”
“Hate to say it, but a pretty face isn’t required in my line of work.”
“You’re not half as ugly as that blocky woman.”
Nyx rolled her eyes. “You say that to her face and she’ll cleave you in two. You forget how Nasheen works, all cozied up at the tit of your milk and honey country. We measure worth differently in Nasheen.”
“And then you destroy it.”
“Don’t talk morals at me, gravy-eater.”
“Call me infidel. It has more weight in Tirhan.”
“I’m not a Tirhani.”
“Isn’t that bloody obvious…”
“You speak to your wife that way?” Nyx took another pull on the wine bottle.
Rhys shook his head. He reached for the knife and a mango, started cutting a portion. “God has blessed me, Nyx. He doesn’t forsake all of us.”
“Don’t preach at me. You let this soft country fool you into thinking you’re clean? Ain’t nobody in this world who’s clean, Rhys. Tirhan’s got the bloodiest hands of all, and you and Khos and Inaya are part of it.”
He paused, fruit in hand, and met her look. “You saw Inaya and Khos? You’ve been to the house?”
Nyx snorted. “They invited me in for soda.”
Rhys’s face twisted, as if he were suddenly sick. “What did you say?”
“I don’t drink it, myself. Too sweet. But Eshe—”
“No. To my wife. What did you say to Elahyiah?”
So that was her name.
“What the hell are you talking about? I didn’t see your wife at Khos’s.”
“You were at Khos’s?”
“Yeah.”
“But not my house?”
“How the hell would I know your place? They lied like kids. They said they had no idea where you were.”
Rhys grinned, then laughed.
“What? What the hell’s so funny?”
Rhys’s shoulders shook. He put down the knife and fruit all together and laughed out loud. “We’re neighbors,” Rhys said. “They live just across the park. You were practically at my doorstep. God, they must have laughed after you were gone.”
“It’s not funny,” Nyx said. “Walking around half of Tirhan knocking on doors ain’t exactly my idea of a good time. I kept waiting for one of your neighbors to shoot me.”
“Then how did you find me? Who told you about the gym?”
“Found out about it at another gym down the street. Asked around. Folks remember you. Pretty Chenjan magician with the funny name.”
“I can’t believe Inaya let you inside the house.”
“Khos answered.”
“Ah.”
“Ah?”
“He’s always been keen on you.”
“Has he? Never noticed.”
“You never notice anything that might inconvenience you,” he said. “Knowing he’s keen on you, I’m doubly surprised Inaya let you in.”
“I do recall she’s good with a shotgun.”
“She’s good with far more than that. She’s a mutant shifter.”
“A what?”
Rhys hesitated, as if he’d said something he wasn’t supposed to.
“What?” Nyx repeated.
Rhys cleared his throat. “Did you ever wonder how she got that bakkie over the border back in Chenja?”
“Yeah, I guess. Not exactly easy to drive a bakkie over a war front, especially for somebody pale as piss like her.”
“She… became the bakkie. Displaced the matter. Turned it into something else.”
“She tell you that?”
“Not in so many words. I became curious after Chenja. I did some reading on Ras Tiegan politics and Inaya’s family in particular. Let’s just say she’s far more dangerous without the shotgun than you might think.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. There many shifters like that?”
“I don’t know. Your sister, Kine, knew more about that.”
“Her bloody fucking experiments. Wish the whole program burned with her.”
“It didn’t.”
Nyx frowned. “I only got so many fights I can manage today, Rhys.” She couldn’t fight everybody’s wars and Nasheen’s too.
“I’m not sure where the transcription is,” he said, and shrugged. “I’ll go through my records at the house first, then the transcription office. I’ll get you the recording tomorrow.”
She looked over the veranda. “Let’s not wait. I’ll drop off Suha and Eshe at the hotel.” She thought about that a minute. “Mutant shifting, that’s something you’re born with, right? Not something they can turn into?”
“I assume it’s from the start, yes. Why?”
“No reason,” Nyx said. “Inaya’s government must be itching to have her back, is all.”
“Don’t tell her I said anything. It’s a suspicion, nothing more. I was as curious about how she followed us back then as you were.”
“I don’t plan on seeing her again, anyway. Let’s get going.”
“I’d rather bring it to you tomorrow. There’s a festival tonight.”
“Festival?”
“The Martyr’s festival. I promised my family I would take them.”
“This a big deal?”
“The whole city goes.”
“So it’ll be quiet. Good. Let me get it and get out of your hair, Rhys. The more I hear about how deep this goes, the more I don’t like it.”
“Nyx…”
“You don’t have to bring me inside,” Nyx said. She didn’t want to see his pious little wife either. And him talking about having children was enough to turn her stomach. Children. Children just reminded her that he was fucking his wife. And the idea of pretty, leggy Rhys having sex was more than she cared to dwell on.
“All right,” he said. He called over the waiter. Nyx was going to insist they split the tab, then remembered Khos and Inaya’s house, and remembered Rhys lived across the park. He could cover it. She was going to have to stretch her notes a good deal further before this was over.
23.
I don’t like him,” Eshe said.
Nyx grinned. “Is that so?”
Rhys had stopped at a call box outside the café to call his wife. Nyx stayed out of earshot, tucked into a nearby doorway while she caught up Eshe and Suha on events.
Eshe’s face remained serious. “It’s not a joke. He’s a magician, ain’t he? You always said not to trust them. Why don’t I stay on point?”
“And you’ve always trusted them, even when I said not to,” Nyx said. “What’s the change?”
Eshe folded his arms. “I just don’t like him.”
“Suha, I need you to poke around the dives near Behdis’s place. If she’s seeing bel dames and not squealing, I want to know about it. Eshe, I want you watching after Suha.”
Eshe shook his head. “Let me fly point for you. I can do it.”
“I’m well aware you can do it. But Suha needs you more than me. You think there’s going to be trouble in that slick little neighborhood of his? Suha needs you to watch her back.”
Eshe shook his head and marched off toward the train.
“And put on your damn hat!” Nyx yelled after him.
Suha spit sen into a takeaway cup. They’d been fined by two Tirhani “public order police” for spitting on the sidewalks. Nyx wondered how the fuck keepers had time to police something so ridiculous. She supposed that without a bunch of deserters, mercenaries, and gene pirates running around, you had a lot less to do.
“I’ll ask around, but I don’t expect to start earning some trust for a couple weeks,” Suha said.
“We should have the time. Just stay low. I’d rather we hear about them before they hear about us.”
“Unless Behdis told them about us.”
“Possible. But that’ll make them easier to find.”
Suha grunted.
“I’m an optimist,” Nyx said.
“You’re something all right,” Suha said. “I’ll see you tonight.” She walked after Eshe.
Rhys talked to his wife for a long time. Nyx finally sat in the doorway, hat brim lowered, and dozed. When he eventually hung up and walked back over, he looked tired.
“She’ll expect us,” he said, and that was that.
Nyx rode downtown with Rhys on the beetle-powered train. Like the rest of Tirhan, it was clean and efficient. It came on time. It dropped them off exactly where it said it would at exactly the time the little schedule promised it would. Nyx found it disconcerting.
From there they took a taxi to the suburbs. The cabbie was a lot more personable in the presence of a magician. Nyx made a note of that for the next time she was running around in Tirhan. Might be useful to dress up like a magician, since they all wore some kind of uniform here.
As they stepped out of the taxi and started walking up the street, Rhys said, “What’s wrong?”
“Huh?”
“You haven’t said a word since lunch.”
“Yeah. A lot on my mind.”
They stepped onto a porch that looked so much like Khos and Inaya’s that Nyx could guess the layout of the house.
“What,” Nyx said, “they map out this place like a city of the future?”
“Famous architect,” he said. “The neighborhood was originally built for mullahs and the Martyr’s closest allies.”
“Doesn’t look that old.”
“It’s only been a couple centuries.”
“I suppose money does wonders.”
“It certainly doesn’t hurt.”
Rhys palmed open the door. The filter popped.
They walked inside. The floor was gray, spongy organic like Khos and Inaya’s house. But the layout was different. They walked into an arched foyer. Straight ahead was a bright, boxy kitchen, and to the left, a strange sunken living area that opened onto the tiled back porch—filtered, of course.
A small, fine-boned woman stood near the desk, hair neatly covered. She was slender and all-right looking, Nyx supposed. Almond-shaped eyes and dark skin, but she didn’t have the sort of easy grace that Rhys did. Her fine features and narrow waist made her look pretty sickly, in Nyx’s opinion. She wouldn’t be any good humping twenty kilos of gear across a war zone, or hauling forty kilos of bursts across the desert during a night raid. Useless in a hard fight.
Just the sort of wife she’d expect for Rhys.
The wife said something in Tirhani.
Nyx glanced over at Rhys.
The wife said, in Chenjan, “You are Nyx?”
“Yeah.”
She looked Nyx over disdainfully. “You’re much uglier than I expected.”
“Quite a relief, isn’t it?” Nyx said in Nasheenian.
Her petite little face scrunched up. “I don’t know what you’re saying,” she said in Chenjan.
Nyx pulled off her hat. “Don’t worry about Rhys. You got yourself a virtuous man.”
“If it’s here, it’ll be upstairs,” Rhys said pointedly.
“Oh, you go right ahead,” Nyx said, still in Nasheenian. “I can keep Elhena company.”
“Elahyiah,” Rhys said. “Come upstairs, Nyx.”
Nyx grinned and winked at his wife. “Will do.”
He led Nyx up to the bedroom. Nyx hesitated under the archway. Inside, everything was clean and neat. The sheets were white, the pillows were white, the gauzy curtains surrounding the bed were white. Nyx wondered if the wife spent all her time cleaning. She must. It wasn’t as if Chenjan wives were officially employed outside the home unless driven to by dire necessity. Rhys wouldn’t want that from his little prize.
“So, why just the one wife?” Nyx asked as he got out a footstool and began going through boxes on top of his wardrobe. “You can afford more. Even the Tirhani Book gives you at least four, right? Khos used to talk about how great that would be.”
“I find one wife fu
lly sufficient,” he said.
“What a rebel.”
He pulled a box down and brought it over to the bed. “I do love her, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Not my business.”
“No, it’s not.”
Rhys pulled open the box and waved his hand over another, smaller box of bug secretions inside. Something rattled. He pulled the lid off. Three sluggish beetles peered out. He stirred his fingers around in the contents, shook his head. “It’s not—” then pulled out a small rectangular casing. Inside was a beetle suspended in clear fluid.
“This is it,” he said. He waved his hand over the box to lock it and put it away.
He handed her the casing.
It was still warm from his hand. Nyx held it up to the light. Nothing at all remarkable about it. Green beetle in clear transmission fluid, wrapped in wiry strings of organic code. She tucked it away into her breast binding next to the one Alharazad had given her.
“Thanks,” she said. “Guess that’s it.”
“You should take this to somebody you can trust. A lot could happen between here and there.”
Nyx shrugged. “A lot can happen crossing the street.”
“I’ll take you to my transcription office. I have a com. You can translate it and have your answer today.”
“This is all I came for.”
“It’s not any trouble,” he said. “I’m curious to know who it was, myself. Her putting out a note on you drove me here. You remember?”
“That so?”
He looked away and started to the door. “Come down. I’ll tell Elahyiah I’ll be back before dark. We’ll have time to take the girls to the festival.”
“Your call,” Nyx said.
They walked downstairs. Nyx waited in the foyer while he talked to his wife in low tones. The wife raised her voice at one point, and they switched from Chenjan to Tirhani.
Nyx showed herself out onto the porch. As she did, she came face to face with a little girl, Chenjan-dark, with familiar eyes. Out on the sidewalk, a hunched little Ras Tiegan woman held the hand of another dark girl, smaller than the first, with braided hair.
The girl on the porch stared at her.
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