Nyx sat on the divan and watched as Inaya set out the transceivers. She opened the little tool kit with her small deft fingers. She shook a couple of the transceivers and frowned.
“This equipment is in terrible shape,” she said.
“So Taite always told me,” Nyx said.
Inaya did not look at her but pulled out one of the com picks and began prying open one of the transceiver cases. “You’re doing this to bring him back?”
“That’s the idea,” Nyx said.
Inaya worked in silence for a time. Nyx pulled out the diagram of the residence.
“So why wouldn’t Taite tell me you were rebels in Ras Tieg?” Nyx asked.
“You used to cut off the heads off Nasheenian rebels. Why would it be different with us?” A low buzzing sound came from the transceivers. Inaya poked at its innards.
“Seems like you hate me a lot for somebody who doesn’t know me.”
“I know all about you. You’re an ungodly, sex-crazed woman.”
“I’m a… what?”
“I’ve read all about women like you, the sort who use everyone around them for pleasure. You’re worse than the sort who cavorts only with women. At least they’re honest. Ungodly, but honest.”
“I’d say I was doing a great job submitting to God by submitting to my desires. Who do you think gave me desire in the first place?”
“God does not want us to kill, yet we are able to kill. If you were truly following God’s desire, you would repress your own desires and marry. Marry a man.”
Nyx settled back on the divan. “Tell me your marriage was happy.”
Inaya’s cheeks flushed faintly. Ah, yes, that color. Nyx covered her mouth. She’s fixing your transceivers, Nyx thought, be nice.
“Is that why it takes a near-death experience to get you to shift?” Nyx said. “You like it too much?”
Now Inaya’s face went bright red. “Do not judge me. You know nothing about me.”
“If God wanted you or me different, He’d have made us that way. I’d think you’d be more unhappy with all the killing I do than with all the men and women I fuck.”
“Sometimes killing is necessary.”
“Sure, of course. Bloody God and all. You and Taite must get into some pretty good arguments.”
“Taite doesn’t kill people.”
Nyx said, “I mean about the sex.”
“Men have certain needs, needs that are unnatural in women. Brothels are a sin, but I can understand his needs for female companionship.”
Now Nyx laughed. It was a full-belly laugh, and she laughed so hard it hurt. “Female companionship?” she gasped. “Oh, hell, you want a drink?”
“I don’t drink liquor.”
Nyx got up and poured herself the last of the whiskey in the bottle. “Inaya, when we get Taite back, you and your brother need to have a talk.”
When, she had said. Not if.
The lie tasted all right.
30
The next day, just before mid-morning prayer, Nyx drove the bakkie to the east side on her own. Nikodem’s residence was in a decent part of town, not one where a bakkie like hers prowled the streets. A few blocks north, the blue and green tiles of the business buildings at the city center reflected the new dawn as it bled to violet.
Nyx parked a block from Nikodem’s residence, partially hidden by a gaudy fountain splashing at the center of the square. She had a clear view of the entrance and the sidewalk just north of it. Nyx pulled out her transceiver and rubbed it absently.
No sign of Rhys.
She hadn’t touched any sen all morning, so she was a little shaky, but having red teeth and numb fingers for this job would be about as stupid as being drunk. She glanced at the cake boxes on the seat next to her and rubbed the transceiver again.
The transceiver buzzed.
She shook it, put it to her ear.
“Yeah,” she said.
“I’m moving in, boss,” Anneke said.
“Good. You see Khos?”
“Not yet.”
“Khos?”
“We’re on our way,” he said over the line.
“All right. Go in.”
Anneke severed the connection.
Nyx hated manual transceivers. They were easier to eavesdrop on, easier to trace. If Raine or Rasheeda or Fatima ran a transmission sweep, they were fucked.
She watched Anneke move in and gave her ten minutes by the fountain clock. Then Nyx locked the bakkie and walked up the street to the residence.
She nodded at the armed, veiled woman playing door guard as if she’d known
her all her life and stepped through the sliding doors.
Anneke’s voice hit her as the doors opened.
“I asked for a head-of-household room three months ago. Is this how you treat your heads of household in this residence? How do you lose a reservation—”
The bewildered desk clerk kept opening her mouth and closing it again. She was little, young, veiled, and neatly dressed. The murals on the wall were glass mosaics of dense jungle and jeweled bugs. A chittering mass of soarer beetles sprayed a fine mist of water from their cages along the edges of the room. The whole residence felt humid, dense.
Nyx hurried up to the counter and mustered up her best Chenjan. “Excuse me,” she said, nudging Anneke aside. “Has a delivery arrived? My employer is having a party on the third floor. There should be two pastry deliveries—”
“I’m sorry sir,” the clerk said. “There have been no deliveries—”
“Your reservation policy clearly states—” Anneke continued.
“I’m sorry, but without a state-approved confirmation—”
“Pastries. The bakery on this street. Are you sure?”
“There have been no deliveries, sir, I—”
Nyx went back out into the street. She sat in the bakkie and waited.
Five minutes, tops. Anneke was a good catshitter, but not that good.
Nyx saw Khos and four women dressed in the gaudy colors of whores, their hair uncovered, approaching the residence. Khos stared down the door guard, and they walked inside.
Nyx pulled the two cake boxes out of the back. They were filled with bags of sand. Sand was cheaper than cakes.
She walked back to the residence, carrying the boxes. When she went through the sliding doors this time, she heard a wave of angry voices.
The front desk clerk looked like a cornered animal.
The whores yelled at Anneke. Khos yelled at the clerk. Anneke’s color had deepened, and the veins in her neck stood out. She was having far too much fun.
“This is a disgrace! A disgrace! Whores! You offend my—” Anneke yelled.
“I’m sorry. There’s some misunderstanding—” the clerk said.
“No misunderstanding,” Khos said. “My women were asked up to a gathering on the fourth floor. This is a highly important client—”
“If you could just tell me the client’s name—”
“That’s confidential. He has a state stamp. I cannot—”
Nyx angled toward the faceplate door and called to the clerk, “I have the pastries. I can’t reach the plate. Could you—”
“If you simply buzz our client—” Khos said.
“I need a name before—”
“Can you just open this door?” Nyx said.
“First you lose my reservation, and then you intend to put me on the same floor with these dirty—”
“I can’t reach the plate,” Nyx said. “If you could just buzz me in—”
Sweat beaded the clerk’s face. She reached under the counter.
The door slid open.
Nyx stepped in.
The door closed and cut off the sound.
Nyx did not allow herself a grin. The clerk would call for help soon, and Anneke needed to get in before that happened.
The stairs were adjacent to the main door. Most residences kept bugs in the lifts. Nyx ditched the cake boxes in the stairwell and headed up.
>
She pushed into the short hall. The floor of the corridor was hard wood, and moaned under her sandaled feet. Nyx pulled her burnous up and followed the dimly lit signs to room tres-bleu-chose. The whole place had a Ras Tiegan theme. She passed the door and walked to the window at the end of the hall to wait for Anneke. She dared not go in on her own to face a magician.
Nyx waited a couple of minutes, then heard a door open behind her. She turned and saw a woman walking out of the room. The woman spoke Nasheenian to someone still inside, asked if they wanted something from a vendor.
The woman spared an incurious glance at Nyx, then started off toward the lift. The door shut behind her.
Nyx looked back out the window.
If the magician was gone, that should leave Nikodem alone in the room.
Nyx clasped her hands behind her back. The window gave her an inspiring view of the cracked parking lot and rusted roofs of a sprawling shantytown, broken only by the occasional serrated palm. Beyond that, low desert hills shimmered in the rising heat.
The call sounded for mid-morning prayer.
Nyx looked behind her again. No sign of Anneke. A soda run wouldn’t take the magician long. Without Rhys next to her, Nyx would be shit in a fight with a magician.
She pulled the crowbar from the loop at her belt and wedged it into the doorjamb of room tres-bleu-chose.
Tej once told her that sometimes the old tricks were the best ones.
Nyx popped the door lock, and front-kicked the door.
The door swung open.
Nyx dropped the crowbar and released her whip. She needed Nikodem undamaged, for now.
A small dark woman stood at the center of the room, wearing calf-length trousers and a thigh-length green tunic. She turned her face to the door, and Nyx knew her in an instant. Gray eyes met hers—too big-eyed for beauty.
Nyx strode right toward her without clearing the room. A mistake. She knew better.
“Nikodem? I’m here to get you out,” Nyx said. “Your sisters have a bounty on you. We need to move.”
Nikodem smiled, and, watching that smile split the broad-cheeked face, Nyx knew that everything she’d worried about was true.
“Oh, I know,” Nikodem said, “and you’re terribly hard to get rid of.”
Nyx heard the unmistakable whir of an organics gun being powered up.
She looked toward the bathroom.
Dahab pointed a double-barreled organics gun at Nyx with her good arm.
“Good morning,” Dahab said.
Nyx stepped left, crouched low, and snapped out her whip at the gun. The whip caught. Nyx pulled. The gun went off and sprayed the chair behind Nyx. Smoke rose from the upholstery.
Nikodem sprinted for the door.
Nyx jerked the gun from Dahab’s grasp, freed the whip. The gun clattered across the floor. Nyx lashed her whip out at Nikodem’s ankle.
The whip caught again. Nyx pulled again. She took Nikodem off her feet and yanked her forward.
Nikodem reached beneath her tunic and came out with a throwing dart.
Dahab ran for the gun on the floor.
Nyx heard the floorboards in the hall groan. If the magician was back with the soda, she was fucked.
Nyx yanked out her pistol, and fired off a few rounds at Dahab with her bad hand, but—as was typical—didn’t hit anything. She felt a sharp pain in her shoulder and saw Nikodem’s dart jutting out of her flesh. She yanked it out and threw it back at her. She hit Nikodem in the face, with the flat ass-end of the dart.
Nikodem yelled at her in some alien language, and then Dahab was on her feet and pumping the organics gun to reload it. The gun whirred.
Nyx shot at her again.
Dahab ducked.
Nikodem started pulling at the whip around her ankle.
Somebody stepped into the doorway.
Nyx prepared to be assaulted by a swarm of wasps.
Instead, Anneke shot Dahab in the head with her shotgun. Dahab’s brains splattered the wall behind her.
The woman crumpled.
Anneke pointed the gun at Nikodem. “We get paid even if you ain’t breathing,” Anneke said.
“And how will you get a dead body out of this hotel?” Nikodem said coolly.
“Want to find out?” Nyx said.
Anneke slung her gun over her shoulder and put her knee into Nikodem’s back. She bound her with sticky bands and then gagged her.
“Move, move,” Nyx said. “Everybody heard that goddamn shotgun.”
They fled into the hall. A few doors stood half-open, and when the residents saw them, all the doors swung shut. Nyx supposed that if she had seen herself running down the hall dragging a gagged woman ahead of somebody carrying a shotgun, she would have shut her door too.
Nyx pushed Nikodem down the stairs. If they wanted her dead or alive, they wouldn’t mind getting her with bruises.
On the second floor, Nikodem stopped walking and sagged. Nyx threw the woman over her shoulder, and her whole body screamed at her. She stumbled. Nikodem tried to bite her ear.
Anneke punched Nikodem.
They ran down the stairs, and pushed out onto the first floor. Order keepers generally took anywhere from eight to forty-five minutes to show up after a call was placed, depending on the neighborhood. The on-premises security would be heading up.
Anneke sprinted down the corridor and pushed open the back door. The alarm went off.
Nyx stumbled into the hot, dusty parking lot.
Khos waited in the buzzing bakkie. “Inaya says the keepers are two minutes away.”
Nyx wrapped Nikodem in a cooling tarp, and stuffed her into the trunk. Nyx squeezed in up front next to Anneke.
Khos hit the speed but slowed once they cleared the parking lot, to avoid suspicion on the street.
“She alive?” Khos asked.
“Does it matter?” Nyx said.
Anneke clenched her jaw and squinted at Nyx.
“You should be happy,” Nyx said.
“You about bit it that time, boss.”
“Not for the first time.”
“No,” Anneke said, “but it was the first time you almost bit it for doing something real stupid.”
“You all want Taite back? This is how we do it.” Her leg throbbed. She had fucked up her ankle on the stairs, and Nikodem was a lot tougher to carry with only three fingers on her right hand.
“Khos, you have your whores tell Raine’s messenger we’re ready to make a deal for Taite.”
“I’ll drop you off and drive over there. You both all right?”
“Swimming,” Nyx said.
She had her bounty. She should be full of grim optimism, but Taite was in pieces and Rhys was missing—and she had no fucking idea how she was going to pull a slick switch for Taite and get Nikodem back across the border alive.
Good thing she didn’t intend on delivering her that way.
31
Khos unloaded Nikodem from the back. Her legs were bruised from trying to kick out the trunk. Once she had a clear view of him, she kicked out at him too.
Her nose was already bloodied from a hit she had taken from Nyx or Anneke. Khos hit her again, hard this time. She went limp.
Khos put her over his shoulder, shut the trunk, and walked up the long flight of stairs to their room. Nyx was just pushing in the door. Khos heard a shriek.
Nyx swore, and Anneke darted inside.
Khos pounded up the stairs.
Inside, Nyx was on the floor with Inaya on top of her. Inaya screamed and pulled at Nyx’s butchered hair. Nyx caught both of Inaya’s wrists and told her to calm down.
“You godless whore!” Inaya cried. “You dirty godless whore!”
Anneke walked over to a soggy box sitting on the tea table. The unmistakable reek of death clung to it. Anneke used the end of her shotgun to open the lid of the box. She grimaced, and slid the lid back on.
Khos deposited Nikodem on the divan and pushed Anneke aside. She grunted.
�
�You bloody bitch! You bloody bitch!”
As Khos reached for the lid, Inaya’s voice began to fade. The baby was crying. Crying and crying.
He pushed the lid back and let it fall to the table.
Khos half-hoped, right up to that moment, that it would be Rhys’s head.
But, no, the head inside the box had been severed from its body recently enough that it was still recognizable as Taite’s. Bloody, covered in sand, discolored, yes… but still the head of his friend.
Khos felt unsteady. He pushed Nikodem’s bruised legs out of the way and sat down on the divan.
Sound started to come back—the screaming baby, Inaya’s sobbing. Nyx was speaking in low tones, and when he swung his head to look at her, he saw her kneeling next to Inaya.
“I’m not perfect,” Nyx said.
“You bloody bitch,” Inaya murmured.
Khos wanted to take Inaya into his arms and say something profound and comforting, but a part of him still wanted this all to be some kind of mistake. Some part of him still wanted Nyx to be right. He wanted them to win.
But Nyx was just a woman—no more, no less. He turned to Inaya, to hold her, but her body language warned him off. He feared that if he touched her, she would claw him.
“Who brought it here?” Khos asked.
“Some magician,” Inaya said.
Khos felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. “A what?”
Nyx stood. “A magician? You’re sure?”
“Yes, they all look alike,” Inaya said, wiping at her wet face. “What does it matter who brought it?”
“What did she say?” Nyx said.
Inaya’s expression got dark, mean. “She said that if you want your own magician back, you’re to meet him in Bahreha. She left a map.”
Anneke pushed the box aside and found a bloodied newsroll beside it. “Got it, boss.”
Nyx took it from her, and unrolled it.
A misty image took shape in front of her. Raine’s familiar face formed and spoke.
“You’ve taken up a better note,” he said, and Khos felt his skin crawl at the sound of Raine’s voice. It brought back memories of a service he liked even less than his current one.
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