God's War (14 page)

On Nyx’s team, the matter of Rhys’s
real name was a small thing, hardly worth comment.

It was another reason he stayed.

Nyx had seen images of the queen
before, of course—misty blue images from high council meetings and patriot-act
ads on the radio—but most of those were doctored. As Nyx walked closer, the
queen stood. She barely reached Nyx’s shoulder. She was a plump, matronly
figure with a wispy cloud of graying hair. Her face was too young for the
hair—she might have been forty. The desert and the suns sucked the youth from
most women, but the queen had grown up rich, and the rich—the sort of people on
the high council and of the First Families—didn’t get exposed to much sun. They
didn’t age as quickly as everybody else, so it was worth her while to keep her
hair white. Older women were well respected in Nasheen. If it didn’t show in her
face, she’d need to show it somewhere. She was the fucking Queen, after all.

Nyx caught Rhys looking at her. She
had the peculiar feeling he was reading her mind. One never knew with
magicians, even bad ones. He still sometimes surprised her.

“May God bless you. Please, be
comfortable,” the queen said, gesturing to the two seats on the other side of
the polished white table. Nyx didn’t see the advantage of having a white table.
She supposed it made sense if you had somebody around to clean up after you all
the time. Back when she was growing up in Mushirah, her mother and aunts had
employed a Ras Tiegan servant to help out with taking care of Nyx and her
siblings and doing little stuff around the house. The woman had lived out back
in the bug storage shed and taught Nyx how to swear in Ras Tiegan and beat her
brothers at strategy games. Nyx wondered if the Queen remembered any of her
servants’ names.

As she sat down across from the
Queen, Nyx realized
she
had forgotten the Ras Tiegan
servant’s name.

“I guess I should say I’m sorry
about your mother,” Nyx said. “About her abdicating.”

Nyx hadn’t cared much for the old
half-breed hag and the bureaucratic tape she wound around the apprehension of
terrorists. It had cut into Nyx’s business in a bad way. The current queen
being a half-breed hadn’t been terribly popular either.

“My mother realizes what is best for
her health,” the queen said, “and the health of Nasheen.”

“That’s good to hear,” Nyx said, and
wondered what she was trying to say with that. Rumor had it Zaynab was an
enterprising sort of queen. She’d been running the country on her own for years
while her mother dabbled in astrology and sand science.

“Nyxnissa so Dasheem,” the queen
said.

“Nyx, yeah.”

“Nyx, a pleasure.”

“Uh, thanks.”

“Thank you for answering my
summons,” the queen said. There was something on the table at her elbow, a
transparent globe. An information globe. Nyx hadn’t seen one of those in more
than a decade. “I was told that you served at the front.”

“A long time ago.” Nyx glanced over at
Rhys and clenched her left hand, the one he’d brushed during their long walk
from quarantine to the queen’s chambers. What little she knew about Rhys she
hadn’t learned from him but rather from the magicians and boxers in Faleen. He
was from some rich family, and he’d spent time at the Chenjan Imam’s court. He
was used to dealing with mullahs and politicians and First Families. It
explained his uptight dressing practices and strict manners. She hoped he was a
lot more comfortable right now than she was, even if he was the Chenjan.

“Volunteered?” the queen said.

“Yeah.”

“Two years of service, honorably
discharged at nineteen, so I’ve read.”

Nyx stiffened. It was a bit early in
the interview to be bringing up her file. She had managed to keep a lot of
things out of that file, and even more out of the public one—things she didn’t
talk about with anybody, especially not her team. She didn’t look at Rhys.

“You came back with burns over
eighty percent of your body,” the queen said.

Nyx opened her mouth to cut her off.
The queen kept talking, minor details, and Nyx saw her looking at the globe,
checking her notes.

“Your military file says you were
put into the care of the magicians for reconstitution.” The queen paused to eye
Nyx over, as if looking for evidence that Nyx had once been a charred,
blackened husk of a woman. “Is that right?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

She remembered the mud between her
toes, the taste of the rain in the yeasty air and the way the wet made the long
grass shine. They had been in Chenia, in Bahreha, sweeping for mines. She went
barefoot when she was doing sap-per work; she liked to feel the ground under
her, the way it responded to her weight. She believed it gave her a better idea
of where the Chenjans had set the mines. Her whole squad had been there,
sweeping up from behind her. She led, pushing farther into the muddy grass,
until she reached the end of the cleared field. That’s where she had gone down
on her belly, a knife in one hand and her other palm flat on the ground, a
mantis at work. She remembered finding the mine, a flat green disk the size of
a bottle cap, the same as half a hundred others she’d cleared from the same
field. Nothing special. Nothing different.

She had been good at what she did.

Until that day.

“I had a good magician work on me.
The best in the business,” Nyx said. And then he fucked me over and sent me to
prison, Nyx thought. But that was in the file too. No need to repeat it.

“I went against the advice of my
best counselors in asking you here,” the queen said, and now she wasn’t looking
at the globe anymore. She smiled, but it was a too-sweet grandmotherly smile,
like she was doing Nyx a favor. A favor she’d want repaid real soon.

It all started to click together in
Nyx’s head now. The aliens from Faleen, the queen’s recent abdication, the fact
that the queen was calling in Nyx—a hunter, not a bel dame.

This might get tricky.

“Sorry I’m not more popular,” Nyx
said. She was better at killing her own people than getting rid of foreigners.
Nobody liked to hear that, but it was true.

“They told me that you served some
time in prison for black work. You were delivering zygotes to gene pirates.”

Yeah, that one had definitely gone
into the file.

“I did,” Nyx said. She was being
tested. But for what? Her loyalty to Nasheen? To the queen? The queen’s laws?
To what end?

“You have some sympathy for illegal
breeding? We have no need for rogue mixers or illegal half-breeds, like Ras
Tieg or Druce. Our compounds perform those functions. It’s disappointing to see
a woman waste her womb on a single birth.”

“Your mother was a half-breed,
wasn’t she?” Nyx asked.

Rhys made a strange little choking
sound that might have been a laugh.

“Excuse me,” he said, “may I have
some water, Honorable?”

The queen cocked her head at him.
She raised a fleshy hand, and Kasbah called in a retainer. They gave him a
plain glass of water. Nyx and the queen were silent through the whole
performance.

Nyx’s mother and all the rest who
were authorized for child rearing had to go through the filtration and
inoculation process on the coast. Just as Umayma had been tailored to suit the
people on it, the people on Umayma had been tailored to suit the world.
Half-breed illegals like Taite had a tougher time getting around. They burned
more easily, died sooner, and suffered from more cancers and diseases. Most of
Taite’s childhood stories were about things experienced while bedridden. The
former queen and her children wouldn’t have had that problem, of course. The
high council would have approved their pairing and gotten them the inoculations
they needed. It strengthened Nasheenian ties with Ras Tieg.

“I was into black work because it
paid all right,” Nyx said, getting back into safer territory.

“More than being a bel dame?
Collecting blood debt is  rewarding.”

“Only if you’re good at it,” Nyx
said. “I wasn’t.”

Rhys shifted in his seat and gave
her a pointed look.

“Nyxnissa is being modest,” Rhys
said. “She brought in every note she was assigned. Her final note as a bel dame
prevented an outbreak of what we now know was blister fever. I believe a
similar contaminated soldier was responsible for the deaths of more than four
hundred people in Sahlah last year.”

“Indeed,” the queen said. “And who
is this Chenjan man in your company, Nyxnissa?”

Nyx said, “He’s my magician.”

“I read that your other partners did
not last long while you were a bel dame.”

“It’s a good thing I changed
professions, then,” Nyx said.

“Nyxnissa is many things,” Rhys cut
in, “including stubborn. Determined. If you’re looking for a woman to stick to
a note until the bitter end, you’ve summoned the proper woman. She has a black
mark—the black work—yes, but she was also young and foolish then. She’s
tempered a good deal since.”

Rhys was a much better liar than she
was.

“Stubborn, yeah,” Nyx agreed. “But
maybe just stupid.”

“Neither of us has gotten where we
are by being stupid,” the queen said.

“Oh, I’ve done some pretty stupid
things,” Nyx said. Going to the front had been one of them. This conversation
with the queen might be another. “I heard you’ve called in a lot of hunters for
this note. Not just me.”

“Hunters, yes. A few mercenaries.
Most have already given up the hunt, however.”

“You haven’t called in any bel dames
to pursue the note?” Might as well ask, Nyx thought.

“I have my reasons for keeping bel
dames out of this particular affair. I need someone….”

“Desperate?” Nyx suggested.

Rhys pressed his lips together and
looked at the table. He discreetly covered his mouth with his hand. Being blunt
shocked him.

Maybe selling herself as desperate
wasn’t a great idea either. Nyx closed her eyes, and behind her eyelids she saw
the mine explode again, felt something wet against her skin, a hard slap. Then
the whole world was full of filth, offal; she watched half a dozen boys blow
apart.

She had been good, once.

Nyx opened her eyes.

Recompense for
the apprehension of the terrorist is negotiable
.

How negotiable? Getting back her bel
dame title negotiable?

Duty. Honor. Sacrifice.
My life for a thousand
.

“These days, I only risk my life for
cash,” Nyx said, opening her eyes.

Duty. Honor. Cash.

“Tell me, why did you volunteer for
the front?” the queen asked.

“My older brothers died at the
front. When they called up my youngest brother, I joined so I could watch his
back.”

“A family woman, then,” the queen
said.

“Not really,” Nyx said. “He died of
dysentery during basic training.”

When she’d gotten back from the
front after being reconstituted, the government had plowed over her mother’s
homestead in Mushirah and put up a munitions factory. The locals later burned
the factory down and reclaimed the farmland, but her mother had died of Azam
fever when she relocated to a breeding farm on the coast. She was dead and
buried long before Nyx was reconstituted.

“Let’s go ahead and talk money,” Nyx
said.

“Money isn’t an issue,” the queen
said. “Bring me the woman I want—alive— and we can negotiate the rest. I have
half a dozen estates and twice as many servants, if you wish it. Women, of
course.” She looked at Rhys. “Unless you’d prefer half-breeds. We have no end
of male half-breeds.”

“Until we start sending half-breeds
to the front,” Nyx said. “You want to know why women risk illegal pregnancy and
keep pirates elbow deep in organs? Half-breeds who aren’t inoculated—who aren’t
rich Firsts—don’t get drafted. They’d fall like rotten wasp nests at the
front.”

“Perhaps we can eliminate the need
for the draft altogether.”

“What do you mean?” This was the
dangerous part. No legitimate note was ever pointedly removed from the bel dame
queue.

“The woman I’d like you to retrieve
can help us end the war.”

Nyx gave a soft grunt. And who would
be more interested in ending the war than a former bel dame and war veteran
who’d lost everything to it? Somebody just as good as a bel dame but with
publicly severed ties to the council? Somebody the queen could put in her
pocket?

Pocket, my ass, Nyx thought.

“We could put something together,”
Nyx said. “Who is she?”

“A foreigner. An off-worlder called
Nikodem Jordan.”

Fuck, Nyx thought. The carrier in
Faleen. The boxers. Jaks. Prison. Her sisters. Aliens. A boy’s head in a bag.
No coincidences.

Cause and effect.

The queen pulled the globe off the
table and called up a still. She handed the globe to Nyx. “This gives her likeness
and background. You’ll need to change the password.”

Nyx took the globe. It fit neatly in
the palm of her hand. Nikodem’s images had date and time stamps. Nyx saw that
several of the stills were dated eight years before. Just as she’d suspected. The
same carrier. The same aliens.

Nikodem was a small woman, Chenjan
in coloring, with a broad nose, wide cheekbones, and gray eyes. It was an
arresting face, not so much alien as exotic. She had the smooth, unblemished
skin of someone who’d never stood under the suns of Umayma. She was too little
and big-eyed for real beauty, but there was some strength in that face—and
cunning. It was the sort of face that kept others out, kept secrets.

“I’ll need to know everything about
her,” Nyx said. She looked up from the projections, reluctantly. “How long has
she been gone? Does she have friends? Other travelers with her? Who did she
meet with when she was last here? Looks like that was eight years ago.”

Rhys tilted his head slightly and
peered at the images projected from the globe. She saw his eyes widen, and he
sat back. The woman wasn’t
that
pretty. Nyx frowned
and peered at the stills again. Then Nyx remembered where Rhys had been eight
years ago. She looked at him again. Their gazes met. One long, tense moment.