God's War (15 page)

Then the queen was talking, and Rhys
looked away, and Nyx tried to listen. Nikodem had been missing for a month, the
queen said. She came to Nasheen with three others. The off-worlders had come to
Faleen for the first time sixteen years before, and they had come speaking the
language Chenjans and Nasheenians used for prayer. Only mullahs spoke that
language with any competence anymore, and most people would debate just how
competent it was.

“What did they come here looking
for?” Nyx asked.

“Some of that is confidential,” the
Queen said. “What I can say is that they were very interested in finding other
followers of the Kitab and its sister books. They have offered an exchange of
technologies in the spirit of our shared faith. We’ve been in negotiations for nearly
two decades.”

“They from New Kinaan?” Nyx asked.

“Yes. You know it?”

“Heard it secondhand. My sister
works with foreigners on the coast,” Nyx said. Kine might be able to fill her
in on what they were up to, though she hadn’t spoken to Kine since she got out
of prison. Kine had wanted even less to do with her after the black mark. “I
know that when we get in off-worlders, we’re always real interested in hauling
them down to the breeding compounds and getting new tech from them.”

“You say they are followers of the
Kitab. A sister book. But have you read it?” Rhys asked.

Nyx looked at him sharply. She
didn’t know what that had to do with anything.

“As with any people, they believe
they are the only true believers of the one God, the only people who know and
understand Him through the words of His many prophets,” the queen said.

“God is unknowable,” Rhys said.
“That is His nature. For them to claim to know God is arrogance at best. For
them to claim more than one prophet isn’t heresy, but to claim there was
another after ours… I couldn’t imagine doing business with such a people.”

That dagger was a little too sharp
for Nyx’s taste. She opened her mouth to tell him to shut up.

“At one time, Nasheen and Chenja did
business,” the queen said, “and it wasn’t called heresy then. It is no business
of mine to tell my women how to worship. I do not require a call to prayer in
any city. That is up to the mullahs and the people who elect them. Your Chenjan
mullahs may be elected, but I am not. When our mullahs overstep, I intervene.”
She smiled thinly. “Our balance of power has kept the soldiers at the front,
the bel dames at work, and the mullahs sticking to matters of God. We have done
this successfully for nearly three hundred years, while doing business with
people of the Book. ”

“You say you give your people
freedom to submit to God,” Rhys said, and Nyx wondered if he’d hoped to have
this conversation with the Queen of Nasheen his whole life, “yet you have
barred men from serving as mullahs unless they return alive from the front. I
see some contradiction in that. How can you deny a man the right to submit to
God as he believes God has directed him?”

Nyx sucked her teeth.

“We have different views of God, you
and I,” the queen said.

Which explains that whole war business,
Nyx thought.

“So, when can I see these
Kinaanites?” Nyx asked.

The queen turned from Rhys and
regarded her a long moment, as if she’d forgotten Nyx was even there. “Kasbah
will take you to them,” she said.

The off-worlders were having supper,
which Nyx found somehow reassuring. As she and Rhys stepped into the room
behind Kasbah, the call to prayer rolled out over Mushtallah. The keening cry
sounded close, and Nyx figured it was pumped into the palace grounds through
some kind of local radio.

Rhys found an ablution bowl near the
door and began to wash in preparation for prayer. Nyx continued on into the
airy little room. There were plush divans and tall succulents in striped pots.
Some kind of gauzy curtain draped down from the ceiling in soft folds, which
cut some of the filtered light from the open shaft above them.

The off-worlders were gathered
around a faux wood table set near four glass doors that led out onto a balcony
overlooking the spread of Mushtallah. Nyx could see the blue light of the
second sun begin to push dusky evening across the city. Glow worm lamps had
been unshuttered, and the minarets were lit up with red beacons, an old but
useless tradition. The beacons just made the minarets better targets.

The aliens at the table were small,
bony women. Two were black as pitch, and one was whiter than a Mhorian, which
Nyx figured wasn’t healthy. The white one wore a visible silver X-shaped
pendant, like a Ras Tiegan, and they all wore dark hijabs that covered their
hair and wrapped around their necks like overgenerous turbans. They were
covered from wrist to ankle in a variety of housecoats and loose trousers.
Though she ate with her fingers, the white woman wore gloves. Nyx wondered if
the white pigment was some sort of skin condition.

Rhys had pulled the prayer rug from
his back and took up his kneeling position, facing north. As he professed his
intention to offer salaat and began to go through the gestures of the niyat,
she could still follow along with him, the words and movement so familiar to
her body. She wished he would carry a sword instead of a rug. When bullets ran
out, rugs weren’t much good for beating people off.

Kasbah introduced Nyx to the
off-worlders.

“You don’t pray?” Nyx asked the women.

“We pray,” the more delicate of the
black women said in heavily accented Nasheenian. “Just not so publicly, not in
ordinary spaces, and not so frequently. We are people of the Good Book, but our
book is… different from yours. I must admit, even among followers of your book…
what is it you call it here, the Kitab? Even among followers of your Kitab on
other worlds, your interpretation is… exceedingly unique. Yours is the first
post-Haj world to—”

“I sometimes wonder what he has left
to say to God,” Nyx interrupted, nodding toward Rhys.

“There is always something left to
say to God,” the woman said. She gestured to the table. “Join us. I am Danika
Chaba.”

The other two introduced themselves.
The other black woman was Solome Hadar, and the white one was Keran Yarkona.
The white one’s Nasheenian was so bad that Nyx could barely understand her.

“You’re the tenth mercenary to talk
to us,” Danika said.

“I’m a bounty hunter,” Nyx said.

“Oh? Is there a difference?”

“Yeah,” Nyx said. She could hear
Rhys reciting, not in Chenjan or Nasheenian but the ancient language of prayer:

“In
the name of God, the infinitely Compassionate and Merciful. Praise be to God,
Lord of all the worlds.”

“Were you all with Nikodem the last
time she was in Nasheen?” Nyx asked. She was hungry, and they had a lot to go
over.

Keran and Solome exchanged looks,
but Danika did not blink as she replied, “I was. Solome stayed aship, as she
had not yet been inoculated against your contagions. Keran had not yet
graduated.”

“Graduated?”

“Off-world studies, diplomacy. She
has done some work for us in-system.”

“In-system?”

Danika clucked her tongue. In
Nasheen, that was a reproach, but Nyx suspected she meant it differently.

“We have two viable worlds in our
star’s system, and a colonized moon. We have some experience in negotiating
with others who are not as we are.”

“It was smart to send women to
Nasheen, then.”

Danika gave a tight smile. “It was
not all politics. We have sent skilled technicians before us, but most were
unable to adapt to the peculiar contagions of your world, and perished. Nikodem
and I are now the top technicians in our field.”

“And what field is that?” Nyx asked.

“Organic sciences.”

Rhys finished the prayer with his
feet tucked under his thighs, his palms splayed on either knee.

“Peace and blessings of God be upon
you,” he murmured, turning to look over his right shoulder, where one of God’s
angels was supposed to be recording all your good deeds. He then looked over
his left shoulder, to the angel making note of all his wrongs.

What wrongs had Rhys ever committed,
Nyx wondered? Again, he murmured, “Peace and blessings of God be upon you.” He
began to roll up his prayer rug.

She noted that he had added no
personal prayers to the beginning or end of his salaat.

Angels and demons and a great man in
the sky who took the time to listen to a whole world abase itself. There had
been no angels at the front. Chenjans were the only demons, and sacrificing
herself to God had proved nothing, saved no one.

What bugged her was that Rhys hadn’t
figured that out yet.

She heard him get up and turned to
watch him walk over. Kasbah brought another chair from the back of the room,
and Rhys joined them at the now crowded table. The white woman, Keran, flinched
away from him as he sat next to her. What did she have to be afraid of from
another believer? Maybe they all had something against aliens. Nyx wondered how
often these people had dealt with other worlds. If they had whole schools for
“off-world diplomacy,” they must do it a lot. Nyx had a long moment of vertigo.
How many worlds were out there?

Lord
of all the worlds…

“Competitive field on your world?”
Nyx asked. “Organic sciences?”

“In our country, yes. But you did
not come here to talk of science,” Danika said.

Nyx leaned back in the chair and
thought:
You did though, didn’t you?
But that wasn’t
the note Nyx had accepted.

“Can you think of anyone Nikodem met
last time who would give her harbor?” Nyx asked. “Any place she’d want to go?”

A black woman in Nasheen might stick
out even if she holed herself up in the Chenjan quarters with the refugees.
Though her color would match, her foreign look and accent would give her away
as something other than Chenjan, especially if she went out unveiled or looked
too many men in the face. These women had no problem looking Rhys in the
face—only Keran seemed to actively dislike him—but that may have been them
bowing to Nasheenian custom. In any case, the other hunters this group had
spoken to would have started in the Chenjan district. If so many had already
given up the hunt, it was likely Nikodem wasn’t there.

“We have a more detailed itinerary
on the globe the queen issued you,” Danika said. “We spent a good deal of time
here in the palace meeting with bel dames and dignitaries.”

“Which bel dames did you meet?”

“Do you remember their names?”
Danika asked Solome.

Solome’s voice was deep, sultry. Nyx
was impressed to hear that voice come out of such a small woman.

“I believe we spent time with Dahab
so Batir and Fatima Kosan. Who were the others? Inan so Khada, and someone
called Blake, a half-breed from Ras Tieg.”

“Blake’s not a bel dame, she’s a
bounty hunter like me,” Nyx said. “Half-breeds can’t be bel dames.” Ah, Blake.
So the young upstart was still around. Nyx knew Inan too. They had gone through
bel dame training together.

“There were magicians, also,” Danika
said. “We met with a great deal of magicians over the course of our stay. The
nature of our work demanded it. That list is in your file also.”

“I heard you saw a boxing match in
Faleen,” Nyx said, casually. She suspected that little detail wasn’t on the
queen’s globe.

Danika grimaced. “Boxing, yes. A bit
of parting vulgarity for Nikodem during her last visit. She has a peculiar
obsession with violence.”

“Does she?” Nyx said, interested.

“Why is it you are not taking
notes?” Solome asked.

“I was trained as a bel dame,” Nyx
said. “We don’t take notes.” What she didn’t say was that she learned
everything by rote because she was dead dumb with books. It was why she could
still recite the Kitab by heart nearly two decades after she’d last picked one
up.

“Then this man is not your
assistant? Is he a magician?” Solome asked, and Nyx watched her eyes. It was a
hungry look, but not one of physical desire. She hadn’t looked at him much
until now.

“I have some training with bugs,”
Rhys said, “My practicing license is provisional.”

“On what?” Solome asked.

“On my being employed with a local
hunter or bel dame,” Rhys said.

“I find this ability to manipulate
organisms through will alone fascinating,” Solome said. “We have tried to
replicate it in our system, but… The ability to alter pheromones, to…
effectively reprogram insects at the cellular level, seems to be something
innate, peculiar to this world.”

“It’s inherited,” Nyx said, “like
shape shifting.”

“It was not something we carried
with us from the moons,” Rhys said.

Nyx, startled, looked at him.
“Where’d you hear that?”

He shrugged. “My father was a hobby
historian.”

Solome said something in a bizarre
syrupy language to Danika. Danika nodded and replied in the same language.

Solome said, “Perhaps you could tell
us of your father. We’re much interested in those with knowledge of this world.
Most Nasheenian libraries and records were burned or culled during one of your
many wars.”

“My father is dead,” Rhys said.

“Ah,” Solome said, “a small tragedy,
but not unexpected. How is it you tolerate living in the country of your
enemies?”

Nyx watched him.

Rhys did not look at her but met
Solome’s steady gaze. “I am a political refugee. Nasheen tolerates my presence
because I am a magician.”

“Tirhan cherishes magicians and
shifters alike, does it not?” Solome asked. “Surely that country, being one
only recently estranged from Chenja, would have been a better fit for one such
as you.”

“Nasheen was… closer,” Rhys said
carefully. Nyx saw him start to play with his hands. Such a good liar, until he
had to lie about himself.