God's War (18 page)

“Try to close it,” Rhys said.

Nyx grinned at that. She wanted to
see Rhys shoot an organic target. He was a good shot.

“I heard you were fucking Chenjans,”
Luce said, “but I didn’t believe it.”

“You women paying for lunch?” Nyx
asked. “Or is that all?” Rhys might have an aversion for hurting living people,
but she didn’t.

Luce said, “You think the council’s
joking?”

“No,” Nyx said. “I think everything
you honey pots could think of to do to me has been done. You stripped me of my
bel dame license and sent me to prison. What, you want to set me on fire? Cut
off bits and pieces and sell them to collectors? Send me to the front? It’s all
been done. Fuck off.”

“We have other ways to hurt you,
Nyx,” Luce said quietly.

“No, you don’t. My mother and
brothers are dead. The only blood sister I have thinks I’m headed straight for
hell. God left me in a trench outside Bahreha. You’re all the sisters I have,
and you’re the ones who sent me to prison. Have a nice night.”

Luce kicked Rasheeda. “Up,” she said.

Rasheeda said, “I haven’t gotten my
little green drink.”

“Get it at the bar,” Luce said.

The bel dames stood.

Nyx watched them walk to the bar.

The bar matron arrived with their
food. There was soup for Rhys, and a steaming heap of meat for Nyx that made
her even more nauseous than the opium smoke. She drew her dagger and stabbed at
the hunk.

“Why haven’t they killed you yet?”
Rhys asked.

“Nobody likes to kill bel dames,”
Nyx said. And she was a lot more valuable to them alive. “I’ve been inoculated
against every known contagion, and I can pass through any filter in the
country. I can power down a city with one good burst slapped together with bug
juice and scattergun acid.” Nobody killed a bel dame. At worst, you were thrown
out. Or permanently imprisoned and cocooned.

“So there’s someone on that council
who wants you alive to use for later.”

“Yeah. It’s why I went to prison and
not back to the front.”

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know. Some old lady,
probably.”

“But they don’t like the queen. Do
you think some of them would kill you anyway?”

“And piss off the old ladies? Luce
won’t. Fatima would arrange an accident. Dahab and Rasheeda might. Others, no.
They’d stick to clean notes.”

Nyx stared at the hunk of meat on
her plate. It had taken four bel dames to bring her down last time. She had
been on her own then, without a com tech, a shape shifter, a magician, or any
kind of hired gun.

“So what do you think this alien
knows that makes the queen
and
the bel dames want
her so badly?” Rhys asked.

“What it is isn’t as important as
what it can
do
,” Nyx said. “If it could end the war,
it could end it in favor of either side. Think of her like a weapon we need to
get back.” She considered. “I need to go to the coast and talk to my sister.
She was passing information with New Kinaan at about the time Nikodem was last
here. She might know something that’ll help.” Kine could also tell her a lot
more about the aliens—and maybe their real motives—than they’d tell her
themselves.

“I can go to the archives,” Rhys
said.

“Too conspicuous.”

“I mean, the archives in the Chenjan
district. I won’t be conspicuous there.”

“Hold off until I get back.” Nyx
poked at her food.

“What’s wrong?” Rhys asked.

Nyx sighed. “I really wanted to get
into a fight.”

Outside, the heady whine of the burst
sirens started up again. The building shook.

“Bloody fucking Chenjans,” Nyx
muttered, but she didn’t look at Rhys when she said it.

“You’re telling me that one of the
mercenaries on this list is the Chenjan under ice in our fridge?” Nyx asked.

“I think so,” Khos said. He shuffled
his feet.

Nyx had sent him and Anneke out to
the Cage to butter up Shajin. Shajin had all the records of which mercenaries
were given the queen’s note. There was more than one way to dig a hole.

When Nyx got back from Mushtallah,
Khos had handed her a list and told her what they’d found out about all twelve
people on it. None of the information was worth much, but from the look of the
packages Anneke had hauled in from the bakkie, the bad news hadn’t stopped them
from picking up enough weapons from a local dealer to fight a small war. Anneke
had a habit of overspending on gear.

“You think so, or you know so?” Nyx
stood in her office packing fist-sized bursts into airtight containers. She had
just enough time to repack her gear and head out to Kine’s.

“I think I know,” Khos said. “The
one I wanted was a Chenjan doing black work. I thought this was him. It’s not.
This is a mercenary. He’s got a similar birthmark. I had Juon look up his
vitals in the directory of resident Chenjans. The one I wanted was worth about
seventy. The one in the fridge is just some petty mercenary.”

“The price for black work has gone
up,” Nyx said, and snorted. “Where did you find him?”

“At a bar in the Chenjan district.
Working on some kind of deal. I took him when he came out the back.”

“He have anything on him?”

“I didn’t have time to check. I was
being followed. That’s why I dumped the head and stowed him in the trunk.”

She hadn’t checked the body either,
when they dumped it at the keg before driving out to the botched bounty job.
“Let’s look, then.”

There was a trapdoor in the hub—the
gear and com room—in the back that led down to the freezer in the basement.
They passed Taite, who was still working at hacking into Raine’s com. Sweat
beaded his brow. He was looking a bit shaky, and Nyx figured she’d tell Khos to
get the kid some food. When he didn’t eat on time, he passed out, and the last
thing she needed right now was a comatose com tech.

She and Khos went down into the
basement, and Nyx unlocked the fridge. The body was pushed up against the wall,
alongside the head of a local magistrate whose sister had never paid them for
the bounty she’d put on her. That particular bounty hadn’t exactly been legal.
Nyx wasn’t so surprised the sister hadn’t come to collect.

Nyx crouched by the body and pulled
open the burnous. She checked the obvious pockets and seams first, finding
three in notes and another buck in change. She opened up a bug box and found a
lethargic locust. She handed that to Khos.

“Make sure Rhys gets that,” she
said.

Then she checked the waistband,
found some garroting wire and some black papers. Looked like at least one of
the contracts the mercenary was pursuing was a contract that ran boys out of
Nasheen, probably to Tirhan or Heidia. Ras Tieg was under contract to send back
draft dodgers. Nasheen’s other neighbors weren’t.

Hell of a thing to die for.

She handed the papers to Khos.

“You think he was part of the
underground?” Khos asked, and Nyx heard something odd in his voice, something
nervous. She wondered how many of his whores knew something about the
underground. Most of the women who permitted themselves illegal pregnancies
were whores. Pay a hard-up hedge witch and you could get your viability hex
turned back on—everybody had it shut off at the breeding compounds when they
were kids. It came with the inoculations.

“Looks like it,” she said.

Nyx tugged out a purse from the
front of the man’s dhoti and opened it. Another ten in notes and loose change.
They might be able to afford to feed Taite’s sister this month after all.

Inside was another bug box. Nyx
shook this one before she opened it, and heard a satisfying sloshing sound. He
had a recording.

“Tell Rhys to warm that up and
translate it.”

She wiped over the obvious places on
the body where he might have kept organics, hidden documents, or internal
transmission bulbs, but came up with nothing.

“Burn his clothes, cut him up, and
feed him to the bugs,” Nyx said. They had a composting bin on the other side of
the basement. “The last thing we need is a dead mercenary in our fridge.”

Khos went out to get the butchering
equipment.

Nyx climbed upstairs.

Taite was still in the hub working
at the com. His dark hair was held clipped back with converted bug clips—the
jawed ends from a couple of mud beetles. A stack of books sat at his elbow,
half of them written in Ras Tiegan, and he kept an idol of one of the Ras
Tiegan demigods—he called them saints—named Balarus or Baldomus or something
unpronounceably Ras Tiegan like that. Old Baldo was the demigod of locksmiths,
apparently.

“You hack Raine’s system yet?” she
asked.

“I need another half day,” Taite
said. He looked up from his work. “Are you voting this week?”

“What?” she said, letting the door
drop. She wiped her hands on her trousers.

“The vote. Queen Zaynab’s asking for
a public vote about whether or not to draft half-breeds. She’s bypassing the
low council and going directly to the people. You remember?”

“Queen does what she wants no matter
what we vote. This isn’t a democracy.”

Nyx walked toward her office. Taite
followed her.

“It matters,” he said. “If she
thinks there’s overwhelming disagreement with the policy, she’ll back down.
Things are hot right now between her, the bel dames, and the high council. The
vote might actually sway her this time. Only you and Anneke are eligible, so I
thought—”

“Why not have your boyfriend get his
sister to do it?” Technically, Taite’s boy-boy love affairs were illegal, but
Nyx had seen enough boyish affection at the front that she didn’t have much of
a problem with it.

Taite flushed. “She already is. But
I need—”

“Taite,” Nyx said, getting back to
her desk. She tried to find something to do with her hands. “You get drafted
and die and your sister gets a pension. What’s the difference if you die on the
road with me or at the front?”

“My sister can barely make it on the
eight I give her every month. And the baby’s not here yet. You know how much a
pension is?”

Him and his fucking pregnant sister.
What was that fool woman doing, getting pregnant outside a breeding compound?
And what fool man had she been cavorting with? Ras Tiegans had absolutely no
control over the fecundity of their citizens. Nobody—male or female—ever got
bugged or permanently severed, and just like the Mhorians, none of them was
legally compelled to give birth at a compound that would properly inoculate
their children. It was like some kind of human dice game.

They’re fucking refugees, she
reminded herself, but some of that old anger stirred, her school-taught
aversion for wasted reproduction. There were a lot better things Taite’s sister
could be doing with her womb. Single births thrown away on a kid who likely
wouldn’t live past five were a waste. Hell, Nyx could justify selling her own
womb to gene pirates who’d take the zygotes out and build better zygotes for
some compound somewhere, but spread her legs with the intent of getting
pregnant? What the hell for?

“Didn’t it go up to seven?” Nyx
said. She honestly had no idea what pensions were running these days.

“Four. Four a month for a half-breed
woman and her illegal kid. Come on, Nyx. It’s two minutes of your day.”

“Anneke will vote. Tell her you’ll
buy her a big gun.”

“Think about how much of your team
you’d lose. You work with more men than any other hunter.”

She packed the last of the bursts,
and tied her bag closed. “I’ve gotta go,” she said.

“If they draft half-breed men today,
they’ll take resident foreigners next,” Taite said, and his tone got wheedling.
She hated it when he did that. “They’ll take Rhys.”

“I’ll be in Jameela for a few days,”
she said. “Transit’s about a week turnaround. Rhys is in charge of the keg, but
you’ll need to back him up if there’s security trouble. Khos has a transmission
for Rhys to sort out. You’ll need to help him. And finish hacking into Raine’s
com.”

“You driving all the way to the
coast?”

“Yeah. You’ll need to take a local
caravan if you have to get out.” She dug into her pocket and pulled out three
of the notes she’d pawned off the body. “You get that to your sister. Tell her
if we make a bag on this note I’ll get her kid inoculated.” Nasheen didn’t
inoculate foreign kids for free.

“You’ll vote?”

“Don’t push me.”

Nyx went out into the keg. Rhys was
sitting at the front desk doing paperwork, bleeding bugs onto greasy pages.

“You have the keg,” she said. “I’ll
be back in about a week.”

He glanced up. Looked at her with
his dark eyes. She remembered listening to him pray, back at the palace. Had
she ever heard him give a salaat that included personal prayers? They’d worked
together for six years, and for six years she’d managed to be in some other
room or smoking out on the street or patching together a bakkie every time he
prayed. What did he pray for, all those times she wasn’t listening?

“Nyx?” he said.

God, she wouldn’t mind standing
there a while longer while he looked.

She hated that.

Nyx dropped her bag, and splashed
her face with water from the ablution bowl near the door.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Never better.”

Her whole body ached. She hadn’t
slept well on the train, and she’d had dreams about that old boxing match in
Faleen—Jaks the outrider and stocky-legged Husayn bashing each other’s head in,
blood soaking into the organic matting of the ring, the whole first row of
spectators covered in blood and saliva, their faces animated, jubilant. She had
dreamed of her womb, a perfect heart, cut up on a butcher’s block somewhere
between Punjai and Faleen.

“Make a couple of calls to some
people you know in the Chenjan districts. Just make sure Nikodem’s not there.”