God's War Part 11

"That's fine," Nyx said.

"Nyx, I'm not-" Rhys began. He tripped over the names of G.o.d, lost count. Started over.

Nyx stepped up and took his elbow. The names of G.o.d fell away. She was about his height, but heavier, solid, and when she took his arm, the fear, too, bled away. Her touch filled him with an emotion so complex that he could not name it. The same woman who could cut the head off a man with a dagger in sixty seconds could ease his mind in the face of a thousand angry Nasheenian women. She could banish all thoughts of G.o.d, of submission. Some days she made him feel like an insect, a roach, the worst thing to crawl across the world. And then there were the times, like now, when she brought him a stillness he had known only with his forehead pressed to a prayer rug.

She said to him, "We'll be all right." To Kasbah and her women, "We'll be all right."

Kasbah led them to the examination room. Rhys's pulse quickened. He would have bolted if not for Nyx's hand on his arm.

"You'll be all right," she said. She would know the sorts of things Nasheenian women had done to him before. She had likely done work like that herself.

What had this exile made him? What was he becoming? He prayed; G.o.d, how he prayed. But he dreamed, often, in Nasheenian now, and the memories of his father's face had slipped away long ago. How could one forget his father's face? It was like forgetting the face of G.o.d.

The women stripped Nyx first, searched her, and when she was putting her clothes back on, told him to strip. And he obeyed them, as he had before, as he would again.

When he had been in Rioja, he found out what Nasheenians did to unescorted Chenjan men. He dreamed now, some nights, of Nasheenian women and boys, b.l.o.o.d.y mouths, screaming. His His blood. blood. His His screaming. screaming.

He turned his back to Nyx and stared at the wall. When they bent him over the table, he felt Nyx's hand on his back.

"You'll be all right," she said. "I'm here."

The ninety-nine names of G.o.d...

He gripped the table so hard his hands hurt.

When he was clothed again, Kasbah led them back to the courtyard. Nyx and Rhys stayed several feet behind her, walking gingerly. As they walked, their hands touched. Rhys knew he should be the one to step away an appropriate distance, to maintain a modic.u.m of modesty even after all that, but he didn't have the energy to break away from her. It was the history of their... partnership? Alliance? Contract? His inability to pull away was all that kept him next to her. But what kept her here? Her arrogance, her selfishness, her desperate need for a magician, even a poor one? She hated him as much as any other Nasheenian did, but she had hired him and kept him, long after his usefulness as a sly slap in the face to Yah Tayyib had expired.

She strode next to him with her usual confidence, a hard but neutral look on her face. She was impossible to read.

"This way," Kasbah said. She took them back to the courtyard and through one of the archways. The air beneath it shimmered as they pa.s.sed, although, unlike the other two filters they'd walked through, it was transparent when undisturbed. They moved into another courtyard teeming with succulents, shielded from the suns by an opaque filter. Rhys took a deep breath. The air was warm and humid. At the other end of the yard-along a path that curved through the broad-leafed plants and heavy flower heads lining the stone path-were two latticed doors.

Kasbah opened the doors onto a broad terrace, also shielded by an opaque filter. Inside, a short, squat woman sat at a table on the terrace.

Kasbah announced them.

"Nyxnissa so Dasheem, and her companion, Rhys Dashasa."

The woman on the terrace did not stand. She turned a soft, slightly sagging face to them, her mouth a thin line. She had the flat, broad nose of a Ras Tiegan and the strong jaw and deep brown complexion of a Nasheenian. As she watched them, she turned up the corners of her mouth. "Rhys Dashasa isn't a Chenjan name," she said. The voice made her sound older than the look of her face.

"It's not supposed to be," Rhys said.

Everyone on Nyx's team had their secrets. Nyx said nothing of her time at the front, though Rhys had seen a public copy of her military records, which indicated she had been reconst.i.tuted and honorably discharged. Her honor was not one she spoke of. Taite had never told any of them why he'd run from Ras Tieg, and when his sister mysteriously arrived in Nasheen eight months ago, pregnant, he simply said that he was her only means of survival and refused to elaborate. Khos's time at the brothels was too extensive for traditional reasons, even if Mhorians were as s.e.x-crazed as they were purported to be. Anneke had blown up more things than even she would admit to, and Rhys suspected she'd spent a lot of time in prison. She had no public record at all. He knew. He had checked.

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

It was another reason he stayed.

9.

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 f.u.c.king 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 G.o.d 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 she had forgotten the Ras Tiegan servant's name. 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 reconst.i.tution." 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s, 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 f.u.c.ked 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. n.o.body 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 c.o.c.ked her head at him. She raised a fleshy hand, and Kasbah called in a retainer. They gave him a plain gla.s.s 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 a.s.signed. 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 t.i.tle negotiable?

Duty. Honor. Sacrifice. My life for a thousand 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 reconst.i.tuted, 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 reconst.i.tuted.

"Let's go ahead and talk money," Nyx said.