God's War (31 page)

“Are any of these whores
Nasheenian?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Nyx,
but you couldn’t pass for a Chenjan whore. Trust me.”

“Not me. You should take Anneke.”

“Anneke couldn’t play a whore to
save her life. In Chenja, she couldn’t even pass for a woman if she tried. Rhys
and I will go.” He hesitated, added, “As
men
.”

“All right. Where’s Rhys?”

“He’s all right.”

“Good.” She was fading. They’d
pumped her with some local drug Rhys had, but she didn’t talk or act like a
woman who wasn’t in pain. She’d rebound, though, he knew. She’d rebound and
forget the whole mess, go back to swaggering around. For one sharp moment, he
realized he liked her this way, mostly helpless and incredibly vulnerable. But
knowing that he was that type of man, that he liked her this way, frightened
him. He looked away from her.

“You call a magician?” she asked,
moving her maimed hand a bit. “I mean, a real one.”

“They’re hard to come by, and
expensive.” Khos paused again. Repairing Nyx’s hand was delicate work, and they
needed someone far more skilled than a hedge witch. “We don’t have the cash.”

“Who said that?”

“Rhys.”

“Can’t I sell something? A kidney?
My liver?”

“I think you’ll need your liver.”

“Maybe a lung. I don’t have to run
fast.”

“I’m not bringing a butcher in here,
and a butcher is all we could afford.”

“You could just find my fingers and
stick them back on.”

“You need some sleep, I think.”

Nyx tossed her head. “That little
dancer will kill me yet.”

“I’ll have one of the women bring
you something to help you sleep,” Khos said, and stood.

“At least it was my right hand,” Nyx
said. Her eyelids began to close. “Rasheeda never could remember I’m a
southpaw.”

Khos stood over her, and watched her
mouth go slack, watched her drift. Half dead and mutilated, and she was already
thinking about her next fight.

Rhys waited for Khos outside Nyx’s
room, pacing the hallway. Rhys had done everything he could, called up every
bug he had the capacity to control, and it hadn’t been enough. Every time he
ran his hands over her, the severity of her injuries made him tremble. For all
his talk of her godlessness, of God abandoning her, he had never expected this.

I
never wanted this.

“How is she?” Rhys asked as Khos
came out into the hall. Khos shut the door behind him and gestured for Rhys to
follow him back into their shared room.

Inside, Khos said, “She’s ready and
willing to sell off her body parts for bread, so about as expected.” He sat on
the bed and stretched out his long legs. “She’s the most stubborn bitch I know.
She’ll be all right. Not for a while, but she’ll be all right.”

“Did you tell her we haven’t been
able to get a hold of Taite?”

“No, and she didn’t ask about him,
praise be. Still nothing?”

“Nothing.” Rhys pulled on his
burnous. It was almost dawn. None of them had slept, but he wanted to stop at
the local mosque and pray before going to clean out the rest of their things
from the garret. Khos had warned him that the bel dames had likely blown the
place wide open by now, but Rhys needed to check. He had left the stash of
Kine’s papers back at the garret, and he didn’t want the bel dames to find
them. If they hadn’t already.

Khos stood as well. “I’ll drive
you,” he said.

They’d spent a couple of hours
repainting the bakkie with some borrowed paint from the brothel mistress and
replacing the tags. Rhys had balked at Khos’s choice of safe house. Nasheenian
brothels might have been places of political protest and intrigue, but in
Chenja they were just brothels. They sold sex and liquor and little else. The
whole house smelled of cheap jasmine perfume, liberally applied; it muted but
did not cover up the smells of sex and bile and sticky opium.

But they were out of places to go on
such short notice. Rhys had no contacts here, and Anneke said her friend’s
teahouse was too conspicuous.

So it was sex and jasmine.

“Are we going to scout out other
rooms?” Rhys asked.

“Once Nyx is up for it,” Khos said.
“She’ll want a say. She gets jumpy when she’s not in a place she chooses.”

They walked down and got into the
bakkie. Khos dropped Rhys at the mosque and pulled out a cigar.

It was the best part of being in
Chenja, perhaps the only part that made any of it worth it: There was a mosque
at every corner, a call to prayer in every city.

Rhys joined the crowd of others
moving into the mosque for prayer. The wave of women was far greater than that
of men, a billowing tide of veils and burquas. He joined the trickle of old
men, young boys, and the handful of household heads, and performed the ablution
with them in the courtyard. He knelt with the other men in a neat row and
praised God with them in one voice.

Rhys found a moment of peace in the
madness, and he clung to it.

After, Rhys joined Khos in the
bakkie. They circled the garret twice to look for movement or some kind of
disturbance or for bel dames posting watch along the street. Rhys sent out a
swarm of locusts to scout the area. They found nothing in the garret. No bel
dames, no mercenaries. Nothing. He tried calling up some wasps to sniff out
traps, but there were no local hives except for the one Rhys had set to watch
Kine’s papers. He’d have to risk it.

“You want to come up and help me
detect explosives?” he asked as Khos parked the bakkie four blocks from the
building.

Khos grunted. “How’d I be good at
that?”

“All right.” It was worth asking.

Rhys kept his hood up and walked to
the door. The building manager had already replaced the lock that Rhys and Khos
had broken while trying to get back in for their gear after Nyx was taken.

Rhys pulled out one of his bug boxes
and used a squirt beetle to spray the lock. The metal began to dissolve. Rhys
pounded the lock free with his burnous-wrapped hand.

He stepped inside.

There was a dirty, pregnant white
woman huddled on the stairs. Either she belonged to one of the other tenements
or she had snuck in before the lock on the door was replaced. She wore a dirty
hijab. He wondered what she was doing out of the foreigners’ ghetto.

Rhys headed up the stairs and made
to squeeze past her.

She lifted her head. “Rhys?” she
said, and tugged at his trousers.

Rhys’s heart leapt. He reached for
his pistols.

“I’m Taite’s sister,” she said
frantically. “You remember me? Rhys?”

Her hair was a mess, partially hidden
under the dirty hijab. The last time he’d seen Taite’s sister, she wasn’t yet
showing her pregnancy. She had been beautiful and haunted. He didn’t remember
her being so pale.

“Inaya?” he said. “How did you get
over the border?” A half-breed woman passing from Nasheen to Chenja? Across the
border?

“I can’t… I’m not….” She let out her
breath.

“What’s happened to Taite?”

“Raine came for him,” Inaya said.
“Taite told me you were here. I worked the way out.”

“Worked out? How did you run the
border?”

“I just… did.”

“Did anyone follow you?”

“Not this time.”

“Not
this
time?”

“They couldn’t this time. But Raine
followed me to Taite, back in Nasheen.” Her eyes began to fill with water. She
looked like she’d been crying a good long while.

“Has anyone else gone up past you?
How long have you been here?”

“Before dawn. I haven’t seen anyone
but the man who came to fix the door.”

“Good.” A Chenjan man with a
woman—who was to all eyes foreign—would get him noticed. “Stay here,” he said.

“Don’t leave me, please!” She grabbed
his burnous.

He took her hands, leaned toward
her. As he touched her, he felt a curious lack, something he could not name.
She had the feeling of a woman free from disease or contagion or petty hurt.
Completely free. It was a slick, oily feeling.

He released her hands. “It’s all
right. I’m getting Khos. We’re just around the corner. Stay here. I’ll come
back. I promise.”

She choked back more tears.

Rhys hurried outside. He found Khos
and leaned into the bakkie window. “Taite’s sister is here.”

Khos choked on cigar smoke. He put
the cigar out on the dash. “Inaya is here?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, fuck.” He started to get out of
the bakkie.

“Don’t,” Rhys said. “The three of us
walking around together—”

“Her and I together is all right,”
Khos said. He’d already gotten out. “I can take her. Is she veiled?”

“She has a hijab.”

“Good enough.”

“Khos, she
hates
shape shifters.”

“Yeah,” Khos said, and started tying
back his dreads. “Did you ever wonder why?”

“I don’t—”

“How do you think a pregnant
half-breed crossed the border?”

“Oh,” Rhys said, and then, “
Oh
. But that’s impossible.” He remembered taking her
hands. He remembered when he first saw her. “I can sense a shifter at three
paces. I would have known when I met her.”

Khos shrugged. “You’ve always been a
shitty magician.”

“Not when it comes to perception.”

“What happened to her? She’s
probably being tailed.”

“Raine got Taite.”

“Shit.”

“Yes.”

“All right. I’ll take her to a diner
in the Mhorian district. You finish up what you need to do here and go tell Nyx
what’s happening.”

“Where will you be?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll make my
own way back to the brothel once she’s secure.”

Rhys left a locust guard on the
bakkie, and they both went to the building.

Inaya stood when they entered. When
she saw Khos, Rhys saw something in her face harden.

“Khos will take you to a safe place,
then we’ll get you back to Nyx. We need to clear things with her,” Rhys said.

Inaya continued to stare at Khos,
her expression grim.

Khos held out his hand.

She turned her head away.

“Taite’s probably dead,” Khos said.
“You come with me and maybe you live. You stay here and you get cut up by bel
dames. You choose.”

Khos walked back to the door and
opened it for her.

Rhys waited a tense moment. He saw a
complicated play of emotions on Inaya’s face. Then she was moving to the door,
awkward with her large belly.

Khos followed her out.

Rhys went upstairs and began the
painstaking circle of their garret. It took him another half-hour, looking for
traps, to convince himself that they hadn’t been here. He pulled Kine’s papers
out of a hole in the floor that he’d covered over with a board and some more
debris. He waved away the wasp guard. At least
that
had
worked this time.

Rhys bundled everything into his
pack and headed out. He drove the bakkie to the brothel and then went up to
talk to Nyx.

Anneke said she was still sleeping.

“I need to get her up,” Rhys said.
He made to move to the door, but Anneke stepped in front of him. She barely
came to his shoulder, but she had firmed up her jaw. Anneke’s stubborn look.

“Let her be,” Anneke said. “Unless
the fucking world is burning.”

“Taite’s sister is here in Chenja.
Raine has Taite.”

“Raine?” Anneke said.

He heard Nyx’s voice from inside,
yelling for water and a pot to piss in.

Anneke opened the door, and Rhys
managed to push past her.

Nyx didn’t look much better. One eye
was still swollen shut, and her head looked too big. She had herself propped up
on one elbow.

“What the hell is this? You all want
to watch me piss?”

“Raine has Taite,” Rhys said, “and
Taite’s sister is here. She needs sanctuary.”

“Can I take a piss first?”

Anneke brought in the pot, and
helped Nyx squat over it. Rhys politely turned away.

“Khos is having her wait in a
diner,” Rhys said, “but we should bring her here.”

Rhys waited until Nyx was done, then
turned back. Anneke handed him the pot.

“Go dump this,” she said.

Rhys wrinkled his nose and took it
out, dumping it in the street. Half a dozen blue beetles lit out from the
gutters and began to feed. When he returned, Nyx had been moved to the couch in
the main room.

“Don’t bring Inaya here,” Nyx said.

“We can’t—”

“Scout out another safe house. If
you’re still certain she’s not being tagged, bring her there. We’ll follow. We
can’t stay in a brothel forever. Underground or not, there are too many people
who know we’re here. I don’t trust wagging Chenjan tongues.”

“And what are we going to do about
Taite?” Rhys asked.

“You let me deal with that,” Nyx
said.

Rhys didn’t like her tone. “How are
you going to deal with that?” he persisted.

“You let me worry about it.”

“We could find a safe house closer
to the waterworks,” Anneke said. She had picked up one of her guns and begun
taking it apart. “That’s where the fights are.”

“Have you been down there yet?” Nyx
asked.

“Not yet,” Rhys said.

“When we’re packed, I want you and
Khos to head down there and report back tomorrow. All right?”

Rhys nodded.

Someone knocked at the door. Anneke
picked up a rifle from under the divan and answered. The brothel mistress held
a small package in her hands. “This came for you.”

“You checked it for organics?” Rhys
asked as he passed his hand over it.

“Of course,” she said. “It came back
organic, just not the sort you mean.”

Anneke took the package and opened
it up. She unwrapped a layer of stained gauze. Her expression was dark. She
handed the package to Nyx.

Rhys leaned in to get a better look.