God's War (36 page)

And Khos would be the one left with
Inaya.

“So lay this out for me again,” Nyx
said to Anneke.

“Low security up front,” Anneke
said, pointing to the hand-drawn blueprints on the table. She’d been running
recon since Khos and Rhys came back from the waterworks. “The back has an
emergency exit. The alarm’s working, so we can get out, but our getaway needs
to be right outside the door, ’cause if security don’t know we’re there by
then, they’ll know once that alarm goes. Nikodem has magicians with her. All
the time. Mid week, all but one of her magicians goes out to socialize at the
local boxing gym. That’s the best time to move.”

“When does she go out with the
magicians?” Khos asked. “Just during fights, like when we saw her?” Nikodem
would get them Taite. He needed to keep his mind on the fucking note.

“So far as I can tell,” Anneke said.
“It’s not like I’ve had a lot of time for recon, and you’ve been… occupied.”

“So once we get past the security at
the desk, we need to separate Nikodem from her magician,” Nyx said.

Khos ignored Anneke. “That’s a tall
order,” he said. “We don’t have a magician.”

“No, but Anneke and I have firepower
and some bug repellent. It could give us the time we need.”

“How do you want to get in the
back?” Anneke asked.

“We’ll go in the front.”

Khos shook his head. “How we going
to get past security?”

“Trust me,” Nyx said.

Khos sighed. Trusting Nyx never
turned out well.

From the other side of the door,
Inaya’s son began to cry.

Evening prayer came and went, and
Nyx found herself standing at the window of the main room, looking out over
Dadfar through the lattice. Looking for Rhys.

Inaya crawled out of her room for
the first time all day and sat with Anneke and the kid. She looked skinnier—and
paler, if that was possible. Anneke fixed her some condensed milk and force-fed
her a roti.

Khos walked up next to Nyx. “See
him?”

“He’s tougher to see in the dark,”
Nyx said, and smirked, but something clawed at her belly. Rhys was late. Very
late. How long until Raine started to send him back in pieces too? She’d been a
fool to send that stupid magician out on his own. A bloody fucking fool.

“He’ll be all right,” Khos said.
“He’s a magician.”

Khos towered over her. Even in the
warm room, she could feel the heat of him next to her.

“We both know what kind of magician
he is,” Nyx said. They stood a long moment in silence. Then, “You know I intend
to bring Taite back.”

“Sometimes I don’t know you, Nyx,”
he said softly.

She looked up at him. The light in
the room was low. Anneke kept a couple of glow worms in a glass. Lanterns used
fuel, and gas was expensive. In the dim light, Khos’s expression was difficult
to read, but Nyx always thought he looked sad. She had signed this big sad man
because she had sensed something in him that she’d never had—a protective
loyalty toward her and the team that transcended petty disagreements about sex,
blood, and religion. When she looked at him now, she wondered what would happen
when those loyalties conflicted. Would he choose to side with her or with
Taite? Taite or the whores? And where did Inaya fit into this? She had seen him
stare long at her door and go rigid when her baby cried.

“Nobody knows anybody,” she said.
“We’re all working on blind faith.”

She watched a hooded figure come
down the street and strained to see, but the figure passed by their building.

“You’re saying your secret to
getting up and going forward is blind faith?” he said, and she heard the
amusement in his voice.

“No,” Nyx said. “Lately, it’s been
whiskey.” She peered down at the street again.

“I’ve been thinking about how to get
past the desk,” Khos said. “I think I know some people who will help us.”

“Khos, the only people you know in
Chenja are whores.”

“Exactly,” he said.

“We’ll have a problem with com, not
having Rhys and Taite.”

“So we’ll put together something
else.”

“Is there something wrong with your
communications?” Inaya said from behind them.

Nyx and Khos both turned. Anneke was
lying in a pile of blankets on the floor, working with her guns. Inaya stood at
the end of the divan, her son in her arms.

“We usually use Rhys. Taite receives
his transmission through the com,” Nyx said.

Inaya hadn’t washed her face in a
while, and her hair was greasy. She looked like some street beggar. “You don’t
have regular transceivers?”

Nyx shrugged. “Anneke, Taite give
you any manual transceivers?”

“I have a box of com gear,” Anneke
said, “but transceivers take a long time to synch up. Don’t have the time or
the money to take them in and have somebody do it.”

“I can do it,” Inaya said.

Nyx smirked. “
You
can do it?” She looked her up and down, pointedly.

Inaya narrowed her eyes. “Where do
you think Taitie learned to repair a console? Did you think that fat man
employed him for his looks?”

“You’re kidding me,” Nyx said.

Inaya said to Anneke, “Show me the
box.” She glanced back at Nyx. “I assume Taitie didn’t tell you why we had to
leave Ras Tieg.”

“I don’t pry into the affairs of my
team,” Nyx said.

Anneke walked over to their pile of
gear and started moving boxes and duffel bags around.

“Our parents handled communications
for the Ras Tiegan underground, rebels against Ras Tieg’s tyrant, the uncle to
your foolish Queen,” Inaya said. “They were also shifter-sympathizers. My
mother was a shifter, and my parents’ politics were… frowned upon. When they
killed my mother, my father took her place and trained Tiate and I. When things
got bad politically, when the streets…” She choked up, and Nyx thought she was
going to cry again, but, remarkably, she swallowed it. “I could marry. Taitie
was too young.”

“So when things got hot, you
smuggled him out of the country.”

“He did the same for me, later.”

“You don’t act like a rebel.”

“We rebel in our own ways.”

“Here,” Anneke said. She dragged a
box toward Inaya. “Should be a couple transceivers in here. Some might be
broken.”

“All right, then,” Nyx said. “If you
can give us com, then maybe we’re ready to run. Anneke, I want you to get me a
couple of empty cake boxes from that friend of yours who owns the teahouse.”

“Cake boxes?”

“Khos,” Nyx continued, “I want to
talk to some of your whores tomorrow, early. I’ll need a half hour of their
time and yours.”

“I’ll go down and tell them,” Khos
said. “Where do we want to meet them?”

“That diner in the Mhorian district,
just before dawn prayer.”

Khos put on his burnous and headed
out. “It’s about fucking time,” he muttered.

“Anneke?” Nyx said.

Anneke straightened. “Eh, I’ll go
get her up. The teahouse is still open.” She concealed her shotgun beneath her
burnous and followed Khos.

“Hey, you fucker!” Anneke called
after him. “Give me a ride!”

Nyx turned and watched Inaya open
the box and pick through its contents. She kept the kid in a sling so he had
easy access to her breast. Unlike a Nasheenian woman, she didn’t keep the
breast bared. Instead, she kept an old tunic slung over one shoulder so it
covered the kid’s head and her breast. An odd affectation, as it wasn’t as if
Anneke, Nyx, and Khos hadn’t seen breasts before.

Nyx sat on the divan and watched as
Inaya set out the transceivers. She opened the little tool kit with her small
deft fingers. She shook a couple of the transceivers and frowned.

“This equipment is in terrible
shape,” she said.

“So Taite always told me,” Nyx said.

Inaya did not look at her but pulled
out one of the com picks and began prying open one of the transceiver cases.
“You’re doing this to bring him back?”

“That’s the idea,” Nyx said.

Inaya worked in silence for a time.
Nyx pulled out the diagram of the residence.

“So why wouldn’t Taite tell me you
were rebels in Ras Tieg?” Nyx asked.

“You used to cut off the heads off
Nasheenian rebels. Why would it be different with us?” A low buzzing sound came
from the transceivers. Inaya poked at its innards.

“Seems like you hate me a lot for
somebody who doesn’t know me.”

“I know all about you. You’re an
ungodly, sex-crazed woman.”

“I’m a… what?”

“I’ve read all about women like you,
the sort who use everyone around them for pleasure. You’re worse than the sort
who cavorts only with women. At least they’re honest. Ungodly, but honest.”

“I’d say I was doing a great job
submitting to God by submitting to my desires. Who do you think gave me desire
in the first place?”

“God does not want us to kill, yet
we are able to kill. If you were truly following God’s desire, you would
repress your own desires and marry. Marry a man.”

Nyx settled back on the divan. “Tell
me your marriage was happy.”

Inaya’s cheeks flushed faintly. Ah,
yes, that color. Nyx covered her mouth. She’s fixing your transceivers, Nyx
thought, be nice.

“Is that why it takes a near-death
experience to get you to shift?” Nyx said. “You like it too much?”

Now Inaya’s face went bright red.
“Do not judge me. You know nothing about me.”

“If God wanted you or me different,
He’d have made us that way. I’d think you’d be more unhappy with all the
killing I do than with all the men and women I fuck.”

“Sometimes killing is necessary.”

“Sure, of course. Bloody God and
all. You and Taite must get into some pretty good arguments.”

“Taite doesn’t kill people.”

Nyx said, “I mean about the sex.”

“Men have certain needs, needs that
are unnatural in women. Brothels are a sin, but I can understand his needs for
female companionship.”

Now Nyx laughed. It was a full-belly
laugh, and she laughed so hard it hurt. “
Female
companionship?” she gasped. “Oh, hell, you want a drink?”

“I don’t drink liquor.”

Nyx got up and poured herself the
last of the whiskey in the bottle. “Inaya, when we get Taite back, you and your
brother need to have a talk.”

When, she had said. Not if.

The lie tasted all right.

The next day, just before
mid-morning prayer, Nyx drove the bakkie to the east side on her own. Nikodem’s
residence was in a decent part of town, not one where a bakkie like hers
prowled the streets. A few blocks north, the blue and green tiles of the
business buildings at the city center reflected the new dawn as it bled to
violet.

Nyx parked a block from Nikodem’s
residence, partially hidden by a gaudy fountain splashing at the center of the
square. She had a clear view of the entrance and the sidewalk just north of it.
Nyx pulled out her transceiver and rubbed it absently.

No sign of Rhys.

She hadn’t touched any sen all
morning, so she was a little shaky, but having red teeth and numb fingers for
this job would be about as stupid as being drunk. She glanced at the cake boxes
on the seat next to her and rubbed the transceiver again.

The transceiver buzzed.

She shook it, put it to her ear.

“Yeah,” she said.

“I’m moving in, boss,” Anneke said.

“Good. You see Khos?”

“Not yet.”

“Khos?”

“We’re on our way,” he said over the
line.

“All right. Go in.”

Anneke severed the connection.

Nyx hated manual transceivers. They
were easier to eavesdrop on, easier to trace. If Raine or Rasheeda or Fatima
ran a transmission sweep, they were fucked.

She watched Anneke move in and gave
her ten minutes by the fountain clock. Then Nyx locked the bakkie and walked up
the street to the residence.

She nodded at the armed, veiled
woman playing door guard as if she’d known her all her life and stepped through
the sliding doors.

Anneke’s voice hit her as the doors
opened.

“I asked for a head-of-household
room three months ago. Is this how you treat your heads of household in this
residence? How do you lose a reservation—”

The bewildered desk clerk kept
opening her mouth and closing it again. She was little, young, veiled, and
neatly dressed. The murals on the wall were glass mosaics of dense jungle and
jeweled bugs. A chittering mass of soarer beetles sprayed a fine mist of water
from their cages along the edges of the room. The whole residence felt humid,
dense.

Nyx hurried up to the counter and
mustered up her best Chenjan. “Excuse me,” she said, nudging Anneke aside. “Has
a delivery arrived? My employer is having a party on the third floor. There
should be two pastry deliveries—”

“I’m sorry sir,” the clerk said.
“There have been no deliveries—”

“Your reservation policy clearly
states—” Anneke continued.

“I’m sorry, but without a
state-approved confirmation—”

“Pastries. The bakery on this
street. Are you sure?”

“There have been no deliveries, sir,
I—”

Nyx went back out into the street.
She sat in the bakkie and waited.

Five minutes, tops. Anneke was a
good catshitter, but not that good.

Nyx saw Khos and four women dressed
in the gaudy colors of whores, their hair uncovered, approaching the residence.
Khos stared down the door guard, and they walked inside.

Nyx pulled the two cake boxes out of
the back. They were filled with bags of sand. Sand was cheaper than cakes.

She walked back to the residence,
carrying the boxes. When she went through the sliding doors this time, she
heard a wave of angry voices.

The front desk clerk looked like a
cornered animal.

The whores yelled at Anneke. Khos
yelled at the clerk. Anneke’s color had deepened, and the veins in her neck
stood out. She was having far too much fun.