Infidel (2 page)

“Where are you?” Suha’s voice had the tinny whine of the red beetle in the casing. “Eshe lost you back on south Mufuz.”

Mufuz, near the cantina. Nyx remembered the stir of women hanging around outside, the smell of saffron and oranges. Saffron put shifter-dogs and foxes off the scent, and the smell of oranges confused the parrot and raven shifters—magicians, too. She should have noticed that. She was getting too tired and dizzy to think straight. Muddied heads in her business got chopped off.
 

Nyx chanced a look behind them, just over her right shoulder. Her head felt light again, as if attached to a string.
 

Hold it together, she thought. You don’t make forty notes a day if your charge ends up dead. She tightened her grip on the kid.
 

“Nyxnissa—” the kid began, her voice low and cautious.
 

Nyx heard angry voices behind them, and moved.
 

She drew her scattergun as she turned. A hooded woman with a leashed cat in hand cried out and ducked. Several more women scurried out of the line of fire, leaving the woman with the shoe bag in the open. The woman crouched low and reached into the bag.
 

Nyx put herself between the woman and the kid and fired.
 

The woman on the ground pulled and rolled. Nyx ducked away and pushed the kid ahead of her, behind another rickshaw. She heard the shot. The back end of the rickshaw exploded.
 

“Move, move!” Nyx said, choking on yellow smoke. Pain blistered across her skin. She half-feared she was on fire, but the smoke in her nostrils didn’t stink like scorched hair or flesh. She’d been set on fire enough times to know what it smelled like.
 

Nyx kept shoving the kid through the crowd. People were panicking now, screaming about terrorists and timed bursts as they flooded up the street. Nyx pushed the kid into the melee and tore off her burnous, leaving it to be trampled by the mob. The kid had dropped her bags.
 

Nyx needed to split from the kid, but Suha was holed up back at their storefront half a kilometer away, and there was no sign of Eshe. She didn’t have anyone to pass the kid to.
 

Not for the first time, Nyx resented not having a bigger team.
 

Nyx put an arm around the kid’s waist and hauled her back onto the sidewalk and into the doorway of a Heidian deli that stank of peppercorns and overcooked cabbage. Nyx went right on past the counter and through the kitchen, eliciting startled cries from squat, tawny Heidian immigrants. A big matron held up a bigger knife and swore at her in Heidian.
 

Nyx pressed right past her and kicked through the back door and into the reeking alley. She heard the breathy flapping of wings, and turned in time to see a black raven descend from the rooftop. Her vision swam. Her heart pounded in her chest as if she’d run five or ten kilometers. She gulped air. The kid wasn’t even out of breath. Some vague part of her registered that something was wrong.
 

The raven alighted on a dumpster and shivered once, shook out a hail of feathers, and started to morph. Dusty feathers rolled down the alley.

Watching the tumbling feathers made Nyx’s stomach roil.
 

She kept hold of the kid, who was saying something Nyx figured should make sense. Some other sound droned in Nyx’s ears.
 

The raven shook off the rest of the feathers and flapped wings that were now mostly arms. It jumped off the dumpster lid and landed on two human feet while it took on the body of a teenage boy. The ends of his fingers still looked too long and bony. He was covered in a thin film of mucus.
 

Eshe was still getting used to morphing quickly, but he wouldn’t be good at it for another couple years, about the time he got drafted for the front.

Whether or not the army made better use of raven scouts than Nyx did was debatable.

Nyx let go of Mercia’s arm and pushed her toward Eshe. He wiped off the last of the mucus and feathers as his fingers finished taking on human proportions.

“Take her to the safe house,” Nyx said. “Stay away from our regular front until I figure out who these women are.”

“But you—” Eshe started, his eyes still black as a raven’s, head cocked. Sometimes watching him shift put her off dinner.
 

“I’m going back and finding those—” Nyx was unsteady on her feet. She pressed a hand against the back wall of the deli to catch her balance. She closed her eyes, shook her head.
 

“Nyx, are you—” Eshe began again.
 

She opened her eyes and waved him away. “Get her out.”
 

Eshe glanced at the girl. “You up for running?” he asked.
 

Mercia nodded.
 

Eshe started off down the alley, naked, and turned sharply left down another. Mercia took off after him—surprisingly fast for a soft diplomat’s kid.
 

Nyx heard the door behind her bang open. She turned and fired her scattergun.
 

The woman at the door had pulled it half-closed, fast enough to catch most of the gun’s spray on the door instead of her belly. She was young, slight, and fast. Her burnous was dusty, and she wore a dark tunic. Nyx wasn’t sure how much damage the scattergun had done.
 

The woman launched herself at her. Nyx fired again and drew her sword. The woman fell into a roll and came up with a knife.

Screams sounded from inside the deli.
 

Nyx caught the first thrust of the knife with the gun, pushed it back. She thrust at the woman with her sword. The woman leapt back.
 

Bloody fucking fast for a mercenary, Nyx thought. Her head swam.
 

The knife lashed out at her again. Caught Nyx on the cheek. Nyx flinched, retreated. The woman grinned.
 

Cocky, Nyx thought.
 

Nyx let the woman push her back to the end of the alley. She parried most of the knife thrusts, but caught a couple on her forearms. There was nothing worse than a knife fight. Fuck around too long and you’d be in ribbons.
 

Nyx was within an arm’s length of the wall. The knife flicked at her again. The woman’s eyes were shiny—she must be new to the game—and sweat beaded her upper lip. Nyx caught the knife with her blade and pushed—hard. In the same motion, she threw her left hand out—the hand holding the gun—in a hard left hook.
 

The gun connected with the woman’s temple. Her head lolled to one side. She stumbled. Her hands sagged. Then she crumpled like a drunken kitten.
 

Nyx raised her head and looked back toward the deli. There had been two of them. Where was the other one?

She slipped just into the next alley and kept her sword out. Sweat trickled into her eyes. She wiped it away, blinked furiously. She heard a noise in the alley, and chanced a look.
 

The second woman was up on the roof, taking in the full measure of the alley. She had a scattergun drawn. Nyx made herself flat against the wall, waited.
 

Nyx was a terrible shot from any range.
 

“Suha,” she said softly. The name triggered the tailored red beetle in her ear. It opened the connection.
 

“What you got?”

“Two women. Possible assassins. Bagged one in the alley. I got another one on the roof of the deli behind me. You got my position?”

“Yeah.”
 

“You still on point?”

“I’m moving to intercept. Eshe says you’re in shit shape.”

“I’m fine. But I’ve got a second shooter. I need you to intercept.”
 

“On it. Got a description?”
 

Nyx gave her a description of the second shooter. When she looked back, the woman was no longer on the rooftop. “Lost visual on the roof of the deli,” Nyx said. “Check the street outside.”
 

“I’m six blocks away.”

“Watch your ass. They’re good. Young, but good.”
 

“So am I,” Suha said.
 

Nyx ducked back into the alley behind the deli and sheathed her sword. She crouched next to the woman and patted her down. The clothes were worn, dirty, but good quality. The burnous was organic, which wasn’t cheap. She found two more knives and about five bucks in loose change—not an insubstantial amount of cash.
 

“Who the fuck are you?” Nyx muttered. A wave of dizziness passed over her again. She breathed deeply through her nose.
 

The woman began to stir. Nyx pulled out some sticky bands from the pack at her hip and bound the woman’s hands behind her. As she pulled up the burnous, she saw a flash of red. She paused. Stared. A red letter was tucked into the back of the woman’s trousers.
 

Nyx went very still for the space of a breath.
 

Then she pulled out the red letter and yanked it open. It was a bel dame’s assassination note. The note wasn’t written up for Nyx or Mercia, but for some inland kid with a smoky face and big eyes. Only a bel dame would carry one of these notes. What the fuck was a bel dame doing hunting down the daughter to a diplomat without a red letter order to do it? Or was she running some kind of black work?
 

The woman was groaning now.
 

“Bel dame, huh?” Nyx said, and snorted. “Might be illegal to kill you… But a buck says you’re running a black note.”

Nyx shoved the note into her pocket. She stood and grabbed the bel dame by the hair.
 

“This’ll hurt,” Nyx said.
 

It took three whacks of Nyx’s sword to take off the bel dame’s head. Blood splattered her feet and swam in lazy rivulets down the alley. She tugged off the woman’s organic burnous and wrapped the head with it. The body shuddered.
 

Bloody fucking bel dames, Nyx thought, and stumbled out the alley and across the next street.
 

Dust quickly covered the blood that coated her from hip to feet, but she still got cautious looks on the street. She turned down another alley and tried to catch her breath. She set down the head. Fuck, she needed a drink.
 

Nyx fell against the alley wall. She turned and pressed her forehead to it. Her stomach heaved. She vomited, tasted acid. Blue beetles lit out from beneath the wall, swarmed toward the steaming bile and blood splattered across her sandals.
 

She moved away from the wall and staggered. She needed to move before somebody else showed up. She needed to take this head to the bel dame office. Might be they’d pay her to bring in a bel dame running black work. She needed to check her account. She needed to bring home a nice girl. She needed a drink. She needed to call Rhys, she….
 

Time stopped.
 

The world went dark.
 

“Nyx? Nyx?”

She was staring at the pale lavender sky from the floor of an alley. Eshe was staring down at her, a skinny little Ras Tiegan half-breed with a soft face and pouting mouth, too plain and unremarkable in looks for much of anything but disappearing into crowds.
 

He pressed a hand to her forehead, like he was trying to measure something.
 

“Whose head is that?” he asked.

Dark smears blotted out the boy’s face. “I don’t have time for this shit,” Nyx slurred. She tried moving her arms. Everything felt heavy. Something stank like vomit.
 

“I think you need a magician,” he said.
 

“What?” she said, but searching for the word took a long time, and even saying it seemed heavy, too difficult. “I think I’m a little tired,” she said.
 

“I’ll take you to Yahfia.”

“The kid…” Nyx said, and then stopped, unsure about what kid she meant. Some kid. Something important. Maybe it wasn’t so important. “I need to call Rhys,” she said.
 

“Who?” the kid said. “I’ll get Yahfia.”
 

“There was a little black dog,” Nyx said.
 

“A what?”

Eshe started to look like someone she didn’t know. What was a boy doing on the street unchaperoned? Shouldn’t he be at the front?

“I just need to sleep, Fouad,” Nyx murmured. “A little sleep, and maybe Kine can get me some whiskey…”
 

Something wasn’t right. She saw a body in a tub, bloody, no eyes… Yes, that’s right, Kine was dead. Her sister was dead. “Fouad,” she told her brother, “Kine is dead. I think you’re supposed to be at the front.”

“I’m getting Yahfia,” Fouad said. He stood, and that was fine, because she was tired of talking. She just wanted to lie there a little longer. Blackness clawed at her, but it felt good, like giving in to sleep after a long, hard day.
 

It didn’t feel like dying at all.