God's War Part 44

"Tell me, old man, or I'll tear your head off with my bare hands."

"Nyxnissa, I do not know."

"Who told you to bring Nikodem here?"

"She came to me with an offer. Rasheeda and Dahab said they spoke for the council," he said. His mashed nose was b.l.o.o.d.y from the hit he'd taken from Rhys, and moisture collected at the edges of his dark eyes. An old man. A war hero. One of the few who came back, making backyard deals with bel dames. "They told me the queen was selling out Nasheenian samples in exchange for help from the aliens with the extermination of the bel dame council. With the council out of the way, the queen will have no one to argue against her weapons programs."

"What?"

"This is what they told me."

"The queen told me that Nikodem can end the war."

"With whatever technology Nikodem's people give us in exchange for our genetic material, no doubt that is true. The queen will also gain absolute power over Nasheen, and then Chenja. Then the world."

"You expect me to believe that a magician who's spent time at the front moved without knowing what everybody's cards were? You think I'm stupid?"

"I've always thought you foolish."

She gripped his throat with her good hand.

He gasped and squirmed beneath her. "You have the potential to be more than you are," he whispered. "You always have. And you chose this this. How did I fail you?"

"Fail me?" she said, disbelieving. "Fail me? You f.u.c.king betrayed betrayed me. You acted like some kind of f.u.c.king father from a historical drama and then sent me to prison. How did you me. You acted like some kind of f.u.c.king father from a historical drama and then sent me to prison. How did you fail fail me? You f.u.c.king me? You f.u.c.king killed killed me! You took away everything I had, you f.u.c.king f.u.c.k!" me! You took away everything I had, you f.u.c.king f.u.c.k!"

"Nyx?"

Rhys's voice.

"Nyx, let him up," Rhys said. He had walked up beside her. She saw his bare feet.

"I intend to eat him," Nyx said.

"Clever," Rhys said. "Then you can be just like Rasheeda."

Nyx looked up at him. He had pulled Jaks's neglected tunic over himself. It was a little short, but otherwise a good fit. It was like Rhys, to think of modesty in the middle of a firefight. He still had a gun in his right hand.

"I'm not letting anyone walk out of here," Nyx said.

Rhys grimaced. "Have I murdered monsters only to save something worse?"

Khos padded in from the doorway in front of her, human again and naked. "Unless you want the others coming after you, you better cut off their heads," Khos said, "just to be sure."

Nyx eyed Rhys. There was something in his face that had not been there before. He looked at her differently. His look made her feel cold.

"You and I need to talk," she said.

"We do," Rhys said. He pressed a hand to her shoulder. "Let Yah Tayyib up. It'll take him time to recover. He won't attack us alone. By the time he's fit, we'll be away from here."

Nyx kept her hand on the magician's throat. She gritted her teeth. "Rhys-"

"Let go," Rhys said. He squeezed her shoulder. "It's all right. We're all right. Let go."

She slowly released her hold on Yah Tayyib.

Rhys helped her stand.

Khos got out of the doorway and let the magician stumble into the corridor. The dagger still jutted from his chest. Where would he go now? To his Chenjan friends? The ones who were going to help him get Nikodem into their compounds? Would they give him some kind of a life here? As a Nasheenian man? A Nasheenian war veteran?

"Where's Anneke?" Nyx asked.

"Here, boss."

Anneke strode over. She had a pistol in her hand. "I got the alien," she said.

"Dead or alive?" Nyx asked.

"Don't know for sure. Pretty dead, likely. But you know how it is."

Nyx limped back toward the boxing ring. The others trailed her. She stood over Nikodem and gently nudged her body over with one foot. Anneke had shot her at least three times in the chest. Hard to tell with all the blood. A few paces away, Rasheeda's twisted body still lay on the floor, and at the far corner of the ring, Dahab lay in a pool of blood.

"We need to clean up these bodies," Nyx said, turning toward the others. As she did, she saw their faces change. They were all at least three paces from her: Rhys next to Anneke, who had the chamber of her gun open as she cleaned it, Khos close enough to spit at, his grim face on the ring.

"Nyx-"

She didn't know which of them said her name first, but the startled looks on their faces made her swing back and stare into the ring.

Jaks stood with Dahab's rifle in one hand, her other hand clutching at her b.l.o.o.d.y throat.

No, Nyx remembered, it hadn't been the best cut.

Jaks had her point-blank. The rifle would blast a hole in Nyx's torso big enough for Anneke to put her head through.

Nyx opened her mouth. At least she could try to give off some last witty thing. Something grimly optimistic.

Somebody else shot first.

Nyx jumped at the sound and grabbed at her chest, but it was Jaks who collapsed into the ring.

From the darkness on the other side of the ring, a woman stepped toward them, rifle in hand, a kid slung over her back. She was a pale ghost in the dim light.

"In Ras Tieg," Inaya said, "we bury our bodies. We know when ours are dead."

37.

They had one last thing to do.

Nyx sat with Jaks's body, in the ring. Rhys stood next to her, still holding his gun, as if he'd forgotten it wasn't a part of him. Khos and Inaya stood along the ropes, and Anneke was looting the dead below.

"I want to burn the lab," Nyx said.

"What lab?" Anneke said, looking up from Dahab's splattered body, bullet necklaces in hand.

Rhys sighed. "Nyx, what's-"

"Nikodem never did get into the Chenjan stuff, but she'll have some Nasheenian information here that no Chenjan needs to find. Fatima and Luce were working with the council to make sure none of Nasheen's secrets got out of the country. That's why they were tracking us. I don't think they know about Rasheeda and Dahab or even the black part of the council they were working with. I don't want any of our stuff here either, so burn it."

Rhys stared at her.

Anneke loaded her gun.

Inaya's kid cried.

Khos shrugged. "This is the last thing I do for you, Nyxnissa," he said.

"I won't ask anything else," she said. "You still have those transmission transcripts she talked about, Rhys?"

"Raine had them."

"Then hopefully the desert has them," Nyx said.

Nyx couldn't make the walk back to Nikodem's lab. Instead, she stayed in the waterworks and cut the heads off Jaks and Dahab. By the time she started sawing at Rasheeda's, her fingers were trembling and sweat blurred her vision. She stopped hacking and crawled back into the ring next to Jaks's headless body. She pressed her forehead to the cool organic matting.

It was a bit like praying, she supposed. She felt as if she were sinking into the ring, surrendering to it. Maybe that's what it was to surrender to G.o.d: to just let everything go, to give it all up. Submission to G.o.d meant a submission of one's desires, of one's will, to G.o.d's will. Maybe that's why surrender, submission, scared her so much now-it felt too much like dying, and she'd had enough of dying. She wanted to live.

G.o.d, she wanted to live.

She heard someone approach and looked up.

Anneke walked toward the ring, wearing a pale tunic and tattered burnous, both too big for her, but she'd found a belt somewhere and tucked a couple of pistols into it and slung Dahab's bullet necklaces over her head. Her feet were still bare. In one hand, she carried a burnous stuffed with Nikodem's head.

"You ready, boss?"

Nyx could smell the smoke.

"Yes."

Anneke helped her down, and they walked to the door. Khos and Inaya and Rhys came after them a few moments later and the five of them-and Inaya's kid-stepped through the halls of the waterworks and out onto the street.

Outside, the world was stuck in the hazy blue half place between darkness and dawn. Though there were no streetlights, Nyx saw the outline of everyone's faces in the dim.

"You have the bakkie, Khos?" she asked.

He handed over the keys.

"I can't drive," she said, looking at his outstretched hand. "Why don't you drive?"

"We're not going with you," Khos said. "I have some friends picking us up."

"You and Inaya heading out?" Nyx said. "I wouldn't have renewed your contract anyway."

"I'm going with them," Rhys said.

Nyx started. "What?"

Dawn crept up on them, bled across the eastern sky, the first rays of the blue sun.

Rhys reached out and almost touched her face. The gesture was so strange and unexpected that she jerked away from him.

He smiled thinly, dropped his hand. "You won't be able to get me back over the border, Nyx."

"You're wrong, I-"

"Nyx, don't," Rhys said.

"I know some people who are very good at getting people over the border," Khos said. "I've been helping them out a long time."

"The wh.o.r.es," Nyx said.

"The underground, yes," Khos said.

"So you'll meet me at the keg?" Nyx said, and her voice broke. She wasn't even sure why. She just choked on the end of her sentence, like it hurt.

"We're going to Tirhan," Rhys said.

"I have a son in Tirhan," Khos said. "And some contacts."

"I can get you all amnesty," Nyx said. "From the queen. That's what this is all about. Money and amnesty."

"No, it's not," Rhys said.

"You signed a contract with me-"

"And it wasn't a writ of sale!" Rhys said, biting. She saw his jaw work. He looked away from her, then back, and relaxed his posture. "Good luck to you," he said, and she remembered how he had looked at her as she pinned Yah Tayyib, as if she was some kind of monster.

Maybe she was.

A bakkie turned onto the street, illuminated by the blue wash of first dawn.

The group instinctively took a step back into the doorway.

"That's Mahrokh," Khos said. "I know her bakkie." He touched Inaya's shoulder tentatively. She looked up at him. There was something in her face too, but Nyx didn't understand it.