“What’s going on?” Nyx asked. She tore her look from the men.
“We have a breach in Punjai. Minor skirmish. Should be cleaned up in half a day.”
“What’s the threat level?” Nyx asked.
The woman narrowed her eyes.
“I spent time in Bahreha,” Nyx said. “I laid the mines that took out Lower Azda.”
The soldier shrugged and looked blank, and Nyx realized all that had been a decade ago. A lifetime, in terms of the war. Thousands had died since then. Bigger cities had been contaminated or overrun or blown up. You’re an old woman, Nyx thought.
“A couple of bursts contaminated the southern half of the city, and a small terrorist unit got through. Nothing serious. We’ll have it cleaned up, matron. Go on toward Basra. We’ve cleared the road through to there.”
The southern half of the city. Nowhere near the Chenjan quarter, which meant her storefront might be safe. Had her team gotten out before the quarantine? Fucking hell.
“Thanks,” Nyx said. She looked again toward the men on the other side of the barricade. “You take care of the boys for me.”
“Yes, matron,” the soldier said. “We always do.”
Nyx turned the bakkie down the temporary sticky-graveled road that the military had put down to bypass Punjai. Punjai under quarantine would buy her time. Anybody—even a bel dame—would have a tough time getting into Punjai, and once in, would have a tougher time wading through the chaos of contaminated quarantined quarters. If her team had gotten out, they might have bought enough time to regroup in Aludra and bolt the fuck off to Chenja without any bel dame knowing the wiser.
Maybe.
A whole heap of maybe.
Nyx ducked and rolled under Husayn’s right jab and threw a right uppercut to her body. Husayn blocked with her left elbow and pushed forward again, throwing a left hook followed by another right jab.
Husayn had gotten a good deal more skilled with age. Not quicker—just smarter. Still, Husayn moved forward when other boxers moved back. Nyx should have remembered that before agreeing to a “friendly” spar with Husayn.
Nyx stopped trying to drive her back and stepped sideways instead. She threw a punch at Husayn’s kidneys, but her heart wasn’t in it. Husayn swung and caught her with a left hook to the jaw, another left hook to the face. Nyx saw darkness move across her vision. Something flashed at her from the back of her brain, some other fucked- up memory. She deflected a double right jab, but she didn’t see the uppercut coming until it knocked her backward onto the dusty mat. Her head felt like it was floating.
Husayn laughed. “You’re getting slow, old woman.”
Nyx used the ropes to help herself up. She waited for her head to clear.
Husayn’s gym had two rings, and a couple of kids were sparring in the other one, far more effectively than Nyx had been.
“I’ve been out of the ring for a while,” Nyx said. She worked her jaw. She was going to hurt tomorrow. Hell, she hurt now.
Husayn grinned crookedly. She had gained a little weight and broken her nose a couple more times, but otherwise, she was the same Husayn. She’d stopped fighting for the magicians not long after Nyx went to prison, and she got leave from the magicians to start her own gym. Lots of young kids came her way hoping to gain some experience before testing their mettle in a magicians’ ring.
“How’s business been?” Nyx asked. She found one of the discarded corner stools and started unknotting her gloves with her teeth. Nyx’s team was around, Husayn had assured her when she drove up just after mid-morning prayer; they’d shown up a day before the quarantine, then scattered their own ways. Probably to mosques and brothels, Nyx thought.
Husayn shrugged and pulled off her own gloves. She never laced them very tightly.
“Been good, as things go.”
Nyx nodded at the sparring kids in the other ring. She let her gloves drop to the ring. “I thought you kept a busier gym.”
“Huh,” Husayn said. “Used to. Most of them headed out to Chenja. There’s a fighting ring out there taking away my best fighters.”
“You know where in Chenja?”
“I heard they’re out of Dadfar.”
“That so?” Nyx said. If they were going after Nikodem in Chenja, the fighting rings were a good place to start. And Husayn had spoken to the aliens before.
“Yeah, heard that from a couple girls now,” Husayn said.
“You remember a fight in Faleen, about seven or eight years ago? You fought an outrider named…” Nyx realized she’d let the name slip again, and had to fish for it. “Jix. Jaks something, Jaksdij, maybe?” Fuck, Nyx thought, I cut up the kid’s brother, and I don’t even remember her name.
Husayn crinkled her mouth. “I fought a lot of girls, been knocked around a time or two.” She rapped her knuckles against her head. “Don’t remember all the girls I fought.”
“How about aliens? You ever seen any of those?”
Husayn’s face opened up. “Aw, hell, the aliens, yeah, I remember them. Aw, yeah,
“I might be looking for one of them. She met up with you at that fight in Faleen. Name’s Nikodem Jordan.”
“Blood and hell, Nyxnissa, what’re you getting yourself into?”
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
“I heard that before.”
“What did she talk to you about?”
Husayn sighed. She spared a look at the sparring kids and then went and picked up another of the corner stools and plopped it down next to Nyx. She sat, leaning in close, so her sweat dripped on the mat at Nyx’s feet.
“She was a real strange talker, that one. Was pretty nice, hearing she was so interested, but those magicians, they said not to talk about boxing or bugs too much, you understand?”
“Magicians like Yah Tayyib?”
“Huh,” Husayn said, and spit. She wiped at her face, grimaced. “He wasn’t the one cutting black work. Can’t fault somebody for doing their job.”
“Let’s say this isn’t personal. What if I told you Nikodem was back—and missing—and the queen had me looking for her?”
Husayn guffawed, but when Nyx’s expression didn’t change, she sobered. “No shit?”
“No shit. It’s cloak-and-dagger work though, all right?”
“Right, all right. This real spindly girl comes in and talks to me before the fight. I was pretty riled up, you know. I get all anxious before a fight, and answering questions—from dogs or aliens or whatever—is not something I got any interest in.”
“What did she want?”
“Wanted to know how we trained, what it felt like to be a boxer, whether or not the bugs or inoculations got in the way. Best I could figure, she thought the bugs made us feisty or some shit, ’cause she couldn’t imagine us going around bashing each other up for fun. She must live on a real dull world.”
“She say anything about why she was here? What she was working on?”
Husayn shook her head. “Naw, and I didn’t think to ask. Magicians all around, you know? I figured she was under their protection. Whatever project magicians got going, you leave it be. You remember.”
“Yeah,” Nyx said. “I remember.”
“Something else she said, though—wanted to know if I’d ever fought a shifter. I told her we don’t allow shifters in a ring, and she said why not? I told her it was ’cause they had an unfair advantage. She thought that was stupid, you know, since we’d fight magicians and all. I had to tell her being a magician just means you’re using bugs. Magicians can stop using bugs. They can even drug up the bad ones to
