God's War

used to call them angels. She was real interested in that.”

“Huh,” Nyx said. “She didn’t know the composition of shifters?”

“Naw, she thought they were just like magicians. Called on certain bugs or something to change them up. I told her no, they were something else, something that got fucked up at the beginning of the world. Told her shifters live half in this world, half in the afterlife. Angels.”

Nyx nodded. It was a popular idea—shifters being angels or demons—but she had known too many shifters to buy into that one. So Nikodem was interested in knowing about shifters. Bugs and shifters. We’re all trying to cure the war, Kine had said. If shifting was genetic, in your blood, could you parse it out?

Do something dangerous with it? Use it to make other things? Gene pirates muttered about that kind of shit all the time, but Nyx had stupidly believed it wasn’t something Nasheen or Chenja would consider. Too fucked up.

“Thanks,” she said. “I better clean up and talk to my crew.”

“Yeah, I saw some of them come back in when you hit the mat. Isn’t much of a safe house if they keep wandering around in broad daylight,” Husayn said.

“Thanks. I’ll talk to them,” Nyx said.

“Nothing of it,” Husayn said. “You spend six weeks here, I could get you back into shape, you know.”

“We won’t be here that long,” Nyx said. The bel dames would burn them out.

Husayn shrugged. “Too bad. I keep wanting to whip that dancer of yours.”

“In more ways than one, I’m sure,” Nyx said.

Husayn winked. “That Chenjan accent turns me frigid. But you know, your little black man’s not a half-bad boxer.”

“Rhys doesn’t box. He’s a dancer.”

“He does box. He’s a magician, ain’t he? And he’s in good shape. A little small, maybe, but there are a lot of women at that weight. I’ve been working with him since he got in. I thought he was training with you.”

Nyx knit her brows. “Not with me.”

“Well, he’s not bad.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

So Rhys was boxing now, despite his long-suffering abhorrence for blood and violence. When had he started that up? It explained how he stayed in shape. He was probably taking lessons from Husayn just to spite Nyx. If she had fewer things to worry about, she might have let it get to her. As it was, she’d spent the last two nights mostly drunk and driving, trying to ward off nightmares of Kine lurching out of the tub, seeking her out with cold hands and bloodied eye sockets. It was not enough that she still dreamed of her dead brothers and her dead squad. Now her sister clawed at her as well. Too many dead.

Nyx hopped out of the ring. She landed badly and winced. She was hungover, and everything was starting to hurt again.

Nyx headed into the steam room. She cleaned herself up and slipped into the closet where Husayn had built a stairwell that went up into the attic.

Nyx found Anneke with her forehead pressed to the floor. Anneke prayed facing north in the center of a vast array of weaponry. Taite had set up a makeshift com center in a far corner, and he and Khos were playing cards on the console. It looked like they’d all slipped in while she fought. What, had they been at lunch?

Rhys had hung up a sheet to screen his sleeping area from the others. She heard him praying, too low to make out the words, as usual, and figured it must be about noon.

She was hungry. They must have eaten.

“What have you all got for me?” Nyx asked.

Khos leaned back in his chair. “What happened to the bakkie?”

“What happened to your face?” Taite said. They were playing for locusts, and one of the bugs was creeping off the table. They must have seen the bakkie in the garage.

“You still need me to fix that window?” Anneke said, coming up from her prone position.

Nyx found a seat on a threadbare divan at the center of the room. There were some deflated speed bags in one corner, and a lone punching bag hung from the long main beam of the ceiling.

“I missed you all too,” she said.

“Anneke and I checked out some of the mercenaries on the note,” Khos said, shoving his cards back at Taite. Taite poked at one of the locusts. If they were just a little harder up, he’d likely eat them. “Two more dropped their notes. If I didn’t know better, I’d say somebody was convincing them it was a good idea. We’re down to one bounty hunter and two mercenaries.”

“The ones who dropped had pretty good money in their accounts after they did,” Taite said. “I hacked into Raine’s com for about a day before he patched the leak. As of three days ago, he’s still after the note.” Nyx saw the statue of Taite’s little Ras Tiegan saint stuck up on the top of the com console. It was good to know that some things were constant.

“Where’s Raine at?” Nyx asked. She wondered how much of her own gear they’d managed to get out.

“He has someone doing recon in Chenja. But he was just in Faleen talking with Yah Tayyib.”

Yah Tayyib. Yeah, it was where she would have gone first too, if the old man would have seen her.

Rhys’s praying died off, and he walked in, buttoned down as ever, though the attic was stifling. He’d cut his hair again, shaved himself nearly bald. She hated that.

“She isn’t in any Chenjan districts I have contacts in,” Rhys said. “All they know is that a lot of bel dames are looking for an off-worlder.”

“Bel dames? Not bounty hunters or mercenaries?”

“Definitely bel dames.”

So bel dames were looking for Nikodem. And if they were looking for Nikodem, it meant they didn’t know where she was either. Were they trying to make sure Nyx didn’t get to her first? Why? To keep Nikodem away from the queen?

“How about that transmission on our dead bounty hunter? Did you decode that?” Nyx asked.

“It’s a transmission from someone who says they’re on the bel dame council,” Rhys said. He sat on the far side of the divan from Nyx. “They were asking him to drop the note on Nikodem in exchange for immunity. They knew he was smuggling out boys to Heidia and were threatening to cut off his head and turn him in unless he dropped out.”

Khos grunted.

“Any idea which bel dame?” Nyx asked.

“No,” Rhys said. “Taite ran it through our voice recognition reel and didn’t come up with any matches.”

Nyx raised her brows. “We should have every working bel dame’s signature on that reel.”

“Well, it was somebody from the actual council, not just a girl. Maybe she’s too old to be on the reel?”

“She’d have to be real fucking old not to be on that reel—or pretty new. It took some skill to pinch that.”

“Hopefully you didn’t pay too much for it, then,” Rhys said.

“I talked to Husayn,” Nyx said, before he got cheeky. “No off-worlder has been asking about boxers or about the magicians in Faleen.” She paused a minute and looked them all over. “She did say she’s losing some boxers to a big ring in Chenja.”

“You think Nikodem might be around boxers?” Taite asked.

“Either the Chenjans took her, with help from our magicians, or she went on her own to go sell something,” Nyx said. “In any case, the boxing is a good place to start. It’s something she was interested in last time, and if she’s got as much of a thing for violence as her sisters say she does, yeah, I’d start with Chenjan boxing.”

“If Raine’s doing recon in Chenja, he might have the same idea,” Taite said.

“We need to do better than Raine,” Nyx said. And Nasheen wasn’t exactly a friendly place to be right now. Not that Chenja would be an improvement, but she liked staying on the move, staying one step ahead of everyone. “I want to move operations to Chenja. Anneke, the bakkie is for shit, and you and I need to work on it tonight.”

“I don’t want to go into Chenja,” Khos said.