“Then don’t. I’ll get another shifter.”
“Nyx—”
A low, steady whine started outside. Fucking burst sirens.
Nyx raised her voice and shifted on the divan, turning back to Khos. “We already talked about this. You go or you don’t. We’re moving the day after tomorrow. Dawn prayer.” She was done with all the sniveling. They were out of time for that.
Khos snorted and hunched in his chair.
The
Nyx tried to measure Rhys’s reaction, but he was staring off into the air.
“Taite, I’ll need you to stay here and work the com, keep an ear on what’s going on in Nasheen. All right?”
“Sure thing,” he said. “Does Husayn play cards?”
The siren started to mute out, then died.
Clear.
“No, but she can teach you to box,” Nyx said, looking pointedly at Rhys. He didn’t react, but Taite made a face at her. The idea of Taite doing anything involving vigorous physical movement was a running joke.
“Anneke,” Nyx said, “let’s go get that bakkie running properly. We’ll need to give it new paint and put on the new tags. Rhys?”
He looked over at her. “Yes?”
“You here?”
“I’m here,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “We’ll need you. I want to talk to you about some things.”
Nyx pushed Khos and Taite away from the com and laid out the papers she’d taken from Kine’s office. She motioned Rhys over. He walked up next to her. She opened her mouth to say something stupid about him, about gravy or prayer wheels or picnicking on the graves of the dead, but she realized she was too tired, and all she really wanted to say was that she’d missed him and his buttoned-up coat.
“When I went over to Kine’s, I saw that they’d gone through her papers looking for something,” Nyx said. “What they didn’t know is that she doesn’t keep her private papers in plain view, not when it has to do with her work in the compounds.”
“So what is this?” Rhys asked, paging through the ciphered sheets.
“Her private papers. I figured you and Taite could decipher them and see what my bel dame sisters wanted from her. It could have been a hit on Kine just to get to me, but… well, they knew Kine and I weren’t close.”
“They aren’t all ciphered,” he said, pulling out a bound record book. “Looks like compound records. I’d have to know more about the technology they’re using.”
“Taite can look that up. You’ll try?”
“I’ll try.”
“Good.” Nyx made to move away from the com. They had a tight deadline, and she already had the litany in her head: papers, bakkie, call the contagion center, go to the bank, pick up gear and supplies.
“Nyx?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry about Kine.”
“Me too,” she said. She saw the body again when she blinked: the sightless eyes, the rusty water, the white feather. “I’m going to go help Anneke with the bakkie.”
“Nyx?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m a dead man in Chenja.”
Something inside of her hurt, something she kept trying to dull with sen and whiskey. She pressed her fist to her gut.
“We’ll be all right. Nobody out there knows you anymore. I can get you over the border and back.” When she said it out loud, she almost believed it.
The way you got Tej over the border?
Rhys pursed his mouth and went back to the papers.
Nyx took Anneke by the collar, and the two of them went down into the garage and looked over the bakkie.
“Who the hell did you have go over this?” Anneke asked. She unshuttered the overhead light. The worms in the glass were dying, and the light was bad.
“Local mechanic in Jameela.”
“I can heal up the front end, maybe replace the bumper if you want to spend the cash.”
Anneke wrenched at the hood. It hissed open. She rolled up the long sleeves of her tunic, showing off the jagged black lines of her prison tattoos, the most prominent of which was a shrieking parrot clutching a bloody heart. She leaned in. She swore. “Shit, how’d you get this back here? You need a new cistern. And your brake line is leaking. Fuck, that coagulant stinks. Who cut this line? You sewed it up twice.”
“Rasheeda. The tissue mechanic patched it the second time. I didn’t have the cash to replace it.”
Anneke sighed and straightened. “You should just get a new bakkie, boss. A proper one with a real flatbed instead of a trunk, one of those ones with the reinforced cistern.”
“Can’t afford it.”
“Can’t afford the repairs neither.”
Nyx handed her a portable light. “Lucky for me, my labor’s cheap.”
Anneke grinned. “Yeah, I know. I get the receipts.”
“At least we know you’re a good shot.”
“Naw, if I was a good shot you’d have died in Faleen, proper.”
“I hired you anyway.”
“Bad judge of character.”
“I know.”
“Huh.” Anneke moved to the back of the garage and pulled out a giant needle, some hoses, and a pair of clippers from the supply cabinet. She had to stand on a box to reach it. “You think you can get the boys back over the border?”
“Raine did.”
“Raine had a lot of contacts.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Hand me some clips and some lube,” Anneke said.
Nyx handed them over, and Anneke disappeared under the hood. Nyx heard the wet slurping of organic tissue as Anneke slid her hands among the guts.
“Why’d you keep running with Raine, after?”
“After what? The thing with you?”
“Yeah.”
“Eh,” Anneke said. “I’ve seen him do worse.”
Anneke reappeared, poked her head around the hood to look at Nyx. She was covered in lube and bakkie bile up to her elbows. “We won’t be able to get Rhys back over the border.”
“Don’t be so dry.”
“I know your count. You never got a guy back over the border.”
“I’ll get Rhys back over.”
“Yeah. Huh.” Anneke leaned back into the guts of the bakkie.
“I’ll get him over.”
“Doesn’t sound like it’s me you’re trying to convince. Hey, I get some cigars for doing this, or what?”
“Just remember to fix the window,” Nyx said. She set the new tags for the bakkie on the front seat. “And put the tags on. I’m going to go look into getting a cistern.”
“Hey, Nyx?”
