God's War

Fatima waited a bare moment, glancing over at Rasheeda as the other bel dame laid out a series of scalpels and straight pins and blinking syringes on a scarlet-colored length of silk.

“You were told to stay off this note,” Fatima said. “Rasheeda and Luce were clear, as I understand it. Yet here you are, far from Nasheen, looking up an off-worlder. Where are Kine’s papers? I searched your safe house. Are they in the country? Who else knows about them?”

Nyx clenched her teeth.

“Your team’s dead,” Fatima said.

“You’re a bad liar,” Nyx said. “If you toasted my team you’d have told me all about the street they were on and the way you killed them. You wouldn’t stop with half-assed declarations. You’re a bel dame.”

Fatima’s mouth quirked again. “You think so? If you leave this place alive, perhaps we’ll see.”

Nyx grunted.

“We know you were at Kine’s,” Fatima said. “Did you speak to her before her death? What do you know about her work?”

Kine and her goddamn papers.

Nyx shifted a little in her chair. If she started talking, she’d be in trouble. She could make up stories, sure, but she didn’t trust that after several days of torture, she’d be able to keep the stories straight. But silence implied submission, and she wasn’t keen on submitting to anyone—not Fatima, not the magicians, not the queen, not God.

“I have no wish to send you home in pieces,” Fatima said.

Rasheeda squatted next to the instruments, giggling.

“Tell me,” Nyx said, “what do bel dames want with information from the compounds? Thought you would be on good terms with their security.”

“I want to know what you know about Kine.”

“What do you know about Kine?”

“Oh, stop it,” Fatima said, and her expression got ugly. “You want us to chop you up and leave you here?”

“You should have asked my team before you killed them,” Nyx said. “They’d have known just as much about Kine as I do.” Burning the pages had been a good idea. If the bel dames wanted the papers and wanted to keep Nyx off the note, it meant they were probably working with Nikodem. They wanted her to stay hidden. In Chenja.

Sweet fuck, Nyx thought are the bel dames working with the Chenjans? Were they working some kind of deal together to topple the monarchy?

“I don’t have any patience this afternoon, Nyxnissa.”

Nyx tacked that down. Afternoon. Not of the same day she was brought in, though, right? So she’d lost a day?

“You never did have much patience, sister-mine,” Nyx said, “and I don’t have much patience for traitors. When did you all decide to sell out Nasheen?”

“Rasheeda?”

Rasheeda grabbed the back of Nyx’s chair and tilted it. She turned Nyx around so she could see the tub of water behind her. A thin layer of ice coated the surface. The tub was padded around the base by a band of insulation that hummed.

“Those are expensive bugs,” Nyx said.

Rasheeda pushed Nyx over.

Nyx went into the water face first. The lip of the tub caught her in the gut. Her head banged the bottom of the tub.

Cold hit her like a fist to the face.

The first time under, she didn’t thrash, just shut her eyes and felt the cold eat into her bones.

Rasheeda pulled her back up. Nyx gasped and went back under, banging her head on the bottom again.

The third time under, she started to struggle, but Rasheeda had the advantage, and the cold was starting to muddle Nyx’s head. Black ate away at her thoughts. It felt like descending into the bowels of Umayma. She opened her mouth to breathe, and sucked in cold water instead.

It went on for a long time. They hauled her out fully once or twice, left her gasping in the chair like a spent swimmer, asked her some questions that didn’t make sense anymore, and then forced her back under.

Finally, Rasheeda got tired, or Fatima got tired. Probably Fatima.

Rasheeda hauled Nyx out of the water and let her chair fall sideways onto the floor, so Nyx had a watery view of Fatima’s sandaled feet.

“Kine’s papers,” Fatima said. “I want them. Where are they? They belong in Nasheen, not here. You’ve run black work before. You think I’m a fool? Who did you sell them to?”

Rasheeda bent over and gazed into Nyx’s face, blotting out the light. Nyx coughed up cold water. She shivered uncontrollably.

Fatima wrinkled her nose, said to Rasheeda. “Give me a couple of her fingers.”

Rasheeda licked her lips. “I want her eyes.”

Nyx’s thoughts were dark and sticky. Fatima thinks I killed my sister. But Rasheeda killed my sister. Why doesn’t Fatima know that Rasheeda killed my sister? Why was Rasheeda only slowing me down, but Dahab wanted to stop me?

Sticky thoughts. Black thoughts.

Something congealed. Rasheeda had slowed her down so she could kill Kine before Nyx got there. Rasheeda didn’t have leave from the council to kill Nyx. Rasheeda was running something on her own. Fatima was doing clean bel dame work, retrieving stolen Nasheenian information she thought Nyx had. Fatima had no idea Rasheeda was running black.

“Let’s save the eyes for later,” Fatima said. She pointed. “Give me those two fingers.”

Rasheeda set Nyx’s chair upright. The wire had dug into Nyx’s flesh now, drawn blood. She couldn’t feel it, though, just pressure. What she did feel were the bloodworms boring into her flesh. Her legs were on fire, and the rest of her was numb.

Rasheeda picked up a cleaver. She pressed the heel of her palm onto the back of Nyx’s right hand, made her splay her fingers across the armrest.

They’re just fingers, Nyx thought. She brought her head up so she could look Fatima in the face.

“I didn’t kill my sister,” Nyx slurred.

Rasheeda brought the knife down on her ring and little fingers. Nyx felt pressure, heard the crunch. Pain. Just pain. Pain is a message. That’s all.

Fatima flinched.

Nyx didn’t.

Rasheeda hacked at Nyx’s hand again. She hadn’t made a clean cut.

Nyx kept her breathing steady, not looking at her hand. Her fingers—or where she was supposed to have fingers—ached. She coughed up more water. She wanted to claw at her burning legs. She wished it was her legs they cut off.

Rasheeda wiped something onto the floor with the knife. Nyx heard a dull thumping sound. Her fingers hitting the gritty floor.

Rasheeda licked the knife.

“Kine’s papers. Or should I take the whole hand?” Fatima asked. “Another day or two and the worms will have your legs…”

The first time Nyx was tortured, Raine had done it.

She had been doing her own side work, her first contract with a gene pirate. She hadn’t known what the woman was, at first, just knew she was paying well for an easy job—plug some organic material into Nyx’s body and have Nyx drive it over to some shady dealer in a border town. The dealer had cut it out, no problem, and suddenly she had more money in her account than she’d ever seen in her life.

Raine had figured it out. How, Nyx never knew. Maybe he kept tabs on her account. He had beat her bloody, called her a traitor to her own country. He’d bound her and left her.

When he came back for her a day later, she lay in the dark, in a pool of her own piss, hungry and dehydrated. He had loomed over her and cut off her ear with one quick slice of a sharp knife.