God's War

Taite lifted her. He didn’t know how he did it, picking up his older sister, this towering figure he had so admired before his exile. The strong one. The shifter. He dragged Inaya toward the hidden door at the back, opened it. He heard someone else on the stairs behind them. A lot of someones.

He was fucked.

He looked into Inaya’s tear-stained face and took it into his hands. “Go to Nyx,” he said. “She’s in a garret in Dadfar, in the Rihaada district on Lower Maida and Seventh. Are you listening to me? You need to cross the border. Do you understand? You need to cross the border.”

“I can’t go to Chenja! They’ll kill me on sight, the bursts—”

“You can,” Taite said. He kissed her forehead, her lips, her eyelids. He had a memory of his mother doing the same to him, the last he ever saw of her. He could not remember her face. “You can… A bird can fly across a border.”

“Don’t ask me to do that. Never ask me to do that!”

He shook her. “Then you’ll die here with me, do you understand?” He shouted at her, and his gut churned as he shouted. He sounded like their father. He threw his pack at her. “Take that. There’s water in Husayn’s bakkie, and a couple bucks in change in my pack. Get the fuck out of here! Right now. Right now!”

“Taite!”

He prodded her into the dark stairwell and shut the door behind her.

He pulled out his pistol and crept behind the com. In the sudden silence, the quiet dim, he looked up at his little saint, at Baldomerus, and he prayed.

When they walked in, Taite started shooting.

22

Nyx faded in and out of awareness. For a time, she thought she heard voices outside the door. The sound of moist clicking, the shuffle of insectile legs, roused her.

When she looked down, she saw a giant centipede gnawing at her left leg with its finger-long pincers. She yelled and jerked in the chair, scaring it back into its hole in the masonry. Her body was instantly covered in a sheen of cold sweat. She fought to stay conscious.

When she next came to, Luce was standing over her.

“Doesn’t look like so much now, does she?” Luce said. She took Nyx by the hair and searched her face.

Nyx faded again.

She dreamed of water. Cool, suffocating water. She swam in a great lake so clear and blue she could see the ruins of old cities below. And then she was drowning in it, drowning in cold, pulled down toward the dead cities, cities full of sand. So cold.

Someone dumped a bucket of water over her. She came to with a start.

“You stink,” Luce said, and set the bucket next to her.

Fatima was closing the door.

They had left the chair from their last visit, and Fatima sat in it again.

“Good morning, Nyxnissa,” Fatima said.

Nyx licked at the moisture on her lips. Her hands had gone numb. She tried to flex them—the fingers she had and the fingers she thought she had. Her whole body was stiff and growing increasingly unresponsive. One of her eyes was swollen shut. She peered at the bel dames and wondered where Rasheeda was.

“I believe I was asking you yesterday where Kine’s papers were,” Fatima said. “I think it’s an easy question. One answer and we give you some water. What do you think of that?”

What Nyx thought was that her throat was so dry she couldn’t speak. But she was no good to them dead.

She moved her mouth but didn’t let any sound out.

“What’s that?” Fatima said, leaning toward her. She gestured irritably at Luce.

Luce walked out and came back with a water bulb. She held it to Nyx’s lips and let her drink.

Nyx gulped it all down, licked her lips again. She tried to grin, but it hurt to move her face.

“Kine’s papers,” Fatima said.

“I didn’t kill her,” Nyx rasped.

A sound came from outside the door, muffled.

“What was that?” Fatima said.

“Sounds like a dog,” Luce said. “I’ll check it out, but the filters are up. No shifter is getting through that filter.”

Luce opened the door. She didn’t close it, and Nyx heard her heading upstairs. From the open door came the unmistakable sound of a barking dog.

“Why bother holding out now, sister-mine?” Fatima said, and her voice softened. “There’s no one in this world who will know or care if you live or die. I am your sister. This time next year, I’ll be on the bel dame council. You understand that? Why not tell me what I need and we’ll welcome you back, sister. Isn’t that what you wanted? Kine’s papers, and all’s forgiven. Do you hear me, Nyxnissa? I have the power to make you a bel dame again. No one else would give you that.”

Nyx was drooling on herself again. She blinked a few times and raised her head. “You think I’m fucking stupid?”

“The thought had crossed my mind,” Fatima said, and her tone flattened again.

“Teams are replaceable,” Nyx said. “I’ll get another team. You want your seat on the council, you’ll have to torture something useful out of some other woman.”

“Your sisters were all you had, Nyxnissa, and in your greed you lost us. I’ve never met a woman so despised.”

“Yes, you have.”

“Is that so? I have three daughters and a son at the front,” Fatima said. “My lover is descended from the First Families. You? You have nothing. No one.”

Nyx heard a soft clicking from outside the door. She raised her head an inch, just an inch, and saw a fist-size black roach skitter into the room.

Nyx shut her eyes.

There was a pop and a flash that Nyx could see even from behind her eyelids. Flash bug.

Fatima cried out.

A gun went off. Fatima screeched again. Noise and movement.

Nyx opened her eyes.

Khos stood next to her, naked, and covered in mucus, still shaking off the last of his dog hair. Anneke was in the doorway. She threw him a pair of cutters.

He bent and worked at Nyx’s bonds.

Fatima was crawling toward one corner of the room, clutching at her bleeding face.

Nyx looked down dumbly at her own ruined, swollen hand as Khos worked.

“Go, go! Hurry up!” Anneke said.

A swarm of locusts burst through the door, throwing it wide, and circled the room.

Nyx heard Rhys’s voice then, from outside. “The other rooms are clear, but Rasheeda’s heading back this way.”

“Do we have another exit?” Anneke asked.

Khos cut the last of the wire from Nyx’s elbows and started on her legs. Nyx tried flexing her fingers. Everything was numb. Even her legs now. She leaned over and coughed up blood.

Khos finished with her legs.

She tried to push herself up, tried to stand. Her whole body shook. Pain blazed up her legs as circulation returned. She looked down and saw blood leaking from the wide, wriggling wounds. If she let go of the armrest, her legs would buckle.

Khos scooped her into his arms. She had forgotten how big he was. She looped her bad arm around his neck