Raine grunted.
Above her, a cloud of wasps circled.
Nyx was breathing hard. Blood trickled from the cut in her forearm. Her knees and elbows were bruised and bloodied. She took up the dagger.
Raine gasped. He had both hands on the hilt of the sword. She pressed her knee into his chest and leaned into him. His eye dangled from its socket. Blood leaked from the corner.
Nyx grabbed his ear. A dozen wasps buzzed around the hood of her burnous. Three of them crawled along her arm. She felt more of them alighting in her hair.
The knife was sharp. Raine kept his gear in good shape.
She sawed off his ear, and he writhed and bellowed at her. She leaned over him so he could see her tuck it into her dhoti.
“Deliver her to the Queen,” he said, spitting blood. “Don’t kill her.”
“I’ll be as merciful to her as you’ve been to me,” Nyx said.
She put her other hand on the hilt of the sword, pressed on it as she moved her face within inches of his. She whispered, “I intend to collect you in pieces.”
“Nyx!”
Her name, on the wind, above the buzz of the bugs. A cloud of wasps circling her. One of them stung her arm.
Nyx pushed herself back up. She stood amid a swarm of wasps. She could not see either side of the gully. The world was a buzzing, hissing swarm. She put a hand over her mouth, tried to breathe without inhaling wasps.
But what did it matter? What did it matter?
Raine’s ear cooled against her skin. She felt the blood leaking down her belly.
“Nyx!”
Why did they call her? Why bother? They were all dead anyway. They should have died the night Fatima and Rasheeda took her. Then she would be dead too, and all this would be over.
“Nyx!”
She stumbled toward the voice without knowing why. She felt the wasps sting her face, her arms, her legs. She had sweated away most of the unguent. She kept her hand over her face.
She fell, and banged her knee on a stone. She dropped the dagger and put both hands down to catch herself. Her hands came away wet.
Water. Why was there water in the gully? Unless…
Nyx ran blindly toward what she hoped was the other side of the gully.
Water rushed past her ankles. As she ran, the water rose, and then she was slogging through it. The wasps stung.
She hated it when she was right about the fucking weather.
She lost her fight with the water.
Nyx let herself drop under. The buzz of the bugs abruptly stopped. Her burning skin was suddenly cool. The current was strong. Bits of stone and wood and some dead thing smashed into her. She broke the surface, tried to stand. The water was chest-deep now.
She could not swim, of course.
When she looked up, the cloud of wasps was somewhere behind her. She tried to find her footing, but the current was too strong.
Nyx collided with the side of the gully. She groped for a handhold and found a loose root. She held on and hauled herself out of the water. She rolled onto the other bank like a beached log and gasped. Anneke was running over to her from just upriver, her gun slung behind her, bumping against her ass.
“Where’s Rhys?” Nyx asked.
“You breathing, boss?”
Anneke crouched next to her, cloaked in a sheen of sweat.
“Where’s Rhys?” she repeated.
“Still upstream, boss.” She looked over her shoulder at the raging water in the gully.
Nyx pulled herself into a sitting position and gazed out at the gully as well. Raine had been in there. Pinned to the ground with a sword. She reached for the ear she’d tucked into her dhoti, but it was gone, torn away by the water.
She looked for the cloud of wasps but saw nothing upstream.
“Where’s Khos?” Nyx asked.
“Last I saw, the fucker was running back toward the bakkie.”
Nyx knitted her brows. Her arms and face stung. “Go see if the bakkie’s still there,” she said.
Fucker, she thought. Cowardly fucker. And perhaps something worse. If Khos had headed out before the end of the fight, it was more than possible that he had either set himself up with a back exit or, worse… Please, fuck, she thought, let that not be it. That’s not it. He wouldn’t do that. Nobody on my team would do that.
She got to her feet. Anneke ran off toward the bakkie.
Nyx stumbled along the bank toward the scrub, searching for Rhys. She saw one dark arm flung out from a line of scrub, palm open toward the sky. She had a sudden memory of her sister, Kine, in the tub, bloodied, eyeless.
She fell to her knees and scrambled toward him. He opened his eyes, squinted at her. Closed his eyes.
“You,” he said.
“Me,” she said.
“I saw you fall.”
“Thought you could get rid of me so easy?”
“Hoped,” he said, and opened his eyes again.
“I think I killed Raine.”
“Never liked him anyway,” Rhys said.
“You still drugged?”
“Yes. But it should wear off. I was due for another dose.”
“They fuck you up?” Nyx asked.
Rhys closed his eyes again, grimaced.
“We need to go,” she said.
“Their magician was shot, but she’ll be coming around.”
“It’s not the magician I’m worried about,” Nyx said. She looked behind her at the raging water in the gully. Where was Nikodem? Had she fallen and washed down the gully too? Or had she scrambled back up the way Nyx had, heading for the road?
She glanced back down at Rhys, at the shallow rise and fall of his chest. She saw now that there was something wrong with his hands. The fingers looked twisted. Broken.
She wanted to kill Raine again. Even dirtier this time.
Nyx closed her mouth, leaned back away from Rhys. Her heart ached. This wasn’t the time for petty sentiment. She had spent so long trying not to feel anything.
“We need to go. I’ll carry you,” she said.
She squatted and pushed her arms underneath him. She was nearly the same size as Rhys, but as she lifted him, she had to go easy, find her balance. She was exhausted.
The stings hurt, and her vision was going blurry. Her knees nearly buckled. The heat was rapidly sucking the moisture from her hair and clothes.
She followed the gully back down through the hills. The water was already lowering, bleeding off. She looked behind her and no longer saw any storm clouds. At least when it rained up there it didn’t last long.
Sand stuck to her skin. She’d lost a sandal somewhere in the gully. She walked with a limp. As she walked, she became increasingly certain that Khos had taken Inaya and the bakkie and fucked off. And Rhys was getting heavier. Her breath came hard. She stumbled.
She looked at Rhys, in her arms. A couple of hours. Could he walk in a couple of hours, after the drugs wore
