God's War

Rhys opened his eyes. “What?”

She was still shivering.

“I was a sapper,” she said. “We went in and exploded bursts, cleared minefields. I told you I was too good to kill. I could cut out a mine and make four better ones from the guts. You give me a magician and some bug juice and I could take out half a city. And I did, you know, I did… I watched a lot of boys die. A lot of good boys. I killed a lot of good boys. Women, kids. Everyone.”

“It’s a war, Nyx. None of us did things we’re proud of.” Rhys caught himself.

“I was good at it. It made me somebody else, though. I didn’t like what it made me.”

He heard them, then. The bugs. Close. He needed more time. How much time did she have?

“Nyx, you can’t—”

“I was doing a sweep at the edge of some agricultural compound out here. Bahreha, back before I blew all these compounds. It didn’t used to be desert. Oh, I was so good. I took out whole cities, Rhys, whole cities full of your people, women and girls too. I was just doing some stupid job with my squad, clearing these flesh mines, and I fucked up.

“I set off a burst. Just one burst, clumsy, and when I did it I fucking froze, and then I just clawed past those boys in my squad, those boys I fought and bled with, and I didn’t even warn them. Didn’t even call out. Just ran.

“There was acid everywhere. My boys blew apart and melted. I crawled out with their bloody steaming guts all over me. When I got out, they had to spray me off with a neutralizer.

“What kind of a woman does that, Rhys? Lets boys die? We’re supposed to protect them. I let them die. I killed my own boys.”

She fell silent for a long time.

In the silence, Rhys heard the hiss of a nest of cockroaches. Then nothing. Only the labored sound of Nyx’s breathing. How badly was she hurt? He needed to know.

“I burned myself,” she said in the darkness. “I got drunk and went out into the fields. The moons were in progression back then, and, oh, they were so big and bloody and there was plenty of light. I dragged out a keg of fuel oil, the kind we used for fire bursts, and I set myself on fire. I just set myself on fire, Rhys—”

“Nyx—”

“I judged myself.”

“Judgment is God’s task, not yours.”

“I left God in Bahreha.”

Rhys heard footsteps outside the door. The light changed. Rhys fell back onto his side and tucked his hands behind him.

The door started to open.

Nyx used her thumb to push the razor blade under him.

A woman stood in the doorway, a black shadow.

“Get her up,” the woman said, and Rasheeda padded in behind her and took Nyx under the arms and hauled her out.

“What are you doing with her?” Rhys asked.

“That’s not your problem, kid,” the woman said. He knew her voice. Was she one of the bel dames? He squinted. There was something about her, something about her hands…

Rasheeda dragged Nyx out of the cell.

“Where are you taking her?” he persisted.

“Don’t you worry,” the woman said, and when she turned into the light, he knew her. “We’ll come back for you soon enough.”

34

Khos’s father had been afraid of three things: dancing, women, and wine. He had told Khos that what made men from boys was a man’s ability to drive well, shoot straight, and tell the truth.

For thirty-four years, Khos had heeded that advice with a fervor he would call religious. He followed that creed long after he had violated every law in his country and some others besides and found himself pining after women with the sort of blind affection Mhorians were supposed to reserve for those of their own sex. Women were not the same people, his father and uncles said. They did not feel the same, did not love the same. They bled and gave birth and died according to their own rules. Their hearts were great deserts of secrets, and those deserts were not a place a man could ever hope to cross, let alone conquer.

When he shifted to human form in front of the bakkie, he paused only to kick out the rocks from behind the tires and pull on an extra burnous from the back.

Inaya was nursing her son, and she said nothing to him until the bakkie was belching and grinding down the barely passable road, toward the shrine.

“What happened?” she asked.

“They’re dead,” he lied, and the lie tasted bad, like blood.

“Where are we going?”

“Tirhan.”

“Tirhan? Are you mad? How will you get there?”

“I know some women who can get us there.” She would kill him if he asked her to shift. In any case, her son wouldn’t be able to shift at all, even if he’d been born with the talent. Most shifters didn’t get the knack of shifting until puberty, though there were exceptions.

“Where’s Nyx?”

“I told you.” He did not look at her. In her face, he saw too much of Taite. How would he tell Mahdesh? “We go on until dark. I have some money stowed in the back, some side work I’ve been doing. We’ll be safe in Tirhan. Your son will be safe in Tirhan.”

And mine, he thought. My son is safe in Tirhan.

The dust blew in from the road. He once heard that when the men at the front marched in formation, those at the center got dust in their nostrils, and their lungs started to seize. They started getting nosebleeds. It got so bad sometimes that the men just dropped out of formation and died there along the road, casualties not of the war but of the desert.

“Khos,” Inaya said.

“We’ll be all right if we can get in and out of Dadfar fast. We’ll need to pick up a few things, some supplies —”

“Khos?”

He hooked a right past the shrine and back onto the main road. Another bakkie screamed past him, spewing red beetles from its back end. There were armed women inside. He was glad they drove too fast for him to make out their faces. He kept his gaze on the road. The long, too-bright road.

“Once we’re packed, we can—”

“Khos, where’s Nyx?”

He chanced a look at her.

Inaya had pulled the baby from her breast. The boy whined in her lap. Her pale breast hung out the front of her robe. He had a sudden impulse to take the nipple into his own mouth, to close his eyes and ask for comfort.

He gazed back out at the road, shifted pedals.

“We were ambushed. She died.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Khos.”

“This was the only way,” he said. “They’re letting us go. They only wanted Nyx. I can get us out.” He spared a look at her again. Her face… there was something hard in her face, something unexpected. “Inaya, I can save you and your son. He can grow up in Tirhan. There’s no war in Tirhan. No mercenaries. No bel dames. No bounty hunters. You can wear a veil and live properly. You can live safe. You can—”