Yah Tayyib stood in Jaks’s corner. He was hard-faced, and neatly dressed.
“This whole thing your idea?” Nyx asked. She looked at her own empty corner. “I get a cut magician? Or we still going to play this pretending I’m in boxing shape and have a whole right hand?”
“That’s not the point,” Jaks said.
“Give her the boy,” Nikodem said. “It will remind her of what she’s fighting for.”
Nyx eyed Yah Tayyib. “This clean work?” she asked him, and couldn’t keep the bite from her voice. “You pinch on me for running a womb for a couple of gene pirates and now you’re selling us all out to some space pirate? Who do you think you’re saving, old man?”
“I’m ending your war,” Yah Tayyib said.
“I spent time at the front too, old man. Don’t pretend only you boys are martyrs.”
“I have never pretended,” he said.
“You smuggled Nikodem into Chenja. Why?”
“I owe you no explanations.”
“You fucking patched me back together, old man. You gave me back a life. You
“Quiet, please,” Nikodem called from her table.
Nyx swung around and peered out at the darkness. She could barely make out Nikodem’s form. “Then give me some idea! Give me some reason why I’m dying. Why you’re willing to slaughter my team! Why you’re staging this bullshit for some jilted kid’s benefit.”
“Shut up and fight,” Jaks said.
“I don’t even have any fucking gloves,” Nyx said. She was buying time for Rhys to recover from the drugs now, but she didn’t think they knew that yet. “Why not slit my throat and be done with it?”
“Because tomorrow Yah Tayyib gets me into the Chenjan breeding compounds,” Nikodem said. “Because after that day my people will have all we need from your shitty little world. When we’re gone, you can stay here and destroy one another far more efficiently. Then I go and win the war for my people.”
“Your sisters know about that?” Nyx said.
“Sisters? They’re just here for show. When I go home, it won’t be with those pawns.”
“You want a good show?” Nyx said. “You want a real going-away? You give me a proper magician.”
“He’ll work old-fashioned,” Jaks said. “No magic, but he can keep you from bleeding in your face. Maybe get me a little longer with you.”
“You never could accept your death,” Yah Tayyib said.
Nyx turned on him. “You’re right. That’s why I came to you. I
“A bel dame can trust no one.”
“I’m not a bel dame anymore.”
It was the first time she’d ever said it out loud.
Dahab pushed Rhys up into the ring. Under the lights, he looked bigger, his shoulders broader. In the ring, for a brief moment, Nyx could have mistaken him for a fighter.
Nyx stepped toward him, grabbed his wrist with her bad hand. “You can do this?” she said softly.
“I’ve spent much of my life in one ring or another,” he said. He looked her in the eye. She held the look for a long time.
God, why didn’t I find you sooner? she thought.
Jaks tossed a pair of gloves across the ring. “Come now, bel dame,” she said.
Nyx handed the gloves to Rhys. “You lace them on,” she said, and bent forward so their foreheads touched. He did not draw away. So close, he smelled of blood and sweat and something even more intimate. Perhaps it was fear she smelled, or the biting chemical odor of a magician. But it was something uniquely Rhys. I’ll miss you, she thought.
“Keep the laces on the left loose,” she said. “I want to be able to get them off with my teeth. You know.”
“I know,” he said.
Rhys slipped on her gloves and took his time lacing them up. He was good with the knots on the right, but he tied a simple bow on the left and tucked the ends into the seam of her left glove.
“Good?” he said.
“Good.”
Nyx was in no shape for a fight. She was worse off now than she had been back at Husayn’s gym. She wanted to believe that Jaks hadn’t had much time to box either, but as she looked across the ring and saw Yah Tayyib take off Jaks’s coat, that hope went right out of her head.
Jaks was lean and muscled, and under the lights the contours of her body were that much more dramatic. She was also young, six or seven years younger than Nyx, and though she had lived a hard life, there was no way she’d been rebuilt as many times, in as many ways, as Nyx had.
Nyx didn’t look out at Rhys or Anneke. And she would deal with Yah Tayyib later.
She looked at Jaks.
Yah Tayyib was rubbing Jaks’s arms and shoulders. Nyx had no illusions that this would be a proper fight with proper rules. She saw no one at the buzzer. It was going to be one long round, with a moment or two for Rhys to patch her back up if she got too bloody. Maybe.
Nyx stood with her hands down and her left toe forward. She waited.
Jaks didn’t put in a mouthpiece, and she didn’t offer one to Nyx.
“Don’t get hit,” Rhys said.
“I’ll try to keep that in mind,” Nyx said.
Yah Tayyib took his hands off Jaks and waved at the buzzer. A thousand hard-backed beetles exploded into movement, sounding the bell.
Jaks leapt forward.
Nyx left her hands down until Jaks was within hitting distance. Then she ducked and blocked Jaks’s wide, wild left hook. As Nyx ducked, she pivoted behind Jaks and caught her with a left jab to the back of the head.
The dull edge of the blade she held in her fist jarred her palm. She sucked in a breath, stepped back into a fighting stance.
Jaks stumbled and turned and moved away, reassessed.
They circled, hands up.
Nyx watched Jaks gnaw on strategy. She had opened too eager, just like she did eight years ago, hungry for a quick fight, for first blood.
Most people who watch a fight think it’s all about the muscle: hitting harder, moving faster. And, yeah, sometimes it looked that way. But telling somebody that you won a fight by hitting the other person harder and more often was like telling somebody that the way you kept from drowning was by moving your arms and legs.
Once two fighters knew how to fight, they stood pretty even. What made one win and the other fall wasn’t about blood or sinew or sweat. It was about will.
Jaks was old enough to know that.
So was Nyx.
Nyx dropped her hands again.
Jaks made as if to hesitate, then stepped in and fired.
Nyx ducked and blocked. The blow glanced off her forearm. She had only enough strength to take a couple of good hits. She needed most of these to bounce off, but she needed them to bounce off in a way that made Jaks think she was winning. Nyx was tired. Not all of the hunched posture was feigned. Her body ached. It didn’t feel like her body anymore. Hadn’t for a long time. She sometimes wondered who she belonged to: the queen, the magicians, the front; Raine had thought she belonged to him, thought he had some responsibility.
But in the end it was just Nyx in a ring.
Jaks sent out a double right jab, a left cross. Nyx kept her hands up. Nothing got through, but she let Jaks keep at it, keep pounding at her forearms and shoulders. Jaks tucked in an uppercut to Nyx’s midsection.
Nyx huffed air and stepped left, tried to get herself out of the corner Jaks was trying to push her into.
“Hit me!” Jaks yelled at her. She batted at Nyx’s raised hands, and Nyx peered between her gloves at Jaks’s pinched face. “Hit me, you fucking coward!”
