God's War

“Your brother was the one who wouldn’t fight,” Nyx said, pushing back at her with her gloves. “Your brother was the coward.”

Jaks swung, a wide right hook, double left jab, right uppercut. The combination was too fast for Nyx. The uppercut caught Nyx hard under the chin. She fell back and caught herself on one knee.

Jaks brought a gloved fist down. Nyx rolled out of the way and staggered back up, brought up her hands. Sweat poured into her eyes. The bell didn’t sound. It had been longer than two or three minutes. Too long.

That was all right. Nyx didn’t intend to fight fair either.

“Look at you, broken up over a dead boy,” Nyx gasped. She sucked more air, tried to concentrate on her breathing. Remember to breath, remember to breath….

You kept yourself from drowning by breathing air.

Jaks swung again, a wild swing. Nyx caught her in the belly with a hard left uppercut, pummeled the side of her face with a left hook.

Jaks reeled and swung. She caught Nyx across the ear.

Nyx grabbed her in an embrace, locked their bodies together.

“You rigged this whole thing for a dead kid, a coward,” Nyx murmured in Jaks’s ear, “and you’re no better.”

Jaks pushed her away and tried forcing her backward. Nyx pushed back.

The lights were starting to flicker. Nyx thought maybe her sight was going. She tried to blink the sweat from her eyes. Her face was starting to swell up. She needed both eyes. She tried to protect the bad side, the one with the swelling eye, but Jaks saw what she was trying to do and swung away at that side with her right.

Nyx stumbled again. She saw darkness at the edges of her eyes. Jaks pounded at her. Still with the right.

Nyx staggered back, put her hands up again. Blood leaked from a wound just above her eye. She blinked, rubbed the side of her face against her shoulder, smeared blood.

“Let me clean her up!” Rhys yelled. “Let me clean her up!”

The lights were flickering. What was that? Nyx tried to look up, but Jaks was on her again.

Nyx hung back on the ropes and let Jaks pummel her shoulders and forearms. She let the force of the blows bleed into the ropes.

“You want to know how he died?” Nyx said. “He was a bleeder, just like you.”

But of all the things she remembered, vividly, from her last night as a bel dame, the death of Jaks’s brother was not one of them.

Just another boy, another body, to Nyx.

But to Jaks: the world.

What had Nyx done, what had she given up, for her brothers? Her mother?

Jaks pounded at her again. Sweat poured down her face. Her body shone.

Nyx’s arms were tired. She waited out the shaking and the pain, kept taking the hits. She didn’t look directly at Jaks’s face but kept her eye on the left side of Jaks’s body, just below the collarbone. She watched the muscles move there from between her gloves. She didn’t need her peripheral vision so long as she had a good look at the way Jaks’s muscles and tendons moved under the skin.

She remembered to breathe.

“You can hit me harder than that,” Nyx said.

Jaks’s assault slowed down. She was losing momentum.

Nyx used the ropes to push herself up against Jaks. She forced the younger woman back and yelled at her, “He bled out like a dog.”

The swing came from the right. Nyx blocked and saw her move left.

Bel dames didn’t trust anyone.

Lucky she wasn’t a bel dame.

Nyx dropped her guard on her right and ducked and turned her head. Instead of smashing her in the temple, Jaks’s left caught Nyx full force on the upper right side of her head. The hardest part of her head.

Light exploded behind Nyx’s eyes. She dropped to her knees.

Jaks cried out and fell back, clutching her bad hand to her chest.

Nyx curled over her hands and pulled at the knot on her left glove with her teeth. Her head spun. Black juddered across her vision.

Jaks dropped next to Nyx and grabbed her by her butchered hair, jerked at her throbbing head.

Nyx wedged her left glove between her knees.

Jaks forced Nyx to face their audience. “You could have cut and run from your team. You could be in Tirhan now, living on that beach you told me about in that shitty cantina outside Punjai. But you didn’t run, and this is where it left you.”

Jaks’s left hand was limp at her side. She spoke through her teeth, whispered into Nyx’s ear, “You think dying for your team makes you a hero? No, Nyx, heroes live for what they love. It’s what separates the heroes from the cowards. Arran and I weren’t the cowards. You’re the coward.”

She let go of Nyx.

“What do you think I’ve been doing my whole life?” Nyx said. “Giving up?”

Nyx jerked her left hand free of her glove and caught Jaks in the throat with her left elbow.

Jaks choked and clutched at her throat. She made a clumsy swing with her bad hand, but the knock on Nyx’s head had broken something deep, and when her bad hand hit Nyx’s head, it felt like a halfhearted swipe, a slap.

Somebody yelled something. A dog barked.

Nyx pinned Jaks. She brought the razor blade across Jaks’s throat. It was a ragged cut, rough and desperate. She pressed hard, sliced. Blood ran, Jaks

thrashed, and Nyx sprang for the edge of the ring.

Rhys leapt across the ring and punched Yah Tayyib full in the face. It was a beautiful, unexpected hit, and the old man toppled off the edge of the ring. Rhys jumped after him. Nyx rolled under the ropes and came up in a crouch among the startled spectators, drooling spit and blood.

People were moving, just shadows in the dark. Nyx was momentarily blind after stepping from the glare of the ring and into the dim. Nyx moved before her eyes adjusted. She heard Rasheeda snicker. Nikodem was already standing. Yah Tayyib yelled.

Dahab’s gun went off.

Nikodem drew one of her pistols. Nyx slammed the palm of her hand into Nikodem’s face. Nikodem fell back onto the table.

Nyx pulled a poisoned needle from her hair and jabbed it hard into Nikodem’s arm.

Anneke still lay under the table. Nyx used the razor blade to saw Anneke’s bonds. She gave Anneke the razor blade. Anneke crawled to her feet.

A tawny dog darted past them. Khos? Where had he come from?

Nyx yelled at the dog. “The gun on the floor! Give Rhys the gun!” She didn’t see Rhys. Where was Rhys? She squinted and wiped the blood and sweat from her eyes.

The dog retrieved the gun with its mouth and took off across the dim room.

Nikodem was holding a hand to her gushing nose while stumbling toward the door.

Nyx heard Rasheeda snickering and looked up.

Rasheeda carried no weapons. She merely reached out and clawed at Nyx’s face. Nyx stumbled back and fell.

Anneke scrambled past Rasheeda toward Nikodem and the other pistol.

“I’m hungry, sister,” Rasheeda said. She stalked forward like a cat.

Nyx tried to get up, but the floor was bloody and slick. She grabbed one of the chairs.

Rasheeda leapt at her.

Nyx got to her feet and pulled the chair between them.

Rasheeda grabbed the chair and held it up.

Nyx ran.