God's War

Dahab stood at the corner of the ring as Nyx ran past. She shot at her. A chair kicked back and splintered an arm’s length away.

Nyx covered her head and ran toward the other side of the boxing ring, where the magicians had gone.

Rasheeda strode after her.

As she ran, Nyx saw Rhys and Yah Tayyib; a cloud of beetles, flying ants, and wasps circled them. The floor was covered in roaches. She crunched across them on bare feet. She saw someone run past the struggling magicians. Beside the figure ran a tawny dog.

Somebody hit her on the back of the head.

Nyx sprawled on the floor, scattering roaches. The dog barked. Somebody yelled at her. Why was everyone yelling?

Rasheeda stood over her, grasping the broken leg of a chair. She swung it again.

A gun went off.

Nyx looked out into the darkness.

Rasheeda dropped the chair leg, and clutched at her throat. She started to shiver and morph.

Dahab appeared from the other side of the ring, trained her gun on Nyx. “You fucking—”

The pistol went off again. Dahab jerked back. The rifle fell from her hands. A line of blood appeared from a hole at the center of her head.

Rasheeda was squawking and bleeding feathers.

Nyx watched Rhys step out from the darkness, pistol trained on Rasheeda. Rasheeda screamed and finished morphing into a raven. She flapped twice.

Rhys shot her again.

Rasheeda-the-raven dropped like a stone to the floor. The body shivered and changed back into the form of a woman, naked and bleeding, covered in feathers and mucus.

Roaches swarmed over Nyx’s legs. She looked up at Rhys. He’d always been a good shot.

He turned away from her, gun still in hand, still ready, and pointed his pistol toward Yah Tayyib, who was struggling to his feet. Yah Tayyib had sent up a cloud of wasps to obscure him. Rhys bolted into the cloud. He held up his hands to call back the swarm.

Nyx crawled toward Dahab’s crumpled body and found a dagger. She ran after Rhys, into the cloud.

As the cloud began to collapse, Yah Tayyib pulled himself toward the door among the remnants of the swarm.

“No you don’t, old man,” Nyx said.

But he was covered in wasps as he reached the door, and all Nyx had left was a dagger and a powerful desire to fall down and press herself against the cool floor. She tried one last sprint, but her legs buckled. She caught herself with her bad hand.

Oh, fuck it, she thought.

She threw the dagger at Yah Tayyib just as he turned to look back.

The curtain of wasps shuddered. Nyx didn’t hear the dagger hit the floor.

The curtain swayed.

Yah Tayyib collapsed, and the wasps buzzed angrily above his head and began to dissipate. The magician clutched at the dagger in his chest.

For a moment, Nyx was so startled that the dagger had hit him that she stared at him stupidly, awestruck at her own throw. She crawled toward him. He had one hand on the hilt of the dagger, and with the other he dug into his robe, probably looking for a boxed flesh beetle or killer roach.

Nyx grabbed his wrist and pinned him beneath her. She was breathing hard. Blood had congealed on her face. She still outweighed him.

“Who are the bel dames who want Nikodem alive? Why?” she demanded.

“I don’t know.”

“Tell me, old man, or I’ll tear your head off with my bare hands.”

“Nyxnissa, I do not know.”

“Who told you to bring Nikodem here?”

“She came to me with an offer. Rasheeda and Dahab said they spoke for the council,” he said. His mashed nose was bloody from the hit he’d taken from Rhys, and moisture collected at the edges of his dark eyes. An old man. A war hero. One of the few who came back, making backyard deals with bel dames. “They told me the queen was selling out Nasheenian samples in exchange for help from the aliens with the extermination of the bel dame council. With the council out of the way, the queen will have no one to argue against her weapons programs.”

“What?”

“This is what they told me.”

“The queen told me that Nikodem can end the war.”

“With whatever technology Nikodem’s people give us in exchange for our genetic material, no doubt that is true. The queen will also gain absolute power over Nasheen, and then Chenja. Then the world.”

“You expect me to believe that a magician who’s spent time at the front moved without knowing what everybody’s cards were? You think I’m stupid?”

“I’ve always thought you foolish.”

She gripped his throat with her good hand.

He gasped and squirmed beneath her. “You have the potential to be more than you are,” he whispered. “You always have. And you chose this. How did I fail you?”

“Fail me?” she said, disbelieving. “Fail me? You fucking betrayed me. You acted like some kind of fucking father from a historical drama and then sent me to prison. How did you fail me? You fucking killed me! You took away everything I had, you fucking fuck!”

“Nyx?”

Rhys’s voice.

“Nyx, let him up,” Rhys said. He had walked up beside her. She saw his bare feet.

“I intend to eat him,” Nyx said.

“Clever,” Rhys said. “Then you can be just like Rasheeda.”

Nyx looked up at him. He had pulled Jaks’s neglected tunic over himself. It was a little short, but otherwise a good fit. It was like Rhys, to think of modesty in the middle of a firefight. He still had a gun in his right hand.

“I’m not letting anyone walk out of here,” Nyx said.

Rhys grimaced. “Have I murdered monsters only to save something worse?”

Khos padded in from the doorway in front of her, human again and naked. “Unless you want the others coming after you, you better cut off their heads,” Khos said, “just to be sure.”

Nyx eyed Rhys. There was something in his face that had not been there before. He looked at her differently. His look made her feel cold.

“You and I need to talk,” she said.

“We do,” Rhys said. He pressed a hand to her shoulder. “Let Yah Tayyib up. It’ll take him time to recover. He won’t attack us alone. By the time he’s fit, we’ll be away from here.”

Nyx kept her hand on the magician’s throat. She gritted her teeth. “Rhys—”

“Let go,” Rhys said. He squeezed her shoulder. “It’s all right. We’re all right. Let go.”

She slowly released her hold on Yah Tayyib.

Rhys helped her stand.

Khos got out of the doorway and let the magician stumble into the corridor. The dagger still jutted from his chest. Where would he go now? To his Chenjan friends? The ones who were going to help him get Nikodem into their compounds? Would they give him some kind of a life here? As a Nasheenian man? A Nasheenian war veteran?

“Where’s Anneke?” Nyx asked.

“Here, boss.”

Anneke strode over. She had a pistol in her hand. “I got the alien,” she said.

“Dead or alive?” Nyx asked.

“Don’t know for sure. Pretty dead, likely. But you know how it is.”