Kameron Hurley - God's War

Nyx opened her mouth to cut her off. The queen kept talking, minor details, and Nyx saw her looking at the globe, checking her notes.

“Your military file says you were put into the care of the magicians for reconstitution.” The queen paused to eye Nyx over, as if looking for evidence that Nyx had once been a charred, blackened husk of a woman. “Is that right?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

She remembered the mud between her toes, the taste of the rain in the yeasty air and the way the wet made the long grass shine. They had been in Chenia, in Bahreha, sweeping for mines. She went barefoot when she was doing sap-per work; she liked to feel the ground under her, the way it responded to her weight. She believed it gave her a better idea of where the Chenjans had set the mines. Her whole squad had been there, sweeping up from behind her. She led, pushing farther into the muddy grass, until she reached the end of the cleared field. That’s where she had gone down on her belly, a knife in one hand and her other palm flat on the ground, a mantis at work. She remembered finding the mine, a flat green disk the size of a bottle cap, the same as half a hundred others she’d cleared from the same field. Nothing special. Nothing different.

She had been good at what she did.

Until that day.

“I had a good magician work on me. The best in the business,” Nyx said. And then he fucked me over and sent me to prison, Nyx thought. But that was in the file too. No need to repeat it.

“I went against the advice of my best counselors in asking you here,” the queen said, and now she wasn’t looking at the globe anymore. She smiled, but it was a too-sweet grandmotherly smile, like she was doing Nyx a favor. A favor she’d want repaid real soon.

It all started to click together in Nyx’s head now. The aliens from Faleen, the queen’s recent abdication, the fact that the queen was calling in Nyx—a hunter, not a bel dame.

This might get tricky.

“Sorry I’m not more popular,” Nyx said. She was better at killing her own people than getting rid of foreigners. Nobody liked to hear that, but it was true.

“They told me that you served some time in prison for black work. You were delivering zygotes to gene pirates.”

Yeah, that one had definitely gone into the file.

“I did,” Nyx said. She was being tested. But for what? Her loyalty to Nasheen? To the queen? The queen’s laws? To what end?

“You have some sympathy for illegal breeding? We have no need for rogue mixers or illegal half-breeds, like Ras Tieg or Druce. Our compounds perform those functions. It’s disappointing to see a woman waste her womb on a single birth.”

“Your mother was a half-breed, wasn’t she?” Nyx asked.

Rhys made a strange little choking sound that might have been a laugh.

“Excuse me,” he said, “may I have some water, Honorable?”

The queen cocked her head at him. She raised a fleshy hand, and Kasbah called in a retainer. They gave him a plain glass of water. Nyx and the queen were silent through the whole performance.

Nyx’s mother and all the rest who were authorized for child rearing had to go through the filtration and inoculation process on the coast. Just as Umayma had been tailored to suit the people on it, the people on Umayma had been tailored to suit the world. Half-breed illegals like Taite had a tougher time getting around. They burned more easily, died sooner, and suffered from more cancers and diseases. Most of Taite’s childhood stories were about things experienced while bedridden. The former queen and her children wouldn’t have had that problem, of course. The high council would have approved their pairing and gotten them the inoculations they needed. It strengthened Nasheenian ties with Ras Tieg.

“I was into black work because it paid all right,” Nyx said, getting back into safer territory.

“More than being a bel dame? Collecting blood debt is rewarding.”

“Only if you’re good at it,” Nyx said. “I wasn’t.”

Rhys shifted in his seat and gave her a pointed look.

“Nyxnissa is being modest,” Rhys said. “She brought in every note she was assigned. Her final note as a bel dame prevented an outbreak of what we now know was blister fever. I believe a similar contaminated soldier was responsible for the deaths of more than four hundred people in Sahlah last year.”

“Indeed,” the queen said. “And who is this Chenjan man in your company, Nyxnissa?”

Nyx said, “He’s my magician.”

“I read that your other partners did not last long while you were a bel dame.”

“It’s a good thing I changed professions, then,” Nyx said.

“Nyxnissa is many things,” Rhys cut in, “including stubborn. Determined. If you’re looking for a woman to stick to a note until the bitter end, you’ve summoned the proper woman. She has a black mark—the black work—yes, but she was also young and foolish then. She’s tempered a good deal since.”

Rhys was a much better liar than she was.

“Stubborn, yeah,” Nyx agreed. “But maybe just stupid.”

“Neither of us has gotten where we are by being stupid,” the queen said.

“Oh, I’ve done some pretty stupid things,” Nyx said. Going to the front had been one of them. This conversation with the queen might be another. “I heard you’ve called in a lot of hunters for this note. Not just me.”

“Hunters, yes. A few mercenaries. Most have already given up the hunt, however.”

“You haven’t called in any bel dames to pursue the note?” Might as well ask, Nyx thought.

“I have my reasons for keeping bel dames out of this particular affair. I need someone….”

“Desperate?” Nyx suggested.

Rhys pressed his lips together and looked at the table. He discreetly covered his mouth with his hand. Being blunt shocked him.

Maybe selling herself as desperate wasn’t a great idea either. Nyx closed her eyes, and behind her eyelids she saw the mine explode again, felt something wet against her skin, a hard slap. Then the whole world was full of filth, offal; she watched half a dozen boys blow apart.

She had been good, once.

Nyx opened her eyes.

Recompense for the apprehension of the terrorist is negotiable .

How negotiable? Getting back her bel dame title negotiable?

Duty. Honor. Sacrifice. My life for a thousand .

“These days, I only risk my life for cash,” Nyx said, opening her eyes.

Duty. Honor. Cash.

“Tell me, why did you volunteer for the front?” the queen asked.

“My older brothers died at the front. When they called up my youngest brother, I joined so I could watch his back.”

“A family woman, then,” the queen said.

“Not really,” Nyx said. “He died of dysentery during basic training.”

When she’d gotten back from the front after being reconstituted, the government had plowed over her mother’s homestead in Mushirah and put up a munitions factory. The locals later burned the factory down and reclaimed the farmland, but her mother had died of Azam fever when she relocated to a breeding farm on the coast. She was dead and buried long before Nyx was reconstituted.

“Let’s go ahead and talk money,” Nyx said.

“Money isn’t an issue,” the queen said. “Bring me the woman I want—alive— and we can negotiate the rest. I have half a dozen estates and twice as many servants, if you wish it. Women, of course.” She looked at Rhys. “Unless you’d prefer half-breeds. We have no end of male half-breeds.”

“Until we start sending half-breeds to the front,” Nyx said. “You want to know why women risk illegal pregnancy and keep pirates elbow deep in organs? Half-breeds who aren’t inoculated—who aren’t rich Firsts—don’t get drafted. They’d fall like rotten wasp nests at the front.”