Kameron Hurley - God's War

But they were out of places to go on such short notice. Rhys had no contacts here, and Anneke said her friend’s teahouse was too conspicuous.

So it was sex and jasmine.

“Are we going to scout out other rooms?” Rhys asked.

“Once Nyx is up for it,” Khos said. “She’ll want a say. She gets jumpy when she’s not in a place she chooses.”

They walked down and got into the bakkie. Khos dropped Rhys at the mosque and pulled out a cigar.

It was the best part of being in Chenja, perhaps the only part that made any of it worth it: There was a mosque at every corner, a call to prayer in every city.

Rhys joined the crowd of others moving into the mosque for prayer. The wave of women was far greater than that of men, a billowing tide of veils and burquas. He joined the trickle of old men, young boys, and the handful of household heads, and performed the ablution with them in the courtyard. He knelt with the other men in a neat row and praised God with them in one voice.

Rhys found a moment of peace in the madness, and he clung to it.

After, Rhys joined Khos in the bakkie. They circled the garret twice to look for movement or some kind of disturbance or for bel dames posting watch along the street. Rhys sent out a swarm of locusts to scout the area. They found nothing in the garret. No bel dames, no mercenaries. Nothing. He tried calling up some wasps to sniff out traps, but there were no local hives except for the one Rhys had set to watch Kine’s papers. He’d have to risk it.

“You want to come up and help me detect explosives?” he asked as Khos parked the bakkie four blocks from the building.

Khos grunted. “How’d I be good at that?”

“All right.” It was worth asking.

Rhys kept his hood up and walked to the door. The building manager had already replaced the lock that Rhys and Khos had broken while trying to get back in for their gear after Nyx was taken.

Rhys pulled out one of his bug boxes and used a squirt beetle to spray the lock. The metal began to dissolve. Rhys pounded the lock free with his burnous-wrapped hand.

He stepped inside.

There was a dirty, pregnant white woman huddled on the stairs. Either she belonged to one of the other tenements or she had snuck in before the lock on the door was replaced. She wore a dirty hijab. He wondered what she was doing out of the foreigners’ ghetto.

Rhys headed up the stairs and made to squeeze past her.

She lifted her head. “Rhys?” she said, and tugged at his trousers.

Rhys’s heart leapt. He reached for his pistols.

“I’m Taite’s sister,” she said frantically. “You remember me? Rhys?”

Her hair was a mess, partially hidden under the dirty hijab. The last time he’d seen Taite’s sister, she wasn’t yet showing her pregnancy. She had been beautiful and haunted. He didn’t remember her being so pale.

“Inaya?” he said. “How did you get over the border?” A half-breed woman passing from Nasheen to Chenja? Across the border?

“I can’t… I’m not….” She let out her breath.

“What’s happened to Taite?”

“Raine came for him,” Inaya said. “Taite told me you were here. I worked the way out.”

“Worked out? How did you run the border?”

“I just… did.”

“Did anyone follow you?”

“Not this time.”

“Not this time?”

“They couldn’t this time. But Raine followed me to Taite, back in Nasheen.” Her eyes began to fill with water. She looked like she’d been crying a good long while.

“Has anyone else gone up past you? How long have you been here?”

“Before dawn. I haven’t seen anyone but the man who came to fix the door.”

“Good.” A Chenjan man with a woman—who was to all eyes foreign—would get him noticed. “Stay here,” he said.

“Don’t leave me, please!” She grabbed his burnous.

He took her hands, leaned toward her. As he touched her, he felt a curious lack, something he could not name. She had the feeling of a woman free from disease or contagion or petty hurt. Completely free. It was a slick, oily feeling.

He released her hands. “It’s all right. I’m getting Khos. We’re just around the corner. Stay here. I’ll come back. I promise.”

She choked back more tears.

Rhys hurried outside. He found Khos and leaned into the bakkie window. “Taite’s sister is here.”

Khos choked on cigar smoke. He put the cigar out on the dash. “Inaya is here?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, fuck.” He started to get out of the bakkie.

“Don’t,” Rhys said. “The three of us walking around together—”

“Her and I together is all right,” Khos said. He’d already gotten out. “I can take her. Is she veiled?”

“She has a hijab.”

“Good enough.”

“Khos, she hates shape shifters.”

“Yeah,” Khos said, and started tying back his dreads. “Did you ever wonder why?”

“I don’t—”

“How do you think a pregnant half-breed crossed the border?”

“Oh,” Rhys said, and then, “ Oh . But that’s impossible.” He remembered taking her hands. He remembered when he first saw her. “I can sense a shifter at three paces. I would have known when I met her.”

Khos shrugged. “You’ve always been a shitty magician.”

“Not when it comes to perception.”

“What happened to her? She’s probably being tailed.”

“Raine got Taite.”

“Shit.”

“Yes.”

“All right. I’ll take her to a diner in the Mhorian district. You finish up what you need to do here and go tell Nyx what’s happening.”

“Where will you be?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll make my own way back to the brothel once she’s secure.”

Rhys left a locust guard on the bakkie, and they both went to the building.

Inaya stood when they entered. When she saw Khos, Rhys saw something in her face harden.

“Khos will take you to a safe place, then we’ll get you back to Nyx. We need to clear things with her,” Rhys said.

Inaya continued to stare at Khos, her expression grim.

Khos held out his hand.

She turned her head away.

“Taite’s probably dead,” Khos said. “You come with me and maybe you live. You stay here and you get cut up by bel dames. You choose.”

Khos walked back to the door and opened it for her.

Rhys waited a tense moment. He saw a complicated play of emotions on Inaya’s face. Then she was moving to the door, awkward with her large belly.

Khos followed her out.

Rhys went upstairs and began the painstaking circle of their garret. It took him another half-hour, looking for traps, to convince himself that they hadn’t been here. He pulled Kine’s papers out of a hole in the floor that he’d covered over with a board and some more debris. He waved away the wasp guard. At least that had worked this time.

Rhys bundled everything into his pack and headed out. He drove the bakkie to the brothel and then went up to talk to Nyx.

Anneke said she was still sleeping.

“I need to get her up,” Rhys said. He made to move to the door, but Anneke stepped in front of him. She barely came to his shoulder, but she had firmed up her jaw. Anneke’s stubborn look.

“Let her be,” Anneke said. “Unless the fucking world is burning.”

“Taite’s sister is here in Chenja. Raine has Taite.”

“Raine?” Anneke said.

He heard Nyx’s voice from inside, yelling for water and a pot to piss in.

Anneke opened the door, and Rhys managed to push past her.

Nyx didn’t look much better. One eye was still swollen shut, and her head looked too big. She had herself propped up on one elbow.

“What the hell is this? You all want to watch me piss?”