Kameron Hurley - God's War

Nyx opened her eyes, but everything was still dark. She heard people talking really close.

“With the information we’ve gotten from Nasheen and what you can get me from Chenja, all I need is to meld my work with what they’re doing in Tirhan, and we’ll have hacked this planet like a blood bank.”

“Don’t know why you had to do it all on the sly.”

“It wouldn’t be sporting to offer two sides of a holy war the same technology. I had to disappear. You and the magicians gave us that. How were we supposed to deal with Chenja when the only docking bays on the planet are in Nasheen? You know how long this has taken us? Decades.”

“Well, you take whatever you want. I give you your pieces of Chenja, and you give me Nyx. I’ve done work with pirates before. Just take your shit off the planet.”

“Our worlds have no shifters, no magicians. The sort of codes you offer us will transform our world. I’ve been fascinated by some of the mutations I’ve seen in Mhoria and Ras Tieg. I can’t imagine the wonders they’re keeping from us in Tirhan.”

“Well, you’re on your own with Tirhan and the red desert. Tomorrow you’ll get your access to the Chenjan compounds. The magicians will arrange it the same way they arranged your disappearance.”

Nyx knew one of the voices, the strange accent. She tried to squint. She wished for sight. A gray wash bled across her senses. She squeezed her eyes shut.

“I am endlessly fascinated with Nasheenian magicians.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

Nikodem laughed. It was a big laugh, far bigger than should have come from the body of such a little woman. “We are even, you and I.”

Nyx opened her eyes.

Light flooded her vision. She squinted again. For a moment, everything was blurry light, too intense. Then she started to make out shapes and figures. The world smelled of damp concrete and ammonia.

Nyx struggled to sit up, but someone had bound her to a cold slab at the wrists and ankles.

“Here she is,” Nikodem said. She wore a black scarf over her hair, but instead of a robe, she wore loose trousers and a long tunic. She had two pistols belted at her hips.

Nikodem placed a hand on Nyx’s arm. Behind the alien, Nyx saw someone else, a tall, brown Nasheenian. White hair, lined face, and his hands… his magician’s hands.

Yah Tayyib.

So this was where everything met up. Yah Tayyib turned back into the shadows and left them before she could speak.

There were big lights overhead. Flies circled them.

Nyx was in some kind of converted storage room. Jars of organs lined the walls—jars covered in cooling bugs—and there were two giant, silvery vats against one wall whose sleek sides pulsed. A long table next to Nyx was covered in instruments. Some tendon worms writhed in a white bowl, trying to escape. She saw a com unit next to the shelving and a dozen bugs chattered in a cold glass case just above it.

Nikodem would keep a laboratory someplace safe. Somewhere magicians and bel dames wouldn’t look. Nyx amended that: where some magicians and some bel dames wouldn’t look.

Another woman walked into view from the shadows along the edges of the room. She wore loose trousers and a thigh-length tie-up tunic that she had failed to knot up top. Her small breasts were bound in purple silk. She was a lean, long-faced woman, with the dark circles under her eyes of a bleeder and the confident bouncing walk of a boxer.

Nyx thought the woman reminded her of someone but couldn’t place her.

The woman cocked her head at Nyx and grinned. “I can see you trying to figure it out,” the woman said.

The grin. Nyx knew that grin, the way it didn’t improve the face. There was less joy in it now.

“I know you,” Nyx said.

“You do,” the woman said.

But the first name Nyx said aloud was “Arran.”

The boy Tej had died for.

“You’re Jaks,” Nyx said. And some old wound throbbed. The old bullet wound in her hip. “Jaksdijah. The boxer. I killed your brother.”

“You remember.” She placed a rough hand on Nyx’s forehead, tenderly, though her eyes and teeth were predatory. She smoothed back Nyx’s hair.

“Nikodem had Yah Tayyib patch you all up, one last time,” Jaks said.

“For what?” Nyx said.

“For me,” Jaks said. “Then for your sisters. I’m told they’ll do far worse, but I wanted you first. It turns out someone on the bel dame council has wanted you for some time.”

Nyx grunted. “Who?”

“I’m just a businesswoman. Your sisters say someone on your council wants you. They said they’ll take you dead if they have to. I needed you alive, but I don’t need to deliver you that way.”

“You can’t do worse to me.” Nyx tried to think, tried to get her muddled brain to push back the gauze of sleep and drugs. She had the queen’s protection. Somebody on the council was going over the queen.

The council was split.

Jaks pulled her hand away, kept grinning. “I have your team,” Jaks said.

“Why should I care?” Nyx tried moving again. Flexed her remaining fingers. She ran through the inventory of her team. Rhys had been in the cell. She figured Khos took off with Inaya, Anneke had been in some firefight with the bel dames. Taite was dead. The only one she was certain they had was Rhys.

“Because I’m going to let you fight me for them.”

“What?”

Nikodem broke in. “You and that other hunter were the last I had to concern myself with. Your little magician had some transmission transcripts on him, I heard, and I needed those in order for my work to continue. Your queen is not as forthright with her information as she should be. I’d have preferred to get them myself. Rasheeda was assisting me.”

“Kine’s records,” Nyx said.

“On my world, you two would never have been called sisters. Impossible, with your differences in class. She wanted to make life. You want to destroy it.”

“You don’t know shit about either of us,” Nyx said.

“I know enough. You have an interesting past, Nyxnissa. It was fortunate that your past served me so well.”

“I’m half dead. You expect me to fight?” Nyx said.

“No,” Jaks said. “I want you dead. At my hand.”

“I have a good team,” Nyx said.

“For a woman who prides herself on her independence, you sure do rely a lot on a bunch of gutter trash,” Jaks said. “Let’s see how well you do without anyone to hide behind.”

“I did well enough with your brother.”

Jaks didn’t punch her; she smacked her, hard, across the face. Blood tickled Nyx’s nose. She sniffed.

Jaks leaned over her. “And what a noble, powerful woman you must be, with the strength and courage to murder a boy in his bed.”

“He was contaminated and he ran.”

“And you didn’t?” Jaks said. “Rasheeda, get her up and taped. I want my fight.” Jaks took Nyx by the chin. “Let’s see how well you do in a fair fight.”

Nyx put those names away in her head. Dahab and Rasheeda. Rasheeda and Luce had been the ones to warn her off the note back in Mushtallah. If they were telling the truth, it meant they’d come from the bel dame council. Fatima, Luce, and Rasheeda had tracked her down and tortured her, looking for Kine’s papers, but not to give them to Nikodem . They had said nothing about Nikodem. They’d said they needed to get the papers out of Chenja. So Luce and Fatima were working for the council members that wanted Nikodem back and Nasheen’s secrets safe, and Dahab was working for Nikodem and Chenja or whatever part of the council believed in whatever Nikodem was doing, and… Rasheeda was playing both sides.

Which was why Rasheeda played dumb when Fatima accused Nyx of killing her sister. Rasheeda had killed Kine for Nikodem, then turned around and played Fatima.