God's War (21 page)

Nyx poked around the kitchen, found
a couple of drawers open. Had Kine been looking for a weapon? Had she known
there was someone in the flat?

Nyx checked behind all the doors as
she moved, cleared each room. Kine had put up blank-faced portraits of the
prophet in the living area, and hung some gaudy inscriptions from the Kitab
alongside them. In her bedroom, though, Kine kept pictures of the five of them,
her kin, embedded in the walls—glowing, partially animated portraits of better
days. If you got too close, you could see that what made the images move were
multi-colored layers of rug lice. The faces of their brothers laughed back at
Nyx: Amir, the oldest by an hour; brilliant Fouad; and skinny little Ghazi, the
runt.

By seventeen, all the boys were
dead.

Nyx pushed open the bathroom door.

Kine lay in the tub, mouth open, one
arm flung over the edge. The water was rusty and full of shit. The room stank.
Congealed blood blackened the floor.

Nyx got close enough to see that
most of the blood had come from a long tear in Kine’s gut. Her bowels had let
loose—before or after she expired, Nyx didn’t care to know. Kine’s eyes were
black holes of blood and eye pulp. They’d finished her off with two shots to
the head.

There was blood in the bowl of the
sink. They’d washed their hands, after.

Under the sink was a single white
feather.

Nyx looked at her sister’s body for
a long minute. Nyx’s palms were wet. The flat was cool.

She dared not make any calls from
inside the flat. They’d likely bugged it.

Nyx did a pass through the last
room, Kine’s study. They’d gone through the desk, opened up jars and boxes of
bugs. The dead and dying insects littered the floor or clung to the ceiling.
Smears of velvet black—blue, violet—ran across the floor. Torn organic papers,
bleeding those same colors, were crumpled and scattered around the window.

What did Kine have that they’d
wanted? If the only reason they killed her was to get to Nyx, why go through
the—

We’re
all trying to cure the war.

Nyx turned abruptly and ran back to
the bedroom. She felt along the edges of one of the animated photos of her,
Kine, and their brothers until she found the catch. The depiction was not
soldered to the wall. It popped free and swung out.

For a conservative like Kine, images
of living things of any kind were vulgar, obscene. An affront to God. If she
had them around, it was to tell somebody something. Or remind herself of
something.

Inside the hidden cabinet were
Kine’s real records: papers and bug recordings of her work in the compounds.
Nyx found a satchel and stuffed the lot of them into it without looking. Rhys
would help her sort them out. She put the picture back in place. Her siblings
grinned at her. Kine winked. Nyx wiped down the frame.

On her way out, she cleaned the
faceplate as well. She walked quickly but didn’t dare run.

Back at the mechanic’s, she found a
call box. She flipped the switch that agitated the bugs and plugged in the
pattern for the keg.

The bugs chattered for a long time.
She heard someone on the other side of the building and ducked behind the box.

“Pickup, you fuckers,” she muttered.
She saw a sudden clear image of Anneke with her head blasted in, Taite with a sword
through his gut, Rhys’s hands—

“Peace be unto you,” Rhys’s voice
carried to her from the desert.

“You listen to me,” she said. Her
voice shook. She stilled it. “You tell Taite to get his sister to a safe place
and cut free his boy. Tell Khos to get his whores to another house, and if
Anneke gives a shit about anybody, you tell her to get them a train ticket.
Anybody we care about, get them out of the city or out of their places. And
start packing up our stuff. You know the regrouping point. You put a filter up
and get out of there. You hear me?”

“Are you all right?”

“Kine’s dead.”

He inhaled sharply. “Nyx—”

“You go get anybody you care about,
Rhys. Tell them to clear out.”

“Everyone I care about is on this
team,” Rhys said.

“Then they need to move,” Nyx said,
and hung up.

Burst sirens wailed out over Punjai;
brilliant green burst tails lit up the black sky. Taite and Khos walked
quickly, side by side, through the Mhorian district, one of the few parts of
Punjai where neither of them stood out much. The faces were paler, the noses
flatter, the shoulders broader, and most of the women on the street covered
their hair with white scarves. A pity, really. The Mhorian district was the one
place Taite ever saw hair that wasn’t black.

“How are we for time?” Khos asked.

Taite shook his head. He knew they
were running a little late, and he knew he should have gone to his sister’s
first, but he had set up this night with Mahdesh three days before. Mahdesh had
been unreachable since then, out poking around some fallen space debris in the
desert. Taite needed to speak to him in person. Inaya would have to wait.

Taite stepped over the threshold and
into the Lunes Dansantes, a Ras Tiegan café that served Mhorian honeyed tea and
kosher food for Khos in addition to saucy, spicy Ras Tiegan cuisine.

They both took off their sandals and
piled them at the door with the others. Inside, the light was low, fresh glow
worms in glass, and a woman sat with a small string band on a raised platform
at the back of the café, singing a Ras Tiegan love song in a high, clear voice.

Taite looked out over the heads of
the cigar-smoking crowd, a mixed group of men and women, mostly expatriates
like him and Khos. He saw Mahdesh’s familiar shaggy head and slim profile and
felt a surge of relief. Of course he would be here. Of course everything was
all right.

“I’ll get us some drinks,” Khos
said.

Taite nodded, and picked his way
among the tables to Mahdesh’s side.

Mahdesh caught sight of him and
grinned. He had the sort of grin that could fill a room. A smile that made
Taite feel as if he were the only man in Nasheen.

They touched lips to cheeks, twice.
Mahdesh kept hold of his elbow, still grinning. He was a little taller than
Taite, broader in the shoulders, and had the clear, pale skin and even teeth of
a half-breed inoculated Mhorian. Mhorians had no qualms about inoculating their
half-breeds.

“Dangerous night?” Mahdesh asked,
nodding toward Khos as they sat.

Taite sat close enough so their
knees touched. It was as much prolonged public contact as they dared, even in
the Mhorian district. Some Nasheenian women took violent offense to overly
friendly men, no matter where they sat.

“Yes, I have to be quick tonight,”
Taite said.

Mahdesh leaned back in his chair,
winked. “I’m getting used to that.”

“We’re having some trouble with a
note.”

“You mean Nyx is having some trouble
with a note.”

Taite swallowed. “Yes.”

Khos arrived with drinks. Clear
liquor for Taite and Mahdesh, amber honeyed tea for himself.

“How are you, stargazer?” Khos
asked. He held out a hand to Mahdesh. They clasped elbows, and Khos leaned in
and kissed his cheeks.

“I’ve been better. The city’s too
hot for me.”

“It’s a good time to get out, then,”
Khos said, and sat. “You told him yet?” he asked Taite.

“Nyx’s note is in trouble,” Taite
said. “You and Inaya should leave the city tonight. Nyx’s sister was killed.
She thinks whoever did it may be coming after our kin next.”

“Are you going to hold my hand,
Taitie?” Mahdesh asked.

Taite felt himself redden. “I—”

Mahdesh reached under the table,
squeezed his knee, and sobered. “I know. I’ll be all right. What does your
sister think about it?”

“We’re going there after,” Taite
said.

Mahdesh raised a brow. “Hope Khos is
staying in the bakkie”

Khos snorted. “I’m doing it for
Taite.”

“She doesn’t hate you, Khos. You
just make her nervous,” Taite said.

“She hates me. She hates herself.”

“Don’t say that,” Taite said. God,
his sister. “She needs to be looked after, all right? Khos, don’t fuck with me
on this. Anything happens to me, look after her, will you?”

Mahdesh shook his shaggy head. “When
will you let her grow up, Taitie? She’s nearly a decade your senior.”

“Take care of her,” Taite repeated,
still looking at Khos.

Khos shook his head. “Come on,
you’ll be fine. It’s why I’m out tonight.” He pulled down his tea in one
swallow. “You two catch up. I’ll meet you outside. That singer’s voice grates.”

He stood, and moved back through the
crowd.

Taite looked back at Mahdesh. Their
eyes met. Mahdesh’s were steely gray, large and liquid. Taite wanted to stay
there forever.

“This note… Inaya…”

“I understand,” Mahdesh said. “I
have some work to do in Faleen at the docks, muddling over some repairs and
doing some translation. I can bide my time until things here cool down. The
border’s been a little warm anyway.”

Taite nodded. He reached for his
drink and realized his hand was shaking. Why was he always such a coward when
it came to these things? Why not say it all out loud?

Because they could kill us for it,
Taite thought.

Mahdesh put his hand over Taite’s.
“Go on. She needs you more than I do. I’ll be all right.”

Taite nodded. He stood. “We’ll be at
a safe house. I’m not sure for how long.”

“Contact me when you can.”

“I will.”

Taite wanted to kiss him. The
singer’s voice trailed off. The café patrons began to clap. Taite turned away
and pulled up his burnous, even though it was dark and too warm. He didn’t want
Mahdesh to see his face.

Taite left Khos with the bakkie and
walked the two blocks over from the Mhorian district into the Ras Tiegan
district. The change was subtle: a narrowing of the lanes, brighter colors out
on the balconies, and the smell of curry that slowly came to dominate the
stench of the streets as he walked.

A gang of women sat outside a bar
and jeered at him as he passed. Most women didn’t bother him, even in the Ras
Tiegan quarter, but he’d had some bad nights since he arrived in Nasheen a
decade before: fourteen years old and starving, his only talent a
predisposition for mucking around effectively inside the mechanical and organic
bits of a com unit.

There were more men in this part of
the city, but the crime rate was about the same as anywhere else in Nasheen. In
Nasheen, Chenja, and most parts of Tirhan, stealing got you a limb chopped off,
and a second offence barred you from replacing it. Blinding was popular for
black market offenses, and he had gone just once to a public execution where a
woman had her head cut off for killing a local magistrate who’d come to
register her son for the draft. There had been a crowd at the execution, but
they had not jeered or clapped or reveled in their bloodlust the way he thought
they would. No, it was a sober occasion, somber, like a funeral. After, they
had wrapped the woman in white and set her on fire.

Fewer people stayed for that part.

He found his sister’s tenement
building—a squat brick-and-tile construction that must have dated back a
century. Most of the tile had been stolen, leaving wounds of brick and mortar
behind. The only renovations going on in Punjai were on the gun towers in the
mosques and the military headquarters to the south.

Taite walked past the building on
his first pass. He hung around the corner and waited to see if anyone had
followed him. His parents had taught him a good deal before they’d managed to
smuggle him out of Ras Tieg just ahead of the military police. He remembered
how black the night was; remembered the protestors on the streets, the pictures
of mutilated babies, the men on their podiums shouting, telling the crowd that
the women of Ras Tieg were murderers and adulterers. He remembered the
children—boys and girls—handing out pamphlets of crushed fetuses and mangled
children, remembered their innocent smiles, as if they were handing out hard
candy.

When he decided there was no one
following, Taite buzzed his sister’s place and waited some more.

Inaya was slow coming down the
stairs. He had managed to get her passage into Nasheen eight months before by
calling in a lot of favors and relying on some of Nyx’s friends in customs.
Inaya had been roughed up at the border crossing but said she would never be
able to recognize her attackers. There’d been too many. Whether her pregnancy
was her former husband’s or some border tough’s, she never said. He had not
asked. She was a woman of a hundred secrets—a Ras Tiegan woman—and he let her
keep them. The last time they’d seen each other, they were ten years younger,
and she, eight years his senior, was rushing through a hasty marriage of
necessity while their friends’ houses burned.

They both knew she could have made
an easier crossing into Nasheen, but she would have rather killed herself than
given in to shifting. For any reason. No matter their parents’ politics, Inaya
thought shifters were dirty and diseased. She thought their miscarriages of
nonshifting children were murder. She thought her mother was a murderer for not
getting Taite and her inoculated, for not somehow saving the five bloody
fetuses that their mother had lost and mourned for five bloody years.

Taite hadn’t blamed their mother for
shifting at night, going out to copulate with dogs, living some other life in
some other form. He understood something of it, that need to escape one’s body.

He had never been able to shift, and
a lack of shifting ability for many Ras Tiegans resulted in poor health. Nyx
liked to tell him he was allergic to air, and she was only half joking. Much of
his memory of Ras Tieg was of a dark room, breathlessness, and the smell of
stale urine in a pot.