Anneke slung her gun over her shoulder and put her knee into Nikodem's back. She bound her with sticky bands and then gagged her.

"Move, move," Nyx said. "Everybody heard that G.o.dd.a.m.n shotgun."

They fled into the hall. A few doors stood half-open, and when the residents saw them, all the doors swung shut. Nyx supposed that if she had seen herself running down the hall dragging a gagged woman ahead of somebody carrying a shotgun, she would have shut her door too.

Nyx pushed Nikodem down the stairs. If they wanted her dead or alive, they wouldn't mind getting her with bruises.

On the second floor, Nikodem stopped walking and sagged. Nyx threw the woman over her shoulder, and her whole body screamed at her. She stumbled. Nikodem tried to bite her ear.

Anneke punched Nikodem.

They ran down the stairs, and pushed out onto the first floor. Order keepers generally took anywhere from eight to forty-five minutes to show up after a call was placed, depending on the neighborhood. The on-premises security would be heading up.

Anneke sprinted down the corridor and pushed open the back door. The alarm went off.

Nyx stumbled into the hot, dusty parking lot.

Khos waited in the buzzing bakkie. "Inaya says the keepers are two minutes away."

Nyx wrapped Nikodem in a cooling tarp, and stuffed her into the trunk. Nyx squeezed in up front next to Anneke.

Khos. .h.i.t the speed but slowed once they cleared the parking lot, to avoid suspicion on the street.

"She alive?" Khos asked.

"Does it matter?" Nyx said.

Anneke clenched her jaw and squinted at Nyx.

"You should be happy," Nyx said.

"You about bit it that time, boss."

"Not for the first time."

"No," Anneke said, "but it was the first time you almost bit it for doing something real stupid."

"You all want Taite back? This is how we do it." Her leg throbbed. She had f.u.c.ked up her ankle on the stairs, and Nikodem was a lot tougher to carry with only three fingers on her right hand.

"Khos, you have your wh.o.r.es tell Raine's messenger we're ready to make a deal for Taite."

"I'll drop you off and drive over there. You both all right?"

"Swimming," Nyx said.

She had her bounty. She should be full of grim optimism, but Taite was in pieces and Rhys was missing-and she had no f.u.c.king idea how she was going to pull a slick switch for Taite and get Nikodem back across the border alive.

Good thing she didn't intend on delivering her that way.

31.

Khos unloaded Nikodem from the back. Her legs were bruised from trying to kick out the trunk. Once she had a clear view of him, she kicked out at him too.

Her nose was already bloodied from a hit she had taken from Nyx or Anneke. Khos. .h.i.t her again, hard this time. She went limp.

Khos put her over his shoulder, shut the trunk, and walked up the long flight of stairs to their room. Nyx was just pushing in the door. Khos heard a shriek.

Nyx swore, and Anneke darted inside.

Khos pounded up the stairs.

Inside, Nyx was on the floor with Inaya on top of her. Inaya screamed and pulled at Nyx's butchered hair. Nyx caught both of Inaya's wrists and told her to calm down.

"You G.o.dless wh.o.r.e!" Inaya cried. "You dirty G.o.dless wh.o.r.e!"

Anneke walked over to a soggy box sitting on the tea table. The unmistakable reek of death clung to it. Anneke used the end of her shotgun to open the lid of the box. She grimaced, and slid the lid back on.

Khos deposited Nikodem on the divan and pushed Anneke aside. She grunted.

"You b.l.o.o.d.y b.i.t.c.h! You b.l.o.o.d.y b.i.t.c.h!"

As Khos reached for the lid, Inaya's voice began to fade. The baby was crying. Crying and crying.

He pushed the lid back and let it fall to the table.

Khos half-hoped, right up to that moment, that it would be Rhys's head.

But, no, the head inside the box had been severed from its body recently enough that it was still recognizable as Taite's. b.l.o.o.d.y, covered in sand, discolored, yes... but still the head of his friend.

Khos felt unsteady. He pushed Nikodem's bruised legs out of the way and sat down on the divan.

Sound started to come back-the screaming baby, Inaya's sobbing. Nyx was speaking in low tones, and when he swung his head to look at her, he saw her kneeling next to Inaya.

"I'm not perfect," Nyx said.

"You b.l.o.o.d.y b.i.t.c.h," Inaya murmured.

Khos wanted to take Inaya into his arms and say something profound and comforting, but a part of him still wanted this all to be some kind of mistake. Some part of him still wanted Nyx to be right. He wanted them to win.

But Nyx was just a woman-no more, no less. He turned to Inaya, to hold her, but her body language warned him off. He feared that if he touched her, she would claw him.

"Who brought it here?" Khos asked.

"Some magician," Inaya said.

Khos felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. "A what?"

Nyx stood. "A magician? You're sure?"

"Yes, they all look alike," Inaya said, wiping at her wet face. "What does it matter who brought it?"

"What did she say?" Nyx said.

Inaya's expression got dark, mean. "She said that if you want your own magician back, you're to meet him in Bahreha. She left a map."

Anneke pushed the box aside and found a bloodied newsroll beside it. "Got it, boss."

Nyx took it from her, and unrolled it.

A misty image took shape in front of her. Raine's familiar face formed and spoke.

"You've taken up a better note," he said, and Khos felt his skin crawl at the sound of Raine's voice. It brought back memories of a service he liked even less than his current one.

"But you're still only a bloodletter," Raine continued. "If Taite didn't get your attention, maybe your dancer will. You don't know what you're doing with this woman, just as you never knew what you were doing as a bel dame. You were more of a terrorist than the boys you brought home. I'm waiting for you in Bahreha. Meet us here-" Raine's face dissipated, and a map of the terrain surrounding Bahreha materialized. The image eclipsed, and Khos saw a familiar landform: a low valley set between two rocky hills just west of them, in Bahreha. "Trade her for him, and what's left of your team goes home alive. If you aren't there by dusk tonight, I kill your black dancer. And then I kill the rest of you. I offer you this because of our former partnership.

"Your sins don't make you cleaner than I, Nyxnissa. I kill for the good of Nasheen, but you kill indiscriminately, with malice. That is the difference between us. Now I ask you to think of our country, our boys. Think of ending the war."

The particles making up the image began to come apart and diffused through the room until nothing was left of Raine's message but the smell of burned lemon.

"How the f.u.c.k did he know we had her?" Khos said.

Nyx threw the empty newsroll across the room. "Because our f.u.c.king transceivers are hackable," she spat. "Anneke, pack up. Now."

"But, boss-"

"Now."

"Boss, we ain't going to trade, are we? Taite's dead. Rhys's dead too, wager. I worked for Raine. That old man-"

"You think he hurt-" Khos began.

"Don't think about Rhys," Nyx said, and something came into her voice, something that twisted Khos's gut, because it sounded like fear. "Pack. Both of you. We're going to Bahreha. Anneke, did you pack my sword?"

"I wasn't wasn't thinking about Rhys," Khos said. "I was thinking about Mahrokh and her house." thinking about Rhys," Khos said. "I was thinking about Mahrokh and her house."

"Don't worry about the wh.o.r.es."

"I got it wrapped up in the back, boss. You want it?"

"Yeah. You got the baldric too?"

Khos gritted his teeth. He walked past Taite's rotting head to get his rifle. Anneke shot past him, stuffing extra transceivers into a gunnysack.

"If he knows where we are, he'll have the place staked out," Khos said. "Why didn't he take Inaya?"

Nyx didn't look at Inaya. She took the bundle Anneke handed her and unwrapped her sword and baldric. "Because she isn't worth anything. Anneke, pack the bakkie. Go. Now. We don't need those."

"Boss, this is the biggest gun we've-"

"Leave it. Downstairs. Now." Nyx tightened her baldric and turned to Inaya. "Are you coming or not?"

Inaya looked back at the box containing her brother's head. From the other room, her son still cried.

"I'm better off here," Inaya said.

"You're not," Khos said. He strode up to her, despite Nyx's look, and pressed his hand to her shoulder. He didn't care, in that moment, if she hit him. "Come with us, or he'll kill you. If he doesn't, Nyx's sisters will. You're tied to her now, and if you're tied to Nyx, you're dead without her. We all learned that a long time ago."

"I don't belong to her," Inaya spit.

"I don't either," Khos said, "but if you have to choose sides, choosing Nyx might keep you alive awhile longer."

"Like it kept Taite alive?"

"He wouldn't have made it this far without her. I'll tell you about it sometime. Come on, get up."

"Leave her," Nyx said. She was pulling loops of bullet rounds over her head. She had a scattergun in one hand.

Khos ignored her, kept his attention on Inaya. She was far too pale, her eyes hollowed. It was as if someone had pulled something from her, drained her dry of blood and pa.s.sion. He remembered Taite telling him stories of his brash, arrogant sister, the one who had once driven in from town with a stolen bakkie she had cut up and rewired, her hair butchered because women weren't allowed to drive. In her haste, it was the only way she could think of to pa.s.s for a boy. In the back seat of the stolen bakkie was a dying shifter who'd been stoned in the street.

"She cried," Taite had said. Taite had said. "She cried and cried, but she saved that woman's life." "She cried and cried, but she saved that woman's life."

But this Inaya would not look at him. This Inaya said, "Take my son. Your women will get him a place."

Khos took her by the arm, a surprisingly small arm, and pulled her-not ungently-to her feet. "Stand," he said softly. "Your son is yours, no one else's. Don't deprive him of a mother because you're too scared to stand."

"We're going!" Nyx shouted from the door. "Grab Nikodem!"

"We ain't all gonna fit in the bakkie, boss."

"You ride up top," Nyx said. Anneke was already pounding down the steps. Nyx hesitated in the doorway, turning back to look at Khos and Inaya.

Khos met Nyx's gaze, and for a long moment they stared at each other. Her burnous was tied only at the neck and hung behind her like a cape, so he saw her without any pretense, any added bulk, no deception. Her eyes were hard and black, and she looked at him the way she looked at everything else in her life-with cold determination, a willingness to part with whatever she knew, she saw, she had, to accomplish whatever she set herself to. She would leave him. She would leave Inaya. The wounds snaking up her legs were almost healed. He noted the missing fingers on the hand that clutched the scattergun, and the worn hilt of the sword sticking through the slit in her burnous. The world could burn around her, the cities turn to dust, the cries of a hundred thousand fill the air, and she would get up after the fire died and walk barefoot and burned over the charred soil in search of clean water, a weapon, a purpose. She would rebuild.

"Yes or no?" Nyx said. "It's a long drive."

Inaya gazed up at Khos, her face a mask of mourning. Her son cried.

"Yes," Khos said.

Nyx started down the stairs.

"Get your son," Khos said.