"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 gla.s.s case just above it.

Nikodem would keep a laboratory someplace safe. Somewhere magicians and bel dames wouldn't look. Nyx amended that: where some some magicians and magicians and some some bel dames wouldn't look. 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 c.o.c.ked 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 a.s.sisting me."

"Kine's records," Nyx said.

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

"You don't know s.h.i.t 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 n.o.ble, 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 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.

Well, f.u.c.k.

"Fair?" Nyx said. "I'm half a corpse."

"Then all I need to do is kill the other half," Jaks said.

Rasheeda and Dahab unstrapped Nyx from the table. Dahab glared at her with her new, foreign eye, a bland point of darkness.

Rasheeda was making strange chirping noises.

"I don't want your squirts taping me up," Nyx said. "Where's Rhys?"

"You'll see your magician soon enough," Jaks said. She was already at the door.

"You want to fight me?" Nyx said. "Rhys knows how to tape hands. Your bel dames aren't boxers. They're bloodletters." And Nikodem loved magicians.

Jaks paused.

Nyx waited.

Nikodem stood next to the slab, collecting what was left of the bands that had bound Nyx to the table. "Let her have him," Nikodem said, turning to Jaks. "He's been drugged."

Jaks looked them both over with her black eyes, hesitated for a long moment. Cool air blew in from the doorway, oddly humid. The hall was dim.

"Sure," Jaks said. "Dahab, you get him. And stay here with them. When you're done, you and Rasheeda bring them both out to the ring. Got it?"

Dahab and Jaks walked off into the hall, leaving Nyx with Nikodem and Rasheeda.

Rasheeda found a chair, turned it backward, and straddled it, facing Nyx. "Long time, sister," she said.

"Not really."

"When we cut off your head, I'm going to eat your eyes," Rasheeda said. "Like I ate your sister's."

"Must have been tasty, my sister."

"Mmmmmm...." Rasheeda licked her lips.

"Not much you could get from her, though."

"Protein."

"Uh-huh." Nyx kept her ace slack. Rasheeda could smell discomfort. Worse, she fed on fear. "Don't know what the f.u.c.k a bunch of bel dames were doing casing the house of a government worker."

"Mother's orders," Rasheeda said, and chirped. What was with the chirping? When did that start? "The papers were for Nikodem, but the blood was for you."

"How thoughtful. How long have you been working both sides?"

Rasheeda snapped her teeth. "It keeps me honest," she said.

Dahab walked back in, but the only thing she had a hold of was her gun. "Nikodem, his hands are broken. He can't wrap s.h.i.t."

"Then get Tayyib to fix him," Nikodem said.

"I don't like magicians."

"If he troubles you, sever his head," Nikodem said. She gathered up some instruments lying next to the sink and put them into a black organic bag. "Come, I want this over with. I have things to do tonight."

Dahab and Nikodem walked out.

Rasheeda continued to peer at Nyx.

"Your sister told us all about you," Rasheeda said, leaning over the back of the chair. Her eyes were empty. "Died screaming in the end. She was a b.l.o.o.d.y f.u.c.king screamer. The worst kind."

Nyx wanted to watch Rasheeda's eyes bulge and pop out of her head, wanted to watch her face darken and her tongue hang out like a dog's.

Instead, they waited for a long time, in silence.

Then Dahab's voice from the hall: "Here's the wraps and tape. Come on, let's go, black man."

Rhys appeared in the doorway. Rasheeda snapped her teeth at him and uncurled from her seat. She sauntered back into the hall. They had stripped him of his tunic and burnous, and dark blood was still smeared across his bare chest. Nyx had never seen so much of him outside of an organics search before.

She looked at his hands. The fingers were straight, and he held two long lengths of cloth and a roll of tape. Fine red ants crawled along his knuckles, his wrists. As she watched, they began to drop to the floor.

His face was impossible to read-his jaw was set, and the dark gaze that met hers was fathomless.

But he was not broken. No, that look was not the look of a broken man.

He nodded at the operating slab.

Nyx sat up on the lip of it. Her body protested. She winced.

Rhys put the tape and wraps next to her. He did not look at her but started wrapping her right hand. He was slow, methodical, professional. How many hands had he wrapped when he worked with the magicians? How many fights had he prepared fighters for? Fights he never watched?

"You all right?" she said softly, and felt stupid for saying it. All right? All right? What did that mean, here? What did that mean, here?

"When you fight her," Rhys said low, not looking at her, "goad her into using her left. Let her hit that hard head of yours."

And something clicked.

Yes, how many hands had he wrapped? Had he wrapped Jaks's hands, that night in Faleen? Rhys knew hands.

"You trying to make me fall?" she said.

He raised his head and looked at her. "Do you trust me, Nyx?"

"I don't trust anyone."

"You didn't answer the question."

Nyx met his look. His was a face she could gaze into forever. She knew it the night she watched him dance, the night her sisters pursued her and her womb bled-the night she reached the end of everything. She supposed she thought that if she could keep him close, she would be able to look at him forever and forget everything else. s.e.x with him, she could take or leave. But she wanted him. Wanted him in a way she couldn't explain, and tried hard not to think about.