"You were unable to bring her to me alive?"

"She was a fighter." That part wasn't a lie, at least.

"I did prefer her death to the alternative, of course. It is best that the knowledge she possessed stays in Nasheen."

"The bel dames would probably agree." Some part of her wanted to know how much the queen knew. Yah Tayyib's words about the obliteration of the bel dames had shaken her. She didn't believe any queen could be so bold, not even this one.

"Indeed. Nikodem's sisters did not relish the idea of her spreading our secrets or theirs. Nikodem was a bit of a rogue."

"Was she, now?"

The queen smiled. "It is best that no one knows how my puzzle is put together, Nyxnissa. Nikodem was merely young and foolish and infatuated with a new world. Now she has been reined in. Now we can continue with our work."

"My sister-"

"Your sister's work was not for Nikodem's eyes, or Chenja's. I'm glad they've been destroyed, though I am sorry for the loss of your sister. I heard the bel dame council had several rogues working against you. How much did you learn of your sister's work?"

"Didn't even try to get past the security," Nyx said. "I had enough on my plate." This lie was outright, but she looked the queen in the face when she said it, and when the queen met her look, something hung there between them-the knowledge that they were both lying their a.s.ses off.

"That's best for all involved, I'm sure." The queen placed her hands on the edge of the bench and turned away to stare into the tank. "It is best you do not concern yourself with certain things, Nyxnissa. Do you wish to discuss money?"

"You've already been pretty generous."

"I'm unable to provide properly for you, but perhaps a yearly allowance is in order for a few years, at least, to keep your work honest."

Or to keep me in your pocket, Nyx thought. She watched a giant creature with a great tail fin and enormous teeth snake by. The room was too cold. She didn't like not being able to see the sky.

"That's pretty generous," Nyx said, "but I think I'll be all right."

"I heard you have a love of the ocean," the queen said, gesturing to the tank. "I heard a rumor that you'd like to retire to the coast."

Nyx started. A love of the ocean ocean? Of water water?

"Yeah? Who told you that?"

"There are many such things in your file."

Nyx frowned. She remembered a hot, dusty night, tangled in the arms of a young, losing boxer, leaning into her, saying, "Don't tell anyone what I'm about to tell you..." She had told Jaks all about the dream of fruity drinks on the beach in Tirhan that night when Jaks took a dive in the cantina outside Faleen. She had lied and told Jaks she loved the ocean and cool water, because Jaks loved the coast and Nyx needed to build up her trust, win her over. Hardened boxers didn't take just anyone home-especially not if their brothers were wanted by bel dames. Jaks was the only person she'd told that lie, besides Radeyah. Who had Jaks worked for before she started working for Chenja? Had she been one of the queen's little roaches, purged and exiled for working with the aliens? Working with rogue palace magicians like Yah Tayyib? Had the queen driven her to betray Nasheen? Or given her blessing?

"I suppose you have all sorts of roaches," Nyx said. "Must be useful to have people like that around when you need something done quietly."

"Don't pretend you know what I do and do not have my fingers in, Nyxnissa. Know that what I do, I do for the good of Nasheen."

"When I was a bel dame, I believed I was killing boys for the good of Nasheen too."

"And weren't you? You prevented the deaths of thousands by neutralizing contaminated boys."

"There are some days I think I would have done us all a bigger favor if I let them kill us."

"That's not very optimistic."

"Oh, I'm an optimist," Nyx said. "A grim optimist. In any case, it's your business."

"I see. So what is it you want? I was curious as to why you wished an audience. I a.s.sumed you came seeking more money. It's what I expect of a hunter."

"I want a favor."

"Certainly."

"I want you to pardon me. Give me back my bel dame license."

"Only the bel dame council can do that." Cool fact, no malice, no hint that she'd expected that kind of request.

"Then tell me about the split in the council and why half of it wanted me and Nikodem dead and the other half wanted me and Nikodem alive. Tell me who else is running rogue and who took my license."

"I'm afraid I don't know."

"The Queen of f.u.c.king Nasheen doesn't know doesn't know?"

The queen smiled; a warm, matronly smile. Nyx saw Kasbah saunter closer to them, one hand twitching. Nyx wondered what kinds of bugs a magician would tailor for palace security. Highly specialized. Highly lethal.

"You should be very careful, Nyxnissa," the queen said, "that you, too, do not become an enemy of the crown."

"I want amnesty for my crew. Amnesty from the draft and from past offenses."

"You know I can't do that."

"I thought recompense was negotiable?"

"We're negotiating. How much did Nikodem tell you before the end?"

"Enough."

"I see."

"Do you? Do you know what we're fighting for anymore?"

"Ah," the queen said. "What we've always fought for. Power. Control. Immortality. The world. My mother forgot that. Sometime during the long war, we all forgot that, and the war became our lives. We can't imagine a time without it. That time needs to end."

"You think anybody really knows why the war started anymore?"

"Like most Nasheenians, most Chenjans, I don't care how the war started. I care how it ends."

"Maybe that's the problem." Nyx stood. "You'll let me know about the amnesty?"

The queen shook her head. "I heard you lost your team."

"I promised them they'd get amnesty. All of them." G.o.d help her, she thought of Rhys.

She turned to leave.

"There is an a.s.sumption," the queen said, and Nyx turned back to face her, "that saving as many people as possible is the right thing to do. Soldiers are taught that at the front. It's why one soldier will throw herself on a mine to save her boys. It's why a bel dame will track down and kill a frightened young boy whose only crime was fearing death. But sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice many to save a few. We send three hundred into the breach so a squad of elite may get past a city's defenses. We must decide, in the end, whose life matters most and how many can be sacrificed to preserve those few."

"Who decides who the best few are?"

"We do, Nyxnissa. We are not so different, you and I."

"From where I'm standing, you and me don't have much in common."

Nyx bowed her head. Kasbah moved to follow her out.

"Nyxnissa?"

She looked back at the queen. "There are no happy endings, Nyxnissa."

"I know," Nyx said. "Life keeps going."

Nyx met Anneke at a little cafe just around the corner from the palace. Nyx ordered a Green Beetle and thought of better times. Anneke ordered a whiskey and water.

"So, we rich or what?" Anneke asked. She pounded down the whiskey and asked for another.

"Probably so," Nyx said. "You want to cut and run, set something up for yourself? You've got enough to retire on."

"Might be. Might take me a recreation. Visit some of my sisters, get a place on the coast, do some homesteading. Still got some homesteading out there in the southeast. Would be funny, wouldn't it?"

"Maybe."

"You heard the bel dames are clearing out of Mushtallah?"

Nyx quirked an eyebrow at her. "Where you hear that?"

"Around. They sold the place on the fifth hill, you know, where you trained. They're relocating to Amtullah."

Removing themselves from the queen's city. Finding a safer staging area. Nyx took a long drink. It was going to be an interesting couple of years.

"What about you, boss? All this moving around. You got money now. Where you going?"

Nyx shrugged. "Don't know. Maybe it's time I retired too. Some other hill. Not sure what I'd retire to, though. Not much else I'm good at."

She sipped her green drink and grimaced. Too sweet. How the h.e.l.l had Rasheeda swilled these things?

Anneke finished her second drink and called for another.

Nyx didn't bother reminding her it was a cafe, not a cantina.

"Maybe you should go to Tirhan," Anneke said. She didn't look at her, but became suddenly interested in the cooling bugs in her gla.s.s.

"Should I, now?"

"Dunno. Might be some work there, maybe running boys out of Chenja and Nasheen. Something a little different. Or same thing, different side."

Nyx leaned back in her chair. There was nothing for her in Tirhan. They wanted their own life out there. She would leave them to it.

"I'm not a good woman," Nyx said.

"I never wanted to be good," Anneke said.

They went back to their hotel, but Nyx couldn't sleep, so she spent the evening out walking in the cool night air, listening to the hum of the cicadas. Big women bustled past her, some veiled, most not. She heard the call for midnight prayer, and she stopped just outside a mosque and thought, inevitably, of Rhys.

She remembered him lying there on the rocky ground next to the gully in the Chenjan desert, his face bruised, his fingers broken, barely breathing. She remembered kneeling next to him, thinking, "Don't die. Don't die. Take me. Take my heart. Yah Tayyib says I don't need it. I don't use it. Take my heart."

She had opened her mouth to say it, had nearly broken down and grabbed at Rhys like some kind of crazy woman, a girl losing her lover to the front.

Take my heart.

"I am such a fool," she said aloud. The worshippers moved past her. A couple dogs barked in the street.

She pulled her burnous more firmly around her and turned away from the mosque and back into the street. She walked with all of the other G.o.dless women and young men, the ones who fueled themselves on the strength of their own will. Sometimes she wondered who she had turned away from first, her world or its G.o.d, abandoned somewhere in Bahreha, like an organ at the butcher's.

The haunting cry of the muezzin faded away. A burst trailed across the midnight sky. The faithful were at prayer.

Nyx went on.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

I wrote most of this book during the year I was dying.

I'm dying a lot less quickly these days, but neither I nor the book would be here without the support of a small army of folks who saw me through that year and beyond.

Big thanks to my first readers: Patrick Weekes, Julian Brown, Miriam Hurst, and David Moles. Finding good first readers can take a lifetime, and this bunch are among the best you'll ever dig up. I can always count on them to call me on my bulls.h.i.t. I hope they'll continue to stick with me, even if sometimes I ignore them and leave in all my bulls.h.i.t.

Special thanks to Jennifer Whitson. Though we're no longer friends, I wouldn't be writing this today without her love, enthusiasm, energetic support, and a particularly expedient 911 call.

This book also would not exist without the friendship, encouragement, financial advice, and a.s.s-kicking of my adopted family, Stephanie and Ian Barney. They have saved me in every way a person can be saved.

But just creating a book and getting up after a knockout doesn't get the book to print. For that, I have my tireless agent, Jennifer Jackson, to thank. She dusted off the book after round one and pa.s.sed it into round two with all the professional aplomb of the best boxing manager. Thanks also to my purchasing editor, Jeremy La.s.sen, and the posse at Night Shade Books. Both Jennifer and Jeremy took a big gamble on a b.l.o.o.d.y little book.

Hats off as well to all of the editors who had a hand in this book along the way, including Juliet Ulman, David Pomerico, and copyeditors K.M. Lord and Marty Halpern. Special thanks also to David Marusek, Colleen Lindsay, Greg Beatty, Jeremy Tolbert, Tim Pratt, Geoff Ryman, Shana Cohen, Kaitlin h.e.l.ler, and the generous-and-always-inspiring Jeff VanderMeer for various and sundry professional advice, shouts-outs, and writing opportunities that have sustained me over the last ten years.

Many thanks to my friends and family for their financial and emotional support. My Clarion experience and Master's work at the University of Kwazulu Natal in Durban, South Africa was made possible in large part by the generous contributions of Roger Becker, Edward Becker, and Ernie Rogers. Additional contributions were also made by Steve and Kris Becker, Annie Hurley, Jeanne Mack, and Jacqueline Hurley (Je t'aime grand-mere). It takes a village.

To Jayson Utz, who stumbled into this whole process mid-fight, thank you for supporting me during many long nights of uninterrupted writing time when we'd both rather be doing something else. Thank you for the incredible patience, fort.i.tude, strength, and love you have generously shared with me during our partnership.