God's War Part 31

Khos hesitated. She wasn't an attractive woman, certainly not the type he'd want to have a drink with under any other circ.u.mstances, but he was here to scout out news and make contacts, and she was offering. He'd also be interested to know how she was going around unveiled without an escort in Chenja.

And how she knew his name.

"All right, then. One drink," he said. "You have a name?"

"In Chenja, I go by Haj."

"Seriously?"

She grinned. He saw dark circles under her eyes. Nyx would say she was a bleeder. "Seriously."

Haj led him up a winding set of stairs to the balcony overlooking the ring. She opened a battered metal door and revealed a lushly appointed viewing box with windows overlooking the ring.

Two young women slumped on the raised benches set against the windows. The benches were covered in an a.s.sortment of pillows that matched the gauzy veils the women wore. Both were Chenjan dark. They looked up at Haj and Khos with heavy-lidded eyes.

"Get this man a drink," Haj told one of the women.

The woman got to her feet with the practiced ease of a dancer. She went to the private bar at the other side of the room and poured out two gla.s.ses of dark liquor.

"Sit," Haj told Khos.

He pushed some cus.h.i.+ons out of the way and sat next to the other woman on the bench. She smelled good, some kind of heady, flowery scent peppered with cinnamon. Haj was well off, but not well off enough to have boys.

Haj sat in an armchair across from him and took the liquor the woman offered her.

"I'd heard you were in town," Haj said.

Khos felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. Who else was tagging them?

"Is that so?"

"I run the brothel on East Babuk," she said. "Oversee it, actually, for my employer. I found out they're giving you sanctuary."

"Is that so?" Khos repeated, still too startled to come up with anything else. He couldn't imagine Mahrokh selling him out, but he'd been wrong before. Who the h.e.l.l was was this woman? "Who's your employer?" he asked. this woman? "Who's your employer?" he asked.

"Local magistrate," Haj said, waving a hand. "No one important. I hoped to thank you for services rendered. You helped some good men dodge the Nasheenian draft. I'm grateful for that."

"Kin of yours?"

A knock came at the door.

"Enter," Haj said.

A bulky Nasheenian woman pushed into the room. She wore a set of dueling pistols, and one arm was paler than the other.

Khos tensed. He knew that woman.

A stocky kid came in behind her.

"You entertaining again?" Dahab said to Haj. She spared only a glance at Khos. Something else was on her mind, praise be. "I need to talk to you about Nikodem."

Khos forced himself to drink more.

"Over here," Haj said.

"You're such a voyeur," Dahab said. "I don't have time for this s.h.i.+t."

"So long as I pay you, you'll make time. Come on."

Haj moved to the far end of the room with Dahab. The girl who'd come in with Dahab hung around pretending not to look at Khos and the women.

"You're a good man," one of the women next to Khos murmured, in Chenjan. She put a soft hand on his shoulder. He didn't feel so great at the moment.

He took another drink and kept his head tilted toward Dahab and Haj. He'd seen Dahab two or three times around the Cage, but it looked like she hadn't recognized him.

"I can't protect a woman who goes out to fights," Dahab said.

"You could have protected her just fine if you brought me that b.i.t.c.h you said you had in Jameela."

"I ain't G.o.d."

"Neither is she."

Dahab and Haj said something else, and then Dahab was marching past him and out the door. Her squirt followed after her, sparing one last look back.

Haj sat across from him as the Chenjan woman next to him kissed his neck. Memories of his night with Nyx, years before-the smell of her skin, the strength in her legs, her perfect naked a.s.s-showed up in the strangest places.

When the woman pulled away from him, he saw a smile touch Haj's plain face.

"Now," she said, "let's talk about what I can offer you for Nyxnissa's head-and the safety of your little white b.i.t.c.h."

Khos took another drink.

27.

"You sure about that?" Nyx asked from her seat on the tattered divan. Her fingers throbbed-the ones that weren't there. She had lost an arm in a tangle with a sand cat once, but she was under the magicians' protection then, and after pa.s.sing out from blood loss, she'd gone only half a day without an arm before getting fitted with a new one. Ghost pains were new to her.

Rhys s.h.i.+fted his weight from one foot to the other. Khos leaned against the card table in front of her, chewing on his thumb. Anneke was wandering around the room, holding the brat in her ropy arms and muttering in low tones. She was probably telling the kid prison stories.

"We tailed Nikodem and the magicians after the fight," Khos said. "They're living in an upscale hotel on the east side. Rhys got a list of the tenants, and there's a party of three under Yah Tayyib's name."

Once again-Yah Tayyib. Nyx supposed she should have been gleeful. Instead, she was exhausted. Being right didn't make it any easier.

"But you didn't see Yah Tayyib at the fight?"

"No," Rhys said. "I called Yah Reza, and she has Yah Tayyib written in as being under residence at the gym in Faleen."

"That just means his name's on a docket. Doesn't mean he's there," Nyx said. "When's the next fight?"

"A week from now. You don't want to nab her at the house?" Khos asked. He started fussing with his dreads. Always a bad sign. Something had gotten him worked up at the fight.

"It'll be easier to take her at the next fight. I'll be in better shape then. If we move now, we're one person short."

"Two," Khos said. "There's Taite."

"I haven't forgotten about Taite." Nyx nodded at Anneke, who had settled the kid on the floor in a spill of blankets. Anneke pulled out her shotgun and started polis.h.i.+ng it, still nattering. She was telling the kid how to take apart an X1080 a.s.sault rifle. "Kinda hard to forget, isn't he?"

"Sure," Khos said, and grimaced at the floor.

"Anneke, I want you scouting out this building of hers. Get me as much information as possible," Nyx said. "How about that that woman? She ready for visitors?" She nodded toward Inaya's room. woman? She ready for visitors?" She nodded toward Inaya's room.

"Not really," Anneke said.

"Too bad," Nyx said. She hobbled to her feet and waved away Rhys's help. It was time to move. In every sense.

She knocked on the door with her good hand and entered before Inaya said anything. The room was too hot, airless, and dark. She needed to open some of the lattices.

Inaya raised her head, then turned toward the wall.

"I know you don't want to speak to me, but I need answers that might get Taite back."

Inaya looked at her.

"Did he give you anything before you left? Supplies, papers, stuff like that?"

"He gave me some things from his desk. And food. There was food and water in the bakkie."

"Where's the stuff from the desk?"

"In the bakkie. I put the transmission canisters under the rug beneath the gas pedals, if that's what you're after."

"The bakkie? Who's bakkie?"

"Husayn's. I left it parked by that place. Your other garret."

Nyx tried to get her head around that. "You got yourself and and a bakkie over the border?" Khos had said something about Inaya being a s.h.i.+fter, but s.h.i.+fters couldn't s.h.i.+ft bakkies, for f.u.c.k's sake. a bakkie over the border?" Khos had said something about Inaya being a s.h.i.+fter, but s.h.i.+fters couldn't s.h.i.+ft bakkies, for f.u.c.k's sake.

"That's my business," Inaya said.

Well, s.h.i.+t, Nyx thought. "Thanks," she said.

She dragged herself back into the main room.

"Rhys?"

"Yes?"

"I need you to go and find Husayn's bakkie. Inaya parked it outside that garret. I have no f.u.c.king idea how she got it over, but I need whatever you can find inside it. Look under the gas pedals. If we're lucky, n.o.body else looked there."

Khos sat next to the kid and Anneke. He counted out violet bursts from his gunnysack. "That thing's been gutted by now. Or stolen altogether," he said.

"I need to risk it," Nyx said.

Rhys pulled on his burnous. "Do we need anything else?"

"Pick up some rotis," Anneke said. "And milk."

Rhys dug some money from their coffers and headed out.

Nyx lay on the divan and waited. There was nothing worse than giving orders from a divan. She pulled up her trousers and looked at the ruined flesh of her legs. They were healing up. Not prettily, but healing up.

Inaya stayed hunkered in the dark bedroom. Anneke brought the kid in to Inaya when he started to fuss. The kid ate a lot. Nyx played cards and thought about Yah Tayyib. She dozed and dreamed of the war.

Rhys was back a couple of hours later. He carried a paper bag. He dumped four rotis on the table and pulled a bulb of condensed milk from the paper bag.

"Anything?" Nyx asked.

"They gutted most everything," he said. "Except these." He pulled two transmission rectangles from the paper bag.

"Can you read them?" Nyx asked.

"We don't have the equipment for it."

"Who does?"

"I know a man in Bahreha who might do me the favor. He's a very old... friend."

"You going?"

"If these can bring Taite back, I'll go." He did not look pleased. Nyx knew what Chenjans did to criminals. If Rhys's man wasn't as friendly as he hoped, Rhys would sit out his last days in a hole in the floor before getting both his heads chopped off.

"Don't be idle. A day there, a day back. You need to take transit. We can't spare the bakkie."

"I know."

"Then go. Do it."

Rhys packed up. "I'm taking some coin with me. We're running low, but I'll need to buy water."

"Yeah," Nyx said.

Khos watched Rhys walk out. "What's next?" Khos asked.