“I believe in myself. That’s enough.”
“For you? And your crew?”
“Why don’t you go off and get married and settle down like a good little war vet, huh? I’m sure you could find some dumb bitch to put you up.”
“We’re a sorry pair of veterans, aren’t we? I think you have as much interest in becoming a kept thing as I do.”
“Hey, hunters!” Shajin said. “You take your personal business outside.”
“I’ve got a file,” Nyx said.
“I have mine,” Raine said. He clapped his hands. His three regulars headed for the door.
“Watch yourself,” Raine said. He put his back to her and walked out.
“Watch your regulars,” Nyx said. “I may find a use for them.”
She wasn’t the only one Raine was stirring the pot with these days. It wasn’t just the protests in small cities like Sahlah. Rhys had word of Raine at rallies in Mushtallah and boys’ rights gatherings in Amtullah. Those were bad places to be seen protesting anything that had to do with God or the queen or the bel dames. It was like he was presenting himself to a butcher and asking them to chop something else off. But he had taught her how to drive, how to use a sword, and how to patch a bakkie—this old man with the dead eyes and bizarre family history who couldn’t leave the war alone.
She supposed there must be something redeemable about him.
Khos spit on the floor next to Nyx.
“Those three were ours,” Anneke said. “Honest, boss, I had them.”
“Well, you don’t have them now, do you?” Nyx said, too sharply. She turned back to the desk.
Juon handed Shajin the file.
“Says here you get thirty for a live catch,” Shajin said, “and twenty fora dead. Too bad.” She filled out the pay receipt. “You know the routine.”
Nyx handed the receipt to Anneke, who followed Khos through the throng to the body drop-off and cashier.
Juon leaned over and whispered into Shajin’s ear.
“What’s that? Ah, yes. You have a note,” Shajin said.
Juon went to the sorting cabinet behind Shajin and plucked out a red letter.
Nyx’s heart skipped. The old bullet wound in her hip throbbed.
Red letters were straight from the desk of the queen. The queen only sent red letters to nobles, ambassadors… and bel dames.
Juon handed the letter to Shajin.
Shajin handed it to Nyx.
Nyx’s fingers trembled. She took the letter and tucked it carefully into the top of her dhoti. A pardon from the Queen? Back to bel dame work? Back to prison? Had she fucked anything up recently?
“Thanks,” she said. “They’ve been giving them out to the top hunters,” Shajin said. “Must be somebody pretty important.”
“Oh,” Nyx said. Not a pardon, then. “If it’s that important, they’d give it to the bel dames, not the hunters.”
Shajin shrugged. “I don’t make policy. Come now, you’re holding up the line, my woman.”
Nyx pushed away from the counter. She waited for Anneke and Khos, and when they returned with the bounty money, she tucked that, too, into her dhoti and told Khos to drive.
Nyx rode shotgun. She pulled out the red letter. Khos looked at her as he started the bakkie.
It took a long time to read the letter. If she went too fast she got the characters backward. By the time they reached the keg, she’d read it twice.
The letter read:
We, God’s Imam, Queen Zaynab sa Boliard so Amtullah, on the forty-eighth day of the Sahfar in the year nine hundred eighty-nine, hereby summon God’s servant Nyxnissa so Dasheem to the Al-Ahnsalus Palace at Mushtallah on behalf of Almighty God and the people of the Holy Empire of Nasheen.
In view of the authority conferred to us by God, and to further the glory of God and His servant Nasheen, we seek the covert recovery of a fugitive, to be apprehended by God’s servant Nyxnissa so Dasheem and whose recovery will be rewarded most graciously.
God’s servant may exchange this imperial summons at the nearest train repository for complementary roundtrip tickets to God’s seat, Mushtallah.
Someone had written in, at the bottom, using the same pen stroke as the queen’s signature:
Recompense for the apprehension of the agent is negotiable. Details forthcoming when you arrive. Discretion advised.
The second part was a lot easier to read, and much more Nyx’s style. It made her wonder how much of her file they’d read before sending the summons.
Back at the keg, Nyx handed Rhys the red letter.
“This for real?” she asked.
He ran his hands over it. “It appears genuine,” he said.
“Best you can tell, right?” she said.
He grimaced. “You pay me for an acceptable level of talent. You get what you pay for.”
“I want you to go with me,” she said.
His dark eyes widened—pretty eyes with long lashes. There were days when she couldn’t get enough of them, and days she wanted to cut them out for the same reason.
“The Nasheenian court? Palace Hill? You must be joking,” he said.
“Listen. I take Anneke or Khos with me, they don’t speak very good, all right? I take Taite, and you know he gets sick when he’s nervous. I want you there.”
“Nyx, I—”
“Thanks,” she said. “Just don’t worry about it.” She turned away from him before he said any more. She needed Rhys, her mediocre magician. There were other things he was good at: well-read, well-spoken, well-mannered. He was Chenjan, sure, but she didn’t know anybody else around with his manners. He never missed a prayer; he talked about God all the time and drank tea instead of whiskey. He made her look good. He made the whole team look good.
Nyx walked into her office and dumped her gear onto her desk. As she saw Khos walk in to the keg she hollered that she wanted to talk to him. Rhys was still standing near the door, at the ablution bowl she had set out for those who wanted to wash themselves before and after they spoke to her. Her business had that effect on people. Rhys had his hands in the water, sleeves up.
She turned back in to her spare office, kicking her chair away. It wasn’t even noon, so the light coming through the latticed windows was low. She climbed up on to her battered desk and propped open the old entrance in the ceiling.
Better.
Khos knocked on the open door.
“Get in here,” Nyx said.
She climbed down from the desk as Khos came through the doorway. He needed a wash.
“Funniest thing,” Nyx said. “I had a body in my trunk this morning.”
“Yeah.”
“Sit.”
Khos lumbered over to one of the backless chairs in front of her desk. They were mismatched chairs, trash she and Taite had picked up years before when they moved out of their firebombed storefront in the Chenjan district and onto the east side. He’d been allergic to the original upholstery, and she’d had to redo most of it herself.
Nyx took off her burnous and draped it over her chair. She removed the most extraneous of her weapons and piled them up next to her for cleaning.
“You want to step away from the crew?” Nyx asked.
If Taite was a good but fragile kid, Khos was like the kid’s lumbering, towheaded older brother. Nyx had picked up Khos Khadija at a brothel outside Aludra three years before. They were both there to see the same girl and had bumped into each other on the stairs. When she found out he was Raine’s new shifter, she hired him at twice the cut Raine was giving him. She’d been very drunk. She’d also been very drunk later, when she slept with him. She didn’t like big men all that much, but it had been a hot fuck for all that. She knew it had been a while since she’d been to bed with anybody at all, because right about now he was starting to look half good again.