“You’re just going to let Taite die?” Khos asked.
“Nobody’s dead yet. Did you hear what I said?”
“He will be dead. How are you going to get Nikodem after all this waiting?”
Nyx regarded him as if he were an annoying insect, something she’d found plastered to the bottom of her sandal. “Have some faith.”
Khos clenched his fists. “In what? You? You don’t even have faith in yourself.”
“Remind me again, did I renew your contract?”
Khos walked away from her, and sat in a ratty chair. Too small for him. Nothing fit him in any country.
Anneke returned and squatted next to Nyx. “If he ain’t already dead, boss, we should bring him in like we brought you in. Fair’s fair.”
“Life isn’t fair,” Nyx said.
As he looked at Nyx, at her mutilated hand and scarred legs, Khos realized that Rhys, her shadow, wasn’t in the room. Unless Rhys had gone out for food, that made him late from his trip to Bahreha. Khos looked again at Nyx and tried to read her. Was she worried about her tardy magician? Or did she care as little for him as she did for the rest of them? They had risked their lives to go after her, pitted themselves against bel dames. But she sat here on the divan and refused to bring back Taite? It’ll be me who has to tell Mahdesh, he thought. Me who has to tell him his lover is dead.
And Khos would be the one left with Inaya.
“So lay this out for me again,” Nyx said to Anneke.
“Low security up front,” Anneke said, pointing to the hand-drawn blueprints on the table. She’d been running recon since Khos and Rhys came back from the waterworks. “The back has an emergency exit. The alarm’s working, so we can get out, but our getaway needs to be right outside the door, ’cause if security don’t know we’re there by then, they’ll know once that alarm goes. Nikodem has magicians with her. All the time. Mid week, all but one of her magicians goes out to socialize at the local boxing gym. That’s the best time to move.”
“When does she go out with the magicians?” Khos asked. “Just during fights, like when we saw her?” Nikodem would get them Taite. He needed to keep his mind on the fucking note.
“So far as I can tell,” Anneke said. “It’s not like I’ve had a lot of time for recon, and you’ve been… occupied.”
“So once we get past the security at the desk, we need to separate Nikodem from her magician,” Nyx said.
Khos ignored Anneke. “That’s a tall order,” he said. “We don’t have a magician.”
“No, but Anneke and I have firepower and some bug repellent. It could give us the time we need.”
“How do you want to get in the back?” Anneke asked.
“We’ll go in the front.”
Khos shook his head. “How we going to get past security?”
“Trust me,” Nyx said.
Khos sighed. Trusting Nyx never turned out well.
From the other side of the door, Inaya’s son began to cry.
Evening prayer came and went, and Nyx found herself standing at the window of the main room, looking out over Dadfar through the lattice. Looking for Rhys.
Inaya crawled out of her room for the first time all day and sat with Anneke and the kid. She looked skinnier—and paler, if that was possible. Anneke fixed her some condensed milk and force-fed her a roti.
Khos walked up next to Nyx. “See him?”
“He’s tougher to see in the dark,” Nyx said, and smirked, but something clawed at her belly. Rhys was late. Very late. How long until Raine started to send him back in pieces too? She’d been a fool to send that stupid magician out on his own. A bloody fucking fool.
“He’ll be all right,” Khos said. “He’s a magician.”
Khos towered over her. Even in the warm room, she could feel the heat of him next to her.
“We both know what kind of magician he is,” Nyx said. They stood a long moment in silence. Then, “You know I intend to bring Taite back.”
“Sometimes I don’t know you, Nyx,” he said softly.
She looked up at him. The light in the room was low. Anneke kept a couple of glow worms in a glass. Lanterns used fuel, and gas was expensive. In the dim light, Khos’s expression was difficult to read, but Nyx always thought he looked sad. She had signed this big sad man because she had sensed something in him that she’d never had—a protective loyalty toward her and the team that transcended petty disagreements about sex, blood, and religion. When she looked at him now, she wondered what would happen when those loyalties conflicted. Would he choose to side with her or with Taite? Taite or the whores? And where did Inaya fit into this? She had seen him stare long at her door and go rigid when her baby cried.
“Nobody knows anybody,” she said. “We’re all working on blind faith.”
She watched a hooded figure come down the street and strained to see, but the figure passed by their building.
“You’re saying your secret to getting up and going forward is blind faith?” he said, and she heard the amusement in his voice.
“No,” Nyx said. “Lately, it’s been whiskey.” She peered down at the street again.
“I’ve been thinking about how to get past the desk,” Khos said. “I think I know some people who will help us.”
“Khos, the only people you know in Chenja are whores.”
“Exactly,” he said.
“We’ll have a problem with com, not having Rhys and Taite.”
“So we’ll put together something else.”
“Is there something wrong with your communications?” Inaya said from behind them.
Nyx and Khos both turned. Anneke was lying in a pile of blankets on the floor, working with her guns. Inaya stood at the end of the divan, her son in her arms.
“We usually use Rhys. Taite receives his transmission through the com,” Nyx said.
Inaya hadn’t washed her face in a while, and her hair was greasy. She looked like some street beggar. “You don’t have regular transceivers?”
Nyx shrugged. “Anneke, Taite give you any manual transceivers?”
“I have a box of com gear,” Anneke said, “but transceivers take a long time to synch up. Don’t have the time or the money to take them in and have somebody do it.”
“I can do it,” Inaya said.
Nyx smirked. “You can do it?” She looked her up and down, pointedly.
Inaya narrowed her eyes. “Where do you think Taitie learned to repair a console? Did you think that fat man employed him for his looks?”
“You’re kidding me,” Nyx said.
Inaya said to Anneke, “Show me the box.” She glanced back at Nyx. “I assume Taitie didn’t tell you why we had to leave Ras Tieg.”
“I don’t pry into the affairs of my team,” Nyx said.
Anneke walked over to their pile of gear and started moving boxes and duffel bags around.
“Our parents handled communications for the Ras Tiegan underground, rebels against Ras Tieg’s tyrant, the uncle to your foolish Queen,” Inaya said. “They were also shifter-sympathizers. My mother was a shifter, and my parents’ politics were… frowned upon. When they killed my mother, my father took her place and trained Tiate and I. When things got bad politically, when the streets…” She choked up, and Nyx thought she was going to cry again, but, remarkably, she swallowed it. “I could marry. Taitie was too young.”
“So when things got hot, you smuggled him out of the country.”
“He did the same for me, later.”
“You don’t act like a rebel.”
“We rebel in our own ways.”
“Here,” Anneke said. She dragged a box toward Inaya. “Should be a couple transceivers in here. Some might be broken.”