Rapture (12 page)

“Experience with what?”

“Just… everything. You’ll need a shifter on your team, won’t you?

Somebody good with a knife? You know that’s me.”

She stared into her bowl. Something twisted in her face, something like resolve.

“Yeah, I’ve gotta have somebody I can trust.”

“You can trust me.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Fatima’s sending some people with me. A magician and a bel dame.

Best intel she’s got says Raine is being taken north, into Khairi. The magician’s supposed to act as a guide through Khairi. But I can’t trust her magician. Or her bel dame. I need my own team.”

“Call Suha then. Aren’t there other people you’ve worked with, too?” Nyx shook her head. “It’s bad enough taking you.”

“So you’re taking me? I mean, hiring me?”

“You negotiating now?”

“Are you paying?”

“We’ll see. Listen, lots of boys think the bel dames took Raine. If that’s so, he’s probably dead. I heard the monarchy’s on the way out, but what comes after that?” Nyx said. “Electing some man to the low council? The high council? That’s as close as they’re getting.”

Eshe shook his head. “From what I heard, the Mhorians have had some influence. Might be nice for something fresh, though, you think?” Nyx snorted. “There’s no new thing. Just the same old shit in different clothes.”

He had forgotten just how grim Nyx could be. Inaya was lively and optimistic by comparison.

“Well, it’s not like things can go on the way they are,” Eshe said. “The Queen’s got no heirs, and her successor isn’t around anymore.

That was an accident,” Nyx said.

“Yeah, well, tell Nasheen that,” Eshe said.

“You pissed at me?” She peered at him.

Eshe started. “No. I just… It’s just strange to be back.” She hadn’t asked him yet about Ras Tieg, or Inaya, or anything that had happened to him since they parted. He knew she didn’t like to ask questions outright.

She said it was rude to ask personal information from trusted people because it implied you didn’t trust them. But he wanted to tell her about Inaya and the Fourré, and the priests he had killed and how crazy the Ras Tiegan bordels were compared to Nasheenian brothels and how much he had missed the wild swagger and careless confidence of Nasheenian women.

He wasn’t sure what he expected to come back to, but now he found himself watching Nyx hopefully, like a kid. He knew better than that. He wasn’t a kid anymore. But he felt safer and more wanted around her than he had with anyone else in a long time.

She left her dirty dishes on the floor, and stood. “You in, then?” He tried to sound casual. “As long as there’s work to do.

Always work to do,” Nyx said.

“You never turned down a job, right? I never have either.” He got to his feet. When they stood next to each other, he was nearly as tall as her, which made him tall in Ras Tieg. It was strange what a few years could do. Despite the height, and the extra bulk, she was smaller than he remembered, and a lot older. The hair braided back against her scalp was long and thick—not the sort of hair you wanted to drag with you into a fight, unless you wanted to give your attacker a handhold—and he could just make out a few silver threads. But her ragged face, scarred throat, and mismatched skin said volumes about who and what she was—and why nobody should fuck with her. He half hoped he would look that ravaged at her age. Maybe people would take him more seriously.

Nyx rubbed her eyes. “Good. I’m kinda tired of exile. Maybe you are to o.”

“Yeah,” Eshe said, but it wasn’t the rioting, tar-tasting streets of Nasheen he was yearning to get back to. For once, he wanted to feel like he was needed somewhere, like he actually fit. Being with Nyx was the closest thing to feeling like he was home. Like somebody gave a shit. Nyx said, “Let’s get started then.”

+

Three hours and twelve candidates later, Nyx was ready to close up shop. The sun was low in the sky, and evening prayer would be coming on soon. Fuck having her own magician. She would rely on Fatima’s and take her fucking chances.

Eshe escorted the next one in. When Nyx looked up, she saw a tall, lean man fill her doorway. That in itself was not remarkable. But his face was. He might not yet have been thirty—hard to tell. He had the aspect of a good boy made old by war. His skin was puckered with windscoured creases—fine lines at the edges of his eyes, his mouth. Unlike the ravaged bodies she’d been processing all day, he was whole. She saw the tail end of some broad scar peeking up from his collar, but that was it. His eyes were hazel-gray—shifty, she thought—set in a dour, handsome face with a strong jaw. His dark hair was sun-kissed a deep brown, dusty, and unkempt—it just brushed the nape of his neck. Nice hair, for a war vet. Most shaved it clean or had it all burned off.

If Mercia was attractive for her plainness, this man was remarkable for his beauty—particularly in a place where smooth skin and supple limbs didn’t last long.

“Have a seat,” Nyx said.

He hesitated, one hand on the back of the chair. She figured out the reason for the hesitation, or thought she did. “No need to salute,” she said. “I haven’t served in a long time.”

He bowed his head slightly as he sat, like some Tirhani businessman. “I am Ahmed al Kaidan.” His voice was soft, but she caught the hint of a speech impediment; gentle slurring that turned the end of his words to mush.

“Did you have a rank?” she asked.

He passed a token to her. A black scarab in tailored resin. “I’ve been told I can bleed on this, and it will verify my service,” he said.

Nyx had seen a few of these tokens from other hopefuls. Some new thing the government was doing to help discharged boys find jobs without a lot of paperwork.

“Important stuff first,” she said. “You know Chenjan?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

He immediately switched languages, and said something mostly unintelligible in Chenjan. All she could make out was “prisoners” and “desert.”

Nyx shook her head. “That’s fine.”

“I worked interrogation,” he said, in Nasheenian. The tone he said it in was flat, the way he would have said, “I worked in bakkie repair.” That explained the soft tone, and unmarred face. He was intel.

“You speak enough, then.”

“Enough.” Same flat tone. His gaze, too, was unemotional. A man used to putting on faces.

“Good with any other languages?”

“I know Khairian. Training camps were up there. We all picked up s ome.”

“You have a knack?”

“I can tell Tirhani from Chenjan. Order food in Ras Tieg, Heidia, and Mhoria. I learn quickly.”

“Lot of translating in my line of work. Anything else?”

“I also know Drucian,” he said, grudgingly.

“Where you learn that?”

“From Drucians,” he said.

Nyx took in the full measure of him again. Nothing special, she supposed, no different than the others. She liked the color of his eyes, now, though. It was growing on her.

“Former intel guys can be unpredictable,” she said. She tapped the beetle casing. “That going to tell me you’re mad as a violet-gassed magician?”

“I was processed through psych before discharge.”

“What’s your talent level with bugs?” She knew magicians ranked their own. He wouldn’t have been able to handle munitions without a higher than average talent. If they just stuck him in intel instead of R&D, he was likely no more skilled than a com tech.

“I had a strong rating,” he said. “But I moved to intel my first year. I was… better at it.”

“Better at torture than bugs?”

“It was my preference.”

“I suppose a talent with bugs makes for a good torturer,” Nyx said. She had the scars on her legs to prove it. “Why you want this job?”

“It’s what I’m good at,” he said.

“What’s that? Bugs?”

“Using bugs to get a job done.”

There was a fine line between madness and intelligence, and she still wasn’t certain which he was. “What makes you think I need a magician for killing?”

“Some of the other men had heard of you. I know you kill bel dames.”

“You have a grudge against bel dames?”

He shook his head. “I’m just looking for a job, matron.” He said “matron” instead of “sir.” No hero, then. That, at least, was promising.

“If you’re intel, you can handle a com, right?”

He nodded.

“Let’s prove it, then. I need you to sort out some transcriptions and hack some information for me on a politician. I need some work done on an old bakkie, too. Call it a test run.”

He hesitated. The words that came out were gravelly, a bit broken. “If I do it, can I get a meal?”

Something tugged at her, some errant emotion that had been building all day as she processed one starving, mangled, bug-ridden boy after another.

“Sure,” Nyx said. “If you’re as good as you say, I can even get you a room.”

+

The sniper was tougher.

In a flat desert, the person with the greatest advantage would be the one with the sharpest shot. Nyx’s aim had never been the best, and even years of training at Anneke’s firing range hadn’t improved her longrange shot.

The snipers and weapons techs who wandered in the next day in response to her new sign were all far outside Nyx’s pay range, and a few were just ridiculous. One girl showed up in some expensive bit of chainmail and the most impractical boots Nyx had ever seen. Her skin was so soft and unmarred that Nyx immediately pegged her as a First Family kid slumming.

“You ever held a gun?” Nyx asked her.

The girl puffed out her chest and declared that she had virtually killed over eight hundred opponents in something called a battlefield mimicry class. Run by rich people and their magicians, naturally.

Another girl came in like she was running headlong from her fifthyear graduation and into the wide world of bounty hunting. She was fleshy and bright-eyed and still had the use of all her limbs.

So when yet another little runt appeared at the door lugging a pack and ragged burnous that could have been nabbed off a corpse, Nyx didn’t have high hopes. She was so small that Nyx immediately guessed she was Drucian before she pulled off her hood. Drucians weren’t worth her time. They were notoriously frail little fuckers. She didn’t need a frail fucker on this job.

She let Eshe screen her, and went back to her office. A few minutes later, Eshe ducked in and said, “You should probably talk to this one.” He lowered his voice. “Especially if she can shoot with her tail!”

“Drucians don’t have tails,” Nyx said.

“Everybody knows they cut them off to fit in,” Eshe said. Nyx followed him.

The girl had pulled back her hood to reveal a sharp little Drucian face—tangle of black hair, gray eyes rimmed in yellow, petite features, sandy skin. On the whole, Drucians suffered a lot of asthma and sinus issues, in part, folks said, because of their tiny noses and crowded features. Whatever environment they had evolved to fit, it wasn’t this one.

The top of the Drucian’s head just reached Nyx’s chest. From what Nyx could see of her limbs beneath the too-long trousers and tunic, she was stick-thin. Nyx sometimes suspected that Drucian limbs were shaped a bit like mantids beneath all the clothes, which would explain their funny walk. They were more modest than any Chenjan, though, and she had never seen one naked.

“We’re not recruiting garbage collectors here,” Nyx said to her. Better to let them down quickly.

The girl did not meet Nyx’s eyes. She simply pulled the pack from her shoulder and began unloading it.

“I build my own guns,” the Drucian said, to the floor. Her accent was terrible, but Nyx had spent a lot of time trying to make sense of the way Drucians mangled Nasheenian, so at least she could keep up.

She set a fine piece on the table. “This is a Z1070 scattergun. Originally fired only dead ammo. I adjusted that. It does blister bursts now. Lengthened the barrel. Better range. Adjusted the spin.”

Nyx’s specialty was munitions and mines, but living with gun-loving Anneke had given her a greater appreciation for guns, so she picked it up and examined it.

“You did all this welding work yourself?”

The girl nodded. Still didn’t meet her eye. Another Drucian thing, and one of the most infuriating. They refused to look anyone in the face but lovers and close family. Worse than Chenjans.

“I’ve been interviewing all day and you’re the first who brought her own gun. Can you shoot it?”

“Yes.”

Nyx handed back the gun. “Let’s prove it.”

She brought the girl up onto the roof. Eshe followed them up. Ahmed the magician was still in the back, working on a bakkie she’d picked up. The space on the roof wasn’t big, but it was private, tucked between two slightly taller buildings.

Nyx pointed out across the scrappy line of other hopefuls to the beggar squatting against the tile of the building opposite, the same one she saw her first day at the storefront. When the lines thinned, he should have gone off as well, but he hadn’t. He was old, maybe fifty, skinny and sickly, with venom scars on his arms. Some hard-up war vet.

“I want you to kill that man. Can you do that?”

The girl’s face remained expressionless. It was like trying to read a stone.

“Is that a problem?” Nyx asked. She watched the girl carefully. This was the toughest test of all. Would she kill on command? Could she?

The girl slid up to the lip of the rooftop. Knelt. Steadied her gun against her shoulder.

“Nyx—” Eshe said.

“Hush,” Nyx said.

“You can’t be serious, Nyx,” Eshe said.

Nyx turned, and saw that Ahmed had joined them. He stood on the ladder leading up to the roof, only his head and shoulders visible.

“When am I not serious?” Nyx said.

She heard two shots in quick succession. Loud. Nyx pressed her hands to her ears, too late.

She went to the edge of the roof and looked down. The beggar was still. The Drucian had not shot him in the head, though. That injury would be too obvious. It was two to the chest. She must have hit some vital organ, because the man had simply bowed over, rather anticlimactically. No one outside seemed to be any wiser, though a few vets raised their gaze to the rooftop.