“The fuck?” Nyx said.

  “I want my money,” Mahir said. “She’ll send a beetle swarm to our contact and let them know to meet us here.”

  “There any alive in here?” Nyx said.

  “Out there,” Ada said. “I can manipulate them from here.

  She’ll get the message. We can hide out here.” The porch light came on at the homestead.

  Nyx wondered how to play it—put the gun away or hold it up?—but Mahir was already moving, waving Eli and Kasib ahead of her.

  “Hands up!” Mahir said. “We’ll be out of your hair in a minute.”

  “Leave it,” Nyx said, but Mahir was already on the porch, talking down a beefy woman who bore a long scar on one side of her face.

  A gunshot came from inside. “Goddammit,” Nyx said.

  Mahir and Kasib bolted into the house. The beefy woman tried to stop them, and got the butt of a gun to the face in response.

  Nyx stood outside with the injured woman while the others cleared the house. The woman clutched at her face and leaned hard against the door jamb. She snuffled and snorted snot and blood. The woman wore a breast binding and trousers, and she was barefoot. A battered old shotgun lay nearby, no doubt tossed when Mahir came down on her like a fucking sandstorm.

  Mahir yelled from inside and told Nyx to escort the home- steader back in. Nyx helped the woman up and half-dragged her inside, where Nyx found herself staring down the sorriest bunch of folks she’d seen in a while.

  There were six kids total, four of them clearly from the same batch. The other two didn’t seem to be related to the batch or to each other, and they were older, maybe ten and twelve. The beefy woman Nyx pushed toward the others was maybe thirty, and there was a legless woman in her twenties and a battered war vet who must have been over forty babbling to himself in one corner. He smelled like urine. The house was neat enough, but poor as shit. Everything was simple, well-worn; the kids wore patched- up clothes with cracked goggles around their necks. One of them had some kind of rash spreading all up his face and along his left shoulder. Another kept wiping her nose and sniffing.

  “We ain’t staying long,” Mahir said. “You all sit tight here, don’t try any shit. We’re meeting someone, then we leave.”

  The beefy woman spit. “You take what you want,” she said.

  “Don’t mind us. Need water, food, you take it. We got some weapons in the back. That’s all we got.”

  “Shut up,” Mahir said. “Just . . . fucking sit tight. Shit.”

  “I have to pee,” one of the kids said, and that’s when Nyx had to go sit outside.

  Nyx slumped into one of the chairs on the porch and gazed out at the fence. The beefy woman had bled all over the porch, spraying blood from her burst nose. Smears of it ran across the stones. Nyx was dying for a drink, for some sen, for sex, for anything to take her mind off this fucking night.

  Nobody came out for a long time. Nyx didn’t hear any gun- shots, which seemed like a good sign.

  Finally, as the first hints of the blue sunrise tickled the horizon, Nyx heard a bakkie buzz up to the edge of the filter. It parked on the other side, and someone got out.

  Mahir opened the door behind Nyx. She said nothing to Nyx but walked down onto the path to meet the newcomer.

  Nyx pegged the newcomer as First Family, one of the rich old families whose kids never seemed to serve much at the front and who spent most of their lives behind filters that protected them from the sun. She heard some of those pampered pieces of shit lived to be sixty or more. Interesting, though, for a First Family to send one of their own out here to pay off Mahir, instead of just a lackey.

  Nyx shifted in her seat, making it a little easier to grab the butt of her scattergun if she needed to. She also tugged up the hood of her burnous, just in case. This wasn’t a job she wanted to be remembered for.

  The woman reached Mahir, and stepped into the light from the porch. Nyx realized the First Family woman was someone she knew. It was Yah Reza, a magician who ran one of the major boxing gyms and magician training operations in Faleen.

  “You got my piece, baby doll?” Yah Reza said. Her speech was a little slurred, and her teeth were red with sen use. She was a regal older woman, all wrapped up in a red burnous.

  Mahir produced the complicated bit of metal, or whatever it was. “Just where you said it would be,” Mahir said.

  A grin split Yah Reza’s face. “That’s just fine, baby, just fine.”

  “We’ve got . . .” Mahir said, “the parrots. You saw the par- rots outside?”

  “No problem,” Yah Reza said. “I can take care of those. Now.” She closed her hand over the piece. “You have what we agreed?” Mahir asked.

  “It’s all been transferred,” Yah Reza said. “Ask Ada.” “Great, great,” Mahir said, and she smiled wide. “Great doing business with you.”

  Yah Reza glanced at Nyx now for the first time. “Come on down here, Nyxnissa.”

  “Shit,” Nyx said.

  “Go on in Mahir,” Yah Reza said. “I want to talk to Nyx.” Mahir raised her brows, but did as she was told.

  Nyx didn’t go down to Yah Reza. She just pushed back her hood and put her feet up on the railing.

  Yah Reza, bemused, made her way up the steps. “Been a long time, baby doll.”

  “Why you have that shit team do this?” Nyx said. “Mine could do it.”

  “Yours wasn’t as desperate,” Yah Reza said. “And lest you forget—you, child, tend to make a terrible mess of things.”

  “I saved them from the parrot problem.” Yah Reza pursed her mouth. “As I said.”

  “Ah,” Nyx said. “They weren’t supposed to survive that.

  How would you get your trinket?”

  “Trinket?” Yah Reza held it up and laughed. She tossed it onto the porch and ground it under her foot. It was sur- prisingly fragile, clearly not metal at all, and it turned to jagged bits of dust easily under the magician’s foot in a way it certainly hadn’t while traveling in Mahir’s breast binding. “It wasn’t the trinket, it was the boy. It’s done now.”

  “You all work on some other level up there,” Nyx said. “Someday I’ll figure it out.”

  “No, no, child,” Yah Reza said. “You don’t want that. If you do that, we couldn’t abide having you around anymore.” She patted Nyx’s cheek. “We prefer your ignorance.”

  “Thanks?” Nyx said.

  “You’re welcome,” Yah Reza said. Yah Reza put her hood back on and started down the steps.

  “You really calling away the parrots?” Nyx asked. “Cause if I’m—”

  “Already done,” Yah Reza said. She gestured to the ground- up trinket. “They’ve been released.”

  Nyx stood, walked down into the yard and watched Yah Reza go. Shifters bound to a temple, but why? Pulled there and kept in a prison? For who? To do what? And where would they go now? Fuck, she was glad getting paid didn’t involve understanding First Family catshit.

  She caught a whiff of smoke, and wondered if somebody was cooking breakfast already. The bluish haze of the first sunrise was still dim. Not even Rhys would be cooking that early.

  As she turned, Nyx saw the team coming out—Mahir first, squat Kasib, little Eli, and Ada with her sunny face. They looked happy, cheery, two words she would never use for her own team.

  Behind them, flames whorled from the open door of the house.

  “The fuck?” Nyx yelled.

  “Huh?” Mahir glanced back at the house. “Just tying up loose ends,” she said. “Come on, they have a bakkie. We can cut the filter and get out.”

  “You just . . . those people are still in there,” Nyx said. “Did you just fucking torch a house full of kids?”

  Mahir raised her brows. “We’ve murdered any number of people today,” Mahir said. “Children, women, men. What’s it matter? It’s the job, Nyx.”

  “They weren’t part of the job!” Nyx said, and her own ferocity surprised her. It seemed to surprise Mahir, too, because she took a step back. “Shit, Mahir, yeah, you do what you need to do for the job, but it’s over. There was no need for that. They don’t have to die for you to get paid. That’s just fucking . . . it’s not . . .”

  “Are you all right?” Mahir said.

  Behind her, the flames leapt higher. Her face was a fiery silhouette.

  Nyx had to look away. Her mind worked furiously, ex- hausted and dehydrated and sore as fuck and here she was with this blazing house of kids and Mahir was right, who cared? She had done worse things, hadn’t she? But those were on a job. A job. This was different, it was.

  She had brought these people here, yeah. But the home- steaders shouldn’t have been out here. Something was bound to happen to these people way out here at the edge of nothing, sooner or later.

  But Nyx knew the difference, now, as she gazed at their happy faces. The difference was, this killing wasn’t for the job. It was for their own pleasure.

  Mahir was patting her shoulder. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s head out. They would have been taken out by the next Chen- jan raid. I was doing them a favor.”

  They piled into the bakkie, and Nyx followed, because what was she going to do, run into the house? Hitch a ride? Walk home? Ada took down the filter. Kasib drove until they got back to town, and the blue sun was up over the horizon. Kasib stopped outside a hotel, and as they all got out, Mahir pulled out some notes and stuffed them into Nyx’s hands.

  “Here,” Mahir said, “you deserve it,” but all Nyx saw were the smears of blood on the porch. “You all right?”

  “Think I’ll walk from here,” Nyx said.

  “Wait, what?” Mahir said. “Don’t you want to be part of the team?”

  Ada gazed at her from outside the bakkie, pleasant face all scrunched up. Kasib was sitting on the hood of the bakkie, eating a roti. Eli had their shotgun over their shoulders, standing watch outside the ratty hotel.

  “No,” Nyx said. “I’ve got a team. We’re square, though, huh?” “Sure,” Mahir said, “we’re even.”

  Nyx turned her back on them and walked and walked as the sky began to brighten. She stopped at a mosque where the muezzin was stepping out onto the sidewalk to head up into the minaret to call prayer. Behind her was a mullah.

  Nyx held out her hand to the mullah. “My tax,” Nyx said. “For the waq. My mother was on the waq, the dole. Giving it back, maybe, for somebody else.”

  The mullah raised her brows.

  “I’m a pretty bad person,” Nyx said.

  “I’m sure you like to think that,” the mullah said, and took the money.

  Nyx came within a couple blocks of her storefront just as, at her back, the big orange demon of the second sun crested the horizon. She waited, not sure if she could go back there, to either team. Sunrise warmed the city and the call to prayer sounded. The heat bathing her back soothed the muscles there. Her ass and thighs still hurt from all the fucking, and she looked forward to lying on the roof and soaking up more heat before it got too hot to bear.

  It was the promise of the warm roof that decided her.

  As she came up under the awning of the storefront, she saw that the front door was open. She froze and pulled her pistol. Nyx crept to the doorway. She went in pistol first.

  Anneke was in the foyer, passed out on the divan. Nyx knew she was passed out, not dead, because she was snoring like a fat old dog. A bottle of whisky sat at the head of the divan, and smears of sen shown on Anneke’s fingernails.

  Nyx lowered her pistol, but kept it out. Someone was banging around the keg, and whistling. She walked to the curtain over the partition between foyer and keg and gently pulled the curtain aside with the barrel of her gun.

  Khos cleaning up the remains of Nyx’s dinner with Mahir; she’d completely forgotten about it. Grease smeared Taite’s workbench, and some of the whisky in the bottle had leaked all over one stool and onto the floor. Behind him, Taite was at the com, already plugging in the scents to call and direct another day of hacking communications associated with their bounties.

  She didn’t get much further into the keg before she saw Rhys bent over in the little nook he called a bedroom rolling up his prayer mat after morning prayer.

  “What the fuck you been up to?” Khos said, wiping at the table. “Looked like you had company.”

  “Not too much,” Nyx said, holstering her pistol. “Just the usual, you know? Painting the town bloody red as a wound.” “I’d expect nothing less,” Khos said, tossing her the rag.

  “Could you help me paint this one a little less greasy?”

  “No problem,” Nyx said, and she saw the surprise on his face at her quick acceptance. She’d like to tell him she’d be a better person, clean up more, look after herself, give a shit about them publicly, but that would be a lie. And she didn’t like lying to them, or to herself. Not unless money was in- volved. Not unless it was part of the job.

  “You’re back,” Rhys said, moving past her toward the foyer. “I really did not miss your face.”

  “Didn’t miss yours either,” Nyx said, and kicked out of her sandals. She began to disarm, pulling the scattergun, the pis- tols, the sword, and laying them all out on the workbench. Khos watched her do it. He didn’t say a word. He simply reached out, and wiped away a bit of blood from the back of her hand.

  It was good to be home.

  WHEN WE FALL

  I DON’T REMEMBER the first time I was abandoned and forgotten, but I have told the story of the second time so often that when the memory boils up it feels hot and gummy, like the air that day.

  Whoever cared for me—and I can’t be certain they were legal guardians, let alone relatives—took me with them to beg at the crossroads just outside the interplanetary port. I don’t know how long they had me, but I know they were not the first. I remember being hungry. I remember a tall woman with dark hair pulling me close and saying, “Stay here, Aisha.” She gave me a length of sug- arcane and a mango. Her skirt was red. I still think of the red skirt when I think of home.

  The people I saw as I sat out there, day after day, were all en- gineered for different worlds. The world I was on then, there was something about the sky . . . bloody red most of the day; stars the rest of the day, and a night filled with blue light. People were tailored to fit where they were from, or the place they’d chosen as home, whether that was a world or the deep black between the stars. Some were tall and fat, short and squat, or spindly; willowy as leaves of grass. Gills, webbed toes, ears that jutted out sharply from faces with eyes the size of jack bolts . . . many had tails; a few had four arms or more. Many wore respirators; teeth gleamed purple behind translucent masks or fuzzy full-bodied filters or suits that clung to their bodies like a second skin.

  Even then, sitting alone on the mat with my mango and sug- arcane, I couldn’t imagine that none of these people wanted me. I used to pretend, sitting at every port then and later, that somebody would come up and recognize me, or see me and just want me, not for some gain of theirs, but out of pure, unadulterated love. I was skinny and long-fingered, with squinty eyes and tawny skin covered in fine hair. I had a high forehead and a bright shock of white hair that stood straight up. I still wear it that way, long after I figured out the tricks for taming it, because I never did like being tamed. I suppose it never occurred to me to ask why none of them looked like me, because none of them even looked much like each other. I heard once that there’s a test you can take to find out what system your people are most likely in, but I can’t afford the test, and sure couldn’t afford to go back. And who’s to say they’d want me now, when they didn’t before?

  It’s difficult to reconcile this memory, still, with what I’m told about our society, about how our people are supposed to be. I see close-knit families and communities embracing one another in media stories. Every audio play and flickering drama squirming at the corner of my vision tells me we care for one another deeply, because we are all only as healthy, happy, and prosperous as our least fortunate member. There is no war, no disease that cannot be overcome, and every child is guaranteed a life of security and love. But the grand narrative of societies often forgets people like me.

  They forget the people who fall between the seams of things. They don’t like to talk about what happens below the surface.

  I went through a series of homes—way stations, temporary shel- ters, is probably more accurate. When this story drips out now, to engineers or star hustlers or bounty hunters at whatever watering hole I’m drunk at, most insist I had to be part of some community foster system organized by one government or another.

  I wasn’t. I’ve made my own way around, getting work in junk ports and on dying organic ships. I’ve done salvage of old trawlers, rotting on the edge of the shipping lanes, half consumed by some star.

  I spent my life with ships.

  But I never expected a single ship to change my life.

  It shouldn’t have been different from any other job with any other junker. I was working inside a vast, shiny new wing of the Aleron port. It had taken a decade and 30,000 people to turn that heap of rock into a modern port to serve the ships along the ship- ping lane; by the time they were done, organic ports were already being grown far more efficiently in the next system. It was old, dead tech before it even opened its doors. Fitting that I was there, then. I was there purely by chance. I’d picked up work on an organic freighter whose owner dumped me and the rest of the crew on Aler- on, firing off with our cut of the cargo, profits, and the last of my meager belongings. I was about thirty, far too old to get had like that, but I’d gotten cozy and complacent with enough food in my belly and air in my lungs. All the three of us had to our names were our jumpsuits and whatever we’d stashed in our pockets.

  Luckily we had different skill sets. I’m a good mechanic; I can work on dead tech and organic ships, and even some of the semi- sentient ones. I don’t have certifications for all of them, but that also means I’m cheap. I know how to tailor viruses and bacteria and microbial compounds fairly quickly and expertly, and how to counter them when a ship has been infected. I learned all that out on the edges of things, places where you teach yourself how to farm by giving yourself a local virus that encodes the skill in your DNA. So me and the crew split up and got work separately. I found myself hired out to a lady whose organic wreck of a ship had barely gotten to Aleron on its own before starting to disintegrate around her. The ship needed a full overhaul, which she didn’t like, but nobody else could fix it for what she could pay.

 

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