God's War by Kameron Hurley Read Free Book Online

knockdown sent Yah
Tayyib and the rest of the crowd to their feet. The air filled with a
collective roar of dismay.
    Nyx took the opportunity to slip
past Yah Tayyib’s elbow and make her way toward the back of the room.
    Yah Batool started the count.
    Nyx circled around to the front of
the cantina, keeping to the darkness at the rear of the ring and avoiding her
sisters. Behind her, Nyx heard the crowd give a yell at the count of seven, and
she turned to see Husayn back on her feet.
    Husayn wouldn’t lose this fight. It
was why Nyx hadn’t bet on her. Jaks would visit the
betting booth to collect her money for the night, and like every new boxer at a
magicians’ gym fight, Jaks would want to know who had bet on her. Jaks would
check the books and see Nyx’s name. There was no faster way to get a losing
boxer to take you home than to bet on her when nobody else did. And if Nyx had
done her job the night before, Jaks would be giddily looking for Nyx in the bar
later.
    The bodies inside the cantina were
packed so tight that Nyx had to shoulder her way through to a free patch of
counter space. She edged a smaller woman out of a seat and ordered a whiskey
from a slim half-breed barmaid.
    Nyx perused the bar. She saw Anneke
standing outside the door to the street. Raine and his team were likely worried
the magicians had filtered the place against them. Bashir should have been looking
for Nyx too, but Bashir spent fight nights watching the fight, and business
dictated that she attend the postfight parties with the local tax and gaming
merchants. She wouldn’t be running the bar.
    Nyx looked for a good way to blend
in with the chattering locals and decided to flirt with the sour-faced woman at
her left, who turned out to be a gunrunner from Qahhar.
    Nyx heard the fight end in round
five. A wave of celebratory dragonflies cascaded from the arena and into the
cantina through the open door. They brought with them a wave of scent—lime and
cinnamon—that drowned out the musky stink of sweat-slathered women and warm
beer. Dragonflies meant the magician-sponsored fighter had won.
    The bar got louder. The winning
betters bought rounds of drinks, and the gunrunner started weeping into her
beer, grieving for her wayward girlfriend. She bid Nyx good night.
    Nyx watched Anneke leave the doorway.
Anneke would take up a position on higher ground, where she could get a better
view as the cantina began to clear out en masse.
    Jaks came through the door half an
hour later, both eyes going purple, lip swollen. Blood oozed through a heavy
wad of salve smeared above her brow. She walked like she had the last time she
lost a fight—like a woman who believed she’d never see another break.
    When Jaks got close, Nyx tugged her
hood back so Jaks could see her face.
    “Buy you a drink?” Nyx asked.
    Jaks grinned. It wasn’t an
improvement on her face. “I suppose I owe you money,” she said. “I saw that you
bet on me.”
    Nyx shrugged. “Seemed like a fine
idea at the time. What kept you so long?”
    “Those off-world women chewed my ear
clean off with all their talk,” Jaks said.
    “What, the ones from New Kinaan?”
Yah Tayyib hadn’t been shitting, then. What kind of alien came all the way out
to this blasted rock to talk to boxers?
    Jaks sat next to her. “Yeah. What
about you, what the hell you doing in Faleen?” Jaks asked.
    “Looking for you,” Nyx said. She had
never been a good liar, so whenever the truth worked, she used it. “What are
you drinking?”
    “Whatever you are,” Jaks said. She
was still beaming, and Nyx had a twinge of something like guilt. She let the
feeling slide away, like oil on the surface of a cistern.
    The barmaid brought their drinks.
Nyx moved closer to Jaks, so their knees touched. “You have family in Faleen?”
Nyx asked.
    Jaks chattered about her kin. They
lived just outside Faleen, she said. She’d been trying to build up to a
magician’s fight since she was fourteen. She had two sisters