God's War Read Online Free PDF Page A

length,
never quite in the same location. Beneath each gym, the world was bent and
twisted. The distance-bending corridors were relics from the times before
Umayma was habitable, back when magicians lived belowground while they remade
the world. This made it possible to step into a gym at the coast and emerge a few
minutes later at a gym in Mushtallah or Faleen and Aludra. Practical for long
distances, but dizzying over short ones.
    As they approached the locker room
for outriders, Husayn—the magicians’ favorite boxing nag—passed them in the
hall, heading one twist of the hallway down to her own locker room. Husayn was
a stocky woman with a face like a shovel. A novice magician scurried after her,
carrying her gear.
    “Hey, chimba!” Husayn called at
Rhys. Too loud. The women in this country were all too loud.
    Rhys did not look at her.
    “Those magicians haven’t been able
to wash that gravy stink off you, you know it?” Husayn persisted.
    “I am still perplexed as to why it
is that Chenja retained the veil and Nasheen discarded it,” Rhys said. “Perhaps
Nasheen’s women sought to frighten away God with their ugliness.”
    “Well now, if all your boys are as
pretty as you, your boys best start covering up
too,” Husayn said. “Ah, the shit I’d like to do to you.” She laughed.
    What a fool, Rhys thought. Chenjan
mullahs taught that men’s bodies were clean, asexual. Closer to God. Women,
real women, were not stirred to sin at the sight of men. If these godless
Nasheenian women were stirred at the sight of anything, it was blood.
    Yah Reza shooed her away. “Come,
now, this isn’t a whorehouse.”
    Husayn cackled and moved on.
    Rhys ducked into the other locker
room. Inside, the light was dim, and a lean woman sat hunched on one of the
benches, staring into her hands.
    When he stepped in, she looked up.
She was long in the face, like a dog, and she had narrow, little eyes and a set
to her mouth that reminded Rhys of one of his sisters, the look she got when
she wanted something so badly she made herself sick. He hoped this woman didn’t
vomit. He knew who would have to clean it up.
    Yah Reza moved past him and greeted
the outrider.
    The outrider stood. She looked
uneasy, like a cornered animal—a dog-shifter in form, or maybe some scraggly
adolescent sand cat. He might have guessed her for a shifter if he had seen
only an image or picture of her, but in person he was able to see clearly that
she was not. The air did not prickle and bend around her as it did a shifter.
She was just some kid, some standard—just another part of the world.
    Yah Reza talked low to the girl and
rubbed her shoulders. She spit sen on the floor. Rhys knew who would have to
clean that up too.
    “This is Rhys. Come here, boy,” Yah
Reza said, and Rhys walked close enough to see that he was a head and shoulders
taller than the outrider.
    “You bring your wraps?” Yah Reza
asked the girl.
    The outrider stabbed her fingers
toward two long, dirty pieces of tattered muslin on the bench next to her.
    Yah Reza spit more sen. “Rhys,” she
said.
    Rhys went to the locker at the back
of the room, where they kept the extra gear. He unraveled a couple of hand
wraps. He grabbed some tape and took a seat on the bench and finished
unraveling the wraps.
    “He know how to box?” the outrider
asked, and even Rhys, with his nonnative Nasheenian, noticed her mushy inland
accent. Where had they picked her up? Working some border town? The magicians
were notorious for pushing girls into the ring before they were ready. It made
the fights bloodier.
    “I don’t believe in violence,” Rhys
said.
    “A shame too,” Yah Reza said. “He’s
a damn fine shot with a pistol. But don’t worry none about his technique. He’s
a magician, girl. He knows hands. You get on, and I’ll meet you in a
quarter-hour. We got some fancy visitors want to meet you and Husayn before the
fight.”
    Yah Reza petted the outrider’s
cheek.
    The outrider sat