Rapture

by Kameron Hurley

  They came to a ten-foot wall marking the border between the city proper and the private residences beyond. Even from this distance, Nyx could see how large the residences were, all of them carved neatly into the side of a hill overlooking the city. Beyond the wall, Nyx saw another filter. The guards at the gate had to code Nyx into the filter for safe passage into the district.

  They drove through. The filter wasn’t nearly as sticky as the one that prevented the bugs, organics, and contagions of the rest of the world from entering Amtullah. This one just kept out the dangerous plague that was the Nasheenian underclass. Going through two tight filters in quick succession made Nyx’s skin itch.

  Twisted thorn trees and hardy butterstalk hybrids with plate-sized leaves lined the roads. The compounds here were all walled. The tops of the walls were lined in hanging gardens of yellow spiderstalk, magnolia vine, amber grass, and lilac. The streets were clean as dinner plates. It put Nyx in mind of Tirhan and their blinding sidewalks and gratuitous parks. She even saw a wasp swarm patrolling a narrow alley.

  “Have you been up here before?” the driver asked.

  “My clients meet me on my turf. I don’t go to theirs,” Nyx said.

  The driver eyed her over. “Yeah, I imagine that’s true.”

  They pulled up to an amber-colored compound at the far end of the hill. Most of it was built into the hill itself, so all Nyx saw as she climbed out inside the compound wall was the main floor. But even from the ass-end of the place, she caught a striking view of the city.

  “Your mom knows how to pick them,” Nyx said.

  “I picked it,” Mercia said. “Fatima had a dozen houses to choose from.”

  Nyx wondered just how deep Mercia had put herself into Fatima’s pocket.

  A small staff met them at the gate. The on-site magician introduced herself as Yah Rafika. The others were a half-breed servant and a housekeeper, and nobody bothered telling Nyx their names.

  “This is Nyx,” Mercia told the housekeeper. “She is our guest. Please, see her in.”

  The housekeeper took in Nyx’s full measure with an accusing stare. “This way,” the housekeeper said.

  The house was some petty First Family’s place from back in the Caliphate days. Building into the hill helped cool the house, and so did the constantly running water pumped through the latticed walls of the compound’s interior. There was a central courtyard that everything else wrapped around, and on the side, a long, sloping yard with a ten-foot mud-brick wall topped in friendly poisoned needles.

  Nyx bided her time in the living quarters downstairs. She faced a wide, tiled fireplace etched in fanciful geometric designs inlaid with gold. Most of the floor was bare stone, but there were carpets in every room—clean ones.

  The housekeeper entered. “I have a meal prepared, if it would please you,” she said. “When you are clean and rested, Ambassador sa Aldred would like to see you.”

  “Thanks,” Nyx said. She followed after the housekeeper and had a seat in the warm little kitchen. She asked for liquor, but the housekeeper said they had none. Mercia didn’t permit it. Nyx ate a late supper of curried locust rotis. As she ate, she watched where everybody ended up. The magician didn’t live at the house. She made nice with the housekeeper and said goodbye for the evening. When Nyx’s supper was done, the housekeeper dismissed the additional servant, as well, leaving just the housekeeper, Mercia, and the two bodyguards Mercia had brought with her to Druce still in the house.

  The housekeeper led Nyx to the bathhouse downstairs to get washed up. They had clean clothes ready. She dressed. Everything was soft. Organic. Expensive.

  When she was ready, the housekeeper took her upstairs. They followed a large, winding stairway made of burnished bug secretions. The housekeeper gestured to a door just across the hall, and Nyx went through the soft arch of the doorway. The bedroom was long and thin, running along the whole north side of the house. The room was dominated by a stone slab where a mattress draped in red and white held court. Mercia was unpacking her case on the bed. A giant tapestry above the bed was spun up in a dozen colors; a swirling Ras Tiegan garden surrounding a broken forest bathed in blood.

  “That’s subtle, isn’t it?” Nyx said, nodding to the tapestry.

  “My mother’s,” Mercia said. “I suppose she thought there wouldn’t be any Nasheenians in here. She forgot about the servants of course.”

  As Nyx moved closer to her, she noted that Mercia had bathed and changed as well, even combed out her hair.

  “Saw you don’t have any filters in the house. What is this, the year 1200?” Nyx said.

  “I’ve never had need of it.” Mercia tucked a loose curl of dark hair behind one ear. She truly was unremarkable in nearly every way. Nyx had to admit she had a soft spot for plain folks. There was something to be said for finding beauty in the rough.

  “Might be time to start,” Nyx said. “All those dead bodyguards and all.”

  Mercia shrugged. “Yah Rafika has a swarm set out on patrol. It’s enough. You know Fatima will want to see you.” She went to her desk and palmed open a drawer. She removed a green envelope and passed it to Nyx. “That’s the official invitation, and her address.”

  “I hope she paid you well,” Nyx said, slipping the invitation into the band of her trousers.

  “I’m sorry,” Mercia said.

  “I’m sure.”

  “No, I am,” she said, and Nyx heard shame in her voice, like some little kid caught telling a lie.

  “If you weren’t a diplomat, I’d kill you,” Nyx said.

  “They said they wouldn’t hurt you. I didn’t let them follow me. We doubled back three times to make sure. I wasn’t followed.”

  “You seem very sure of that.”

  “You’re a bel dame. Aren’t you supposed to be able to know things like that?”

  “People keep saying I’m a bel dame, but I’m not. Haven’t been in over twenty years. I’m just a woman, Mercia. And you lied to me.”

  “I didn’t lie… all right, at first I lied, but I was doing a favor for the Queen.”

  “In return for what?”

  “It’s politics. It’s not personal.”

  “Everybody says that when they’re the ones doing the shitting, not when they’re being shat on.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’ve said that already.”

  Mercia flexed her fingers. Nyx wondered if there was a weapon in the case she was unpacking on the bed.

  “I wanted to find you,” Mercia said. “They just gave me a good reason to do it.”

  “But you found me all on your own?”

  “Eshe helped.”

  “You better not have mixed Eshe up in this.”

  “I didn’t. When he learned I was trying to find him, he contacted me on an untraceable pattern. Well… the bel dame said it was untraceable.”

  “And you found Anneke’s place the same way?”

  “I didn’t use any of Fatima’s agents to find the house. Only me and Khanaya and Ayah—my bodyguards—know where the house is.”

  “You’re making this a very easy interrogation.”

  “Is that what it is?” Mercia’s voice was light.

  Nyx realized she still didn’t get it. “You just told me that there are only three people in this country who know where Anneke and her kids are. Who know where my safe house is. Three people.”

  “I don’t want—”

  “Doesn’t much matter what you want, does it?” Nyx crossed to the bed in three long strides and took Mercia firmly by the chin, leaned into her. She smelled of cinnamon and cocoa butter. Her skin was incredibly soft, like some First Family kid.

  “Leave me alone after this. All of us. I see you again… I hear something’s happened to them…”

  “I didn’t go out there for them,” Mercia said. She raised her eyes, met Nyx’s look. “I went out there for you.”

  Mercia kissed her.

  Nyx wasn’t sure which of them was more surprised.


  Mercia grabbed her by the collar of her vest and pulled her into the bed. Her leg slipped between Nyx’s thighs. Warmth bloomed through Nyx’s body, as if she’d been soaked in warm honey.

  My God, she’s soft, Nyx thought, tangling her fingers in Mercia’s dark hair.

  Mercia tugged Nyx’s vest open. Suckled her breast with her warm, wet mouth.

  “Fuck,” Nyx said.

  Mercia drew her head up, eyes glassy, cheeks flushed. “You’d better,” she said.

  And that was the end of the interrogation.

  For a time.

  The sheets were still damp, tangled around their feet. The darkness clung to them like another lover, hot and close. Nyx watched the long rise and fall of Mercia’s chest. Gorgeous breasts. She had never seen such perfect breasts. She slid her hand up Mercia’s thigh. Mercia sighed and smiled, caught up her fingers with Nyx’s.

  “That was worth going to Druce for,” Mercia murmured.

  The floor rumbled softly.

  Nyx raised her head. Heard a pop-pop sound outside, distant. It was almost dawn.

  “What is that?” Mercia asked.

  Nyx pulled herself out of bed and walked naked to the window. Opened the shutters. Gazed out over Amtullah. The view from the bedroom was even more spectacular than the one from the front courtyard. Orange, yellow, green, and lavender lights blazed across the city. The filter above caught the light, reflected it back, made the world glow softly even in the deepest part of the night.

  Nyx listened.

  The pop-pop sound came again, closer this time. Another rumble. From the east. She turned and saw a flickering flare of fire, and a smoky haze over the lights. The floor trembled again.

  Mercia padded over to the window, pulling on her robe. She took Nyx’s arm, pressed against her. Nyx wondered just how attached Mercia wanted to get. “Chenjans?”

  “No,” Nyx said. “It’s coming from inside the city.”

  “You think they’ve infiltrated the city?”

  “No. It’s the boys.” Nyx pulled away and started getting dressed. “Stay up here. You’ll be safe in this district.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “It’s a good time to see Fatima. She’ll be all riled up.” Nyx holstered and stowed her weapons. It always took longer to get them back on than it did to get them off.

  Mercia took a breath. “Nyx?”

  “What?”

  “Fatima promised me information I could use against our ruling Patron. I’ve long suspected that he has worked with Nasheen to repress our people. She said that if I went after you, she would give me that proof.”

  “And you believed her?”

  “It cost me nothing.”

  Nyx felt her expression harden. “Didn’t it?”

  Mercia pulled her robe closed. “That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it?”

  “This is business, Mercia. This is all just business. You mistake it for something else, you get killed. You understand? Bodies are my business.”

  Mercia raised her chin. “I understand,” she said.

  “Good.”

  Nyx walked to the door, looked back once. Mercia stood in the dim light of the window, robe slightly open, long, pale legs visible. Her expression was a little stricken. She’d be fine. Neither of the bodyguards had checked in on them, and they hadn’t exactly been quiet, which meant her people were used to her bringing lovers home. Nyx wondered if all the others Mercia dragged home were like her—scarred and twisted, something to gossip about back home over high tea. Going to bed with a Nasheenian was about as exciting a time as a rich dip could hope for. Not for the first time, Nyx wasn’t so sure that one of her impulsive fucks was a good idea. Especially knowing what she was about to do.

  Nyx shut the door.

  She stood a moment in the hall, trying to get her bearings. The radio was on downstairs, coming from the kitchen. The housekeeper’s rooms were out back, further down the lawn.

  Nyx pulled her dagger. Not her preferred weapon, but it was quiet.

  She padded down the stairs. Peered into the kitchen. The smaller bodyguard, Ayah, was there, feet on the table, listening to the radio as it wafted out misty images of some story from the Kitab. She was sipping a malty beverage. She was alone.

  Nyx killed her quickly and cleanly. Ayah barely had time to turn her head before Nyx bared her throat. Ayah kicked back, spastically jerking her legs. Her chair clattered across the floor.

  Nyx left the bodyguard in a pool of blood and went into the yard searching for Khanaya. She found her peering up toward Mercia’s room. Mercia had just closed the shutters.

  At Nyx’s age, she had learned to move fast. Surprise and experience were her only advantages.

  Khanaya turned as the knife came down. Caught the blade with her forearm. They grappled.

  Khanaya fumbled for a pistol, too hasty, panicked. Nyx drove her knife into Khanaya’s eye and punched her in the throat to stifle the scream. She held Khanaya down until she bled out. Then Nyx gritted her teeth, hooked her arms under the body’s, and hauled the still-warm corpse back into the kitchen. She slopped it next to Ayah’s.

  She sniffed at Ayah’s forgotten glass. The malty stuff gumming up the bottom was bad bootleg liquor. Nyx kicked the body’s leg away from the chair and sat down with the glass to wait. Sipped the liquor. Not bad. She listened to the thump-thump of explosions in the city center, and the low grumble of angry humanity. Blood congealed on the floor. Tiny blood mites began to appear along the edges of the room and scurry their way across the bare stone to the pooling blood.

  That made two less people who knew where Anneke and Radeyah and the kids were. And a very simple message to Mercia. It should have been the most relaxed Nyx had been in years. She should have enjoyed killing this cleanly, and fucking a smarmy young diplomat. Instead, she found herself thinking of another woman back home, and a house full of kids, and Anneke’s crumbling back.

  She finished her drink, and went out into the rumbling dawn to find Fatima.

  5.

  Ahmed traded his face for a ticket out of Sahar. It seemed a fair enough deal at the time—the butchers told him it was a pretty face, and they had a fair number of mutilated veterans coming off the front who’d have use for it. As it was, he could use a new face himself. It was harder for bel dames to hunt down faceless men.

  But when he woke on the butcher’s block, his vision a gray haze, a dull throbbing in his swollen mouth—like it had been stuffed with gauze—and he pressed his fingers to his engorged face and lips and tried to speak… he knew something was terribly wrong.

  They had not taken his face.

  They had taken his tongue.

  A tall woman entered. Her hands were bloody crimson, her gaunt face a hallowed mask. In her fingers she held a strange creature—half worm, half beetle. It was flat and smooth, with savage hooks at one end.

  “Open,” the woman said. He did not recognize her. Someone else had made the deal with him, and another woman had taken him here. She gripped his chin firmly in one hand, presented the worm-bug with the other. “Open,” she said, “Or did you never want to speak again?”

  He opened. The worm fell into his mouth, wriggling and lashing. The morphine had taken the edge off, but he felt it when the worm jabbed itself into the stub of what was left of his tongue.

  Ahmed retched.

  “Don’t fight it,” the woman said. She slapped his shoulder. Left a long red smear of blood. “Just let it settle. In a week you won’t even notice it.”

  He choked and drooled and finally, painfully, mumbled something like a curse. The worm waggled on the stub of his tongue. His words felt mangled, mushy. He gagged again.

  “It’ll conform to you,” the woman said. “It’s a proper parasite. Just give it time.”

  A tongue was a cheap organ, he knew. Not at all worth a trip out of Sahar. He bled all over the paperwork and collected his small sum and would have cursed the woman who’d taken him here, but the thought
of speaking made his stomach churn. If he spent another day in Sahar, he would be dead. It didn’t matter much what he had to sell to get out.

  So he slogged back into the fleshpots, and traded his right kidney for the remainder of what he needed for his train ticket. Still drooling and stumbling, he picked the first train headed to the interior. The woman at the counter spent twenty minutes reviewing his discharge tattoo and accompanying paperwork, then asked for an additional personal fee.

  “I don’t understand that request,” he said, his words coming out garbled, sloppy, as if he were chewing on the worm with every word. He gagged again.

  The ticket agent smiled, brazenly, the way all the women did who weren’t at the front. She told him men weren’t permitted on the interior without a special pass. “You won’t get past the filter, even with a face like that.”

  He had no interest in being reminded of his fucking face.

  “I’m not aware of that law,” he said, and spit blood and some yellow-pink mucus on her counter.

  “You are now,” she said. “One hundred notes, or you stay here at the front with the rest of the boys.” She leaned away from the ticket counter, still grinning. “I suppose you could walk across that desert. Plenty of other boys have, I hear. Mushtallah looks like some magician’s slab, bunch of pretty boys all standing around waiting to get put in jars.”

  He had spent far too many nights on the sand already. His slick was going bad, starting to stink, and they had relieved his entire platoon of weapons before getting their discharge tattoos. Aside from the slick and his other kidney, he had little left of any value. If only they’d taken his face.

  Ahmed took a deep breath. He started to recite the ninety-nine names of God, the way he had the time he saw his first squad torn apart by a hornet burst. It was the calm that kept you whole, when a hornet burst started biting. He had spent an hour in perfect stillness as his squad screamed and died around him, their faces and hands swelling and bursting, bloody foam at their mouths.

  He thought, again, of his face. Tried to tame his new tongue. “Is there some other arrangement we can come to?”