Rapture

by Kameron Hurley

  The sand broke against the filter. She half hoped it would stop, but no—it simply ate the filter. Bled through. She spread herself thinner. Consciousness floated.

  There once was a woman…

  And then she felt something else ahead of her. Some other entity, something like her. It, too, ate at the sand. The tide had become a wave.

  The wave soon became a runnel.

  Inaya began to grasp back at the bits of herself. She felt some semblance of consciousness return. As she regained control, she was able to focus on the final movement of the sand, until every last grain was broken and removed.

  It was painful, coming back.

  Inaya burned with the effort. She staggered into her body like a drunkard. Fell to her knees. Coughed up bloody mucus and dead beetles. She snorted air into new lungs. The ground beneath her was scorched bare. Every last scrap of organic matter had been eaten by the sand.

  She raised her head.

  There was another figure there across from her at the edge of the filter, a pale man. He coughed up a swarm of red beetles. They buzzed about his mucus-smeared head.

  Inaya crawled toward him. Hunger stabbed her belly. She would need to eat soon.

  He looked up.

  It was the Angel who interrogated her—Pieter. The one from the prison. The one she had spared.

  He met her look, said nothing. Then he was on his feet, running out past her, through the filter, and into the trembling jungle.

  Nyx stared at the pile of bones where Alharazad and the dozen bel dames had been. “I’m… I can’t… what the fuck was that?”

  “You asked once why I followed you,” Safiyah said. “It’s because I’m hoping they give me something difficult next time.”

  “They?” Fatima said. Her voice was faint. The beetles had picked Alharazad clean, but left Fatima intact.

  “You think you are the only power in Nasheen, child? Oh no. Yours is a very new power, and you only have as much as we permit you. Don’t get too comfortable, now.”

  “The boys—” Fatima began.

  “The boys will be just fine,” Nyx said, suddenly. It bubbled up from inside of her. “Because as I told you, Raine’s still alive. You don’t know any different, do you? There will be people here to corroborate that. He just checked in with them. Should be on the radio any minute. Raine isn’t going to be found. And nobody else is going to look for him. He’s retiring from politics. The bel dames are going to keep going on as they are until the new government decides what do to with them. No one’s going to kill anyone. How does that sound?”

  “Bloody awful,” Safiyah said.

  “Fatima?” Nyx said.

  “I… need to think.”

  “No thinking. Doing.” Nyx walked up to the table. “If there’s a new government in Nasheen, you can bet I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you’re not a part of it.”

  “Then shoot me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what you do.”

  “Is it? You really don’t know me at all, do you, Fatima? I’m not like you. Not anymore.”

  “There is no place for you in the new world,” Fatima said.

  “That’s what I’m hoping,” Nyx said. “If you had any goddamn sense, you’d hope so too.”

  Nyx pushed past Safiyah into the hallway. She needed to get away. Far, far, the fuck away.

  “Nyx!” Safiyah called. “Come now, darling, let me buy you a drink.”

  But Nyx was unsteady on her feet, burning with fear. As she stepped into the hall, she was overwhelmed by the number of women around them, scurrying from one job to another. She reached for her blade.

  Safiyah took her arm, quickly. “Hush now,” she said softly. “Head high. Sword sheathed. We are going to walk right out of this dismal place.”

  “I fully expect to fight my way out. Fatima will call someone. We’ll carve out bloody bel dames for spans.” Nyx could see it. The bodies. The blood. The twisted young women’s faces.

  Safiyah patted her arm. “Not today, child. Not after the call you made.”

  “She won’t come.”

  “She will.”

  They walked through the open foyer unmolested, and when they stepped into the courtyard, there she was, with a mixed force of order keepers and Ras Tiegan security professionals. They had already breached the filter.

  Mercia stood at the head of the little army, foolishly, Nyx thought, but that was just like her. When she saw Nyx and Safiyah, she frowned. “I expected you’d be fighting your way out,” she said.

  “Me too,” Nyx said.

  “Colonials,” Safiyah said, and shook her head.

  “Thank you for the information. The Queen’s given me leave to extradite Fatima as a war criminal for what she’s done to Ras Tieg. Do you have the confession?”

  Nyx decided not to tell her that the move on Ras Tieg was all the Queen’s idea. The girl would find out soon enough when she watched the recording. Nyx was fond of imagining Fatima living in some moist Ras Tiegan prison for the rest of her life. It was fitting, seeing as where Fatima had put Nyx for a year of her own life.

  Safiyah took a locust from the deep sleeve of her burnous and passed it to Mercia. “My bugs see and record all.”

  “You going to forgive me about the bodyguards, then?”

  Mercia’s face was unreadable—the perfect politician. “I’m keeping that note in my ledger.”

  “Fair enough,” Nyx said.

  47.

  Ahmed waited for Nyx at the rented storefront. He wiped himself clean with water pooling in the sink and a durable bar of yellow, scentless soap. It was not a proper bath, but it was the best he’d felt in a good long while. He caught his reflection in the cracked, opaqued windows at the front of the office, still hung with Nyx’s sign, though she had turned it inward, so her advertisement for a “bug killer” was visible only to him. He kept the windows opaqued, glad for the privacy, and dressed.

  Outside, Amtullah was a city on the brink of change. Whether that was civil war or not, he wasn’t certain. There were large protests in the main square, and the night before, no one had obeyed the curfew. The word at the taverns he stopped in was that Hamza Habib had finally communicated with his people, and negotiations with the new government would continue in his name by a man he had designated.

  “God the compassionate, the merciful, has willed that another be my voice in the movement during these months of my exile,” his recorded voice said over the radio—Ahmed was shocked the government channels were covering it—“and until my return to Nasheen I designate Dawud al Bassem as leader of the men’s initiative to restore Nasheen to its former bounty, God willing.”

  Ahmed had never heard of Dawud al Bassem, but he expected he would be hearing a good deal more of him in the future.

  He went back into the gear room and set out what he had left. Two pistols. One that seemed to be forever clogged with sand. A broken knife. He had kept it for the metal. It might be worth selling. He had no plan, no purpose. He half hoped Nyx would keep him as a part of her new team. Would she open up the storefront and take up bounties again? It wasn’t great work, but it was work, and the only sort he seemed to be good at.

  As he cleaned his weapons, he became aware of a faint sound in the outer room. He paused to listen. Nothing. There was a good deal of noise on the street, and it was bleeding into the storefront.

  He turned.

  A woman stood three paces from him, a long dagger drawn. She was young, perhaps twenty, and she wore loose crimson trousers and a dark burnous.

  Ahmed had already emptied his weapons to clean them. The dagger was broken. He could wield it if he must, but not well. He had never been good with knives. He preferred words. And looks.

  They regarded one another for a long moment. He pressed his hands to the table.

  “There’s no life for a man in Nasheen, is there?” he said.

  “Plenty of room for men,” she said. “Just not criminals.”
/>   “And we’re all criminals to you, aren’t we?”

  She stepped forward.

  Bel dames never gave up, no matter how far you ran or how many politicians you saved.

  “Make it quick,” he said.

  “Let’s not make it at all,” Nyx said. She entered from the back door. Her face was haggard. She watched the little bel dame.

  “How long have you had the note?” Nyx asked.

  “A month. Another sister passed it to me.”

  “I bet she did,” Nyx said. She walked up to Ahmed and put a hand on his shoulder. Oddly comforting. He understood what the Chenjan liked about her. “I just came from speaking to Fatima Kosan,” Nyx said. “Rumor has it you’re all going to be out of a job soon.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Who was your first?” Nyx asked.

  The girl firmed her mouth.

  “That young, are you?” Nyx walked toward the girl. “Let me tell you a secret. They forgive you when you let your first one go. There are boys out there threatening to riot. There’s a new government to put together. A whole country to run. A world to fix. And you’re fucking around in here swinging a knife at a war vet. There are no more deserters, honey pot. There’s no war. We’re just people now. You get that?”

  The girl stared at her knife.

  Ahmed held his breath.

  “Go home,” Nyx said. “There’s been enough blood spilled in Nasheen today.”

  In another life, Ahmed would have lost his head. He could see it, staring back at him from the floor.

  But as Nyx put her hand on the girl’s shoulder, the girl’s expression crumpled.

  “It’s all right, Nyx said. “They’ll be another one.”

  “You’re Nyxnissa so Dasheem,” the bel dame said.

  “Yeah. No note on me either. I checked.”

  The girl pulled a red letter from her burnous and handed it to her. “I pass his note to you,” she said. “I don’t give up notes either.” And she walked out.

  Nyx held the red letter. Sighed.

  As Ahmed watched, she tore up the red letter and threw the remnants onto the floor. “I’ll tell the bounty office it was passed to me. Even if it’s not wiped clean, well, it’s mine now. And I’m retired.”

  “I thought you weren’t a bel dame anymore.”

  “I’m starting to realize it doesn’t much matter what the truth is, only what people think is true.”

  Ahmed took a breath.

  “Don’t go thanking me yet. I can’t pay you any currency. I’m flat broke. But I hope you’ll accept that instead.”

  “I will,” he said.

  “Pack your things,” she said, and opened up the safe. She passed him what was inside.

  It was a train ticket to Mushirah, and a government-stamped land deed made out to a woman named Bakira so Dasheem, passed to Kine so Dasheem, then Nyxnissa so Dasheem, and then Eshe al Khazireh. The final name, scrawled in at the bottom and sealed with a shimmery organic stamp, was Ahmed al Kaidan.

  “I’ve been holding onto that a long time,” she said. “My sister fought for a decade to get our mother’s farm back from the government. Maybe you can make some use of it.”

  Ahmed felt his throat swell. It was the kindest thing anyone had ever done for him. “Thank you,” he said.

  She shrugged. “Find yourself a nice boy to settle down with, and raise something worth a damn in this fucking desert. That’s thanks enough.”

  He opened his mouth to deny it, but realized the time for deception was done. There was some relief in that.

  Nyx leaned back on a wicker chair on the roof of the storefront, feet up on the edge of the parapet, gazing out over the city. She was drinking whiskey, and it had never tasted so good. Safiyah sat next to her, legs crossed beneath her billowing robe, hair pulled back from her creepily lovely face.

  Nyx rubbed at a smear of blood on her trousers, wondering what injury it had come from. Most everything still ached, though the whiskey was dulling it now. In the distance, Blood Hill was lit up like a torch as order keepers and Ras Tiegan irregulars set up camp as temporary investigators.

  “Think the bel dames will ever get it back?” Nyx asked.

  “Of course they will,” Safiyah said. “You should know that better than I. But of course, they still have Bloodmount.”

  “Just figured you’d have more experience with them than me.”

  “I have seen bel dames do many things. Play many roles. But the bel dames I once knew and the ones as they are now…” She smirked. “They are far different people.”

  “You talk about it like you remember when they ruled the world. Not like you read it in a book.”

  Safiyah sipped her drink. It was some gross fruity thing. Nyx could smell it. Safiyah gestured up at the bright light in the sky—the alien ship locked in orbit around Umayma. “Have you ever seen a ship shot out of the sky?” she asked.

  Nyx gazed up at the light. “Never happened in my lifetime. They say we lost the ability.”

  “Not lost,” Safiyah said. Her eyes were bright. “Just dormant. Saving it for when they truly needed it.”

  “How old are you, Safiyah?”

  “Old enough.”

  “How’s that possible?”

  Safiyah sighed. “We were all long-lived people, once. Nashins and Senyans. We were from different worlds, it’s true, but related ones. We had a shared religion, shared culture. Shared genetics, even. For a good long time, the richest were like immortals. Lived for centuries. On Umayma, that changed. Mutations happen faster here. They are difficult to correct, and nearly impossible to control. But we found that if we kept a few bloodlines very pure, we could maintain some of those genetics. You should have seen the things our conjurers could do, even in my time. But those skills are degrading. The bugs are mutating faster than we are. I worry that someday we may lose our hold on them all together. And the shifting… Well, the shifting is getting worse. Sometimes I think we’re fighting the bold truth that what the world really wants to do is change us to fit it. We keep trying to change the world to suit us. I don’t think that’s the way—ah, there it is…”

  Safiyah pointed back up at the sky.

  Nyx followed her gesture, and saw a brilliant blue burst of light puncture the night from the direction of Mushtallah. It roared across the darkness, into the atmosphere, fast as a comet. It left a misty trail of debris in its wake, like a spent burst.

  Nyx watched the light change, grow smaller as it ascended. Then, a bloody eruption of light: purple and blue, tinged in orange, ringed in green. For a moment, it was as if a small star had exploded in the sky. Then bright flares broke apart from the mass and rained down from the atmosphere. It was like fiery hail. The end days from some bloody book.

  Nyx took a drink. It was one of the prettiest things she ever saw.

  Safiyah sighed as the rain of debris flared, darkened, and died in the night sky. After just a few minutes, the residue from the explosion had all but dissipated, leaving just a few misty trails of aurora-like folds in the sky and gaggles of awed spectators on the streets.

  “Not as dramatic as I hoped,” Safiyah said.

  “Did you shoot down the Drucians, a thousand years ago?”

  Safiyah sipped her drink. “There were still a few of us alive, then. We could afford to be more dramatic. Their ship was bigger, too. A proper colonial ship, not a military vessel like that one.”

  “Military?”

  “Oh yes. You think your queen would tell you the truth of anything? That was a military vessel, Nyxnissa. They didn’t wake me up just to kill Alharazad. Certainly not. They wanted to know if I could still protect us from those expansionists. They have wanted to eradicate our kind for millennia. There was once a filter over this world, did you know? It protected us for nearly two thousand years, until some bloody expansionist came by and tore it up. It took every resource this planet had to beat them back. After that, the Caliphate fell and the wars started. There was only s
o much left here for us. Few resources means the ones with the most control over them will survive. So when the Drucians came, yes, I blew them out of the sky. There was not enough here for us, let alone half a million more.”

  “Half a million?”

  “Oh yes. At least that many.”

  “You murdered half a million people?”

  “Would you rather it was our people I murdered? You of all people understand that we must make choices, Nyxnissa. Half a million aliens to save millions of our own? Absolutely. I still consider it a fair trade.”

  Nyx shook her head.

  “Are you shocked?” Safiyah asked.

  “About which part?”

  Safiyah shrugged. “Oftentimes, when I tell colonials, they cannot comprehend it.”

  “I’ve seen a lot of crazy, surprising shit in my time,” Nyx said. “Long-lived mutants blowing shit out of the sky is the least of it.” She thought of the massive organic atmosphere machines, and the creature that had attacked Khatijah.

  Safiyah polished off her drink. “Well, that should be all for the sky theater tonight,” she said. “I’m back off to my masters. There’s apparently been some disturbance in the old derelicts beneath Mushtallah, ever since that business in Ras Tieg. No doubt crawling through that muck in search of the disease will keep me busy.”

  “Who is it who polices somebody like you?”

  Safiyah smiled. “Oh, now, you don’t think I’m going to tell you all my secrets, do you? What I’ve learned about this world over the centuries is that just when you think you’re starting to understand the full puzzle, something pops up that forces you to rearrange the whole picture. Stay on your side of the divide, Nyx. It’s simpler and easier that way.”

  “I like it over here,” Nyx said.

  “I do as well. It’s a shame, really.” She watched the sky a moment longer. “Good night, Nyxnissa so Dasheem. I do hope we can work together again someday.”

  Nyx raised her glass.

  Safiyah left her.

  Nyx sat on the roof a good deal longer, refilling her glass until the bottle was empty. She wondered how a person was supposed to sleep at night, knowing the kind of shit Safiyah did. But was it really all that different? Killing a hundred people or a million? After a while, they all blurred together. Oh, sure, there were some you thought about more than others. The boy from Radha who screamed for three hours for his mother after Nyx threw an acid burst into his garret window. The pretty girl from Barsa who Nyx killed as she lay between her naked thighs. Just reached up and pushed two thumbs into her eyes, fleshy jelly. Nyx had been drunk and high on some military grade narcotic then, so that memory was milky and distorted with the memory of the three other times they fucked. And then there were the twin boys who had taken an entire textile factory hostage in Aludra. When Nyx finally got in, she found nothing but bent, twisted, bodies. Charred and bashed in, ragged clothing. But it was not the female workers who had drawn their wrath. No, the women had gotten out the back. All that was left when the twins came in were half a dozen young boys, twelve to sixteen, not one of whom had done a day of combat training. They were frail, skinny, pretty little things—what was left of them, anyhow. Nyx found the boys upstairs, sobbing over the last two bodies. These ones were mostly just melted flesh. They had run out of bullets, and used acid on them.