His father, he knew, would call him coward. His father would call him infidel.
Rhys put his books and papers away. He locked up some notes about his translation in Beh Ayin. Whatever bel dames wanted with Tirhan in the wilderness was something he wanted no part of. It meant a loss of face, and the potential loss of a good deal more, to request that the Minister pull him from such assignments. But it protected Elahyiah. It protected Laleh. It protected Souri. Everything he had built. What if those bel dames had known him? What door could have opened there on that blasted mountaintop?
Rhys went upstairs and into the dim of his room. He saw Elahyiah asleep, wrapped in nothing but a silk sheet, the latticed doors open to the ruddy light of the big, round-faced moons, her bare feet exposed. He pulled the gauzy curtain above the bed over another few inches to cover her exposed foot. She would lie like that the same way at midday, heedless of the unfiltered sun.
Elahyiah stirred in her sleep and turned onto her side. He saw the fullness of one bare breast in the red moonlight. Her eyelids flickered, and she smiled at him, still sleepy. He palmed her breast, teased the nipple with his thumb, and leaned in to kiss her.
“I love you,” he said.
She pulled him down next to her. “You say it as if I don’t know.”
“I love you,” he said again, whispered into her ear, against her neck, again and again until she laughed and he had to laugh, too, at the absurdity of it. As if she did not know.
“Marry me,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. Yes and yes, a thousand times yes. He would choose this again and again, until the end of the world.
Now keep it safe, he thought, and moved with her in the darkness.
+
Rhys woke from a dream of drowning. Not in water, no, but sand. His mouth was full of it, sharp and chalky dry, ground glass. He tasted blood.
He thrashed in his bed and sat up, disoriented, listening to the persistent buzzing from something… somewhere… downstairs. The call box. He wiped at his eyes and looked first for Elahyiah. She lay curled on her side, fingers hooked into a pillow, her face slack and soft. She could sleep through a sandstorm, that woman.
Rhys pushed out of bed and slipped on his khameez. The dim blue-gray along the horizon told him it was another hour or so before the first dawn, maybe seven in the morning—they kept time by the twenty-seven-hour clock in Tirhan. Trust the government to wake him a full hour before dawn prayer. He had already sent his brief of the meeting with the bel dames to the Tirhani Minister. He could think of no one else who would call at this hour. Another assignment so soon?
The call box was still buzzing as he passed his girls’ room. Souri peered at him from the open doorway.
“Da? I dreamed locusts in the hall,” she said.
“Hush. It’s just the call box.” He picked her up. Souri was wide-eyed and covered in a thin film of sweat. He was not the only one with nightmares. He brought her back into the room, across the soft organic flooring. Laleh, like her mother, slept soundly in her bed.
“Stay here. I’ll stop the buzzing,” Rhys said. “I’ll get you something to drink. I need you to be brave, though. Can you be brave while I get the call?”
“I’m scared, Da,” she whispered, and curled her little fingers into his khameez.
“All right, hush,” he said.
He brought her downstairs with him, heedless of the creaking steps. The only ones in the house who would wake were already awake.
He picked up the call box receiver with his free hand.
“Yes?” he said.
“Rhys Dashasa?” the voice on the other end said.
A cold knife cut through his gut. Rhys hung up.
That hadn’t been his name in six years.
He stared at the call box a good half minute. Souri began tugging at his khameez.
“Da, I’m thirsty. Da?”
Rhys set his daughter down and walked with her into the kitchen. His mind had gone coolly blank. He poured her a glass of lime-flavored water and helped her with the cup. He watched her drink.
Dreaming. Nightmares. Too many nightmares.
The call box buzzed again.
“Da?” Souri said.
“Stay here, love,” he said. He crossed to the call box again. He took a deep breath, squeezed his eyes shut, opened them. He was awake. He took up the receiver, pressed it against his ear. Said nothing.
He heard the soft, chittering mumble of an open line. Then, “Peace be upon you? Rhys? Is Rhys there? This is the Minster of Public Affairs. I need to speak to Rhys Shahkam please.”
Rhys let out his breath. He rested his forehead against the wall. “Yes, Minister?” he said.
“I need to speak with you about your report. Were you coming in today? You know I start my day at nine.”
“Of course. Yes. When would you like to meet?”
“If it’s not troubling to your affairs—”
“It is never troubling to my affairs to meet with you,” he said, and felt a sudden vague tiredness at the expectation of the dance. They circled a few more times, exchanging pleasantries. He agreed to meet her in an hour, downtown—after prayer of course.
Rhys put Souri back to bed.
He dithered in the kitchen for some time, cleaning up ahead of the housekeeper. He kissed Elahyiah and the girls. Then he washed and dressed and walked outside to catch a taxi. The way to the taxi ranks was through the park, so he stepped across the street and onto the gravel path. The blue-gray haze on the horizon was beginning to blossom. He sensed a wasp swarm off to his left, patrolling.
The morning was surprisingly quiet. He slowed his walk, listening. A rickshaw passed down a narrow road on the other side of the park, just visible through the trees. Bugs still infested the park; he could feel them vibrating, humming, pliant and prepared to receive direction… but the cicadas were quiet.
Cicadas did not quiet for magicians.
Rhys paused. He could see the other side of the park from where he stood. Unease filled him. The phone call came back to him… and the white raven in Beh Ayin.
Rhys held out his left hand at his side, palm splayed, and called for a wasp swarm. The swarm patrolling the street at his left paused, buzzed, waited. He put out a second thread to the cicadas, but could not contact them. Not for the first time, he wished he were a more skilled magician.
Rhys continued walking down the soft path, every part of him humming. His right hand flexed, itching to take the hilt of a pistol he no longer carried. What use was there for a pistol, in Tirhan?
My safe country, he thought. My safe little country. What a bloody fool I am.
He crossed the park. The sidewalk on the other side was empty. Two belching taxis and a rickshaw waited just up the street. He took a deep breath.
Bloody fool, indeed.
Elahyiah would laugh at him. Rhys Dashasa. No one knew him here. Bad dreams and call boxes. Too many bel dames and nervous ministers.
He tried to smile as he got into the taxi.
15.
Alharazad was a head and shoulders shorter than Nyx, heavy in the hips and jowls. The weathered hands that held the gun were sure and steady. The hood of her shiny green burnous was pulled back, and she wore a white turban and a pair of dark goggles. The hilt of a sword stuck up from a slit in the back of her burnous. Nyx wondered if it was the same one she’d used to behead half the bel dame council. Her gloves covered her from fingertips to elbows, and matched the burnous. Nyx saw something of her son Raine in her aged, sun-sore face: the full mouth and square jaw.
“Thought you’d be bigger,” Nyx said.
“Off,” Alharazad said.
Nyx clattered off the porch and faced the gun again.
“I was told you could help me with a note,” Nyx said.
“I don’t run notes anymore.” Alharazad didn’t lower the gun.
Nyx saw movement at the corner of her eye—Suha and Eshe coming around from the back of the house.
Stay fuck
ing still, she thought. Nyx couldn’t see Alharazad’s eyes behind the goggles.
“The bel dame council is staging a coup,” Nyx said. “I need somebody to help me figure who’s leading it so I can take her out.”
The line between Alharazad’s pale brows deepened. She spit a wad of sen onto the porch.
“That so?”
“They set off a scalper burst on Palace Hill a week and a half ago. Lost ten or twenty thousand people, best guess.”
Alharazad lowered the gun. “The Queen get out, then?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“Tell your friends to stand down.”
Nyx raised her hand.
Suha and Eshe came to a standstill at the other end of the porch. Suha’s hands twitched at her hips where her pistols were holstered.
Alharazad turned now to look over at Suha and Eshe.
“That a boy you have with you?” Alharazad asked.
“Yeah.”
“Mighty strange team for a bounty hunter.”
“I’ve been more than a bounty hunter.”
Alharazad lowered her gun. She spent a long moment working her jaw. “I’ve heard of you,” she said.
“I’ve heard of you too,” Nyx said.
Nyx waited for Alharazad to bring up the gun again and blow her head off. They stood in the sun and waited for a good long minute while the mutant cicadas buzzed.
Alharazad spit on the porch again. “Get inside,” she said.
+
“Somebody told me there was a traitor by your name working for gene pirates,” Alharazad said.
Alharazad sat across from Nyx at a battered table made from a slab of molded bug secretions. The secreted slab was the slick, too-shiny type that made up the façades of some of the older ruins in the north. Alharazad had her feet up, and smoked a long pipe full of hashish. The whole place smelled like marijuana, and it made Nyx queasy. In the loft above them, Nyx saw the tall, brilliant green fronds of marijuana plants reaching toward the ceiling. Every few minutes, some kind of mechanical device sprayed a mist of water over the plants; the water evaporated in the dry air before any of it reached the cramped living space below.
“I’m a mercenary,” Nyx said. “Bounty hunter, mostly. Sometime security guard.”
“Yeah. Like I said.”
Alharazad barked at Eshe to serve them up a pot of grubs and dandelion heads from a pot that simmered over her battered fire-beetle stove, like he was some kind of house boy. As he sat down, Alharazad patted his head in the absent way old women who were used to having boys around the house did. Eshe flinched, but didn’t say anything.
Nyx stared into the heap of boiled grubs and felt her stomach roil. She picked up one of the communal spoons and resolved to get all the food down regardless of how her stomach felt. Her reflection in the derelict’s windows had unsettled her. She needed to put on weight.
Suha dug in.
“Fatima sent me,” Nyx said. “She thinks you might know something about the bel dames who took out Mushtallah.”
“Oh, I have a lot of ideas,” Alharazad said. She had taken off her goggles, and her dark eyes were bloodshot. “There were days when I wanted to take out Mushtallah myself.”
“Fatima seemed to think you could give me a lead on who they are,” Nyx said.
Alharazad’s mouth softened, like she wanted to smile. “That so?” she said.
“Why’d you want to bomb out Mushtallah?” Eshe said.
Nyx shot him a look.
“Why not?” Alharazad said. “It’s a wasteland of corruption. You think the bel dame council is power hungry, you should spend some time with the First Families. Soft, fat, rich—can’t wipe their asses without somebody around to tell them what hand to use.”
“Firsts don’t bomb cities. Bel dames do,” Nyx said. “You’ve taken rogues before.”
Alharazad puffed away. “You making up your own notes now?”
“I’m working for Nasheen,” Nyx snapped.
“You need to kill ideas, girl, not people,” Alharazad said. “The council’s been hooked on the idea of running the country for a good long while. We used to do it, back in the wild days. Back when the whole world was like this.” She waved her hand at the dusty landscape beyond the windows.
“I’m a bloodletter, not a politician,” Nyx said. “I just take off heads.”
“Do you now?” Alharazad snorted. “If that was so, the Queen would have told me you were coming. No, this isn’t about a head, is it, girl?” She put down her pipe and fished around in her vest. She pulled out a marijuana cigarette. “You follow an idea, too. You believe the Queen is the rightful ruler of Nasheen. You don’t believe as the Tirhanis believe, that the absolving of the Caliphate was an affront against God.”
“I don’t believe in God,” Nyx said.
Alharazad pounded a fist on the table. The flatware shuddered. Soup slopped over the side of Nyx’s bowl. The bel dame’s face twisted into an angry grimace. “Don’t say that shit in my house. You want a bug swarm to pick you clean? This isn’t the place to go cursing God.”
“Damn,” Eshe muttered.
“Save the cursing for shit that’s actually happening,” Nyx said. She turned to Alharazad. “Rumor has it that half the council may be rogue. I need to know what you’ve heard.”
“I don’t hear much out here,” Alharazad said. “But anyone with a head can tell you where those bel dames are.”
“I know they’re in Tirhan, but it’s a big country. I need more than that.”
“Try Shirhazi, political center.”
“You have a contact there?”
“Might be. Old magician named Behdis ma Yasrah. Hard on her luck. You know the type. She’s a magician of mine. Smuggled a lot of stuff out before the council broke down. She had some trouble with venom, got herself kicked out of the magicians’ circle.”
“You think this magician knows something about the bel dames in Tirhan, then? She helping them?”
Alharazad shrugged. “Couldn’t say. But if there are bel dames in Tirhan, she’ll have heard where. Give her my name and a handful of notes and she’ll squeal. She was always good like that. Get you what you need, for a price. Too bad nobody uses voice reels anymore. Might give you somewhere to start.”
“I don’t—” an old memory tugged at Nyx—a headless body in a trunk, a recording in his pocket. Six years ago Rhys had opened up the recording and found that it contained orders from a bel dame asking a mercenary to drop a note against the same gene pirate Nyx and her crew were pursuing…. Nyx had run the transmission through her voice recognition reel back then, but her reel was out of date. At the time, she hadn’t had any way of matching the voice to a name. But if Alharazad had an up-to-date reel… She could figure out just how long these rogue bel dames had been stirring up shit.
“You have an updated reel?” Nyx asked.
“What, this woman been talking to you?” Alharazad said sharply.
“I might have use for a reel,” Nyx said. “Be nice to have an updated one with all bel dame voices and blood codes.”
“Huh,” Alharazad said. She eyed Nyx over, one long look, then barked, “Boy!” at Eshe. “Go unroll the top of that desk and bring me that amber box.”
Eshe pushed his stool back and walked across the spongy floor. He rolled open the desk. Three giant moths flapped out into the hot air. Alharazad caught one in her hands and trapped it under her empty wine glass.
“They’re tastier fresh-killed,” she explained.
Eshe brought over a roughly rectangular box covered in hard, shiny resin and set it in front of Alharazad.
Alharazad opened the box. Inside was a battered collection of small, thumb-sized canisters. Some were transparent. Nyx could see the lethargic bugs within them stir at the sudden movement. Alharazad picked out a rust-colored canister and handed it to Nyx.
“You’ll need a magician to decode that,” Alharazad said.
“Yeah,” Nyx said. She tucked the caniste
r into her breast binding beneath her tunic.
“Look for Behdis around the boxing gyms in the Ras Tiegan district in Shirhazi. You’ll find her. She doesn’t keep a regular call pattern I could point you at, but if you tell her I sent you, might be she can help.” She closed the box. “The rest I can’t help you with. I’m retired.”
“Eshe, Suha, I’ll meet you outside,” Nyx said. “I want to talk to Alharazad a minute more.”
Alharazad raised a brow.
Suha jammed in one more mouthful of stew and grabbed Eshe by the elbow. He shook her off and looked back over his shoulder, once, at Nyx. Then they were both out the door. Suha pulled it closed behind them.
Alharazad spit on the floor again.
“You have some love for the Queen,” Nyx said, “so why didn’t she ever come to you about this?”
“If you’d gotten a real red letter, you’d be waving it in my face. This isn’t official business. This is personal business. I know the difference, myself. What did Fatima promise you?”
“Why wouldn’t you help Fatima? Why did she send me here?”
“I told you. Retired.”
“I know what you told me. I also know catshit when I smell it.”
A slow smile broke across Alharazad’s haggard face. “Cheeky woman, aren’t you?”
“I’m tired of getting blown up for no good reason.”
“A country at war with itself will lose a war with outsiders. That’s a rule,” Alharazad said. “Nasheen has to be united to win a war against Chenja. The Chenjan civil war that gave them Tirhan extended the war another century. By all accounts, they had us on our knees before that war. Civil war in Chenja gave us a chance to recover.”
“We don’t exactly have Chenja by the throat right now. We go to war, they take everything. You’d rather the bel dames laid out the Queen?”
Alharazad reached into her pocket and rolled a ball of sen between her crimson-stained fingers. She tucked it into her mouth. “You won’t stop the bel dames by killing one of them. And whatever Fatima promised is hollow. She’s fighting on the losing side. You ever asked the Queen about who she’s lined up next for the throne?”
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