Infidel

by Kameron Hurley

  The Ras Tiegan woman took Nyx in with one long, penetrating look.

  Rhys appeared then. He kissed the little girl on the porch, called her Laleh, and told the Ras Tiegan woman to go inside and help Elahyiah with the laundry.

  “Yes’im,” the Ras Tiegan woman said, and Nyx had her answer about who kept the house so clean. Of course they’d have a Ras Tiegan servant. They were practically Tirhani.

  “Your kids?” Nyx asked as the youngest pattered inside with the housekeeper.

  “Yes.” He pulled on a hat. The day had moved into late afternoon.

  Nyx dug around for her goggles. She’d taken to packing them, last few days. “This better not be far.”

  “It’s near downtown. One more ride, then we’ll have some new answers to old questions. You owe me that much, at least.”

  “I thought what I owed you was to go away.”

  “That will happen soon enough,” he said.

  They took a taxi to the transcription office, a battered little storefront tucked into a steep, narrow street. The language moved easily from Tirhani to Chenjan as they traveled, and the smell changed, the way it usually did when moving into a Chenjan district. Gravy and curry and heavy incense. They passed prayer wheels hung outside windows, bowls of milk put out for demons. Shadows were collecting along street. The day was moving fast.

  Rhys unlocked the door. As they walked in, they passed a passive wasp swarm. It clung together, a humming nest of bodies, in a far corner. The office was small, little more than the storefront proper. It looked like he had a tiny storage area in back, curtained off. There were three writing stations, two cushions on either side of each low wooden table. Along the wall were jars of bugs, mostly locusts, and transmission fluid. The place even smelled like bugs, some subtle odor, like when you stuck your nose up close to some rotting forest floor at the coast. Thick, musty, death.

  Rhys pulled the curtain away from the storage area. The com was there, a hulking console made of various types of scrounged metal and bug secretions. She handed over the mercenary’s transmission. Rhys inserted the rectangle into a free slot and held out his hand to her.

  “You have the reel Alharazad gave you?”

  Nyx handed it over.

  Rhys slid it into another open slot. He stirred up the fire beetles at the bottom of the com and waved a hand over the filter. A cacophony of noise and vapors seeped from the filter. Blue and yellow mist colored the dim air.

  “The hell?” Nyx said.

  “It’s warming up. I haven’t used it in a while.”

  Rhys played the transcription. Nyx hadn’t heard it the first time.

  “We have a death note on mercenaries and bounty hunters accepting notes on Nikodem Jordan, an alien emissary from New Kinaan. Nikodem Jordan is to be kept alive at all costs. These aren’t pale notes. Deliver your heads to the Black Stag Beetle hotel in Punjai. Ask for Leveh.”

  It was a pretty standard black note transmission. The Black Stag Beetle was a regular haunt for black note dealers back then. Now it was the Dire Wind cantina just outside Basra.

  Nikodem. Nyx hadn’t heard that name since Kasbah invoked it. Hadn’t thought much about it. Some days it was just another body. Aliens bled red, just like everybody else. No ships had touched down on Umayma since Nyx sent them home with their sister’s head. She wondered how long it would be until they came scrabbling back to Umayma looking for genetic material. Maybe they’d had enough of the planet. Nyx didn’t blame them.

  “Alharazad’s reel should have been preprogrammed,” Rhys said. “I’ll just activate it and ask it to match up the voice pattern.”

  “Sure,” Nyx said.

  Rhys pressed a button. A tinny-sounding belch came from the machine.

  “How long’s it been since you used this?” Nyx said. He had never been great with a com.

  “Matched pattern,” said a warm, matronly voice. A stir of red mist filtered up from the tinny speaker. “Voice pattern recognized as that of Shadha so Murshida. Run check again?”

  Nyx folded her arms. “One of Shadha’s girls,” Fatima had said. Apparently Shadha’s girls had been running things their own way for a long time. Not terribly useful information, though she could have Suha ask around for somebody called “Leveh” now as well. If Shadha still ran with her, she’d likely be high up the food chain by now.

  She turned to Rhys to thank him, and noted that he’d gone very still.

  “What?” Nyx said. “You heard of her?”

  “Nyx,” Rhys said softly.

  “Yeah?”

  He raised his head, and his eyes were wide, just like his daughter’s had been on the porch. “You should go.”

  “You heard of her?”

  “I did business with her last week.”

  Nyx started. That was a bit of luck. “Where? What business?”

  “Bad business,” he said.

  “I need an address.”

  He pulled both of the transmissions out of the com unit and pushed them across the slab toward her. “She’s selling some weapon from the red desert. Some kind of flesh-eating sand.”

  “Selling it to who, Tirhan?”

  “Yes.”

  “No shit?”

  “Nyx, I don’t know that this is the sort of woman you want to go up against.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The weapon. Nyx, this is more than cutting off a head. You cut off her head and there will be five more behind her. She had more bel dames with her.”

  “I know there are rogue bel dames. It’s why I’m here.”

  “It’s too big for you.”

  “It’s my country, Rhys.”

  “Yes, and my father is my father, but it doesn’t mean I obeyed him.”

  “You’d obey your mullahs, though, huh?”

  “Nyx,” he said, carefully, “there have been times… there have been times I didn’t obey God. I know when something is too much for me.”

  “That’s because you’re a coward.”

  “If you think your Queen is going to look out for you—”

  “It’s not about that.”

  “Then what?” he said. He ran his hands over his head. She hadn’t seen him do that in a long time. It was a nervous, familiar tic. Comforting. Come home with me, she wanted to say.

  “Go home and tell her you couldn’t find anything,” Rhys said.

  “I’m not doing this for the Queen. It’s not a note.”

  He dropped his hands. “Then why?”

  “You wouldn’t understand. I’m doing this for myself.”

  “For God’s sake, why? You’re not up for this.”

  “How would you know what I’m up for?”

  “I just…” He was looking her over. Her body—not her face. Not her. Just the meat that had failed her.

  “I’m not broken!” she said. She grabbed the transmissions off the com and stuffed them away. “Where did you see this Shadha?”

  “Nyx…”

  “Where, Rhys? I won’t ask nice again.”

  “Beh Ayin,” he said. “Southeast. I met them at a hotel there. I don’t know where they stayed. Probably outside the city.”

  “That’ll have to be enough.” She walked into the storefront proper. She didn’t stop at the door but pushed right on through into the street.

  Rhys yelled at her from the door. “Don’t run off like a child!”

  She turned, shouted back at him, “Says the man with the babies and bauble wife living fat and soft in the Tirhani suburbs! You got soft, old man. Coward.”

  “I never said I was anything else.”

  She stormed back toward him and shoved her face into his, so close she could smell the spicy Tirhani perfume on his collar.

  “No,” she said, “but I always thought you were more.”

  Nyx walked off down the street, heading in the direction she hoped was the Ras Tiegan quarter. She supposed it didn’t make much difference. The sun was going down. She had a lead on the rogue bel
dames. She was one step closer to a bel dame title and averting civil war. Likely not in that order.

  All she wanted to do now was get drunk.

  24.

  Of all the people Nyx expected to be waiting for her back at the hotel, Khos Khadija wasn’t one of them. He sat at a sen-stained table near the opaqued window, playing cards with Suha. A ring of lethargic locusts sat at the center of the table. The smell of curried dog wafted up from the room below them. Nyx heard soft, shushing voices speaking muted Ras Tiegan next door.

  “Watch out for him,” Nyx said as she walked in. “He cheated me out of a basket of scarab beetles the first time we met.”

  “He says you met in a brothel,” Suha said.

  “Where’s Eshe?”

  The radio was on, spewing bubbly Tirhani voices and the green, misty images of some daytime romance. Both beds were unmade. The privy was ensuite, but the door was open, and the little closet-sized room was dark.

  “He’s hot on some girl at the gym,” Suha said.

  “Better be a useful girl.”

  “Maybe so. He said he met some other Nasheenian women—boxers—at another gym. Told him to get in some bag time and find out the names.”

  “I wish you’d told me more about the note,” Khos said.

  Nyx took off her burnous and tossed it on the bed. “Why, you looking for work? From the looks of your pretty house, you’re not hard up.”

  “Rogue bel dames are everybody’s business,” Khos said.

  Nyx shot Suha a look.

  Suha shrugged. “Figured if he ran off before you got back, I’d kill him,” she said.

  “Try,” Khos said.

  Suha leaned back, so her long coat fell away, revealing her duel pistols. “Try me,” she said.

  Khos looked back at Nyx. “I want to buy you a drink.”

  “I’ve never been one to pass up free liquor,” Nyx said. She was curious about why he came. Did he miss slumming? “I’m gonna wash up and let Suha bleed you a little more, then we’ll get going.”

  She cleaned up in the privy. When she returned, Suha and Khos had already broken out some bootleg whiskey.

  “If you and Eshe go out tonight, add another name to your round,” Nyx told Suha as she pulled her burnous back on. “Woman called Leveh. Over thirty by now, I’d bet, but don’t quote me.”

  “Bel dame?” Suha said. Her voice was a little drawl. Nyx didn’t blame her. She was ready to go out and get drunk, too.

  “Likely. Maybe just a contact,” Nyx said. “And watch the liquor tonight. Set down some traps. I don’t want a repeat of Punjai.”

  “Last one,” Suha said, and took a pull from the bottle.

  “Let’s go, Khos,” Nyx said.

  He pulled his big body from the chair and came after her. They walked downstairs in silence. She let the silence stretch as they entered the street.

  “Used to live out here when we first came to Tirhan,” Khos said. “Good shebeen around the corner. Unlicensed.”

  “Shebeen?”

  “Like a tavern. Uh, less formal. You’ll see.”

  “Thanks for bringing the whiskey.”

  “Figured you’d need it. Been rough living in a dry country. You can still get it. Just a lot more trouble.”

  They stepped into an old Ras Tiegan dive not much better than the hedge witch’s hovel in Punjai. The floors were dirt and most of the roof tiles were broken. There was one long counter along the far wall and dirty tables. Nyx set herself up in a corner so she’d have a view of the door. Khos bought the first round.

  “What we here for?” Nyx asked, three drinks and a dozen nattering pleasantries later.

  Khos shook his head. Nyx realized she missed his dreadlocks. Tattoos were the same, though. She always liked those.

  “You should have told me you were looking for bel dames,” he said.

  “You never asked.”

  “Wrong. I did ask.”

  “And you said trouble with bel dames scared the shit out of you and slammed the door. Why is it all the guys I put on my team are cowards?”

  “We’re less trouble, I’d wager.”

  “You looking to screw me again?”

  His eyes widened.

  “Not like that,” Nyx said, waving a dismissive hand. “The betraying part, not the fucking part.”

  “I got a family now.”

  “So you family guys keep telling me.”

  “I’m here to help.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I think me and Inaya can help you. Come on back to the house. She… she and I don’t get on as well as we used to, but you and her are working for some of the same things.”

  Nyx snorted. “When did Inaya and I ever have anything in common?”

  “She does… work. I suspect she has something to do with the Ras Tiegan underground. A shifter rights group. You know what that is?”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “She sees and hears things that might help you. I want you to come over and talk to her.”

  “So… why isn’t she here?”

  “I need you to ask her. I can’t.”

  “What, she doesn’t know you know?’

  “No.”

  “What kind of fucked up relationship you two have?”

  “No more fucked up than any of yours.”

  “Why are you really here? Prostitutes not brutal enough for you? Lack of whores in Tirhan?”

  His face reddened. “You’re never fair.”

  “Just right.”

  He started to stand. “I wanted to help.”

  Nyx sighed. “Sit, sit,” she said. “Let me finish my goddamn drink. Should have known you and Inaya wouldn’t stay out of the covert business out here. Can’t say the same for Rhys.”

  Khos sat back down, avoided her eyes. “He not what you expected?”

  Nyx finished her drink and knocked the glass back on the table. The whiskey burned going down. God, she’d missed it. “No, he was everything I expected,” Nyx said. “That’s always the problem.”

  “Maybe you should go after different types of guys.”

  “Or more girls.”

  “Or more girls. Though, as I recall, you like the same sorts of girls, too.”

  “Which are those?”

  “The ones who don’t want you.”

  Nyx glared at him. “You want to compare bed partners? I’ll have you beat.”

  “I don’t doubt it. I didn’t grow up the way you did.”

  “How’s that?”

  “With women. It’s another good reason to speak to Inaya. Maybe you can figure her out.”

  Nyx laughed. “Because I’m a woman?”

  “What?” He looked genuinely affronted.

  “Khos, me and Inaya have nothing in common. When are you going to get that? We have as much in common as you and Rhys.”

  She did like the fact that he was trying to get her to go home with him, though. It had been a long while since anybody tried.

  A few drinks later, they caught the train to the city center. The trains were packed with revelers headed to the waterfront for the festival and fireworks. Getting a taxi wasn’t possible, so they walked up into the suburbs, which helped Nyx walk off some of the booze.

  The air was cool, but not cold. Still, Nyx had her coat buckled up, and she was winded by the time they came to the top of the hill. Her skin hurt, and her left knee was starting to go out. As she limped along, she wondered if this was how Fatima felt. Broken down old crone at thirty-eight.

  “What happened to you, anyway?” Khos asked. “Never seen you look so bad.”

  “I pissed off the wrong people, that’s all. Bound to happen sooner or later.”

  “Least you’re still breathing.”

  “It’s something.”

  Khos suddenly stopped. “You smell that?”

  “What?”

  “Smoke.”

  “There are fireworks at the waterfront, drunk man.”

  “Not that.” The
y were at the low end of the park, a couple blocks away from Khos’s house. The streets were quiet. Most of the houses were dark. Everyone had bled out downtown hours ago. Nyx couldn’t help looking across the park, toward Rhys’s house.

  Khos started running.

  “What?” Nyx yelled.

  She jogged after him. Her body protested. Half a block up, she realized what was wrong. There was something dark billowing from the windows of one of the houses. Nyx heard the crack-pop-roar of a bustling little blaze, still hidden from view.

  Khos ran up the steps.

  The burning house was his.

  “Out back!” he yelled at her. “There’s a well out back! I’ll come help you with the pump!”

  He pulled open the door, and a billowing cloud of smoke rolled out. Inside, something roared. She saw a wash of orange light.

  “Inaya!” Khos yelled.

  Nyx ran around the back of the house, into the garden. The back windows of the house shattered. Behind her, the house bellowed. Her skin throbbed. She rolled and scrambled up in the light of the blazing house. The skin on her shoulder tore, bled. She found the well at the bottom of the yard.

  The well was already uncovered. An old bucket pull was set up over it. A large tree stood behind the well, clawing at the sky with branches clotted with tattered leaves.

  Nyx put her hands on the edge of the well and looked down. The water was glassy black. She stared at her darker half, gazing up at her from the bottom of the well. There was nothing but water and her reflection and the stir of the water around the rope.

  The rope.

  She gave a sharp tug on the rope. It stayed taut. There was something on the other end.

  The best way to poison a well was to throw a body into it. Nyx cranked the wheel of the pull, grunting with the effort.

  She had one long stretch of time to think about who it was on the other end of the rope. Inaya? No… She knew how bel dames thought. They would have drowned the children here. Their bodies would be sodden and gray.

  Prepare for the worst. Always prepare for the worst, because if you see anything less than that, it will be a prize, a relief.

  Fuck, I’ve gotten soft, she thought, and was reminded of Rhys. She heard something splashing in the water.

  Nyx let the lever catch. She leaned over to peer into the well again. There, at the other end of the rope, was the bucket, and a pair of hands desperately clinging to it while a smaller figure shivered inside the bucket. Two cold, wet faces peered up at her, trembling; their expressions shadowed and terrified.