Infidel

by Kameron Hurley

  “It’s Nyx!” Nyx yelled at them, stupidly, but it was dark, wasn’t it, and how could they know her, in the dark? Hell, how would they know her anyway? She’d only seen them once. “I’m getting you up. Come on now!”

  She turned back to the lever. A stiff wind buffeted her from behind. She heard a scattering of dead leaves roil along the dirt drive. The wind stirred the tree. She raised her head and saw a hundred cicadas crawling along the trunk, flitting among the branches. As the wind stirred, the cicadas moved as well, flying around the tree like a cloud. She braced herself, squinted, prepared to be swarmed.

  But something else happened.

  The tree began to tremble. The wind died. The cicadas coagulated into a throbbing mass, then pulled into the tree, a tree that was rapidly becoming smaller, condensing. The dead leaves moved along the ground, drawn back up into the tree’s branches. They melted together like butter, merged with the cicadas. Nyx had a dizzying moment of vertigo. The world seemed to bend. Something in the air around her twisted, tore, and the tree and leaves and cicadas became a liquid thing, like mottled, melted flesh. Something screamed, something inside the tree; the cicadas, maybe, dying.

  Branches flew up, a crown of leaves; branches became hands, the crown of leaves elongated, shuddered.

  “Oh God,” Nyx said, and the breath left her body. She knew what it was becoming—what the tree, the leaves, the air, the bugs, were becoming.

  “Oh God,” she said again, because she was suddenly sick, because it was like something in the world had been distorted; something… wrong.

  As the tree’s color paled, the melted shape took on a more human form. The gaping hole in the face—the half-formed mouth—vomited a black cloud of flies, and with the flies came another scream; not from the bugs this time, but a true human scream; the rage and pain and terror of birth.

  The figure stumbled toward Nyx, shaking and shuddering, slinging off long strings of mucus and leaf pulp, and the black eyes grew lashes and the irises formed and focused, and the cascade of hair and leaves went black, black and long as Inaya’s hair; Inaya’s face, round but still slack-eyed, and the fingers at the ends of the new arms were held in tight fists, oozing mucus and blood and something else that had the tangy smell of oak hybrid sap. Flies and leaf pulp, dirt and the shimmering wings of cicadas, stuck to the slick mucus covering her naked body.

  The fists reached out, made open hands. Clung to the edge of the well. The eyes focused, and it was something more or less human, more or less Inaya, and Nyx knew her then, really knew her, and she felt a deep cramping in her stomach, sudden nausea. She backed a half step away and dry heaved.

  Inaya screamed into the well. As she screamed, a handful of flies escaped from her newly formed lungs.

  “Up!” was the word she screamed, or maybe that was just some grunt, some noise, but the next words were her children’s names, and not even Nyx could mistake those.

  “Are you all right?” Inaya yelled at them, and the children cried up at her.

  Inaya raised her head to Nyx—her damp, mucus-crusted head—and her eyes were so very fucking black, and the look on that face, in that face…

  “Haul them up!” Inaya snarled.

  Nyx grabbed the lever and hauled them up like some other woman—someone far younger, far stronger, far less broken and exhausted. Sweat beaded her brow, ran between her breasts, her shoulder blades, long before she was tired or spent. She was shaking at the end.

  When the bucket was close enough, Inaya reached into the well and hauled up the girl first—Nyx hadn’t understood her name—then Taite. The children hit the dirt and clung to their mother.

  Inaya patted them down, asking after hurts. When she was done, she turned again to Nyx, opened her mouth to speak, and stopped. She turned to the blazing house.

  “Khos,” Inaya said. Then, “Watch the children.”

  And in a breath, an instant, she blew apart, piece by piece, and each piece disintegrated into another piece, another, smaller and smaller, until there was only a pale mist, a fog, as if she’d transformed into some cheap radio drama, and the mist blew across the yard and into the burning house; a howling, contaminated wind.

  The children gathered around Nyx and gazed with her, open-mouthed.

  Nyx’s mouth was dry. She tried working some spit into it and, “She do that often?”

  “Never,” Taite said, breathless.

  “Holy shit,” Nyx said.

  “Holy shit,” the girl said. Inaya had apparently taught her children Nasheenian.

  Nyx grabbed them each by the hand. “Let’s go,” she said, and started walking toward the blazing house and the demon.

  When they got to the porch, Inaya was already there, human again, naked. She knelt over Khos as he coughed and spat, his face covered in soot.

  “You’re a stupid fool,” she said.

  “What happened?” Nyx asked.

  Inaya slowly turned her head, stared at Nyx with her pitch-black eyes. “What do you think happened? They came for you. Looking for you.”

  “Bel dames?” Khos asked, and started coughing again.

  “Have you been drinking?” Inaya asked. Her eyes narrowed. “Were you drinking while these women tried to tear us apart?”

  Nyx looked out at the park. “How many?” she said.

  “Six, seven, I don’t know,” Inaya said. “I saw them coming up the walk. I knew what they were. I hid the children and… myself. They burned the house and left.”

  Nyx felt a sudden, stabbing pain in her gut. “Left and went where?” she said.

  Inaya shook her head. “I don’t—” She stopped. She, too, looked across the park.

  “Rhys,” Nyx said, and began to run.

  25.

  Rhys found the house in disarray. Elahyiah argued with the housekeeper in the kitchen. Something to do with missing laundry. The girls were in the sunken study, in varying states of dress. Slippers and stockings littered the floor. He saw dirty, discarded head-scarves on the porch.

  Elahyiah was pulling at an earring. He noted that her pair didn’t match. She was barefoot.

  Outside, the neighbors’ houses were going dark. He heard revelers walking through the park to catch taxis downtown to the waterfront. They would soon find themselves in a deserted neighborhood.

  “I’m going up to wash and dress,” he said.

  Elahyiah did not acknowledge him then, but she came to him in the bathroom as he disrobed. He started the water in the tub.

  She stood in the doorway.

  “It was old business. It’s done now,” he said.

  “What did you think, bringing that woman into our house?”

  “I was thinking it was my house, and I could bring in whomever I please.”

  “How can you say that? I’ve heard the stories of this woman. Eight years you lived with her—”

  “Six. It isn’t as if we were married.

  “That’s worse!”

  “Is it? Elahyiah, please. I don’t want to fight over this. She’s nothing. She was not a wife, not even a temporary one. You insult me if you think we were anything but employer and employee.”

  “I did not….” She choked on her words.

  Rhys slipped into the tub. The warm water felt deliciously good. “I’ll be down soon.”

  “We’ll be late,” she said.

  “We’re always late.”

  “Rhys…” She knelt by the tub. “I know it is not my place to ask. I know it is not my place to question, but you did not marry me for my silence.”

  “No, I did not.” Rhys stared at the water coming out of the facet, his own skinny knees poking up from the water. He remembered the storefront back in Nasheen, in the dusty dive in Punjai. Nyx used to keep an ablution bowl near the door. Customers who came to her with bounty business all wanted to wash, after.

  “That woman scares me,” Elahyiah said.

  “I used to be like her,” he said.

  “I don’t believe that.” She touched his fa
ce. “She is nothing. She has turned her back to God. I could see that in her face.”

  “Am I so different?” He raised his head. “She stayed and fought. Here I am, hiding in Tirhan.”

  “Hiding from what? The war? That is not your war, Rhys.”

  “My father thought differently.”

  “Mine did not. We came here because we will not fight a war for rich mullahs. This is our life, Rhys. We owe nothing to those broken countries.”

  “I love you,” he said. And he did.

  She bent and kissed him, softly. “God made us partners, love.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. It was disrespectful to bring her here. That life is over.” He took her hand, met her look.

  She nodded and pulled away. “We’re almost ready.”

  Rhys let himself sink under the water, cut out sound. In the silence, he began to recite the ninety-nine names of God. He had his world back. Nyx would not come to him again. She had too much pride to ask for another favor.

  In the warm silence, he felt something slipping away. Some rotten part of himself? Or was it some better part? The part that would fight for something more than a clean house and a well-paying job?

  Her work is not honorable, he reminded himself. You are a father and husband. There is far more honor in that.

  Rhys took his time and dressed in a clean khameez and bisht. He wore soft sandals. After dabbing on some perfume he opened the wardrobe and pulled a locked box from the top shelf. It was a sand-bitten old box of synthetic gray wood and amber. He ran one hand over it, and thought of the desert.

  Four years ago, his wedding day, he had locked this box and sworn not to open it again. But for the last three days he’d wanted nothing more in the world than what it contained.

  Rhys passed his hand over it a second time, disarming the spider poised beneath the lid. He opened it.

  Inside, two jade-hilted pistols were nestled atop a length of green silk. Underneath were four boxes of non-organic ammunition. He didn’t want fever bursts in his house. Metal was expensive, but more stable.

  He wanted to touch them. He wanted to grab his belt, get his holsters. Weapons at his hip again, just like the desert. That other life.

  And if you pick them up, he thought, you’ll never put them down again. They are everything you put aside. Which do you want? You cannot have both.

  Rhys closed the box.

  He re-triggered the spider with a wave of his hand and replaced the box in the wardrobe.

  “Rhys? Rhys, they’re starting the fireworks!” Elahyiah called from downstairs.

  Rhys shuttered the light, watched the room go dim. The bloody light of the moons poured in from the windows. He faced the mirror next to the door. In the bloody light, with his neatly shaven head, his gauzy bisht, he looked like a dervish from one of his mother’s stories.

  He started down the stairs.

  “Ella? Ella?” Elahyiah’s voice again, coming up the stairs. The housekeeper’s name was Ella.

  Rhys arrived in the kitchen. Elahyiah was struggling with Laleh’s headscarf.

  “They’re too young for them,” Rhys said.

  “Their cousins are wearing them,” Elahyiah said. “They’re already teased for not being clean. Let’s not give them anything else.”

  “If your uncle starts in on us again about cutting our girls-”

  Elahyiah put her hands over Laleh’s ears. “Stop that now.”

  Souri tugged at Elahyiah’s sleeve. “I have to go,” she said. “Please, Ma.” She squirmed.

  “I’ll take her,” Rhys said. He scooped Souri up and brought her into the privy just off the study.

  “Can’t go if you watch!” Souri said.

  Rhys sighed and turned away.

  “Ella!” Elahyiah called again.

  “Where did she go?” Rhys asked.

  “Into the garden. I wanted to bring lemons for Uncle Shaya’s new wife.”

  “I’ll find her,” Rhys said.

  “Da! I’m done, Da!”

  Rhys made sure Souri’s underclothes were in order and stepped back into the room. He saw Elahyiah at the counter with her head in her hands. Laleh clung to her hip.

  “Elahyiah,” he said softly.

  She raised her head. Her eyes were wet.

  He took her face in his hands and kissed her softly, said, “I love you. Just you and no other. You understand that?”

  She leaned her forehead against his, wiped at her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m at fault. Hush, now. I’ll find Ella and we’ll go to the waterfront? Yes?”

  “I want to have fruit cakes!” Laleh said.

  He palmed her head. “And you’ll have them,” he said.

  Rhys walked to the back porch, through the filter, and into the dark garden.

  “Ella?” he called. Was she out meeting men again? Elahyiah had caught the girl talking to some street boy on the porch once. Ras Tiegan girls were loose as wives’ tongues.

  “Ella! Do you have those lemons?” He walked past the well, to the little patch of lemon trees at the edge of the yard. He tripped over something in the grass. He looked down. He’d kicked over a basket half-full of lemons.

  Rhys picked up the basket. He peered into the darkness of the garden. “Ella?” he said, more softly.

  He looked back at the house. The street was eerily quiet. The houses all along the block were still. He saw one light on, high up in a house one street over. Most everyone was already at the waterfront.

  Rhys picked his way across the yard, holding the basket of lemons. So quiet.

  He paused at the edge of the porch. The bugs. The bugs had gone quiet. No crickets. No cicadas. Rhys dropped the basket. He walked quickly back into the house, through the filter.

  Souri looked up as he came in. Laleh was knotting her headscarf. “Da?” she said.

  Elahyiah was opening the front door.

  “Don’t!” Rhys said.

  It all happened very fast.

  Ella careened into the house, screaming. Behind her were three big women. The first inside grabbed Elahyiah by the hair. The second twisted the housekeeper’s skinny head. Her neck snapped. Rhys heard it.

  There was a sudden, pervasive smell of oranges.

  Rhys choked and raised a hand, called for the wasp swarm at the center of the room.

  The girls began to scream.

  He felt the filters go down. The constant humming—the singing that sent him to sleep at night—went silent. The house was naked.

  The wasp swarm swooped toward the woman holding Elahyiah.

  The bel dame holding his wife.

  Rhys grabbed Souri with his free hand. She was screaming and screaming.

  Something heavy thumped him from behind. A hand went over his mouth. He felt a bug in his mouth. Smelled bug-repelling unguent on his attacker’s fingers.

  He elbowed his attacker, but there was someone else with her, and they were both on him now. They wrestled him to the ground. The swarm swam lazily away from him, misdirected, confused. He called them in to sting his attackers and asked for a beetle swarm. The nearest was in the garden. He felt them there, but could not call them. Oh, God, why give him any skill at all if it could not help him now?

  He choked on the beetle. The poison began to work its way down his throat.

  Screaming. His daughters were screaming. Elahyiah.

  My wife. The bel dames and my wife.

  Rhys tried to heave himself out of their grip. They held firm. The struggle was enough to make him gag on the bug. He swallowed, knowing as he did that he was half a minute away from losing the bugs completely.

  “Out, all right? Bring them out!”

  A long-legged woman stepped over Souri’s sobbing form and crouched next to Rhys. She cocked her head at him, leaned in close. A lovely, clear-skinned face, but something in her was lacking, some light behind her eyes.

  “Missed me, black man?” Rasheeda said.

  Rasheeda. The white raven had found him.
>
  Rhys pulled against the bel dames again.

  “Come now, I was always better at this than she was,” Rasheeda said.

  They hauled him up and bound him. Elahyiah, too.

  The girls they wrapped once with sticky bands and moved outside.

  “Where are you taking them?” Rhys said, voice hoarse. The world was muted, dumb. It was like being blind, without the bugs.

  “Leave my family inside. They’re nothing to you.”

  “You forget, black man. None of you are anything to me.”

  “Rasheeda—”

  The women dragged him out to the back porch. He recognized one of them now. She was the tall bel dame who’d stood next to Shadha so Murshida in Beh Ayin, the one with the burn-scarred neck. What was her name? Dhiya.

  “You’re making a mistake, Dhiya,” Rhys said.

  She turned to him, coolly, said, “You have no idea.”

  Outside, the bloody moons cast the whole yard in crimson shadows.

  Elahyiah and the girls were huddled at the end of the porch. The girls were sobbing. Elahyiah looked over at him. He saw her breathing deep, but she did not cry. She did not tremble.

  Two of the bel dames were uncovering the well. They must have broken the padlock.

  Dhiya pushed him to his knees. He was just ten feet away from Elahyiah and the girls. He looked over at his wife again. She met his look for one long minute.

  Neither said a word.

  Rasheeda tossed a loop of something to one of the bel dames. “Rope them up in that,” she said. She strode over to Rhys.

  “I have some questions for you, gravy eater.” She crouched again, cocked her head. “I heard you had a meet with an old friend of ours. I need to know what you gave her.”

  “She came here for a recording,” Rhys said. “I don’t have it anymore. She has it.” Nyx could take care of herself. He and Elahyiah could not.

  “So you gave her everything?”

  “Yes. Search the house. There’s nothing. She wanted a voice reel we had back when we were hunting the alien, Nikodem Jordan. She needed to match it to the voice of a bel dame.”