Infidel

by Kameron Hurley

  Nyx hit him with a hard left hook. Folks always forgot she was a southpaw, and he was no exception. He tried to block, too late, and she followed it up with a right jab that hit him square in the face. Heard the crunch of bone and cartilage. Blood burst from his nose. He stumbled back and caught himself on the table.

  Her hand throbbed. Her knees were suddenly unsteady.

  “You need to sit the fuck down,” Nyx said.

  “You bitch,” he said, spitting blood. “You’d sacrifice us for this.”

  “You’re right,” Nyx said. “I don’t give a fuck about your families. I’d sacrifice every damn one of you. You know what I give a fuck about? Two hundred and fifty thousand dead boys at the front. Eighty-four thousand civilians dead in Mushtallah two weeks ago. You see me with a family, Khos? You see me with anything I give a shit about? I lost it all a long time ago, and I wasn’t stupid enough to run off and build a new one. We’re killers, every fucking one of us, and the killing is going to keep on until the war ends.”

  “And maybe longer than that,” Suha muttered.

  “I have a coup to put down and a country to save,” Nyx said. “You can hole up here for another couple years sucking off that fat tit until it dries up, but it will dry up, because you’re sucking on the blood of dead men, and there’s only so many of those to go around. What then, Mhorian?”

  “Then I fucking kill you,” Khos said, spitting more blood.

  “Some days I wonder if that’s your problem, Khos. You can’t decide whether to fuck me or kill me.”

  Rhys put his ugly hand on Khos’s arm. “We have bigger problems, Khos.”

  “Yeah, and she brought them right to our door!”

  “And you let me in,” Nyx said, “and bought me a drink.”

  Khos wiped his bloody face with his sleeve. “You’ll do this without me and my family.”

  “You go out there now and you’re as good as dead,” Nyx said. “If the bel dames aren’t already on point, they’re on their way.”

  “I’m a shifter, Nyx. So’s my wife. We’ll get out. The rest of you… that’s up to you.” He looked at Eshe. “You can get out too. I’d leave with us.”

  “Fuck off,” Eshe said.

  “Inaya!” Khos yelled, and turned to the door leading into the yard. But she was already there, staring in at them, a curious look on her face.

  “We’re going,” Khos said.

  “Are we?” she said. Nyx remembered that tone of voice. It was the same one Inaya used back in Chenja after she blew a hole in a gene pirate.

  “Stop. Let’s go.” He stepped away from the table and took her arm.

  “Company,” Suha said, nodding out toward the yard beyond Inaya. Suha pulled her pistols.

  Nyx looked over Inaya’s slim shoulder and saw two figures in the yard. She saw them toss the grenade.

  “Get down!” Nyx yelled.

  Everyone scattered.

  Khos grabbed Inaya. Rhys bolted to the front door. Nyx yanked the curtain separating the rooms and threw it over Eshe. She jerked him back into the far corner of the bedroom. Suha was already kicking out the lattice window. Nyx had Eshe halfway bundled up through the opening—cursing and flailing—when the grenade went off.

  Nyx let him go and dropped to the floor, hands over her ears. Suha kicked over the flimsy bed frame to shield them from the blast.

  The world went quiet—muffled, dark.

  Nyx choked on dust and smoke. She opened her eyes—surprised to be conscious—and scrambled for a weapon. The center of the ceiling had caved in. Dust caught the light and held it, blinded her. She scrabbled toward the kicked-out window and caught a glimpse of Eshe running and morphing at the same time across the dirty street. He shook free of his clothes and took flight. Three gunshots sounded, muted to her ravaged ears.

  She turned back into the house and grabbed a chunk of broken tile from the collapsed roof.

  Suha pushed off the ruin of the bed frame and winced. A jagged wooden splinter had lodged itself in her shoulder. She pulled one of her pistols and threw it to Nyx.

  “The fuck I’m supposed to do with this?” Nyx shouted—barely able to hear her own voice. She was a terrible shot.

  Suha fired into the haze.

  Nyx ducked behind the ruin of the bed with Suha.

  They were coming in.

  Two came in from the front door, three more from the door into the yard.

  Nyx pointed and fired. The gun popped in her hand. If she laid down suppressing fire it might take a while for them to realize she couldn’t hit shit, even at this range.

  The two at the front backed off from the assault and ducked behind the door. One at the side door rolled in and took up position behind the table. Nyx pressed her back to the ruin of the bed, took a deep breath, turned, and fired off a few wild shots.

  Suha waited until she was down, then fired a few more. Yelled something at her.

  “WHAT?” Nyx yelled.

  Suha signed to her—clenched fist with the thumb sticking out: need ammo.

  Pistols like Suha’s didn’t have more than ten shots a count. Fuck, Nyx thought. How many had she already fired off? Five? Six? She wished she had her sword. Swords didn’t run out of death.

  Nyx popped off another round.

  Suha pushed up after her, popped off two more.

  Then, nothing. The hand sign: clenched fist with thumb pointing down. She was out.

  Nyx popped out one more. The bel dames countered with a long spray. Another grenade came over the top of their makeshift barricade. Nyx picked it up and huffed it back at them. It careened out through the side door. The women scattered outside.

  Suha was patting herself down for ammo. Nyx pulled a couple of tiles into a neat pile next to her. At the end of the world, the war was going to come down to throwing stones. Might as well start now.

  The grenade exploded outside. Nyx pointed the gun in the general direction of the other two women and fired the last of her bullets. When it was empty, she threw the gun at the nearest woman. The gun careened into the doorframe and clattered to the floor.

  Nyx slid back down and exchanged one last heated look with Suha. Suha had her mouth bunched up. Sweat beaded her furrowed brow. She pulled a curved blade from a sheath at her back. Took a deep breath.

  Nyx waited for the bel dames to reload.

  The popping stopped.

  Nyx and Suha burst over the barrier and rushed the front door. The two bel dames jerked out of their defensive positions and raised double-barreled organic shotguns. They were too fast for Nyx to close the distance and push the barrels away.

  This is going to hurt, Nyx thought. And I was feeling so good, too.

  Then the bel dame’s head exploded.

  Blood splattered Nyx’s face. For a minute she thought she’d been hit, and clutched at herself for an injury. No pain. Nothing. Just bloody shock.

  The second bel dame jerked back. Her shotgun went off. The sniper blast caught her in the throat, tore open a big hole. Blood gushed.

  Nyx grabbed the bel dame’s shotgun and pushed past the bodies. She crouched in the doorway and did a long sweep of the street. A few curious heads peeked out of nearby windows. When they saw her with the gun, they ducked back in. She’d need to move fast. They’d call the order keepers soon.

  She scanned for snipers. Her eyes had always been good, and the bug that woke her body had sharpened them a little more. Nobody on the roofs on the street. Back behind them, though…

  Nyx crawled across the bodies. Suha was lying on her belly just inside the door leading the yard. She had the second shotgun with her.

  “Ours or theirs?” Nyx asked, but her voice still sounded muffled, even to her own ears. She tapped Suha’s ankle and signed when she looked back, asking if the snipers were friendly or not. Suha signed back: two fingers to the temple. Friendly.

  Nyx pushed herself against the door jam and glanced into the yard. She’d gotten one of the bel dames with the grenade. The other two were missi
ng. On the other side of the yard, she saw somebody toss a green organic sniper rifle with a single-shot acid burst cartridge over the fence. Then they crawled up over it.

  Eshe.

  Naked as the day he was born, wandering around in full sun. He picked up the gun and grinned. He yelled something.

  “WHAT?” Nyx yelled back.

  “Had it in the bakkie!” he yelled.

  “Need to put you on point more often!” she said.

  Nyx stood. A dog barked, and the familiar yellow mutt that was Khos-the-dog prowled into the yard from the front.

  “Plenty of good you did,” Nyx said.

  Khos-the-dog shivered once, then started to morph. Dog limbs elongated, muscles moved and stretched and tore, and dog hair shook off the melting torso in clumps. In a few minutes, Khos, too, stood naked in the yard, wiping mucus and dog hair from his pale arms and shoulders.

  His lips started moving, but all Nyx heard was bwaaa bwaaa muhhh mwaaaa.

  “WHAT?” Nyx said.

  He raised his voice and repeated. “I tracked them as far as their bakkie. Inaya took over then.”

  “She tailing?”

  “All the way.”

  “Where’s Rhys?” Nyx asked.

  “Other side of the fence,” Eshe shouted. “He’s coming around!”

  Nyx looked back at Khos. “Bel dames aren’t worth interrogating. They won’t break. Not even under me.”

  “I bet I know somebody who is,” Suha said.

  Nyx nodded. “Drugs first. New safe house. We need to move fast. She won’t stay still long.”

  “WHAT?” Suha said.

  Nyx raised her voice and repeated.

  “Who?” Khos asked.

  Rhys walked out into the yard, picking his way past the bodies. Nyx felt something inside of her ease up. He stopped a few paces away, didn’t look at her.

  “Need some magician’s drugs,” Nyx said. “You help with that?”

  “WHAT?” he said.

  33.

  Rhys went home.

  The public order police had sealed off the house with tailored organic tape to keep out miscreants and squatters. Too late for that, Rhys thought. He moved his hands over the tape and subtly altered the bugs’ coding. They were simple enough bugs that even he could control them. The filter was still down. The house was silent.

  He walked upstairs. The house had been thoroughly ransacked. By the bel dames, he assumed, not the police, though he would need to file a report with them shortly. He poked through the house. Found one of Laleh’s headscarves. A crudely drawn avocado from Souri’s first days learning Ras Tiegan with the housekeeper. He ran the water in the bath and stared at the alien hands that moved the hot water slider. Someone else’s hands. Someone else’s life.

  Instead of getting in the tub, though, he washed himself standing up, as if preparing for prayer. He found some old clothes in his wardrobe. Long trousers, long, dark coat, a short tunic with green trim at the hem and cuffs. He dressed slowly, deliberately. Then walked across his room to the box where his pistols lay. Inaya had told him there was a body in his room, but it wasn’t there any longer. Nor was his housekeeper’s.

  He pulled out the leather holster from his wardrobe and strapped it securely around his hips. Picked up the first jade-hilted pistol. Cleaned and loaded it, slow and deliberate, just as he had dressed. Then the second one. He holstered both at his hips and pulled the coat forward to hide them.

  When he stood in front of the mirror, he almost didn’t recognize himself. No magician, now. Just some Chenjan refugee. Some mercenary.

  He grabbed a hat he found at the top of the wardrobe, pulled the petty cash from Elahyiah’s jewelry box, and collected some food from the fridge.

  Rhys stood in line for a taxi. He paid nearly half a note more to the driver than usual. He took the train to the southern edge of the city. No one gave up their seat. No one got out of his way. He stood the entire ride.

  When he disembarked, he caught the familiar smell of curried protein cakes and gravy. Heard the call to evening prayer roll out over the quarter. As he walked, he saw matrons setting out cats’ milk for demons. Heard the tinny whine of someone up on a roof spinning their big prayer wheels. The first sun set, and blue dusk fell over the city.

  Elahyiah’s father lived in a three-story walk-up above a laundry run by his two wives and children. Rhys ascended the stairs and knocked at the door.

  Elahyiah’s cousin, Faraz, opened the door.

  “I’m here to see my wife,” Rhys said.

  Faraz was twenty, smooth-faced and heavy-browed. He looked Rhys over a long moment and frowned deeply. “She doesn’t want to see you.”

  “Is that him?” Rhys heard Elahyiah’s father, Saman, inside. “Is that him?”

  The old man pushed his way to the door. “Come, get out of his way. A man has a right to see his wife. Let him in.”

  Rhys moved past Faraz and into the cramped living room. The room smelled of tobacco and marijuana and bleach from the laundry downstairs. The women’s quarters were curtained off from the main living area.

  “Come, sit with us. Have tea,” Saman said.

  “Thank you,” Rhys said, “but I am here for my wife.”

  “Of course.” Saman saw his hands, then. Shook his head. Rhys had not gone up when he dropped Elahyiah off. “Come, sit, have tea.”

  “Elahyiah?” Rhys said, loud enough to be heard beyond the curtain.

  “Come, tea,” Saman said.

  “I don’t want to come back there, Elahyiah,” Rhys said. “I do not wish to be rude.”

  She emerged from behind the curtain. She wore a clean abaya and hijab—both too big—likely her mother’s.

  “Let’s go to the roof,” Rhys said. “Do you permit me, Saman?”

  “Of course, my son,” Saman said. “Come up, come up.”

  Elahyiah whispered something fiercely to someone behind the curtain. Her mother? Perhaps one of her cousins?

  Rhys followed Saman up onto the cool, flat roof. There was a garden there, mostly succulents in pots as big around as Rhys could reach, protected from the worst of the sun by a broad awning that stretched across the roof. The marijuana grew up here, too, and the long, red flowering stalks of sen.

  Saman went downstairs to get Elahyiah. Rhys took off his hat in the blue dusk and waited. He waited a long time.

  She came up, eventually. In the blue light she looked even more like a lizard, some fragile thing.

  She hesitated a few steps away. Lowered her eyes, clasped her hands.

  “Elahyiah?”

  “I will do as you wish. You know that,” she said.

  “Don’t,” he said. He reached toward her with his hand. She flinched. Not my hand, he amended. Someone else’s—some other man’s hand. Another man’s hand, touching my wife. He pulled the hand away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know how to make it right.”

  She shook her head.

  “I know this place is safe,” he said. “You should stay here until the danger’s over. But… I want to rebuild, Elahyiah. You’re my life.”

  She began to cry.

  “Elahyiah?”

  She threw her arms around him and wept. Rhys let his arms rest at his sides, uncertain of what to do with his hands. Would she pull away again?

  “I love you,” she said. “I love you. They took everything. Oh, God is great but so cruel. God is so cruel.”

  “Hush,” Rhys said. He reached a hand tentatively up and cupped the back of her head. “Hush.” Something inside of him loosened, some terrible fear. “We’ll rebuild our life. You know that?”

  “No,” she said. She pulled away from him and wiped at her eyes.

  “Elahyiah?”

  “No,” she said. “You did not see your daughter’s broken skull. I saw it, Rhys. I saw what… I saw. The things I saw!”

  “Forget that. It happened to someone else.”

  “No.”

  “What can I do?”
>
  She bunched her hands into fists and met his gaze for the first time. Her eyes were hard and bright. He had never seen her look so fierce.

  “Kill them,” she said. “Kill all of them.”

  34.

  They jumped Behdis four blocks from the gym. Suha stepped neatly out of the bakkie and shoved a beetle down her throat. Nyx opened the bakkie door to shield what she was doing and dragged Behdis into the back.

  Behdis put up a lot of fight for an old woman.

  Suha locked and closed the door, then casually walked over to the other side of the bakkie. She slipped into the driver’s seat, took the wheel, and pulled away from the curb.

  Nyx hadn’t bothered finding a rental. Rentals, even in the shittiest parts of town, wouldn’t allow her to do what needed to be done. Instead, she had Eshe scout out places while they cleaned Behdis’s ruined hovel of drugs, weapons, and food. He found an old abandoned warehouse along the far bank of the viscous inland sea. Nyx left Khos at the house to wait for Inaya.

  “You want in, you share the safe house. You want out, get the fuck out of my face,” she’d told him. “I’ll send Eshe back for you in an hour.”

  It was just posturing. He had a good nose in shifter form, and he could sniff them out pretty quick if he had a mind to. Of course, if it came down to that, she had no trouble killing him.

  Nyx and Suha hauled Behdis downstairs to a former ice room, tied her to a support beam, and beat the shit out of her.

  When they came upstairs, they were splattered in blood and vomit, and about all Nyx knew was what Behdis had had for breakfast.

  “She’s old,” Suha said. “I told you she ain’t gonna talk. The bel dames can do worse to her.

  “Then we starve her out,” Nyx said.

  Suha pursed her mouth.

  “Cut her loose and lock her up. Let her dry out. We’ll have a name in thirty or forty hours.”

  “Nyx—”

  “Give me a better idea.”

  They sat upstairs and played cards for an hour, then sparred, barehanded, for an hour more.

  Nyx felt faster and stronger, but it wasn’t until she really started moving that she realized how slow and sick she’d been. Suha blocked her first three punches, but the next two landed, and she forced Suha back across the grimy warehouse floor. And though they were both pulling their punches, Suha had the ghost of a bruised eye and Nyx’s nose was bloody by the end of it.