Infidel

by Kameron Hurley

  Nyx saw something moving along Suha’s bloody arm, like a swarm of maggots.

  Suha started scrubbing at it with the tunic.

  “Rhys! Rhys!” Nyx reached toward him. He was standing over the body of a tall, twisted bel dame with burn scars on her neck. Broken as a rag doll. “Rhys, goddammit, get up here!”

  He turned.

  The hissing, spitting sound grew louder. Where had it been? Locked in the desk? One of the big cabinets near the door? Everything was broken and busted in. They’d blown the room and started cutting people up, and now it was out.

  Rhys turned toward the sound of the sand.

  “Here! Rhys, get the fuck up here!” Nyx said.

  He stared at the body of the bel dame. Blood spattered his hands. His face. He left the corpse and waded toward them across the rubble.

  Something spat at him. A spray of fine gray mist. He jerked away, startled. Smacked at it like he would a mosquito, a biting fly.

  Nyx looked around at the bloody ruin of the tower. It feeds on blood, Rhys had said. But none of them were wounded. Did that make a difference?

  She watched him smacking at the dusty air. He started coughing.

  “Rhys?”

  She jumped off the desk.

  “Nyx!” Suha yelled.

  Nyx took hold of Rhys by the collar and hauled him to the desk. A blistering rash had opened up on his cheek where some bel dame’s blood had splattered him.

  She pushed him onto the desk. “Get it off, Suha! Wipe it off!”

  A raven cawed.

  Nyx saw Eshe circling. She felt something biting at her blood-soaked trousers. She sat up on the desk and pulled them off, threw the bloody trousers onto the hissing floor.

  The few living bel dames were screaming now. Weird, high-pitched cries.

  Nyx started pulling off Rhys’s blood-soaked clothes and feeding them to the spitting, hissing sand that popped and cackled around them.

  Suha’s arm was a red rash. She, too, had stripped down to her dhoti and breast binding. She scrubbed at Rhys’s face until he pushed her away.

  “Fuck!” Rhys said, crouching at the edge of the desk. He was nearly naked, stripped down to his small clothes.

  Nyx heard someone on the stairs.

  Yah Tayyib carefully moved into the doorway. His face was unreadable. For a moment, Nyx expected him to cackle madly and tell them this had been his plan all along. It seemed like a pretty good one. Leave her and the rest to starve to death—naked—amid a stir of dead bel dames contaminated with flesh-eating sand.

  Instead, Yah Tayyib raised his arms and called a swarm of locusts.

  The locusts descended from a clear sky. They were a black plague so massive Nyx lost sight of everything—Yah Tayyib, Rhys, the desk, the bodies. The world was a buzzing, chitinous mass of death. Suha grabbed at her. Nyx grabbed for Suha, and a moment later Rhys’s strong, slim arms encircled Nyx’s torso, and the three of them clung together in the merciless swarm. Nyx dared not open her mouth. She breathed slow through her nose. She felt Rhys’s heartbeat—strong and fast—against her shoulder.

  Then the swarm was gone, just as suddenly as Yah Tayyib had called it.

  Nyx tried opening her eyes. The light was back—orange, warm. Suha and Rhys pulled away. She stared out at the ruined tower. The corpses had been picked clean, leaving behind piles of soft white bones and tattered clothing.

  Nyx let out a breath.

  A few locusts still fluttered among the rubble. She flicked one off her arm.

  Yah Tayyib leaned wearily against the doorway. His face looked haggard.

  “You look ridiculous,” he said, and collapsed.

  Nyx scrambled off the desk. She picked her way back across the ruins, and found Yah Tayyib partially supine, wedged in the doorway. She had to climb over him and kneel on the other side.

  “You all right? Tayyib?”

  His eyelids fluttered. “Yes,” he muttered. “Yes, of course.” He opened his eyes and gave her a long, piercing look. “Listen, now,” he said.

  “Oh, shut up,” Nyx said.

  He winced and tried to sit up a little straighter. “No. The only time you ever listen is when you think you’re losing. Listen now. You’ve squandered your talent.”

  Nyx sighed and stood. “Oh, just die already.”

  “No, I won’t,” Yah Tayyib said. He used the lintel to help pull himself up. One hand clutched at his side, but Nyx didn’t see any blood. No sign of visible injury. “I’ve done some terrible things, I admit that.”

  “Finally.”

  “But I did them to free Nasheen.”

  “Let’s not argue about this again.”

  Suha was pulling her clothes back on. Rhys was already half-dressed. Pity, Nyx thought.

  “Would you listen?” Yah Tayyib said.

  She folded her arms and regarded him. The room was cold. She realized how strange she must look, mostly naked, her mismatched skin and bizarre corpse scars fully visible. Nothing he hasn’t seen before, she reminded herself.

  “We need to get moving, Tayyib. Likely order keepers on the way, and I don’t want to answer all the questions they’ll have about this catshit.”

  “Promise me something.”

  “I don’t promise anybody anything.”

  “Let all of this go.”

  “Tayyib—”

  “Goodbye.” But he didn’t walk into the hall. He started walking into the ruined tower.

  “Hold on. What about the locusts, Tayyib? The locusts ate the flesh. The flesh holds the sand. Where are they?”

  He turned. The ghost of a smile touched his face. “Let go,” he said.

  Four giant hornets buzzed through the broken roof. Nyx jumped back into the hall.

  The hornets gripped Yah Tayyib by the back of his coat and picked him up neatly into the air. He caught hold of their slender feet and they buzzed up and away into the bright lavender sky.

  “Holy fuck,” Nyx muttered.

  Rhys shook his head, awestruck. “I can’t believe he managed that.”

  “What the fuck was that?” Suha asked.

  “What is it always?” Nyx said. “Tayyib fucking me over.”

  “He did say you were even,” Rhys said.

  Nyx looked over at Rhys. He sat on the edge of the desk, his dark, dirty hands gripping the lip of it.

  “We should go,” Rhys said.

  Nyx kicked at one of the piles of bones and clothing at her feet. “Why can’t you do shit like this?” she said.

  He slid off the desk. “If I could do that, I’d be king of Chenja.”

  40.

  The evening call to prayer rolled out over Beh Ayin, low and comforting and just a little too loud for Nyx’s aching head. She sat on the balcony with a fifth of whiskey, watching bugs incinerate themselves on the filter with a hiss and pop and spray of gray ash.

  Eshe had his feet pulled up under him. He was eating cold curry, something Inaya had cooked the night before.

  Suha offered Nyx a sen cigarette.

  Nyx shook her head.

  Suha lit up, and leaned over the balcony. “Risky, Nyx.”

  “Always is.”

  They sat outside in silence for a good while longer. “You know I can’t go back to Nasheen,” Nyx said.

  Suha nodded. “All our names are on the bounty boards now. Load of good Fatima did sending us to Alharazad. You think she knew?”

  “Not likely,” Nyx said. “Fatima had an interest in us catching the bad guys.”

  “Fuck ’em,” Eshe said.

  Nyx snorted. “Easy enough to say, Eshe. Harder to do.” She looked over at Suha. “I want you to have the storefront.”

  “They’ll have tagged me. I won’t get in through that filter in Mushtallah.”

  “Records were all purged during the burst. They’ll have to refile you. Under whatever name you want.”

  “What, you think nobody will know me?”

  “You think I registered your employment with the local u
nder your real name?” Nyx said. “You think I’m stupid? I been doing this a long time, Suha. You should stop by and clean it out at least. Lot of good gear still at the storefront.”

  “What about you?” Eshe said.

  “I’ve got my shit in order,” Nyx said. “The flood, remember?”

  Suha finished her cigarette and patted Nyx on the shoulder. “I’m getting out of here tomorrow, then. Eshe? What you think?”

  “Don’t know,” Eshe said.

  Suha shrugged. “Your call.” She went inside.

  Nyx looked at him. He gazed out over the balcony.

  “Suha wouldn’t be such a bad employer,” Nyx said.

  “Where you going?”

  “Can’t tell you that.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  He rubbed angrily at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Fuck you.”

  “Fuck you, fuck me, fuck everybody,” Nyx said. “Doesn’t change it.” She felt a lump forming in her throat, and swallowed another mouthful of whiskey.

  “You never gave me a good answer,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “About what makes us different than everybody at the front. ’Cause I didn’t see anything different.”

  “That’s up to you, Eshe. I can’t make your decisions for you.”

  “God says—”

  “God says a lot of things, depending on who quotes Him.”

  Eshe chewed his lip. “Inaya said she’s going to Ras Tieg.”

  “Yeah?”

  “She said there’s a rebellion there. A shifter rebellion.”

  “That so?”

  “She’s going to help.”

  “Huh.”

  “That’s like what we do, isn’t it?”

  Nyx considered that. Maybe it was, if they were trying to upset the status quo instead of maintain it, but all that catshit back there was about stopping the coup and keeping the war machine running. Put some more weapons into Tirhani hands. Or whoever Tayyib was working for.

  “It’s probably better than what we do,” Nyx said. Maybe then he could know, for certain, that he was one of the good guys. Nyx supposed he might find some comfort in that. For however long it lasted.

  “You think I should go with her?”

  “Your decision, Eshe.”

  He finished the curry and tossed the box over the railing. Some local bug pack below hissed and chattered. He stood. “When are you going?”

  “Morning, likely. Heard the trains are running again.”

  He nodded.

  Then he lunged toward her.

  She jerked back, startled. He wrapped his arms around her and held on tight, buried his face in her hair. Then, just as suddenly, he pulled away and left her.

  Nyx rubbed her eyes. Long day, she thought. Long fucking day.

  +

  Nyx drove them to the train station the next morning. They all sat together on the train this time. Inaya and Rhys on one seat, Suha and Eshe on the other, Nyx across the aisle.

  At the central station in Shirhazi, Inaya and Eshe bought tickets for Ras Tieg. When it came time to walk away, Eshe just firmed up his mouth and told her goodbye. She wished him luck. No tears this time, no embarrassing display of emotion that left her befuddled and reeling. No, he acted just like a boy headed to the front. Just the way she’d taught him to.

  Suha made a couple calls. Nyx and Rhys walked her back out to the taxi ranks.

  “Azizah’s cache isn’t too far from here,” Suha said. “She’s got a way to get me back into Nasheen. Get me some new papers.”

  “You clean out that storefront,” Nyx said. “I don’t want any of those fire-happy bel dame apprentices to clean it out first.”

  After Suha got into the taxi, Nyx turned to Rhys. She gestured to the next taxi. “Yours, gravy,” she said.

  He did not smile, did not react. Just watched her with his big, dark eyes. She was reminded then of the first time she saw him—years ago, an age ago, when he was just a dancer and she was some arrogant bel dame on the run—saw him across a smoky, crowded gym while her ruined body healed and her bloody bel dame sisters sniffed her out. He was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

  He still was.

  “Don’t come for me again,” he said.

  “I won’t,” she said. “You get on back to your wife.”

  He stepped into the taxi. She slammed the door behind him.

  41.

  Rhys took the taxi as far as the edge of the Chenjan district. As they came up on Elahyiah’s father’s block, he told the taxi driver to slow down.

  “It’s just here,” Rhys said, but as they arrived at the walk-up, Rhys let the driver continue on by while he gazed up at the shuttered windows.

  “Where is it, huh?” the driver asked.

  “Never mind,” Rhys said. “Never mind. Keep going.”

  “Where?” The driver asked.

  “Back to the station,” Rhys said.

  +

  Rhys jumped out of the taxi and pushed his way back through the blue arches of the station, favoring his twisted ankle. Polite Tirhanis moved aside. Some made shocked noises, but no one swore or caught at his coat. Tirhanis—always so polite.

  He followed the signs for trains to the coast. There were six of them leaving in an hour—two to the southern coast and four more to the eastern.

  Nyx hadn’t said where she was going, but he had a good idea.

  Rhys hobbled along the train platforms, looking for Nyx’s familiar broad torso. The arrogant stance. The peculiar cant to her head as she pretended to understand somebody talking to her in a language she couldn’t even name. He looked for her brown coat, buttoned all the way up even in the heat to hide her scars. He walked and walked until he reached the third to last platform where he caught sight of a lone, familiar profile waiting at the other end of the platform.

  He stopped in his tracks. Passengers moved politely around him, a ceaseless tide. He watched her pull something from her coat and stare at it a long moment. Then her head came up, and she was looking out at the incoming train, taking a step back from the edge of the platform.

  Rhys pushed his hands into his pockets. Realized what she was looking at.

  She’d stolen his book of poetry. When had she lifted that?

  He watched her step into the train. Willed her to look back. One look. Just one.

  Nyx disappeared into the car.

  Rhys let out his breath.

  He waited until the train pulled away from the station. Watched it move past him. The windows were opaqued. He wondered, briefly, if she saw him. Wondered if she cared.

  She would sacrifice everything, he reminded himself. You won’t. That’s the difference between you.

  But in that moment, as he watched the train disappear toward the eastern coast, that knowledge gave him no comfort.

  42.

  Getting back into Nasheen, as a Nasheenian woman, alone, wasn’t so tough. She knew just as many organic forgers as Suha, and she knew the best way to get into Nasheen was at the coast. Taking a boat back, though, was the tough part. Nyx spent the whole trip sick.

  When she stumbled onto dry land, she was on the Nasheenian coast, and though she hated the coast, it was a lot better than being on the actual ocean. They asked for her papers. They checked her blood, her sex, checked her papers again.

  “You’re traveling alone?” the customs officer asked.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  They noted that down.

  She was pretty sure she knew why.

  Eshe would thank her someday, after he stopped hating her.

  She bought a sun-sick, spitting bakkie off a dog vendor and kept half her cash stuffed in the seat, and the other half in her dhoti. She drove the bakkie into the wastelands. She had trouble finding the place. She didn’t remember the last time she’d driven a bakkie on her own. Since long before she got sick, she supposed. There was freedom on the road, a rush of adrenaline, speeding throug
h the desert, wearing nothing but her dhoti and binding. The sand gummed up the corners of her eyes. The heat sucked her dry. She felt clean, free. So bloody fucking free.

  She wound up the pitted drive and saw Alharazad’s half-buried derelict rear into view. She half-expected a couple of bel dames on watch, maybe a sniper on the roof. But that wasn’t Alharazad’s style.

  Nyx ground the bakkie to a halt and stepped out. Her burnous billowed behind her. She left her goggles inside. She stood a moment behind the bakkie door, taking in the derelict, the opaqued windows.

  She kept one hand just behind her, within reach of her scattergun, as she approached. Dead cicadas littered the walk. Some of the kill jars on the porch had recent additions: a couple of hooked-nosed plybugs, an enormous butterfly the size of her head, a mutant owl bug with long stalks for eyes.

  Nyx knocked at one of the windows. As she waited, she took another look around the yard. The weather had turned, and the heat was bearable. At night, the bugs in the jars would be lethargic.

  She saw her, then, coming down from the shallow rise that looped behind the house. Alharazad wore a green organic burnous and goggles. Three bug cages hung from the end of a pole slung over one shoulder. Her windswept hair was knotted at the back of her head.

  Alharazad trudged toward her, weaponless. Spit sen.

  “I suppose you’re here to kill me,” Alharazad said.

  “What fun would there be in that?” Nyx said.

  Alharazad stepped onto the porch and pushed in the door. Unlocked, unfiltered. A perfectly insecure door.

  Nyx followed her inside.

  The marijuana plants were gone, replaced by what looked like opium seedlings and cardamom. New season, new crops. It reminded Nyx of Mushirah. They would be planting saffron and ambergrass this time of year.

  Alharazad stacked the bug crates on the table. Kept her goggles on.

  “I don’t believe you won’t bring in this note,” Alharazad said.

  “There was never any note on you. Besides, I’m retired,” Nyx said.

  “I don’t believe either of us is retired.”

  “I’ve already died once. Didn’t like it much. I don’t think you’d like it either. Everything stops.”