Infidel

by Kameron Hurley

  “That so? A lot like living in the desert, then.” Alharazad pulled off her goggles, regarded her with bloodshot eyes. “What you here for, then? You want my head, you’ll have a hard time getting it.”

  “Why didn’t you take mine?”

  Alharazad grinned and spit. She began pulling the bugs from the cages. She slipped them into the kill jars she kept on the floor. “I don’t like waste. You wasted a good many women out there, from what I hear.”

  “I figured some of them were likely mine anyway.”

  “Been thinking of babies, have you? Your genetic stuff belongs to the bel dames. What they do with it isn’t your concern.”

  “But some were, weren’t they?”

  Alharazad smiled. She set the now empty cage back on the floor. “When you can’t get the real thing, you settle on an imitation. But blood codes don’t make good bel dames. Hardship does. I always did prefer the real thing.”

  Nyx shrugged. “Sorry. Politics aren’t my thing.”

  “Let me tell you something, girl. I’ve been bringing in black sisters and terrorists, aliens and gun-runners, since long before you were born. It’s not the first time I had a bel dame squeal my name to some mark.”

  “It was Behdis who squealed, not Shadha. She didn’t start talking till she knew we were on to her.”

  “Behdis? Interesting. How long did it take you to get that?”

  “About twenty hours of detox.”

  Alharazad clucked her tongue. She walked over to the ice box, pulled a bottle down from on top of it. “Whiskey?”

  “I ain’t staying long.”

  Alharazad poured herself a glass. “Probably a good idea. Let me tell you about women, Nyxnissa so Dasheem. There are hot young things from the front—crazy, bloodthirsty, good at butchering. Your Rasheeda is like that. Good tool, when used right. It’s when you lose control of her that she becomes a threat. I put Shadha on the council myself. You figured that out?”

  “Sounds about right.”

  “Wasn’t so bad. She needed direction. I was happy to give it. Then she comes to me about the Queen. She tells me about black deals with interstellar gene pirates. She tells me we’re giving the monarchy to a magician. She tells me the Queen’s looking to end the war with a Tirhani treaty. Imagine that? Chenja and Nasheen, signing a truce in Tirhan? That fucking bloated body? Nothing but rot, there. And you know what I realized, Nyx? You and I have seen the whole bloody world. The best and worst of it. We’ve given life, and taken it. That Queen? That woman we swore to? She’s done none of that. She sat behind a filter from the time she’s born. You ever seen her hands? Not a scratch. Not a callous.”

  “You wanted Shadha to take the fall for the bel dame coup. You didn’t think it would succeed?”

  “Succeed? We’re bel dames. We ruled the world once. We could do it again. And we would have.”

  “But?”

  “But not her.”

  Nyx snorted. “You aren’t serious.”

  “You would have done the same. The council’s clean now, Nyx. And there’s a huge power vacuum. Who do you think they’ll call in to fill it? Not you. Not the rogue bel dame who poisoned the Queen’s heir and killed one of her messengers. If you can’t play nice, I make sure you can’t play at all.”

  “Who did you get to contaminate me?

  “We all have a price. Even Yahfia, your little lost magician.”

  “That explains why I could guilt her into getting me out of Faleen, then.”

  “Yes, her conscience did get the better of her in the end. You heard the Queen shipped her to the front for that little bit of mercy?”

  “I did.”

  Alharazad opened the other bug cage. “And now I’d suggest that you get in that bakkie and get on the road. You don’t have a lot of time. Someone will figure out your papers are forgeries eventually. How long do you have, you think?”

  “You said to me you can’t kill people,” Nyx said. “You gotta kill ideas. We killed an idea out there. You think another bel dame is going to follow you against the Queen? Not so long as they remember what I did out there.”

  “What did you do, Nyx? Who’s to know?”

  “You forgot who I was working for,” Nyx said.

  Alharazad peered at her. “You were running rogue on an ear worm from the Queen.”

  “I was running for Fatima Kosan. I was working for the bel dame council, Alharazad.”

  “Catshit.”

  “Truth.”

  Alharazad waved a hand. “Easy enough to fix.”

  “Is it? I figure if you had a mind to kill me, you’d have done it already.”

  “Maybe I have other plans for you.”

  “Might be I have some for you, too.” Nyx moved toward the door. “See you around.”

  “Here,” Alharazad said. She picked up a jar, and handed it to Nyx. Inside was a dead dragonfly, perfectly still, perfectly preserved. “Take it.”

  “Why? Something to remember you by?” Nyx threw it back at her. Alharazad caught it.

  Nyx walked outside. She started the bakkie and then turned it around in the tight, sandy drive.

  Long way back to civilization, but she was breathing. That was something, and more than it felt like she’d had in a long time.

  43.

  Nyx washed her hands in the ablution bowl next to the door. She was surprised that this close to the Drucian border, all the cantinas still had ablution bowls. She had a special fondness for border town cantinas, and this one was no exception. She paid for a bottle of whiskey and a pinch of morphine from the barkeep, then hauled her duffle bags outside under the awning.

  She had sold the bakkie to a cancerous creeper three blocks back and used the cash to buy some clothes better suited for the milder weather on the coast and the Drucian interior. Out here, the world was still a dusty desert, but she could see the dark outline of the mountains in the distance. Cooler weather. Fewer people. Fewer bugs, too.

  A sun-sick bakkie chugged up to the bug feed station outside the cantina. A dark little woman jumped out. She wore goggles and a headscarf around her narrow head. Pistols were visible at her hips, and the stock of a shotgun poked up through her burnous. To the casual eye, she looked like a Chenjan, but when she spoke, her Nasheenian was pure.

  “You ready?” Anneke said. She hadn’t aged a day. Why was she the only one who looked like she’d rolled out with the Queen’s reward for a dead alien just yesterday?

  “Let’s do it,” Nyx said.

  Anneke picked up one of the duffle bags, and they walked out to Anneke’s waiting bakkie. Loaded up Nyx’s things.

  “What did you do with all your gear?” Anneke asked.

  “Saving it for a bloody day.”

  “Thought you were getting out of those.”

  “You never know.”

  “Heh. Yeah, that’s it, I guess. You never know.”

  Nyx rolled down the window. Anneke started the bakkie and drove south, toward the smoky mountains of Druce.

  The desert rolled out ahead of them. Anneke drove around a big sand drift that was eating at the road, and then it was east, southeast, where the sun would rise tomorrow but right now it was getting dark, so dark, and Nyx couldn’t help looking back over her shoulder at the sunset—the bloody, gorgeous dying of the world.

  “It’ll still be there,” Anneke said.

  “Yeah, I guess. Just wondering how I’m going to pass the time.”

  “Rumor has it you’re a bad shot.”

  Nyx grinned. “That so?”

  “Figured somebody oughta do something about that. You being unemployed and all, you got plenty of time. Don’t know how you stayed alive so long, not knowing how to fucking shoot.”

  Nyx laughed, and it broke something up inside of her. She laughed so hard that tears bunched up at the corners of her eyes. She wiped them away.

  “Thanks for coming out here.”

  “I needed a little excitement. Always knew you were good for that, boss. So how’s it f
eel?”

  “What?”

  “Being a wanted woman.”

  “Fatima might still be able to get me cleared, yet,” Nyx said, but even saying it out loud didn’t sound convincing. Get her pardoned by the Queen? No. Not even the bel dames had that kind of power. She had fucked herself by killing that messenger. How many years until she didn’t look guilty? Until Fatima called? Until she could take a shit without expecting some bel dame to shoot her for slaughtering a dozen of their best?

  There was something on the radio. Talking heads. Politics. First Families with rich, privileged voices.

  “Listen to that,” Anneke said. “They totter on like nothing’s changed.”

  “It hasn’t,” Nyx said.

  “You never did believe in anything,” Anneke said. “Not God. Not the bel dames. Now you’re all nagging on Nasheen. We got a word for people like you.”

  Nyx stared out the window a good long time, watched the deep amber dunes turn to black as they entered the blasted desert that stretched from the eastern edge of Nasheen to the Drucian border. Chenjan bursts and ancient magicians’ blights had swallowed this part of the desert. She saw the cratered remains of old, nameless cities. The air tasted of tar and ashes.

  “I wasn’t worth bringing back,” Nyx said.

  “That so?” Anneke said. She spit sen, rolled her shoulders. “Lots of boys weren’t worth killing, either. But it ain’t up to you.”

  Anneke changed the radio to a new station, something with a southern cantina beat and high, clear vocals. The old mercenary raised her rickety voice and started to sing along.

  “All you do is learn how to fight a war,” Nyx said. “Nobody ever teaches you how to stop.”

  Nyx leaned out the window and watched the big orange demon fall below the horizon, saw the whole world go blue-violet. It was, she decided, very beautiful. Like a Chenjan magician she once knew.

  Some things were worth coming back for. Even way out here, at the end of the world.

  +

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Compared to writing God’s War, writing Infidel was a cake walk. Despite the fact that I was finishing various drafts of Infidel while God’s War was being edited, dropped, shopped, re-sold, and edited again, the first half went pretty smoothly.

  Many thanks to my agent, Jennifer Jackson, for keeping things moving on the business end with God’s War, which allowed me to actually write this damn book. Though I suffered my fair share of Book Depression when God’s War was dropped and re-shopped, things would have been far, far worse if I had to deal with the nuts-and-bolts business end of shopping a book while… you know, writing a book. So thanks, Jenn.

  My first readers had the unenviable job of reading through the original second half of this book (as well as all the rest), which, to be honest, kind of sucked. Thanks to David Moles, Patrick Weekes, and Miriam Hurst for bearing with me (and David in particular for assuring me that I didn’t need to TOTALLY start over). Your fried grasshoppers and chocolate-covered crickets are in the mail….

  Once the big stuff was addressed, my beta readers were invaluable in helping ensure that there were as few discrepancies between God’s War and Infidel as possible, always a tricky undertaking when you’re doing series books. Thanks to Jayson Utz and Matt McDaniel for their last-minute read through. In particular, many kudos to Dave Zelasco, whose attention to “bugs, guns, and whiskey” helped me iron out a lot of discrepancies regarding those particular items. As ever, any of the crap that’s been left in is my own damn fault. But be assured that there is much less of it thanks to these folks.

  For final editing and copyediting, many thanks to my editor, Ross Lockhart, and my copyeditor, Marty Halpern. Special thanks to Ross and David Palumbo for putting up with my strong opinions on book covers, too. And, lest I forget, thanks again to Jeremy Lassen for originally purchasing these books in the first place.

  As ever, my parents—Terri and Jack Hurley—have been endlessly supportive of my work, even if it’s not exactly Oprah Book Club material. Thanks for being my biggest fans.

  Thanks also to Jayson Utz for being a great partner. Living with a writer is tough. We stay in a lot. We snarl at our neighbors a lot. We watch too many episodes of The Twilight Zone. And we have these really annoying things called deadlines. Jayson has endured all of this and far more with a tremendous amount of love and good humor.

  Finally, thanks to all the other writers and readers who have supported these bloody little books. I can’t promise you all a happy ending, but I do hope you continue to enjoy the ride.

  The Big Red House

  Ohio

  Spring, 2011

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Kameron Hurley currently hacks out a living as a marketing and advertising writer in Ohio. She’s lived in Fairbanks, Alaska; Durban, South Africa; and Chicago, but grew up in and around Washington State. Her personal and professional exploits have taken her all around the world. She spent much of her roaring twenties traveling, pretending to learn how to box, and trying not to die spectacularly. Along the way, she justified her nomadic lifestyle by picking up degrees in history from the University of Alaska and the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal. Today she lives a comparatively boring life sustained by Coke Zero, Chipotle, low-carb cooking, and lots of words. She continues to work hard at not dying. Follow the fun at www.kameronhurley.com

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  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR