Infidel (52 page)

43.
 

N
yx 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 feel?”
   

“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 Wa
r, 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