Rapture (33 page)

It was the letter Michel had asked her to write to the Savoie family to help ease their fears and loosen their purse strings. The handwriting on both letters, of course, was identical.

Inaya went numb. She was aware of herself as if from some great height.

“We have you out, Madame de Fourré,” the Angel said. “Is there anything more you wish to say before we separate your head from your body and end this petty insurgency once and for all?”

N
yx tagged the woman as a bel dame almost immediately. It meant Nyx already had her scattergun half-drawn when the bel dame went for hers. Young women always liked to shoot off quips before their guns.

Older women knew better.

Nyx’s gun went off a breath before the bel dame’s. She stepped into the woman’s space as she shot, batting away her gun with one hand while continuing to shoot with the other. Four shots to the chest put her down.

It was one of the quickest fights Nyx had ever been in.

Nyx let off her last shot into the woman’s hand, ensuring it was too mangled to work the gun that had fallen just out of her reach.

She pressed a knee onto the bel dame’s stomach to hold her still and leaned over her. The woman was coughing blood. She couldn’t have been much more than twenty.

“Who sent you?” Nyx said. She pressed the gun to the woman’s face. Not that it mattered much. She was out of rounds, and the woman was dead anyway.

Just coughing. More blood. And fear. It was strange to see fear in a bel dame’s face, but death was different at twenty than forty. She watched the bel dame bleed out, right up until her eyes went dead and the bleeding stopped as the bug in her head kicked in.

Nyx glanced up at the others. Kage had pulled out her gun and circled back around Ahmed, looking for more shooters. Ahmed still stood exactly where he had when the bel dame pulled her gun, a dumb expression on his face.

“You want to cut off her head?” Nyx said. “She was after you, not me.”

Ahmed shook his head.

“Well, I’d recommend you do it, or somebody’s going to bring her back,” Nyx said. “Then you and I need to talk.”

+

The room was surprisingly cool, a blessing after so many days in the desert. Eshe sat in the doorway watching Isabet sleeping in the far corner of the room. Kage was below, washing up at the communal well. They all needed it, but the water was costly. Kage had traded something of hers for it, but Eshe wasn’t sure what. Nyx was off with Ahmed speaking to the local authorities about shooting the bel dame, and Khatijah had gone with them. He was content to be alone with Isabet for the first time in many days.

Her tangled, dirty hair was knotted back from her blemished face. The salve had soothed much of her inflamed skin overnight, but she had gone too long without it. She wouldn’t have the lovely complexion of her rich parents anymore.

He knew what he needed to do back when they came to in the organic pods and he had seen her lying beside him, skin enflamed, face slack. He imagined she was dead, and the fear and loss that cut through him was so painful he thought his chest might burst. He was angry at himself for it, but it didn’t change how he felt.

Isabet opened her eyes.

“I’d like to take you back to Ras Tieg,” he said.

“I can’t,” she said. Her eyes welled with tears again, but she did not shed them.

“We’ll get on with a caravan. A proper one. It won’t take nearly as long to get back if we’re with someone who knows where they’re going. Let me take you home. I can’t watch you die out here.”

Isabet sat up, wincing. “I told you I can’t go back.”

“Because you’re pregnant? What does that matter? Inaya won’t care about that, or anybody else. It’s not like Inaya’s kids were all born with fathers around. We can… we can say it’s mine.”

He had been thinking and praying a lot about it, and what it meant to offer her a way to return to Ras Tieg with some semblance of honor intact. It meant marrying her, he knew, or at least telling people they were married.

“You think that’s better?”

“Better than going back to Ras Tieg a whore, and getting stoned for it? Yes.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Tell me what I don’t understand. You just ran off here because you fucked some guy? I don’t understand why you all don’t have hexes on you like Nasheenians. I couldn’t get a woman pregnant without a lot of effort.”

“Nasheenians tamper too much with God’s will.”

“So it was God who got you pregnant, now?”

Isabet touched the unguent on her face, absently. “The voices were supposed to go away,” she said. “That’s why I did it. I wasn’t coerced or anything. You’re not supposed to get pregnant the first time. Everyone knows that.”

Eshe threw up his hands. God save him from ignorant Ras Tiegans.

“That worked out well, didn’t it?”

“I wasn’t supposed to be able to channel God through my mother if I wasn’t a virgin. But… I still hear Him.”

“And what does He say?”

“I don’t know. Nothing you could understand.”

“Because I’m a half-breed heretic?”

“It was my choice to come here.”

“Just as it was your choice to fuck Michel, I’m sure.” Eshe stood. “I never said it was Michel!”

“Why else would you have come?” Eshe said. “Why would he have sent you here? It wasn’t Inaya, was it? It was Michel.” He was done. He wanted to leave her here, so she could understand what it would really be like, to make it on her own. But if he did that, how would he be any better than Michel?

“You’re a bastard,” Isabet said.

“Every Nasheenian is a bastard,” Eshe said. “That insult means nothing to us.” He stepped out into the corridor. “I’m going down to wash up.

Would you like to do the same, or lob more insults?”

He could see Kage making her way back up the ladder, mostly clean, lugging her massive gun with her.

For a moment, he thought Isabet would refuse. He almost hoped she would. Then she said, “All right.” And the hope fluttered up again, the hope that maybe he could build some kind of life after this. That maybe they weren’t all going to die for Nasheen.

Kage met him on the balcony.

“You leave any water for the rest of us?” he asked.

Kage moved past him without a word. How did people like Inaya get others to like them? Even love them? He seemed to fail at it, even when he said all the right things. Kage hadn’t spoken two words to him in more than a week.

“So what kind of work has Nyx found for us?” he asked Kage, hoping something that wasn’t rhetorical would get more of a response. “We won’t need to hire ourselves out,” Kage said. “I found us a guide.”

+

“She’s a First Family,” Nyx said. “Is this supposed to make up for you fucking that giant?”

Kage sat with her on a cracked slab behind a string of temporary tents selling smoked cat meat and fried sand crawlers.

“I don’t know what that is,” Kage said.

“Families or fucking?”

“My business is my own. All you need know is that woman helped me find this one.”

“You’re all a slippery bag of trouble,” Nyx said.

The woman walking toward them was one of the most elegant Nasheenians Nyx had ever seen. Being pretty wasn’t an asset in Nasheen, but this woman wore it like it was one. She was strikingly beautiful, the sort of insidious beauty that knocked you flat in the street when you saw it. Her complexion was smooth as a child’s, brown as burnt butter. She had a face like a proud cat—large eyes, plump cheeks, generous mouth. She wore a pale yellow shalwar khameez stitched in red and orange geometric designs. Her hijab was purple, wound loosely around her head so her cascade of dark, wavy hair hung free to her waist.

“Is this your employer, then?” the woman asked as she approached. “Yes,” Kage said. “Nyx, this is Safiyah.”

Nyx said, “Sorry. Been a misunderstanding. I don’t run with rogue First Family. Too much trouble. Too much paperwork.”

Safiyah laughed, a surprisingly ugly sound considering her pleasant exterior. She sounded like a rabid dog hacking up a bit of foam. “Oh, they won’t pay anything for me back home if you try and turn me in. So don’t bother working out how much I’ll go for.”

“Come on, Kage,” Nyx said, and started to move past Safiyah.

“You have another way over the Wall, then?” Safiyah said.

“We have plenty of other offers, thanks.”

“Oh do you? I admit I am surprised. Only one of those red djinns can get you over.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Of course, I could get you over.”

“Is that so? And how would you do that? Dig?”

“Fly.” Safiyah turned to Kage. “And your little friend here can help with that. It’s why I approached her in the first place.”

“I think we’ll make our own way,” Nyx said.

“What, with the Chenjan? Oh, please. Ask her what work she has for you. Ask her what she traffics in. There’s a thriving market in human flesh here. There will be money made for your bodies, no doubt, but you will not be collecting it.”

“You seem to know a lot about what we’re up to.”

“I have a single-minded interest in arriving on the other side of this wall. To achieve that, I need a Drucian. It so happens one works for you. I propose a simple partnership until we reach the other side. Is that so remarkable?”

“Fuck, you even talk like a First Family,” Nyx said.

“I’ve found it’s easier to be who you are instead of pretending at something else. Fewer things to remember.”

Nyx regarded her once more. She was slight in stature, a head shorter than Nyx, and it made the size of her generous breasts and hips altogether more distracting. But Nyx was not so besotted that she failed to notice the fine scarring on the inside of the woman’s wrists as she spoke, the peculiar worm-wheels of a venom addict.

“Let me talk to my team,” Nyx said. “We have a few choices. They’ll want some say in it.”

Safiyah smiled, like a cat with a roach. “That is a fine line, honey sweet, but I suspect there is only one woman making all the decisions.”

“I’ll be in touch,” Nyx said.

“I’m sure,” Safiyah said.

+

“Remember what happened the last time we took on an addict,” Eshe said.

Nyx knew very well what happened the last time she took on an addict. Eshe wasn’t present to torture and kill her, but Nyx was. She resented him just a little for bringing it up.

“Thanks for that, Eshe,” she said.

“Listen, even if she is an enemy… you always said known enemies were better than unknown ones. So why not keep her close?” Eshe said.

“You put up a filter to deter bugs. You don’t invite them in to sleep with you on the off chance you can swat them later.”

“She’s a magician who knows the territory. And Nasheenian,” Ahmed said. “I trust a Nasheenian magician—even a First Family—far more than any Chenjan.”

“But she could use that against us,” Nyx said.

“She could just as easily use it against us if we don’t take her along,” Ahmed said.

“Kage, you have anything to say about this?” Nyx asked.

Kage had her gun resting across her thighs. She seemed to be contemplating the floor. She raised her head. “I did not think this was for voting.”

“It’s not,” Nyx said. “But I want your opinion.”

“If we do not go over soon, we will run out of money. And food. We will die here. Or die working here. It’s just logic. We must take the magician’s offer.”

“And it doesn’t concern you at all that she picked you out as some key piece of whatever plan she has for getting us over.”

“No. It means you need me to get over the Wall, too.”

That was a motive Nyx could understand. “All right. We ditch the Chenjan and take the magician’s offer. But if it all goes to fuck, I’m blaming Kage.”

Kage stiffened.

“It’s a joke,” Nyx said.

“Not sure it’s the best time for jokes,” Ahmed said. He stood. “I’m getting a drink. Anyone coming?”

Nyx was, for the first time in a long time, tired of drinking. She just wanted to sleep. “I’m staying in. We’ll have shit to do tomorrow.”

“I’ll go,” Eshe said.

Nyx figured Eshe was due for a drink.

“Anybody else?” Ahmed said.

Isabet turned her back to them and curled up in her burnous. Khatijah shook her head.

Kage uncurled from her seat. “Can I go tell the magician we will accept her offer?” Kage asked.

“Sure,” Nyx said.

“Let’s go,” Ahmed said to Eshe. “I’d like one more drunk night before some magician turns me into a cicada.”

+

Eshe and Ahmed asked around and found what the locals called a shebeen, just a knotted hunk of stone piled against the side of the Wall where a man sold bitter liquor from the carapace of a monstrous insect head the size of a small incendiary burst.

The liquor hit Eshe hard, harder than he expected, and two rounds later, the desert was a soft, gauzy sea of delight. He hadn’t felt this pleasant in a good long while. It made him want to buy more of whatever the liquor was to take with them over the Wall.

Ahmed didn’t seem to be faring much better. Eshe bought another round and finally asked him.

“So who was that woman tried to kill you? You tell Nyx yet?”

“It doesn’t matter. She’s dead. Did you see how fast Nyx was with that shot?” He held up his hands as if he were sighting down the barrel of a gun. “She moves faster that you’d expect, a woman her size. If I could move that fast I wouldn’t have been in intelligence.” He sighed into his drink. “It took the best people.”

“What, and left people like you and Nyx?” Eshe said.

Ahmed snorted. “Yeah. Bad guys.”

“I never wanted to be a bad guy,” Eshe said.

Ahmed raised his glass. “Sorry, kid. You are.” He drank. “I never wanted to be a hero. I wanted to be a farmer.”

“You ever worked a farm? I have. Forced into it by my house mothers. It’s shit work.”

“I did the same. I liked my house mothers a good deal more than you, though. They had a farm. It was a good life. Predictable.”

“Dull,” Eshe said.

“How’d you get out of it?”

Eshe shrugged. “Same as any boy. Dressed up like a girl and ran away.”

Ahmed ordered them another round.