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.
R
hys 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.
G
etting 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 through 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.”
“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.