Rapture (18 page)

He raised his head.

Women emerged from the world around him.

They seemed to come up from the sand itself, like Nasheenian women did in his dreams—half a dozen of them, wearing calf-length dhotis, breast-bindings, and heavy turbans the color of fresh blood, that wound about their heads and faces. The ends trailed out behind them like tattered flags. The clothing was the same color of the sand in this part of the desert, as if it had been dipped in blood and left to age in the sun.

The women were nearly the same color, reddish-brown, darker at the knees and elbows. But it was their height that impressed him. They were tall as giants—the tallest rose above him by a full head and shoulders.

Rhys froze. His bullets were deadtech—difficult to replace out here— and he was down to his last four. Two short of what he needed.

“What happens now?” Rhys asked, in Khairian.

The women said nothing.

He began searching for a swarm. He felt something stir beneath his feet. Something large. Not at all the type of thing he wanted to wake up and try to control. But it was there, waiting. A few others clung to the edges of his awareness—fire ants, scarabs, and wilder things, bugs he had no names for but the impressions and scents they used to differentiate themselves from one another.

“I’m employed by a man named Hanife,” Rhys said. He knew they had 122 ‡ Kameron Hurley not come for that. Knew they did not care for that. But he had to say it anyway, to everyone he encountered. If the man was as Payam said he was, he would be loved or despised in equal measure. Best to play a bet on finding the man’s allies. “He lives north of here. I was separated from my caravan during… a sandstorm.”

But the women were unmoved. They stayed still for so long that Rhys wondered if they were truly live things, or a hallucination. He passed his hand in front of his eyes, but the women remained rooted to the spot. Watching.

“I’ve done nothing wrong,” he said. “I just needed water.”

The woman nearest him said, in Khairian, “We have come to collect blood debt for Circle Bavaja.”

“I’m sorry,” Rhys said. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“You have defiled one of ours,” the woman nearest him said. She was fleshy in the face, soft compared to her taut, lanky body. “You have fed a body to the sand that was not yours to take. We have come to claim vengeance.”

Rhys took a deep breath. He flexed his hands, preparing to draw his pistols.

“There has been a mistake,” Rhys said. “It was an accident.”

“It is not an accident to spill blood. Vengeance must be taken. We are the avengers of the blood.”

They moved toward him like a desert wind over hard stone—fast and fierce.

He drew his pistols. He was a fast draw, and a good shot. But he got off only one round. In the next breath, one of the women had his wrist twisted behind him. His pistol was on the ground, and pain screamed up his arm. He fell to his knees and lost his grip on the other pistol. She released him. He let out his breath and shook the pain from his twisted arm.

The women made a circle around him. The fleshy one said, “Your blood debt will be paid, stranger.”

“I have nothing to give you,” he said.

“You lie about that,” she said. “There is always your blood.”

“The bodies of our kin lie ten days back at the Rovanish water cairn where you slew them as we came to reclaim that which is ours. Now we have come to collect blood debt for your crime.”

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Avengers,” the woman said. “We have come to avenge the lives you to ok.”

“There has been some mistake.” My God, Rhys thought, I am a thousand miles from Nasheen and they have bloody bel dames out here? Would he never be free of them?

“We don’t pass judgment. We merely collect,” the woman said. “Your fate will be decided by Circle Bavaja.”

“And if I don’t agree to come with you?”

“You will come with us.”

He glanced from one set of dusty desert eyes to another. Their expressions were all shrouded, indecipherable.

He tensed. Then he turned. Tried to break away from their circle.

He wasn’t sure where he was going, what he would do. He just needed to get away. Far away. Back to Elahyiah. His family. He meant to put it all right.

Something heavy thudded into his back before he got three paces. He stumbled. Fell. Pain radiated deeply across his lower back. It was like someone had skewered him with a flaming brand.

He tried to claw forward, but the women were already there, one at each elbow. Black pain bit at his consciousness.

“Elahyiah,” he said, and that was all.

W
hen Kage dreamed, it was of cool, dark spaces. Soft voices. Walls that hemmed her in, close enough for her to reach out and touch. Comforting. Her perfect world was a smooth crevice at the back of a cave. She knew her way around the dark. For her, the nightmare was the desert. Wide-open, unobstructed views. Big, bold sky.

As the road turned to gravel, then hard-packed sand, it was still dark outside, and comforting. But as the sun rose and the way smoothed out she realized they were headed toward a vast expanse of absolute nothingness. It was like being devoured by some great-mouthed monster with an unfathomable appetite. The desert scrub grass and rocky protrusions quickly became hard-baked brown playa. Flat. Limitless. The vast lavender sky met the brown desert in every direction, as far as she could see. It was terrifying and unsettling. She gripped her gun close. After a time, she found that the most comforting thing she could think to do was stare hard at the seat in front of her.

The first time Kage slept under the open air, she was thirteen and still raw and sore from her blooding the day before. It all started happening at once, for girls, after the blooding.

She slept under the vast sky that night with a handful of other women, all of them older than her, if only by a few years. She felt completely exposed, vulnerable, for the first time in her life. Yes, certainly, she was small, even for someone of her people, but she was fast and limber. She knew where to hide in a fight. Knew exactly where to hit to land the most amount of damage with the least amount of effort. Her mother had taught her that—tricks she picked up from the Nasheenians she watched in the factories.

“When you’re old enough,” her mother told her, “you will do your time in the factories. Learn Nasheenian. Make enough money to earn the right to a spouse. Perhaps a pair of them.”

It was a rite of passage, of sorts, to go out into the factories and return with the goods and currency her people needed to survive. Everyone left, but not everyone came back. It was those who did not come back that made her most nervous. Where did they go? Did the sky eat them? Did they fall into it, explode like stars? Or was it the Nasheenians that ate them?

Now she traveled across a landscape so alien that waking to it each morning gave her vertigo. When Nyx asked her if she was all right as they rode along in the spitting organic contraption they called a bakkie, she half thought to claw open Nyx’s face and scream about how the sky was going to eat them. The feeling came over her most at dawn. It was a breathy, oppressive thing. Like holding on to a great flying beast that you knew you could not hold.

“You all right?” Ahmed asked. He sat beside her at the wheel of the bakkie, as unconcerned as the others about the limitless space as the suns came up over the desert.

She nodded, once, and gripped her gun a little tighter.

The bakkie ground to a halt the next day. Sunk deep in the sand. Nyx had them work an hour or so to try and free it. When that didn’t work, she told them to unload all they had and start walking. To where, exactly, Kage was not certain. All she cared about was that it was very far from her country, Dei Keiko, the country the Nasheenians called Druce.

Kage raised her head and stared at the unending landscape. She had not anticipated this. What she expected, she wasn’t sure. Maybe riding in a bakkie or caravan the whole way. Perhaps taking a series of trains. Or trekking up and about mountains—solid, massive hulks of stone to hide on and within. She had not expected this insecure place.

“Won’t we be exposed out here?” she asked softly as she pulled on her pack.

“Caravans are few and far between,” Nyx said. “So hitching a ride isn’t much of an option, but we might run into one. Bakkie isn’t much good anyway. Easier to spot than a group of people in dusty burnouses.”

But Kage knew that Nyx was wrong about that. Groups of people were very easy to spot at a distance. What she must have meant was that they no longer presented just two targets. Now they were six—seven counting the Ras Tiegan girl. On foot, it was less likely they would all be taken out at once. The others would serve as decoys, letting Nyx and her boy escape. Kage sometimes wondered if this strange woman knew she was so transparent in her self-preservation.

Ahmed asked Kage to help clean out the bakkie’s cistern of bugs. They collected them into jars and packed them away for seasoning up meals later on. It was easy enough work, and she enjoyed crooning to the insects as they worked.

Their newest member, the arrogant little Ras Tiegan girl, was standing behind the second bakkie, hopping from foot to foot on the hot sand. She had not brought proper shoes. She and Eshe were arguing. They had been arguing all week, ever since Nyx pushed the girl into camp and announced she was coming with them. Kage still didn’t understand why, and each day they traveled with her, her unease grew. Ras Tiegans were not trustworthy people. She hadn’t slept properly since the girl joined them. All her dreams were murky with blood and the ominous purring of Ras Tiegan-talk.

“We’re three days out from clan Shafiori territory,” the tatty little magician, Eskander, said. Kage had already learned to despise the sound of her voice. “They’re a typical Khairian border clan. A little more settled than most, and they take bugs in exchange for water, mostly.”

“Mostly?” Nyx said.

“Well…” Eskander said, fiddling with the ornate hilt of her useless pistol. Kage couldn’t understand why Eskander’s assassin companion let her carry it around as if it were a real weapon. “They take blood and slaves too. But who doesn’t really?”

Kage stiffened at the mention of slaves. “What kind of slaves?” she asked.

Eskander seemed to notice her for the first time in days. Her eyes narrowed. “Oh. Not Drucians. Your kind don’t last long up here. They mostly prefer Nasheenians and Chenjans, when they can get them. Chenjans get fewer cancers.”

“Let’s hope we have enough bug power to be persuasive,” Nyx said. “Kage, I might have you hang back when we get close. Just in case we need a quick exit.”

“Oh, they aren’t violent or anything,” Eskander said hurriedly. “They won’t give you any trouble.”

“I’ve known a lot of black market slave dealers,” Nyx said. “They search for weakness. When they find it, they take advantage. I expect these won’t be much different. So we need to have straight spines. That includes you, magician.”

“Of course, of course. Straight as an arrow.”

“When did you last see an arrow?” Ahmed asked.

“We trained with them.” Eskander made a pointing motion with her right hand. “It taught us proper trajectory. Helps with the bug stuff. But surely you went through that training?”

Ahmed shook his head. “I wasn’t that sort of magician.”

“I would not have expected that. Surely you—”

“I’m talked out,” Ahmed said, and started walking.

Kage followed after him. She wasn’t particularly fond of nattering magicians either.

The sun was too high and hot for traveling, but Nyx had them walk in it anyway. Kage kept her hood up and nursed at her water. The Nasheenians hardly drank anything at all, and that worried her. Was she going to be a liability out here, soaking up too much water? She put her water bulb away and resolved not to drink again until they camped.

She put one foot in front of the other, plodding across the sand for hours. Head down. She listened to the others as they chattered for the first few kilometers. The stupid Ras Tiegan girl finally shut up an hour into the walk, out of breath. But Eskander kept talking, always boasting about nothing. To Kage, it was all dull air, but Eshe seemed to be listening to every word both women spit out, even if nobody else had much to say. Khatijah took up the rear of their party, lingering behind often to ensure they weren’t followed.

Ahmed, at least, was steady and quiet, so Kage began to keep pace with him, though he was much taller, with a longer stride.

When Nyx said, “Hold up there. Kage, Ahmed, hold up!” she didn’t know how long they’d been walking. But as she raised her head, she saw that the suns were low in the sky, and a brilliant sunset was melting across the fathomless horizon.

For some reason, though, her feet kept moving, as if of their own volition. It took a great deal of effort to slow, then stop. The world wavered.

“Kage, sight that out for me,” Nyx said. She was pointing off to the left of the sunset.

Kage tried to bring her gun out of its holster. It should have been a simple move. Just untie and pull. But her arms felt strange. Like some kind of jelly. Now that she was standing still, she noticed a buzzing in her head, like a low cicada’s whine. She managed to close her fingers around the stock of her gun, and worked it out.

But as the gun tugged free, the weight of it pulled her down. She stumbled. The gun was tumbling into the sand. Her stomach clenched. Sand in the gun. It would need cleaning. It would misfire. She went down in the sand with the gun. Clutched it against her. Tried to keep it away from the sand. Her vision blurred, and her tongue felt large in her throat.

“Kage?” Ahmed’s face appeared above her. Black spots juddered across her vision.

She moved her mouth, but no sound came out.

“Water!” Ahmed said. It sounded like water.

But the world was going blissfully black now. Black as her warm little cave at home. It was strange how you didn’t realize how much you loved a place until you had lost it so completely. Everyone believed the world outside was better. But it wasn’t. It never was. If things had gone differently, she would be home now. Curled up in the dark, wrapped close with her loved ones, with her children. It was near the Festival of the Ancestors now. She would be walking down into the bowels of the world with her family, carrying bug lights and singing old songs about death, rebirth, and new worlds. They would tread softly down into the murk, and through the doors of the re-spun wreck of their star carrier. They would light lamps at the base of their ancestors’ rotting metal coffins, their bones long since turned to dust by the strange bacteria of this world. What was left of their people was what the few survivors could patch and piece together from the still-living tissue of those who had died in the descent. Shot out of the sky, abandoned by their own ancestors, denied the world they were promised, this was their purgatory. They had subsisted on thin hope, these many centuries, the same thin hope that sustained her now. As the world went dark, she felt her mind float up and away. It was lovely. She hoped this was death, that she was finally ascending to the world they were promised each year in the guts of the dead starship—the world that lay on the other side of the eternal blackness of Umayma’s western sky. The world they had been forever denied.