Rapture (22 page)

The large man leaned toward him, and sniffed a little. He was younger than Rhys suspected—not even thirty. The lines at the corners of his eyes were deceiving. It must have been the desert. Did they have filters out here? He had yet to see one, but he couldn’t imagine that any society that could build this vehicle didn’t have effective filters.

The man said something to him. Like the strange prayers the women had made, it felt as if he should understand it.

Rhys shook his head, and said in Khairian, “I apologize deeply. I do not understand you.” The literal translation of “apology” in Khairian was “I will share my water with you when we meet next,” implying that there would be no water shared today, and that was regretful.

The man guffawed, as if it were the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

“You do not speak Yazdani?” the man asked, in terrible Khairian.

Rhys shook his head. He had never heard of anything called Yazdani. “Is that one of the Khairian dialects?” But he knew it wasn’t. To his ear, it was too different from Khairian.

The man turned away. He waved at the woman and shook his head. He said something again in the first language—Yazdani. Rhys noted that some of the words were the same as the first time, and guessed they likely had to do with understanding the language.

Rhys decided to take a risk.

Another few weeks in the desert with these women, and he would be dead—hauled off to some unknown fate in some unknown place. If they meant to pawn him off on this man and his caravan, there was some hope of getting out of the desert. Their technology was obviously more advanced, and though the stir of men in dhotis and baldrics acting as muscle there at the rear of the caravan was a little stoic, they did not seem abused or starving. There were worse places to end up.

“I have a talent with languages. Give me a few weeks and I can become conversant in Yazdani,” Rhys said.

The man raised his brows, so thick and dark that they gave Rhys the impression that he had two caterpillars sitting above his eyes. “Is that what you think I need?”

“That’s certainly a large part of it.”

A smile touched the man’s face. He leaned back into his seat and made a circling gesture with his finger. “What else do you think I need?”

Rhys gazed at the men again.

“An army, I’d guess,” Rhys said.

“A cheat, surely. Have these old hags told you of me?”

“I confess, I do not know who you are.”

“I think you do. I have been searching for you, ever since Payam’s caravan was ransacked by these hags’ sisters.”

“You’re Hanife?”

The man pressed his hand to his heart. “I am. Hanife of the Yazdani. The ocean people. That’s what they call us, though where we come from, the ocean is only liquid three months a year.” He jabbed a finger at Rhys’s captors. “They are always looking for ways to call us soft, but in our language ocean people has a rather agreeable sound. I suppose you will learn that soon enough.”

Hanife motioned one of the women forward. Rhys expected to see a transaction completed in bugs or blood, but instead the man reached into the back of his vehicle and pulled out what appeared to be a rune or relic made of obsidian. It was smooth and flat on one side, and on the other bore lines of text in a language Rhys did not recognize.

The woman took it reverently, as if embracing a lost child.

“Come now, this desert will surely kill you in another few hours,” Hanife said. “Get in the back. Efsham, give him some water, will you?”

The driver handed Rhys some kind of seed pod. Rhys shook it. Something watery sloshed inside.

“I’m indebted to you,” Rhys said.

“Nonsense. Payam is indebted to me. His caravan should have been better protected.”

“The caravan was… overrun?”

“Of course. Surely you were there? All dead, just north of Tejal. All but you. The gods were kind to spare you. I have taken on the blood debt you owed for whatever hoo-hoo you killed out there in the desert. I understand. These things happen. But as long as I own the blood debt, I’d suggest you not run off anywhere. It’ll take you four years to work it off. That’s not so bad a time, then?”

“What?”

“Your blood debt was worth far more than five thousand notes. Twenty thousand, at least.”

“Twenty thousand?” Rhys could not imagine such a sum. “You’re indenturing me, then?”

“Indenture, yes. I had forgotten that clever word. It’s the southern ones who use it, mostly. Here it is simply called working off your blood debt. Which begins now. It’s another few weeks until we get back to the hold, so I suggest you begin learning Yazdani now. My staff is at your disposal. I will caution you though. If it turns out you have lied to me… If you are not as clever as you pretend, well… Many men die in the desert. You understand.

I understand,” Rhys said. “But what about—”

Hanife shook his head, and started talking to him in Yazdani.

Rhys crawled into the back of the vehicle, and drank his water. When he was done, they gave him two more, as if water were not the most precious resource in the world. Compared to traveling with the austere desert women, his new companions were chatty and gregarious, especially Hanife.

Among Rhys’s many concerns was Hanife’s epithet. He had said something about… gods. Rich men could be good allies, but rich men without a shared morality—infidels—were dangerous. He needed to tread even more carefully here. The desert women he could understand. They reminded him of bel dames, of Nasheenians, and he knew how to regard them. But these people, these Yazdanis, were something else entirely. Something unknown. He was reminded of a story about a beggar accepting water from a beautiful woman at a well, and how after offering water, she had offered her charms. The devout man in the story had refused her, but they were both eaten by djinn. She for harlotry, and he for accepting soiled water from a known harlot.

But as the driver passed him yet another water pod and the world began to feel cooler, and not so disjointed, he remembered that it was actually a Ras Tiegan story.

What was the Chenjan one? Why could he not remember? Or were they so much the same that he confused them?

He drank.

E
skander had them turned around again.

Eshe watched her kick about in the loam like a lost dog. From a distance, the land here had looked like an oasis, but up close the tangled fingers of the structures that towered over them were spiny, lichen-covered ridges made of some bone or mineral. Bits of detritus had gotten caught up in the tops of them. He saw sage, desert grasses, and even the mangled body of some parrot or raven that must have died on impact. The air smelled of death here, though Eshe saw no other dead creature. It took him some time to realize the smell came from the loamy soil surrounding the lichen-trees.

Eskander wandered about the maze of lichen-trees in slow circles, raising and lowering her hands.

“Poor excuse for a magician,” Ahmed muttered beside him. “I can feel her tapping into swarms like she’s asking directions, but most of it’s just jumbled and confused.”

Kage walked up to join them. She, too, gazed at the magician.

“Are we lost?” she asked.

“It appears so,” Ahmed said.

“Fatima put her in charge,” Eshe said. “What did you expect? Shortest path?”

Isabet chimed in, in Ras Tiegan. “This is a waste of time. You should shift and scout.”

Eshe sighed and moved past her, toward Eskander. “You don’t want to see how much food I’d have to eat to come back after a shift out here,” he said. “You did it in Ras Tieg all the time.”

“There were a lot of things I did in Ras Tieg,” he said. “Not all of them are a good idea here. Or did you not get that yet?”

He glanced behind them. Khatijah was the problem. They had spent far too long waiting for her to recover, and her walk was much slower now. Painful. Ahmed said he did what he could for the pain, and Eshe knew that whatever drugs the bug in her head pumped out helped, but she and Nyx were supposed to be their strongest members. Now, with the missing hunk in her leg, and persistent limp, she wandered around like a shambling corpse. And then there was Isabet, of course, and her stump of an arm.

“What are you looking for?” Ahmed called down at Eskander. She jerked her head up. “Eh?”

“What bug are you trying to call?”

“Oh, it’s a tricky one. Tricky, tricky,” she muttered. “A kind of sand worm. The larva sometimes has memory of its parent. Should be able to tell us where to go.”

Kage said, “That does not sound—”

Ahmed cursed softly. “She’s madder than a Tirhani martyr.”

Eshe shook his head. Since Khatijah nearly got devoured by wild animals, Eskander had only gotten madder. He wasn’t even sure why Nyx pretended the “magician” knew where they were going. He slid down the dune and met Nyx as she was pulling up her trousers. Khatijah had already finished, and stood at the height of the rise, favoring her bad leg, watching them all like a disapproving squad commander.

“She has no idea what she’s doing,” Eshe said.

Nyx said, “That makes seven of us.” She moved past him.

“I say bleed her out. Kage can eat her,” Eshe said. Khatijah was just out of ear shot.

“We can ask somebody at the next settlement,” Nyx said. “There were nomads earlier. One of them will know the way.”

Eshe snorted. “The way? The way to where?” He stepped forward, and—dropped.

He felt the rush of grainy soil, darkness—

Eshe landed with a painful thump on spongy ground. He heard voices coming from above him.

“Fuck!” Nyx said.

Then Ahmed: “Wait. I’m lighter. We have a rope?”

Eshe shook his head, and tried to push himself up. The floor was sticky. Blood? God, he hoped he wasn’t bleeding. The darkness was absolute. His fingers touched something, the edge of some textile, non-organic. He yanked his hand away.

“Go!” Nyx said—the voice sounded muffled, but still intelligible. “Khat, help me hold him!”

Eshe reached into his pocket and pulled out a fire beetle carapace. He tore the frayed end of his burnous free, and lit it with the beetle.

A flare of light hurt his eyes. He heard a sputtering above him, and a shower of soil.

Just above him, twice as high as he was tall, he saw Ahmed’s torso burst through the grainy ceiling. Ahmed windmilled for a moment, his torso hanging suspended in the air.

“Eshe? Are you hurt?”

Eshe saw large, spiky protrusions all around him. Like teeth. It was a blessing he hadn’t hit one. He was becoming aware of a pain in his leg, though, the one he’d landed on. He moved the light toward the textile he had brushed in the dim, and caught his breath.

“There’s something down here,” Eshe said.

“Yeah. You’re down there. Stand up. I need to know how much rope we need. It looks like there was a glamour or organic skein or something over this pit.”

“Where’s Nyx?”

“Who do you think is holding me up?”

“Tell them there’s a body down here.” Eshe waved his fiery rag over the wizened leg beside him, tangled with a very new-looking sandal. The body had begun to mummify, but Eshe still recognized the features, and the shiny token hanging from the corpse’s throat.

“What does it matter?” Ahmed said. “Get up here.”

“I know her,” Eshe said.

+

It wasn’t the only body in the cavern.

When Nyx crawled down into the abyss with Ahmed to see what Eshe was nattering about, she counted four bodies, all of them young Ras Tiegan women dressed in red Khairian burnouses.

“Why didn’t the bugs eat them?” Nyx asked.

Ahmed shrugged. “The smell alone should have drawn them. Maybe the floor eats the bugs?”

The air down here still reeked of dead flesh, rot, though these bodies were mostly desiccated.

“How did they die?” Nyx asked.

“No sign of injury,” Ahmed said. “They could have just died of dehydration.”

Eshe was standing next to a slim, dark-haired body, favoring his left leg. Nyx hoped she wasn’t going to have to hack it off. She had already reached her fill of amputations.

“Who is she?” Nyx asked.

“Her name was Corinne,” Eshe said. “I knew her in Ras Tieg. She was one of the living saint’s handmaidens.”

“Living saint?” Nyx said.

“What are Ras Tiegans doing out here?” Ahmed said.

“It’s a sort of holy person,” Eshe said.

Nyx held a portable glow globe aloft, giving them a full view of the cavern. It was a spherical room lined in thorny, calcified spikes. The floor was strangely pliant, like walking across a tongue.

“Anybody else get the impression we’re in the gut of some beast?” Nyx said. The smell was stronger down here, but shouldn’t have been. The bodies were too dry for it.

Eshe gazed up at the strange ceiling, and the knotted rope. “We should go,” he said.

“You’re the one who asked me down here,” Nyx said. “Give me a minute.”

She inspected each of the bodies. They were not bound, and carried no weapons. She did find several water bulbs stacked near the feet of one of them.

“Nyx,” Eshe said, and pointed.

She turned, raised her light. There was something scoured deeply in the cavern wall. It looked like writing. “Is that in Ras Tiegan?” she said. “It say anything useful?”

When no one said anything, she glanced back. Eshe’s face was slack.

Ahmed answered. “It says, ‘we were betrayed.’”

+

There were ways to get under just about anybody’s skin, Ahmed knew. Eshe was an easy mark. Young, outwardly cocky, but unsure. Isabet was his female counterpart, only far less capable in a fight. It was easy enough to get an edge in under their insecurity. Khatijah had her pride. Eskander was… well, Eskander was many kinds of unstable. A poor wind would unsit her. Kage, he had already seen snap. But needling Nyx was like poking a hibernating cat. He was just never sure when she was going to turn around and claw his face off.

“And she knows nothing about this?” Nyx said again, more loudly, as if that would get her another answer.

Ahmed sighed. He looked over at Isabet, who was sitting in the soil, trembling, the stump of her arm pulled against her body. Eshe stood a few paces distant with Khatijah. Kage and Eskander were a more tactful distance away, breaking for midday prayer and a meal. He resented not praying. Even during interrogations at the front, they never required him to miss a prayer.