Infidel (50 page)

“Here,” Shadha said. Snotty bubbles appeared under her nose. She hacked and coughed and struggled again with the jagged shard in her chest. Touched it with already bloodied fingers. She bared her teeth. “You set it free. It’s hungry, now.”
 

“Nyx!”
 

Suha was moving toward her across the rubble, fast.
 

Something hissed.
 

Nyx swore. She shot Shadha in the face and leapt on top of the desk. Suha jumped up with her.
 

“Fucking shit’s eating me! Fuck!” Suha started pulling up her tunic.
 

Nyx saw something moving along Suha’s bloody arm, like a swarm of maggots.
 

Suha started scrubbing at it with the tunic.
 

“Rhys! Rhys!” Nyx reached toward him. He was standing over the body of a tall, twisted bel dame with burn scars on her neck. Broken as a rag doll. “Rhys, goddammit, get up here!”
 

He turned.
 

The hissing, spitting sound grew louder. Where had it been? Locked in the desk? One of the big cabinets near the door? Everything was broken and busted in. They’d blown the room and started cutting people up, and now it was out.
 

Rhys turned toward the sound of the sand.
 

“Here! Rhys, get the fuck up here!” Nyx said.
 

He stared at the body of the bel dame. Blood spattered his hands. His face. He left the corpse and waded toward them across the rubble.
 

Something spat at him. A spray of fine gray mist. He jerked away, startled. Smacked at it like he would a mosquito, a biting fly.
 

Nyx looked around at the bloody ruin of the tower. It feeds on blood, Rhys had said. But none of them were wounded. Did that make a difference?
 

She watched him smacking at the dusty air. He started coughing.
 

“Rhys?”
 

She jumped off the desk.
 

“Nyx!” Suha yelled.
 

Nyx took hold of Rhys by the collar and hauled him to the desk. A blistering rash had opened up on his cheek where some bel dame’s blood had splattered him.
 

She pushed him onto the desk. “Get it off, Suha! Wipe it off!”
 

A raven cawed.
 

Nyx saw Eshe circling. She felt something biting at her blood-soaked trousers. She sat up on the desk and pulled them off, threw the bloody trousers onto the hissing floor.
 

The few living bel dames were screaming now. Weird, high-pitched cries.
 

Nyx started pulling off Rhys’s blood-soaked clothes and feeding them to the spitting, hissing sand that popped and cackled around them.
 

Suha’s arm was a red rash. She, too, had stripped down to her dhoti and breast binding. She scrubbed at Rhys’s face until he pushed her away.
 

“Fuck!” Rhys said, crouching at the edge of the desk. He was nearly naked, stripped down to his small clothes.
 

Nyx heard someone on the stairs.
 

Yah Tayyib carefully moved into the doorway. His face was unreadable. For a moment, Nyx expected him to cackle madly and tell them this had been his plan all along. It seemed like a pretty good one. Leave her and the rest to starve to death—naked—amid a stir of dead bel dames contaminated with flesh-eating sand.
 

Instead, Yah Tayyib raised his arms and called a swarm of locusts.
 

The locusts descended from a clear sky. They were a black plague so massive Nyx lost sight of everything—Yah Tayyib, Rhys, the desk, the bodies. The world was a buzzing, chitinous mass of death. Suha grabbed at her. Nyx grabbed for Suha, and a moment later Rhys’s strong, slim arms encircled Nyx’s torso, and the three of them clung together in the merciless swarm. Nyx dared not open her mouth. She breathed slow through her nose. She felt Rhys’s heartbeat—strong and fast—against her shoulder.
 

Then the swarm was gone, just as suddenly as Yah Tayyib had called it.
 

Nyx tried opening her eyes. The light was back—orange, warm. Suha and Rhys pulled away. She stared out at the ruined tower. The corpses had been picked clean, leaving behind piles of soft white bones and tattered clothing.
 

Nyx let out a breath.
 

A few locusts still fluttered among the rubble. She flicked one off her arm.
 

Yah Tayyib leaned wearily against the doorway. His face looked haggard.
 

“You look ridiculous,” he said, and collapsed.
 

Nyx scrambled off the desk. She picked her way back across the ruins, and found Yah Tayyib partially supine, wedged in the doorway. She had to climb over him and kneel on the other side.
 

“You all right? Tayyib?”

His eyelids fluttered. “Yes,” he muttered. “Yes, of course.” He opened his eyes and gave her a long, piercing look. “Listen, now,” he said.
 

“Oh, shut up,” Nyx said.
 

He winced and tried to sit up a little straighter. “No. The only time you ever listen is when you think you’re losing. Listen now. You’ve squandered your talent.”

Nyx sighed and stood. “Oh, just die already.”

“No, I won’t,” Yah Tayyib said. He used the lintel to help pull himself up. One hand clutched at his side, but Nyx didn’t see any blood. No sign of visible injury. “I’ve done some terrible things, I admit that.”

“Finally.”

“But I did them to free Nasheen.”
 

“Let’s not argue about this again.”
 

Suha was pulling her clothes back on. Rhys was already half-dressed. Pity, Nyx thought.
 

“Would you listen?” Yah Tayyib said.
 

She folded her arms and regarded him. The room was cold. She realized how strange she must look, mostly naked, her mismatched skin and bizarre corpse scars fully visible. Nothing he hasn’t seen before, she reminded herself.
 

“We need to get moving, Tayyib. Likely order keepers on the way, and I don’t want to answer all the questions they’ll have about this catshit.”

“Promise me something.”

“I don’t promise anybody anything.”

“Let all of this go.”

“Tayyib—”

“Goodbye.” But he didn’t walk into the hall. He started walking into the ruined tower.
 

“Hold on. What about the locusts, Tayyib? The locusts ate the flesh. The flesh holds the sand. Where are they?”

He turned. The ghost of a smile touched his face. “Let go,” he said.
 

 
Four giant hornets buzzed through the broken roof. Nyx jumped back into the hall.
 

The hornets gripped Yah Tayyib by the back of his coat and picked him up neatly into the air. He caught hold of their slender feet and they buzzed up and away into the bright lavender sky.
 

“Holy fuck,” Nyx muttered.
 

Rhys shook his head, awestruck. “I can’t believe he managed that.”
 

“What the fuck was that?” Suha asked.
 

“What is it always?” Nyx said. “Tayyib fucking me over.”

“He did say you were even,” Rhys said.
 

Nyx looked over at Rhys. He sat on the edge of the desk, his dark,
 
dirty hands gripping the lip of it.
 

“We should go,” Rhys said.
 

Nyx kicked at one of the piles of bones and clothing at her feet. “Why can’t you do shit like this?” she said.
 

He slid off the desk. “If I could do that, I’d be king of Chenja.”
 

40.

T
he evening call to prayer rolled out over Beh Ayin, low and comforting and just a little too loud for Nyx’s aching head. She sat on the balcony with a fifth of whiskey, watching bugs incinerate themselves on the filter with a hiss and pop and spray of gray ash.
 

Eshe had his feet pulled up under him. He was eating cold curry, something Inaya had cooked the night before.
 

Suha offered Nyx a sen cigarette.
 

Nyx shook her head.
 

Suha lit up, and leaned over the balcony. “Risky, Nyx.”
 

“Always is.”
 

They sat outside in silence for a good while longer. “You know I can’t go back to Nasheen,” Nyx said.
 

Suha nodded. “All our names are on the bounty boards now. Load of good Fatima did sending us to Alharazad. You think she knew?”

“Not likely,” Nyx said. “Fatima had an interest in us catching the bad guys.”
 

“Fuck ’em,” Eshe said.
 

Nyx snorted. “Easy enough to say, Eshe. Harder to do.” She looked over at Suha. “I want you to have the storefront.”

“They’ll have tagged me. I won’t get in through that filter in Mushtallah.”

“Records were all purged during the burst. They’ll have to refile you. Under whatever name you want.”
 

“What, you think nobody will know me?”

“You think I registered your employment with the local under your real name?” Nyx said. “You think I’m stupid? I been doing this a long time, Suha. You should stop by and clean it out at least. Lot of good gear still at the storefront.”

“What about you?” Eshe said.
 

“I’ve got my shit in order,” Nyx said. “The flood, remember?”
 

Suha finished her cigarette and patted Nyx on the shoulder. “I’m getting out of here tomorrow, then. Eshe? What you think?”

“Don’t know,” Eshe said.
 

Suha shrugged. “Your call.” She went inside.
 

Nyx looked at him. He gazed out over the balcony.
 

“Suha wouldn’t be such a bad employer,” Nyx said.
 

“Where
you
going?”

“Can’t tell you that.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

He rubbed angrily at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Fuck you.”

“Fuck you, fuck me, fuck everybody,” Nyx said. “Doesn’t change it.” She felt a lump forming in her throat, and swallowed another mouthful of whiskey.
 

“You never gave me a good answer,” he said.
 

“About what?”

“About what makes us different than everybody at the front. ’Cause I didn’t see anything different.”
 

“That’s up to you, Eshe. I can’t make your decisions for you.”
 

“God says—”
 

“God says a lot of things, depending on who quotes Him.”
 

Eshe chewed his lip. “Inaya said she’s going to Ras Tieg.”

“Yeah?”

“She said there’s a rebellion there. A shifter rebellion.”

“That so?”

“She’s going to help.”

“Huh.”

“That’s like what we do, isn’t it?”

Nyx considered that. Maybe it was, if they were trying to upset the status quo instead of maintain it, but all that catshit back there was about stopping the coup and keeping the war machine running. Put some more weapons into Tirhani hands. Or whoever Tayyib was working for.
 

“It’s probably better than what we do,” Nyx said. Maybe then he could know, for certain, that he was one of the good guys. Nyx supposed he might find some comfort in that. For however long it lasted.
 

“You think I should go with her?”

“Your decision, Eshe.”

He finished the curry and tossed the box over the railing. Some local bug pack below hissed and chattered. He stood. “When are you going?”
 

“Morning, likely. Heard the trains are running again.”
 

He nodded.
 

Then he lunged toward her.
 

She jerked back, startled. He wrapped his arms around her and held on tight, buried his face in her hair. Then, just as suddenly, he pulled away and left her.
 

Nyx rubbed her eyes. Long day, she thought. Long fucking day.
 

+

Nyx drove them to the train station the next morning. They all sat together on the train this time. Inaya and Rhys on one seat, Suha and Eshe on the other, Nyx across the aisle.
 

At the central station in Shirhazi, Inaya and Eshe bought tickets for Ras Tieg. When it came time to walk away, Eshe just firmed up his mouth and told her goodbye. She wished him luck. No tears this time, no embarrassing display of emotion that left her befuddled and reeling. No, he acted just like a boy headed to the front. Just the way she’d taught him to.