Rapture (51 page)

When they stared up at her, Nyx wasn’t even so certain the boys knew what they had done. Slitting their throats was clean and easy, but when it was over, she sat exactly where they had, staring down at their bodies as they bled out and blood pooled around her sandals. She wondered what somebody else might think, coming upon her that way, surrounded in a factory full of mangled bodies. She half hoped they might kill her.

Now, Nyx sighed and stood. She took one last look at the sky. For the first time in a very long time, she believed there was another world on the way… a world that had to be better than this one. Cause fuck knows it couldn’t be any worse than the one she knew.

She understood, now, why she and Safiyah got along so well.

I
naya walked into a tavern called the Lapping Cat. It was at the far eastern edge of Inoublie, the half of the city left blessedly untouched by the devastating sand. She walked to the bar keep, who appeared more than a little surprised to see a woman wearing a modest habit and wimple enter his tavern.

“Is there a message here for Inaya Khadija?” she asked.

He raised his brows. “There is, Madame. One moment.” He walked to the back and returned with a sealed envelope.

“Thank you,” she said.

She walked outside and went to a nearby café to open the letter. Inside was a picture of her children and a train ticket to Shirhazi, the capital of Tirhan.

Inaya stared long at the photo. When she last saw her children, Taite and Isfahan, they were six and three. That made Taite thirteen and Isfahan ten now. They were serious children, more serious than she remembered. They stood together on a balcony overlooking Shahrdad, the salty inland sea in Shirhazi. Isfahan covered her hair, and Taite’s hair was already tangling into dreadlocks like Khos’s.

She wept there at the table.

The serving girl came to her table with more tea, but said nothing. Inaya expected they had seen a great many weeping people here the last few days.

She placed the photo on the table and stared at the train ticket. It should be so easy to go home. She remembered life in Tirhan, before the bel dames came, before she realized everything she lived there was a lie. The streets in Tirhan were safe. She left her garden door unlocked. She could walk anywhere she wished, be employed wherever she wished. The festivals were colorful; the people friendly, the food plentiful. It was like a dream of a place. And the reason it existed was because the rest of the world was like this. The people there could live that way because they sent weapons to countries like hers, and dared them to tear each other apart.

Inaya tore up the train ticket. She finished her tea. Took the photo from the table.

“Madame?” Adeliz said.

Inaya glanced up and saw her waiting in the doorway. “Yes, I’m coming,” Inaya said. She pushed the photo into her pocket and placed a few chits on the table for the tea.

“There is a message from Alix,” Adeliz said as they stepped onto the street.

“And what is that?” Inaya asked.

“She says the bakkie’s waiting.”

“Then we best not keep her waiting,” Inaya said, and buttoned her coat against the cold.

R
hys sat in his new home in Bahreha, in Chenja, unpacking boxes of linens from Tirhan. He had always preferred Tirhani clothes. Better made, more beautiful. For so long, he had thought himself as a poor nomad, a drifter—he had forgotten what it was to build a home. The terror of losing it again had cut too deep to risk that loss again. But the alternative…

He imagined Elahyiah singing in the other room. Heard Rahim’s wailing. But it was all fantasy.

He had no family now. No path. No purpose.

The first thing he did on his return was send half the salary he had received from Hanife that week to Elahyiah’s parents’ address in Tirhan. He’d left Bomani before Hanife had him pay it back. He did not know if Elahyiah ever received it. He still had a few friends in Tirhan, though, and they told him his wife and children were safe with Elahyiah’s family. It was enough to know that his resourceful wife had done what he could not—bring their family home. But it was no thanks to his words or deeds. He knew that, and the knowledge threatened to devour him. All he had left now was God.

Outside, he heard the call to prayer start at the center of the city. It had been some time since he was back in Chenja proper, and the first time he had been back as a man and not a criminal. What remained of Hanife’s money had rented him a proper house in a decent part of town. His uncle, Abdul-Nasser, lived not far from here, and though his uncle was a bit scattered in the head, he was a good ally to have as Rhys settled in his new life.

Rhys had started work at the local madrassa, teaching the Kitab to young children. Despite some disapproving noises from the madrassa’s elders, his request that girls be allowed to attend classes as well was approved. He would teach nothing to boys, he said, that he would not teach his own girls. His girls… the ones he let die, and the ones Elahyiah had taken from him. He could hate her for it, he knew, or release her. A man who could not fix himself, who did not know his own path, was not fit to be a husband. He knew that.

He had come home to find his path.

The end of the war had meant the end of many things in Chenja. There was an opportunity for change here, and he intended to be part of it.

He uncovered his pistol box from a stack of belongings that had come with him from his temporary apartment. He imagined going upstairs, past Mehry and Nasrin’s room, where they would be playing with a collection of dolls and toy bakkies he had bought for them in Heidia, one of the ports of call on his journey home. He had never been the best of magicians.

But instead, he had the dolls and toy bakkies here, in a sad pile beside his pistol box. The two things could not exist together. He knew that. Had known it back in Tirhan, but fought it.

He put the pistol box into his pile of things to sell.

Someone knocked at the door. The Mhorian woman who came in to cook and clean for him, Rahel, answered it.

Rhys carried the clothing upstairs. The house was still very sparse. Perhaps it always would be. Some men could start over, he knew. Pretend they had never failed. But he was not that type of man. He would live with his mistakes, even if he did not know how to fix them.

“Patron?” Rahel called from the bottom of the stairs.

“Yes?” Rhys said.

“Pardon, patron, but this man says he’s your father.”

Rhys took a deep breath. He had known it was a possibility for his father to find him. People would talk. Especially his uncle. “Let him in, please. Prepare some tea.”

Rhys walked to the window in his study, and gazed out into the dusty landscape outside Bahreha. He imagined a day when his grandchildren would play in the parks there, and his children would rebuild the roads and the fountains and sponsor the theaters. He imagined a whole world on top of this one, better than this one, a thousand years of peace.

Perhaps even a world he could be a part of.

He only thought of Nyx once, when he heard his father enter the sitting room. Heard his distinctive voice speaking softly to Rahel. Rhys had fled his home a coward. What would his father have to say to his cowardly son? He wanted Nyx beside him then, wanted her easy confidence, her surety.

Instead, he recited the ninety-nine names of God. Then he went to the basin on his side table and performed the ablution, as if for prayer.

When he gazed into the mirror, he saw a face he had thought forgotten, long dead. But as he straightened, he saw that it was Rakhshan Arjoomand, not Rhys Dashasa, or Rhys Shahkam, who now prepared to face the consequences of everything he had fled.

He walked downstairs.

A tall, thin man stood at the door, wearing a beautiful green shalwar khameez stitched in gold. His head was shaved, but a neat white beard clothed his handsome face. The man had his long, slim hands folded in front of him. He gazed up at Rhys; an old man now, much smaller than Rhys remembered.

“Rakhshan,” the man said.

Rhys held out his hands to greet his father.

T
he season had turned. Cloudy skies and misty days had given way to partial clouds and drizzle. Nyx hadn’t lived on the coast for the weather.

She drove down the long, dreary drive to the coastal compound, past the towering trees, comforting as minarets, and parked next to the ruin of the compound wall. Got out of the bakkie.

The compound wall had been imploded. As had the compound itself. It was just a heaping pile of rubble and weeds now. Nyx knew how it would go because she had been the one to design the blast and set the charges. She had taught the kids how to make eighteen different kinds of mines and shown them exactly how to set them.

It’s why she didn’t hesitate, now, to walk over the ruined wall and into the overgrown garden as the rain misted her face. She tracked each and every charge with her eyes, checking that they had blown successfully. From the look of the damage, every mine had gone off as planned. She had been a sapper, once. It was nice to know she was still good at it.

Nyx settled on the remains of the porch. The damp soaked through her coat. With the wall down, she had a good view of the ocean, and a bruising violet sunset that she had to admit was kinda pretty. The heap of rubble behind her that had once been her home was less pretty. That was all right. She never blew a place with the intention of it looking nice afterward.

Nyx pulled a bottle of whiskey from her coat pocket and broke the seal. Stared at the ocean. Drank.

She remembered Fatima putting that paper in front of her and telling her she could become a bel dame again. It had been tempting. Take up the old bel dame title. Throw it around like she really was somebody great. Somebody important. Somebody the world would remember. An honorable woman because she could kill well. But when she looked at that paper, she thought of all the other stuff that came with it. She thought of Radeyah’s scars, and her dead brothers, and how her mother had died in the breeding compounds. Being a part of the old world meant being a part of the system that created all that shit. In her own way, she had supported it all, hadn’t she?

Nyx took another pull on the bottle. Without God or the bel dames, she wasn’t so sure what she was anymore. Maybe that was all right.

In the end, she refused Fatima’s offer, then called Anneke and told her it was time to blow the place. But when Anneke and the kids ran, they couldn’t tell Nyx where they were going. Nyx knew that when she called. When she set it all into motion. She knew she’d give up her home, the kids, Radeyah, and everything she built, and kill a good many people besides, when she took this note.

But it wasn’t taking the note that was so bad. Or calling Anneke, or even giving everything up. Even trekking across the desert, bleeding out magicians, killing women, watching Eshe die, no… that was all just what you had to do to survive. The worst part of a fight was always afterward, when you could hear the screams of your injured opponent, and the snarling crowd; when you felt your own chest filling with fluid, and snorted great gobs of coppery blood. The worst part was when you realized it was all over, but you weren’t dead yet.

Nyx took another pull.

She heard a coughing sound above the gnashing of the sea, and saw a bakkie coming up the drive. It was a smoked-glass bakkie, the sort used by security forces in Nasheen. She set down the bottle and pulled her scattergun from her back. Placed it in her lap.

The bakkie had been following her since Sameh. She half hoped it was some rogue bel dame come to end it all. But she supposed it could be some other person—Anneke come to take her back, Radeyah to forgive her, or maybe, just maybe, it was Rhys, giving it all up to… no, it probably wasn’t Rhys. Whoever it was would be somebody with nothing to lose. She thought of Mercia, and wondered if she’d come out for another round between the sheets. Wouldn’t that be something?

The driver cut the juice to the bugs. The coughing and hissing in the cistern stopped.

The driver’s door opened.

Nyx gazed out toward the horizon, and weighed her options. There was a lot of thinking a person could do, in the long pause between what was, and what could be. She remembered the starship, bursting apart in the sky. She had done her part to usher in twenty years of peace. What Nasheen did with it was up to Nasheen.

Now, she figured she’d either have a good tumble, or go down blazing. Either way, it was a fitting way to end things.

The rain stopped. A pity. She’d been hoping for a storm.

“I’m retired,” Nyx said—to the ocean, to the air, to Nasheen, to her visitor—and took her last drink.

++

Writing these books has been a bizarre rollercoaster ride.

It turned out that Rapture was a far more exhausting book to write than I anticipated. The realities of deadlines and day jobs kept me in front of the computer and research books for long stretches—sometimes fourteen to sixteen hours a day. It was not always fun, but it was necessary. Thanks to Jayson Utz for all the support during various deadline crunches.

My first readers this time around worked with a very tight deadline as well. Thanks to Miriam Hurst, Julian Brown, David Moles, Dave Zelasco, and Alec Austin for fast, detailed notes, suggestions, rants, and the occasional rave. After all those hours in front of the damn computer, I barely knew my own name, let alone what weapon anybody was carrying or the proper way to gut a corpse.

Many thanks to team Night Shade throughout the life of these books, as well—my editor, Ross Lockhart; Jeremy Lassen, my acquiring editor; Marty Halpern, my copyeditor; and Liz Upson for marketing support, as well as Tomra Palmer for fast turnaround on annoying new author questions.

Thanks as well go out to my agent, Jennifer Jackson, for making the tough phone calls.

My parents also remain among my top fans and supporters—thanks for cheerleading me on throughout my career.

Finally, thanks to all the readers, bloggers, book club participants, and fans who took a chance on these books. It’s because of you that this book exists at all. Keep passing copies around, and I’ll see you again for the next one….