Apocalypse Nyx

by Kameron Hurley

  The ground trembled. Nyx got up and went for the stairs, instinctively yelling, “Rhys!”

  “What?” Rhys said as he clattered down the steps, yanking the hatch down behind him.

  “You and those fucking bugs,” she muttered, and sat back down. “Anneke already head out?”

  “Like a shot,” Rhys said. “Don’t bother calling after her.”

  “Anneke would take a hit from a burst and just pick it back up again,” Taite said, switching the radio past two daytime operas and a Kitab education show to arrive at the burst warning station.

  Rhys stopped at the bottom of the stairs, gazing into the deep shadows under them. “How did this dead dog get down here?” he said.

  A heavy whump sounded above them. Dust and dirt particles sifted into the stale air.

  Nyx picked at a tear in the divan, curling the stuffing onto her finger. “Don’t remember notes on dogs,” she said, and laughed because that wasn’t quite true. Any number of shapeshifters who could step into dog skins had been on the bounty boards before.

  Taite settled against the wall next to the radio. “It must have come in the back and wandered in. You leave the basement hatch open?” he asked Rhys.

  “Why would I?” Rhys said. He knelt beside the dog. Nyx could just make out the shape of it in the dim light. Rhys gently turned it over. Pointed. “There are six dead hornets under here. It triggered the intruder trap. This isn’t a dog. Only a human would trigger the trap I set.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re a shitty magician,” Nyx said. “Maybe it’s a mistake. Last thing we need today is a dead shapeshifter.”

  “We can have it tested,” Rhys said

  “Can’t we just bury it?” Nyx said.

  “Come on, Nyx,” Taite said at the same time Rhys said, “No.”

  “All you men conspiring against me,” Nyx said. “Remember I still have to re-up your contracts.”

  Another burst made the world tremble. Nyx leaned back into the divan and stared at the ceiling. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll report it after the siren’s done.”

  Rhys gazed up at the trapdoor.

  “What is it?” Nyx said.

  “Not sure,” he said. “But I think . . . I think someone is knocking on the door out there.”

  “They can wait for after the raid,” Nyx said. She wished he would stop caring about things, or noticing them. Half the time she thought he’d do better half-drunk than she would. Good for his nerves.

  “What if it’s Anneke?” Taite said.

  “She could palm herself in,” Rhys said. “Nyx, I really think—”

  “After the raid,” Nyx said. “I don’t want to open a door to anyone dumb enough to be out in a raid.”

  “It’s probably one of our clients,” Taite muttered.

  Nyx said, “Serves them right on both counts, then.”

  “We can’t just leave them out there,” Rhys said.

  “For fuck’s sake!” Nyx said, pushing herself off the divan. “You so eager to help, why don’t you go up there? But you won’t, will you, because you’re godly and righteous and it’s easier to level guilt and blame than do a damned thing yourself, isn’t it?”

  She got up and pushed past Rhys, not wanting to see the look on his face. She knocked him out of the way with her shoulder and pounded back up the stairs.

  Above, the world outside was eerily still except for the low wail of the sirens. She didn’t like going out during raids. Not just for the obvious reason but because the world was so quiet it felt like being the last person alive. She wondered if that was what hell was like, wandering around on a deserted street, wondering if you were mad, if the war was all over and you were the last person standing.

  She went right for the door. A heavy whumping sound came from the north, then the shock wave. It rattled the equipment on the work tables. Loose gun parts and dead bugs pattered all around her feet as she walked.

  Nyx hitched one hand behind her, taking hold of the hilt of her scattergun, and opened the door wide with the other, ready to run off whatever dumb kid was looking for shelter. If it was a client, though, maybe she’d look heroic. Maybe they’d tip better next time.

  A stout little woman wearing a hijab and an intricately embroidered violet housecoat raised her head, and Nyx knew her by the coat long before she caught sight of her pouting, squinty-eyed little face.

  “Look what you’ve done, sister,” Kine said as the sirens wailed. “I’ve come here all the way from the coast and gotten my best housecoat dirty. Now what’s this you were saying about the Muhktars?”

  Kine complicated things, in the way that only Kine could.

  While the air sirens wailed, Kine followed Nyx to her office, and turned up her nose at the empty bottle and dusty interior.

  “You live here?” Kine said.

  “I do a lot of things here,” Nyx said.

  “It’s worse than your last domicile.” Kine kept her hands clasped in front of her, as if afraid that she’d get some contagion or disease if she touched anything. It was probably a good instinct.

  “Why does my business concern you?” Nyx said.

  “Those are dangerous families you mentioned,” Kine said. Her gaze roved around the office now; at first Nyx figured she was still judgey about things, but the look was keener than that. She was clearly looking for foreign bugs, the type tailored by a magician to spy on people like Kine who had government clearance.

  “Turns out the woman I’m working with isn’t part of either family,” Nyx said. “So it was all a false alarm.”

  Outside, the burst sirens gave one last mournful wail, then trailed off into silence. Nyx glanced into the outer room. The rest of the team would come up soon.

  She opened her arms, trying to herd Kine back to the door. “Raid’s over and I’m fine,” Nyx said. “You should go back to the coast.”

  But Kine remained firm. She planted her feet and set her mouth and Nyx knew the only way she’d get her out was to move her bodily, which Nyx was getting ready to do.

  “The Muhktars are powerful shapeshifters,” Kine said. “Do you have shapeshifters in your employ who can best them? I can guarantee you don’t, because you must have a license for a shapeshifter, and you’ve always been terribly cheap.”

  “Inexpensive, not cheap,” Nyx said. “All my girlfriends will tell you.”

  Kine frowned.

  “I told you,” Nyx said, “we aren’t dealing with the Muhktars.” But her thoughts drifted back to the dead dog in her cellar. She had thought she had this bel dame apprentice figured out, but now she wasn’t so sure. There were plenty of people who wanted vengeance against Nyx. But how did the dogs fit? Was she using them as reconnaissance, too, instead of bugs?

  “Nyx?” Rhys’s voice, from the workroom.

  “In my office,” she said.

  Rhys came in, Taite just behind him. They stopped short on seeing Kine.

  “Rhys, Taite,” Nyx said, “this is my sister Kine. She works at the compounds on the coast. Big fancy government job.”

  Kine’s eyes got big. She took a step back on seeing Rhys. “Rhys is not a Tirhani name,” Kine said.

  “It isn’t Chenjan either,” Nyx said, “but that’s what he calls himself.”

  Kine stared at her. “This is too much,” she said. “You’re employing Chenjans now? Have you sunk so low?”

  “I wasn’t aware I could sink any lower in your regard,” Nyx said. “I’m pretty pleased with myself now, actually.”

  “I didn’t know you had a sister,” Taite said.

  “Just the one,” Nyx said. “It’s enough.”

  “So many men here,” Kine muttered.

  “Can I get you a drink before you leave?” Nyx asked. “Rhys makes stuff you’d drink. Tea, things like that.”

  “We should have lunch,” Kine said. “It’s the proper thing to do.”

  “I don’t do lunch,” Nyx said.

  “We are sisters. We should go to lunch.”

  “Sh
e’s your sister,” Rhys said. “You really should go to lunch.”

  “See?” Kine said. “Even the Chenjan agrees with me.” She sniffed.

  Nyx glared at him. Taite snickered and popped back out of the room, clearly smart enough not to take sides. Unlike some other people.

  “We’ll get food on the way to dropping off the dead shifter,” Nyx said. “All right? Rhys, help me bag up that dog.”

  It took a good half hour to get the dog bagged and usher Kine out of the storefront. Kine lingered near Rhys’s prayer mat, making a little moue with her mouth that made Nyx fear she was actually going to try and start talking to him, and that wasn’t going to go well.

  Finally, the sack with the stiff dog over her shoulder, Nyx strode down the busy streets of Punjai with Kine at her side. She wasn’t sure which was more of a liability—Kine or the dog. Kine kept pace with her, curling her nose at every man and uncovered woman they passed. Kine muttered about cancer and modesty, and how God had decreed women cover themselves to protect them from cancers, and why were all of these women so foolish and why were so many foreign men here, instead of fighting for God?

  “Why aren’t we taking the train?” Kine asked as they passed the gated entry for the overhead train. The door was heavily barred; scorch marks stained the face of it.

  “Train hasn’t worked in a decade,” Nyx said. “Besides, the office isn’t far.”

  The shifter licensing office was twelve blocks away. Nyx stepped nimbly over trash heaps and venom-addled junkies, massive bug carcasses and discarded food wrappers. By the time they reached the broad amber door of the office she had to admit she was pretty hungry after all.

  She pushed to the head of the queue, ignoring the hot, startled stares and gaping mouths of the folks waiting ahead of her. Most of the people in line were foreigners, and men at that. They weren’t in a place to complain at her barging in.

  Nyx swung the dog carcass onto the table and waved over the paunchy old man behind the counter. He panted his way over, limping heavily on what was clearly a poorly made organic hybrid of a leg, the sort men got when they came back from the front when their families couldn’t afford a proper magician to put a good one back on. He was missing most of the back of his head; it was slathered over in green bug secretions, and he wore what remained of his hair long to try and cover it. The deep grooves of his face were covered in stubble, at least in the places that weren’t too scarred to prevent it.

  “Can I help you, bel dame?”

  She smirked at that, pleased to be mistaken for what she once was. There was a murmur in the crowd, most of whom were either shifters or mercenaries looking for shifters, likely, and several lanky, hard-bitten types took a step back. She liked the breathing room that being bad afforded her.

  “Need this tested,” she said. “Found it in my basement.”

  “Basement?” he said, sucking what remained of his front teeth. He pulled a syringe from the front of his apron and jabbed it into the dog’s throat. Withdrawing it, he said, “One moment,” and went into the back.

  Kine leaned into her and said, low, “I believe there was a queue, Nyxnissa.”

  “You always did draw inside the lines,” Nyx said. “What did that ever get you?”

  “Prestigious, reliable, and cancer-free employment,” she said.

  “Better not say that too loud,” Nyx said, leaning against the counter while the half dozen people in line pretended not to listen. “Men here’ll eat you for something good as that. And you don’t want to know what the women will do.”

  The man reappeared from the back. He put down a big book of green paper on the counter and opened it up with a sigh. “It’s a shifter,” he said. “We will need to log this death.”

  “Fuck,” Nyx said. “How much is the fine?”

  “You found it in your basement?” he said, peering at her.

  “Listen,” she said. “It triggered one of my magician’s traps. I have a whole team who’ll tell you the same. It’s all legal.”

  “I’m sure,” he said. She didn’t like the way he mushed up his face, like he was just tolerating her answer, knowing the law was on her side as a Nasheenian woman, but she let it slide.

  “Anyway,” she said, “I’m in the market for a shifter anyway. You know anyone?”

  The man raised his brows. “You’ve brought a dead shapeshifter here, which you admit was killed in your own basement, and want me, a shifter, to recommend a good shifter to you?”

  “Yeah,” Nyx said.

  The man clucked his tongue and bundled the dog back into the sack, and walked away to the back room again.

  Nyx glanced over at Kine. “What did I say?”

  “Only what you always say.”

  Nyx looked around the room, sizing up the ropy mercenaries and foreign shifters. There were a couple tables at the front of the store where a big Mhorian, two skinny Drucians, and a one-armed Heidian were playing cards. A young Nasheenian sat alone near them, looking like she was halfway to drinking herself to death.

  Nyx sat up on the counter and said. “Hey! I’m hiring shifters over on Hadya Street. Be good with a gun. Not squeamish. Reliable.” She hopped off the counter and started toward the door.

  “Fucking Nasheenians.”

  She turned to see who’d said it, but the card players were all staring hard at their cards, and the folks in line were staring straight ahead.

  The Nasheenian kid was laughing, though. “Yes we are,” she said. “We sure are.”

  “I pay cash,” Nyx said, “or bugs, for contract bounty work. Your choice. The fucking is extra.”

  Kine made a little squealing sound at that, which made the whole trip worth it.

  “Let’s go to lunch,” Nyx said.

  Rhys never liked the jobs Nyx gave him, but he didn’t like starving, either. He told himself, often, that he wasn’t here because of the work. He was just biding his time until he got real employment. But no matter how many doors he palmed or letters he wrote to cities with more gainful employment, the answers he got back—when he got them—were resoundingly negative; sometimes violently so. He’d had no idea how many pejoratives Nasheenians had for men, and Chenjan men in particular, until he had started looking for a job.

  But now, for the first time ever, he had a job offer in his pocket for a team other than Nyx’s. It should have been the boon he was waiting for, but he’d held on to it now for two days. It was a job in the interior, working as a translator for the Nasheenian foreign affairs department. Why he hadn’t drawn up his resignation the day he received the letter, he wasn’t certain.

  Rhys rubbed the paper of the invitation between his fingers in his pocket as he walked with Taite to the library at the center of town, though it wasn’t a library anymore so much as it was a woman behind a heavy door who sat at a kiosk connecting Punjai to real archival collections in the interior. No one was fool enough to keep anything of value in the border towns, not when the Chenjans could spill over and occupy them at any moment. The last time Chenja had taken hold of the city was just fifteen years before. They’d gotten halfway to Mushtallah before they were turned back by a sea of magicians. His mentor, Yah Tayyib, had told him that story often. The subtext of it wasn’t lost on Rhys. Rhys didn’t want to forget which side he’d been born on; he considered Chenja the morally superior country, of course. But the Nasheenians didn’t want him to forget where he came from, either.

  So when he and Taite stepped up to the door of the library and a large woman knocked into Rhys so hard he fell, it was by no means an unexpected or unprecedented occurrence.

  Rhys hit the ground hard. The woman leered over him, her great one-eyed face eclipsing the sun.

  Taite babbled an apology.

  “Watch your step, child,” the woman said. “Don’t go looking into matters that don’t concern you or your employer. She should be in prison, and if she keeps on with this job she took, that’s where she’ll end up. Free advice.”

  Beside her was a bi
g yellow dog; its head was as high as her waist. It growled at Rhys while wagging its tail, a strange mix of signals that he couldn’t parse.

  She pulled up the hood of her brown burnous and stepped over him, back into the busy street. The dog loped after her.

  Taite helped Rhys up. “Nyx has a way of making friends,” Taite said.

  “Why does she choose these jobs instead of sticking with the bounty boards? At least with the bounty boards we have legal support and backup.”

  “She likes to live dangerously,” Taite said.

  “I don’t,” Rhys said. He pulled his hand from his pocket.

  Taite laughed. “Then I don’t know why you signed on with Nyx.”

  “Some days I don’t either,” Rhys said. Then, “I have another job offer.”

  Taite looked at him sharply. “Really?” he said.

  “Is that odd?”

  “No, just . . . well, I guess it is. Hard for foreign men to get jobs. I mean, I know. I’ve tried.”

  “It’s for the government.”

  “Have you told Nyx yet?”

  “No.”

  “Well, maybe wait to tell her until you’re sure,” Taite said. “She’ll fire you on the spot.”

  They pushed inside the library and waited in the short line to speak to the librarian at the kiosk. They found the information they wanted fairly quickly, about the address linked to the bug Nyx had given Taite; she printed most of it out, which was expensive, but not as expensive as having it coded into a bug. That said, paper was easier to hack. Rhys hoped the one-eyed woman and her dog weren’t just waiting around to jump him again.

  They made it back to the storefront relatively unscathed, just in time for mid-afternoon prayer. Rhys left the papers on Nyx’s desk and then unrolled his prayer rug as the call to prayer moved out over the city. Leaving Nyx’s team should have been an easy decision, so why was he hesitating?

  When he finished and stood he noted that Taite was watching some radio opera, chin in hand, while his com console ticked away at recording some other hunter’s com channel that Nyx had put him on. She was always spying on former team members and stealing their jobs. Taite was Ras Tiegan, and there was no Ras Tiegan church in Punjai, but Rhys had seen him praying at night. They shared a god, but not a faith. Still, Taite was observant of his own beliefs. It was a good start.