Infidel

by Kameron Hurley

  “Mercia get back all right?” Nyx asked as she opened the door.

  Suha blew smoke through her nose and tugged at her sleeves. The venom scars on her arms weren’t visible with the long sleeves—she made an effort to hide them, especially around Eshe—but it was a nervous habit that reminded Nyx of a Chenjan woman tugging at her headscarf to make sure her hair was covered.

  “Could have gone better,” Suha said. “You should have been there.”

  “I can’t be everywhere at once,” Nyx said.

  Eshe opened the front and squeezed into the little jump seat behind them. Nyx slid next to Suha.

  “The diplomat fired us,” Suha said. She put out the cigarette and stuffed a wad of sen between teeth and cheek. Her teeth were stained bloody crimson with it.

  “She deposit my fee?” Nyx asked.

  “Yeah. Says she heard we had trouble downtown today.”

  “Fucking diplomats. She should thank me for keeping her daughter alive.”

  “I called the bounty note office like you asked,” Suha said.

  She started the bakkie, and turned them out onto south Raban. From here, Nyx could just see the curved amber spire of the Orrizo in the distance—a monument to anonymous dead men.

  “There’s no record that anybody put out a note on you or Mercia.”

  Nyx chewed on that for a while. “So that bel dame was rogue. Interesting.” And more than a little disconcerting. She was half-hoping she could just burn up the body in her freezer and be done with it.

  “Only thing more dangerous than a bel dame is a rogue bel dame,” Suha muttered. She hunched over the wheel and bunched up her mouth into a sour moue.

  “You got that head in our freezer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “May need to pay a visit to Bloodmount, then.”

  Eshe hopped up and down in his seat. “Bel dames? We get to see bel dames?”

  Nyx sighed.

  The awning above Nyx’s storefront was battered and torn, and the unguent that kept the bugs away had long since worn off the slick surface. Locusts and sand flies clung beneath the awning during the day and crawled across the top at night. In the window just to the left of the door, Eshe had painted and hung a sign:

  Nyxnissa so Dasheem

  Personal Security

  Blood Bonds

  Bounty Reclamation &

  Bel Dame Consulting Services

  Nyx hadn’t wanted to put in the part about bel dame consulting services, but she’d had a couple of kids come in from the front and ask her whether or not there was money in being a bel dame. More often, she had dodgy-looking young boys push in and ask her how to avoid getting caught by bel dames. She charged those ones half a note and told them to leave the country. Once a bel dame had your name, only death would stop her—and bel dames were notoriously hard to kill.

  Nyx knew that better than anyone.

  Suha unloaded gear and dry goods from the bakkie while Eshe followed Nyx inside through the filtered smart door. Nyx had laid the place out a lot like her old storefront in Punjai, only this one was about twice as big. The wide, circular reception area they called the keg had an ablution bowl near the door and one padded bench along the far wall. Eshe’s little desk guarded the entry from reception into the backroom where they kept their com and gear shop—they called it the hub—on the other side of a cheap, low-res filter. Nyx’s office was to the right of the shop. She didn’t bother keeping a filter over her door. Filters were expensive. She didn’t run with a magician anymore who could do the maintenance for free, so she just kept the one filter over the entrance to the hub. The organic smart door had come with the lease. It was enough.

  “What other contracts are on the boards?” she asked Eshe as she walked behind the slab of her desk. She and Suha had rescued the desk from behind a kill shelter on the south side of Amtullah during a low-spring rainstorm that flooded the streets long enough for them to float the desk out. The wood was synthetic, made from bug secretions instead of coastal timber, but the sort of people Nyx dealt with couldn’t tell the difference. It made her look richer than she was.

  Eshe pulled a battered, antique slide from the locked drawer of his desk and accessed a list of potential notes and clients that Suha had logged that morning. Nyx began taking off the most extraneous of her gear and set it out for cleaning. Her vision swam as Eshe spoke. She rubbed her eyes.

  “So let’s get this straight,” Nyx said when he was done. “I can play babysitter to some First Family secretary, cut off a petty debtor’s head, or… What was that other one?”

  “Woman who owns a gambling pit in Ashad quarter wants you to evict some tenants.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Eshe shrugged.

  How the fuck else was she going to pay the bills? Nyx felt suddenly lightheaded, and put her hand on her desktop to steady herself.

  “Sign me up for the babysitting job,” she said to Eshe. “I’ll sort out the details tonight, all right? Go get cleaned up. It’s fight night.”

  Eshe thumbed some notes into the misty slide and walked back into the keg. Nyx heard him crackle through the hub filter and batter around in the backroom with Suha. They started arguing about what kind of oil was best for rubbing down a double-barreled semi-organic Z1020 after disassembly.

  Nyx pulled off her sandals. She hung her head between her knees. She closed her eyes and waited for her head to stop spinning.

  She didn’t want to go up the hill to the Orrizo and talk to some moneyed magician who looked at her like a broken anvil. She also didn’t want to spend any more nights with her head between her knees. She wasn’t doing herself or Eshe any favors, and Suha had a mother and three sisters to feed. For the first time in a decade, Nyx had money in the bank, gun and money caches for emergencies, and a team she was more than eighty percent certain wasn’t fucking around on her. So why was she so sick and miserable?

  Nyx sat up slowly and palmed open the sen box on the bottom left corner of her desk. A little sen with a morphine chaser cured just about everything.

  When she was more coherent, Nyx accessed the day’s accounts on her personal slide and paid a couple of bills. Mercia’s mother had indeed deposited the promised fee. They’d all be able to eat for the next few weeks.

  Winter days in Mushtallah were warm, but short. By the time she mostly squared her accounts it was already dark, and she had unshuttered both glow worm lamps; the one on her desk and the big cylinder near the door. She heard Eshe light the cheap lamps in the keg. Suha turned up the radio as a band of nighttime revelers passed through the alley on their way to a low-end brothel three streets over.

  The local magicians were holding a boxing match later that night. Nyx figured she’d send out Eshe for food and then take him downtown after Suha packed up and went home to her mother. Payday nights were traditionally Nyx and Eshe’s food and fight nights.

  She leaned back in her chair and stretched. The chime on the reception area door sounded, which meant somebody had stepped onto the porch. She figured Suha had punched up a food delivery.

  Nyx walked into the keg and slid her hand over the face of the door. The door went transparent—from her side, anyway—and she saw a girl on the stoop wearing a too-big burnous. Even with her face hidden deep within the heavy hood, Nyx knew it was Mercia. The kid had affected an awkward slouch, probably in an attempt to appear less like Mercia, but Nyx had spent all day staring at her ass-end, tracking her through crowds—she’d know that kid’s bony little ass anywhere.

  Nyx opened the door and stepped into the threshold to block Mercia from getting inside.

  “Don’t you put a foot in here,” Nyx said. “Your mother likely has tags.”

  Mercia tilted her head up a little, so Nyx could just see the stubborn end of her pale chin. “No one followed me.”

  “I’m not hiring,” Nyx said. “Cutting off heads isn’t nearly as glamorous as it sounds.”

  “It’s nothing like that. I wanted to apol
ogize, about my mother.”

  “We all had them. Not worth apologizing.”

  “She shouldn’t have fired you. That was…” Mercia hunched up again, as if retreating. “I had a woman once who wasn’t as good as you.”

  “Hard to believe.”

  “I’m being very serious.”

  “If your mother’s hiring in my pay range, I’m not surprised she’s gotten some shitty service.”

  “Can I please come in? I don’t like standing around in this part of the city.”

  “We’re out of honey wine, and Ras Tiegans don’t drink buni.”

  “Put something in it, and I might.”

  “A runaway and a lush? Your mother’s going to enjoy feeding me to her security staff.”

  Nyx heard someone crackle through the hub filter behind her.

  Eshe said, “What’s up front?”

  Nyx stepped aside to let Mercia in. “We’ve got another bug for dinner.”

  Eshe’s eyes got big. “We’re ordering in?”

  “Go pick something up. Suha’s got petty cash.”

  Nyx sat Mercia down on the padded bench in the receiving room. The kid pulled back her hood. Her eyes were reddened from crying, but not bruised. Nyx didn’t see any bruises on her bare arms or wrists either. Nobody had roughed her up—at home or on the street. Not tonight, anyway. So what was she running from?

  “Does this apology come with some dinner money? You Ras Tiegan girls don’t eat much, but I won’t hold it against you.”

  Mercia shook her head. “I only wanted to say I’m sorry. She shouldn’t have run you out like that. I saw what those women were. I don’t think anybody else could have gotten out of that.”

  “Women are just women.”

  Mercia’s forehead wrinkled. “Those women were bel dames.”

  That particular insight was surprising. How could a Ras Tiegan girl spot a bel dame? “You seen a bel dame before?”

  “I’ve seen one of those ones before, at the Queen’s palace. I told my mother I’d give a description to the authorities, but she didn’t want to make a charge.”

  “You remember the bel dame’s name?”

  Mercia shook her head.

  “But you know she’s a bel dame?”

  “Queen Zaynab introduced them as a group.”

  “Which one was it? One of the ones by the bakkie or the one with the bag?” Nyx asked.

  “The one with the bag.”

  The one Nyx had killed.

  “Was that the only one who looked familiar?” Nyx asked.

  “That’s the only one I remember,” Mercia said.

  Nyx leaned forward and put her elbows on her knees, clasped her hands. If bel dames wanted Mercia dead, it wasn’t so much her business, but it was interesting. Ambassador sa Aldred had taken Nyx off watch, and the diplomat and her daughter would be heading back to Ras Tieg after the summit ended in a couple days. But a dead ambassador’s kid might trigger a bigger incident—something rogue bel dames might like.

  She looked over at Mercia. The skinny kid was watching her with sorrowful eyes, like she was worried about how Nyx was taking the news. It wasn’t the sort of look Nyx expected from a girl being hunted.

  “Your mother will hire you another bodyguard,” Nyx said. “If she ups her fee, she can get one better than me. You’ll be all right.”

  The half-lie tasted fine. There were a couple of retired bel dames who could make good bodyguards, if the ambassador was willing to pay the fee. Knowing the ambassador’s pay rate, though, she probably wouldn’t parse out that much for a replacement, and Mercia would be left with some snot-nosed kid just out of university who wouldn’t stand a chance against three or more bel dames working a blood note. Just another soft, educated idiot.

  Nyx sighed. Ever since Nyx took Eshe in she’d had a soft spot for kids with shitty mothers. I must be getting old, she thought.

  “I know a few women I’d trust to watch after you,” Nyx said. “I could make some calls, maybe convince them to work cheap.”

  Mercia wrinkled her brow. “Me? I’m not worried about me,” she said.

  “Why the hell not?” Nyx said.

  “Because,” Mercia said, very slowly, as if speaking to a soft, educated idiot, “those bel dames weren’t after me. They were after you.”

  3.

  The Tirhani Minister of Public Affairs was in a foul mood. In the three years Rhys had worked with her, he had come to know her moods better than those of his own wife. The Minister bore her moods more clearly in the severe lines of her face, the deepening crease of worry between her heavy brows. When her mood moved from severe to foul she would tighten and release her fist on her desk the way she was doing now—tighten and release, tighten and release—as if she were strangling kittens one by one and dropping them into a pail at her feet.

  Rhys sat across from her at the center of the broad map of her office, a slide pulled open in his hands. A pattern of gilded palm fronds repeated along the border of the room, like the name of God in a prayer. The windows behind her were opaqued and filtered to keep out the sun. He could look just over the Minister’s shoulder and see the whole of Tirhani’s capital, Shirhazi, spread out across the flat plain below, crowded along the rim of the salty inland sea called Shahrdad. Tirhanis liked their buildings tall, and from this height, fourteen floors above the city, Rhys could share their enthusiasm. Being above this big city made him feel less small.

  The Minister thumped her fist on her desk.

  “These bloody black roaches think that covering up women’s faces makes the lot of them more pious. Piety does not determine price. I won’t part with the fruit of our labor for a brick man’s fee. Do they think we are a country of stevedores?”

  Rhys pulled his attention back to the Minister and the pleasantly cool room. The slick semi-transparent screen of his slide displayed his notes on the translation of Chenjan contracts relating to an exchange of goods and services with Tirhan. Like many of the documents Rhys had dealt with during his translation work with the Tirhani government, the actual goods and services were not specified, merely the terms of the amounts agreed upon, the delivery dates and times, the payment milestones, and generic legal jargon.

  “Are you going to have your assistant consul politely decline their offer?” Rhys asked. “I’d like to have an idea of the tone you wish to present before I receive the document for review.”

  Though the goods were never named outright, Rhys suspected the Minister of Public Affairs was negotiating arms sales with Chenja, and had been for as long as he had worked for her. A third of the population of Shirhazi was employed in its weapons manufacturing plants. Most of Tirhan’s economy was tied up in arms deals that fueled the centuries-old war between Chenja and Nasheen. It kept Tirhan’s neighbors busy and made Tirhanis rich. It also required a significant ex-pat community of magicians to produce it. Shirhazi was a hodgepodge haven of refugee Chenjans and exiled magicians from Nasheen, Ras Tieg, even Mhoria. The Minister knew he knew her business, but they never discussed the movement of arms in such blunt terms. Some of this was merely the Tirhani custom of false modesty and false politeness. Rhys had spent much of his time as a child learning similar conversational rituals at the Chenjan court while on business with his father. He had picked up the Tirhani version easily. He found it much more comforting than brutal Nasheenian honesty.

  The Minister’s frown deepened. “You must decline their offer politely, but with a touch of disdain. This is the second time this new Minister has treated us as infidels during a negotiation. He must know his place before God. I will have my consul remove the offer completely, as a lesson. I will have him forward you our reply tonight, but do not trouble yourself about its delivery. I will have their minister stew himself to death while his people starve in the trenches.

  “Would you like some tea?”

  The segue was abrupt, and familiar. The Minister pulled a cup and saucer from her desk, a strainer, a tea bag. Business was concluded for the day.


  Rhys rose. “Thank you, but I must humbly decline,” he said.

  “Oh, no, I insist you sit and have a drink,” she said. She ladled a teaspoon of fire beetles into a water shaker and shook it up to heat the water. “I cannot allow you to part ways without a drink.”

  Tirhani false politeness.

  “I respectfully decline. I am not thirsty. Thank you for this reception. I do look forward to hearing from your consul.” Rhys bowed his head and waited. They had still not discussed the matter of payment.

  “It is really too much,” the Minister said, taking her cue. “You do too much for us.”

  “I am, as ever, pleased to offer my services to the benefit of this great country,” Rhys said.

  “And how much is it I may reward you for those services you’ve provided today?”

  “It is nothing,” Rhys said. “It is my pleasure.”

  He continued waiting.

  “No, indeed, I insist. It is the least I can do.”

  “I am pleased to serve such a pleasant employer.”

  “I must redeem you. Come now.”

  “A day’s work, twelve hours, correspondence with a Chenjan minister,” Rhys said. “God willing, the price for such work is sixty notes.” It was a price ten percent higher than he believed she would pay.

  “That is too much,” she said, and her expression soured further. “I could have had a boy from the Chenjan ghetto do the same, for far less.”

  “And you would have gotten work of an equal quality to the price you paid. You will not find a boy familiar with Chenjan politics and the workings of the minds of her war ministers begging for bugs at the corner.”

  “Yet I have had Chenjan men provide me with just such a service at half the cost.”

  “Half? Then they are beggars, and scoundrels, and it is no surprise that they are no longer in your employ. Instead, you have found my services more than adequate for several seasons.”

  “It is adequate only when it is fair. I’ll pay you forty, no more.”