And then as the wind fell and the curtain stilled he felt his restlessness still as well, and his wife was no longer a frail stranger across the hall who could not remember to eat her own dinner or keep an appointment, but the mother of his children, his gift from God, the passionate love of his life, because the love of one’s life was never that which you wished for or hoped for or forgot or lost or mistook; it was the partner you spent your long days with, the woman God made for the partnering of all of your days.
The love of your life was never the woman you left behind.
He moved to step into the room, to lie next to her, but as he did he heard a faint sound from below, felt the stirring of some bug in a wire—old, familiar.
Rhys turned away from the bedroom and descended to the kitchen at the bottom of the house. From here, the sound of the call box was louder, though the stirring in his blood remained the same.
The box was soldered to the wall next to the desk. He picked up the receiver.
“Peace be with you,” he said.
“And with you,” the woman on the other end said. He knew the voice. The connection was good; nothing hissed or chittered over the line. It meant the bugs that originated the call were expensive. Government.
It was the Tirhani Minister.
“I need you to take a train tonight to Beh Ayin,” she said.
“This is… unexpected.” He was thinking it would cost her two hundred notes.
“It’s of great importance.”
If she was being blunt, he would follow suit. “It will cost you,” he said. He thought of the housekeeper, wondered how much it would cost to hire a second.
“I expected nothing less,” the Minister said, but her tone was the same. No amusement, all business.
“Who am I meeting with?” he asked.
“I will have one of my people meet you in Beh Ayin. She’ll give you more information. She lost our original translator. How’s your Nasheenian?”
When was the last time he had spoken Nasheenian? Six years? Inaya and Khos preferred to speak to him in Tirhani. When the three of them lapsed into Nasheenian, it was generally brief, to explain a term, or triggered by some memory.
“You’ll need to translate a negotiation,” the Minister said, “and you need to be on your best behavior.”
“Goods and services?”
“Very discreet goods and services. You understand?”
“If I did not, you would not employ me.”
“There’s a train to Beh Ayin in two hours. There’s a ticket with your name at the call desk.”
“Minister?”
“Yes?”
“What happened to the other translator?”
“Two hours,” the Minister said, and hung up.
4.
The bel dame reclamation office in Mushtallah was at the base of the city’s fifth hill, unofficially referred to by bel dames and civilians alike as Bloodmount. Particularly pious Nasheenians paid exorbitant prices to take a brief, musty tour of the interior of the derelict that made up the center of the hill. All the hills of Mushtallah were artificial. Their rotting cores were made up of old refugee ships, derelicts from the mass exodus from the moons back at the beginning of the world. Nyx had never been down there—she didn’t much care what came before her—but she heard most of it was sealed off. What was left was just a sterile tangle of old metal, bug secretions, and bone dust.
There had been talk a few years before of the bel dames selling their residences on Bloodmount. Some had gone so far as to set up an alternate site in Amtullah for training new bel dames, but whatever grief they had with the Queen or with themselves had been sorted out, best anybody could tell, and Bloodmount was back at full capacity again.
Nyx had brought the whole team to drop off the head. She was interested in keeping them all together right now, at least until she had some answers. They had packed up the rogue bel dame’s head in the trunk, and Nyx had finished off a fifth of vodka for breakfast, since she’d sworn off whiskey. It took the edge off her nerves. The last thing she wanted when she walked into a boiling hive of bel dames was to go in jumpy.
As they proceeded around Palace Hill, Bloodmount came into view. At the height of the hill, a single tower gleamed a burnished copper color. That was the only visible part of the ship above ground—a twisted metal spire where every bel dame took her oath to uphold the old laws of blood debt.
“You sure you want to do this today?” Suha muttered, and spit sen out the open window.
Nyx stared at the spire. The bel dame training schools, residences, and reclamation office ringed the base of the hill. From here, she couldn’t see the organic filter that protected the hill, but she’d been through it enough to know that it was the most powerful one in Nasheen. Hard to do, with Palace Hill and its high security organics just up the street. And the inner filters were more precise, and more deadly. She didn’t figure she’d get much past the first filter on this little jaunt.
“I’m sure,” Nyx said. “Best case, we find out what the fuck’s going on with this rogue bel dame. Worst case, they kill me and you’re out of a job.”
“I like my job,” Suha said.
Eshe stayed quiet.
Suha drove to the big, burst-scarred main gate at the base of the hill. This neighborhood was mostly boxing gyms and cheap eateries. There were a few shabby text and radio program stores and some bodegas. Nyx stepped out of the bakkie and looked up in the tenement windows above the shops. Teenage girls—bel dame hopefuls and university students—sat around on the tiny balconies. High-pitched laughter trickled over the street. She caught a whiff of marijuana, opium, and the distinctive milky stink of too many teenage women. A couple of leggy girls stood on the stoop of a bodega across from the bakkie. They smoked clove and marijuana cigarettes and wore calf-length burnouses. They looked Nyx over with heavy-lidded eyes.
“Can I come?” Eshe asked, leaning out the window. A couple of passing girls turned at his voice and stared outright. One of them stumbled. Her companion shrieked with laughter.
Nyx pushed his head back into the bakkie. “Stay with Suha. This isn’t a good place for boys.”
“Nyx—”
“You heard me. I’ll lose com with you once I’m inside the filter,” Nyx said. “I’m not back in two hours, you file a report with the order keepers.” Not that it would do much good. Bel dames were outside government control. They policed themselves. How they dealt with Nyx and the rogue bel dame’s head was no business of the Queen’s, so far as they were concerned. Still, she liked the idea of somebody filing some obscure paperwork on her behalf.
Nyx motioned for Suha to pop the trunk, dug the burnous-wrapped bel dame’s head out of the back and slung it over her shoulder. The burnous had eaten most of the blood, but it was still stained with amber-brown splotches.
She leaned into the driver’s side window and nodded to the side street. “There’s a good Ras Tiegan place two streets over called the Montrouge. Get the kid a soda and some curried dog.”
Eshe grimaced.
“You watch yourself in there,” Suha said.
“You watch yourself out here,” Nyx said. She walked up to the front gate.
There was a young woman posted, just a kid, maybe twenty. Couldn’t have served a day at the front. She had clear skin and shiny eyes, just like the cocky bel dame Nyx was bringing in. Definitely not a day at the front.
“Here to report a rogue bel dame,” Nyx said.
“I gotta take your identification,” the woman said. Nyx held out her hand.
The woman wiped Nyx’s finger across her portable slide. Nyx felt a wisp of pressure as some tailored bug skein sucked up a blood sample.
Nyx watched the woman’s reaction as the file came up. The girl didn’t blink.
“You’ve got level one clearance. You can go as far as the reclamation office without being cleaned.” She punched open the gate.
Nyx slipped inside. The gate clanged behind her. Old, old metal—th
e sort of stuff that came off derelicts. She walked across the courtyard, past the bakkie barns. A couple of tissue mechanics raised their heads as she passed. Otherwise, nothing stirred on the other side of the gate.
The bounty reclamation office was a single-story building of amber stone. Most of the original arches had been whittled away by small arms fire, and what remained had been badly reconstructed with concrete and crumbling brick. Only half of the bel dame oath was visible. The complete line, the heart of the bel dame oath, was “My life for a thousand.” All that was clearly readable above the office now was “My life.” Nyx thought that somehow appropriate, knowing what she did about bel dames.
She hesitated at the stoop. It’d been a while since she crossed this threshold.
“Well, shit,” she said aloud, and moved the weight of the head to her other shoulder.
She walked into the musty interior of the office. It took a minute for her eyes to adjust. A kid clerk stood behind the counter, chin in hand, staring at some misty drama leaking out from the radio on the counter. She jerked her head up when she saw Nyx and turned off the radio. The images began to dissipate in the dry air.
Nyx thumped the burnous-wrapped head onto the counter.
The girl put on a haughty face to cover her surprise. It was fun to watch. Nyx figured she wasn’t a day over sixteen.
“You have a note?” the girl asked, casually extending her hand.
“It’s not a note,” Nyx said.
The girl’s posture changed, then, subtly—enough for Nyx to judge that she’d had some bel dame training already.
“I’m here to deliver a rogue bel dame,” Nyx said.
The girl’s eyes widened. She shifted away from the counter. “You killed a… bel dame?”
“More or less. You’ve got another thirty hours or so before the head goes bad. They put the bug in your head yet? We’re hard to kill for a reason.”
“The… bug?”
“Call whoever’s in charge of black marks, all right? I’m filing a report.”
Another woman walked in from the back. She was a gray-haired matron with a face like death and vinegar. One hand rested on the pistol at her hip. The barrel glowed green. It was some new organic model. Suha would know it.
“You left me a long time with your runt,” Nyx said.
The matron crinkled her face into the semblance of a smile. “A surprise or two is good for her. Teaches her to pay attention.”
The girl moved to shove her hands into her pockets. Hesitated. Left them free. One of the first rules of self-defense was to always keep your hands free—so you could grab a weapon, or use your hands as one.
“Go sort the dead notes in the back, Hind,” the matron said to the kid.
Hind sidestepped behind the matron and ducked into the back.
The matron spread her palms on the table, cocked her head at Nyx. “I can see you’ve been in the business awhile. Most don’t reach our age.”
I’m only thirty-eight, Nyx wanted to say, but this old woman—this crone—was likely no more than forty.
“You handle black marks against bel dames?” Nyx asked.
“No. That’s a council job. I already called her. She’ll be coming down to chat.”
“Council? The bel dame council?”
“Been a council job the last four or five years now, since the new gals got elected.”
“Didn’t know there was an election.”
“They happen hard and fast around here. Usually ’cause somebody got cut up. Just elected two new ones. Shook things up. Been some… interesting times, last few years.” She palmed the burnous. “So, what you bring us?”
Nyx heard at least two people take up positions outside the front door, blocking her escape. It felt good to have somebody make a fuss over her again, at least.
Then the door at Nyx’s left opened—the door leading back into the bounty reclamation offices.
A familiar figure entered. Her hair was completely white now, tied back from a pinched, hallowed face. The years hadn’t been kind. A long scar marked her from nose to ear on the left side of her face. Whoever had given it to her had taken half the ear as well. She wore loose black trousers and a tight, sleeveless tunic the color of sage. Her hands were fine boned, like her face, but heavily veined and wrinkled. You could always mark a woman’s age by her hands, even among the First Families.
The matron at the counter nodded at her. “This is Fatima Kosan,” she said. “Fatima handles all the black marks.”
“I know who she is,” Nyx said.
“They told me when you breached the gate,” Fatima said coolly. “I requested a personal notification if you ever blooded the gate.”
“How many people you kill to get that council seat?” Nyx asked.
“Enough,” Fatima said lightly.
“I’m here to deliver a head. That’s all. This honey pot tried to kill the daughter of the Ras Tiegan diplomat, Erian sa Aldred. Maybe me too.”
Fatima approached the counter. She walked with a barely perceptible limp. Nyx figured the right knee had been replaced, maybe a year or two before.
Fatima pushed open the top of the burnous, a bold thing to do, considering Nyx and the head hadn’t been through a filter. Nyx could have brought in any kind of Mushtallah-based contagion and killed the lot of them. But Fatima, best Nyx remembered, wasn’t stupid. She just knew Nyx well.
“Make sure she’s one of ours,” Fatima told the matron, “and get her to the Plague Sisters.”
Nyx pulled the red note from her dhoti. “Found this on her.”
Fatima took the red note and examined it. “We’ll have it tested. Where’s the body?”
“Last I saw it, Mashad and East Efran, in the alley behind a Heidian deli. Don’t know the name, but the food smelled right.”
The matron took the head carefully, as if it were a child.
Fatima rested a hand on the counter, faced Nyx. Her eyes were soft and brown, but the hollows were deeply lined now.
“You looked better back when you were teaching me the laws of blood debt,” Nyx said.
“Long time ago,” Fatima agreed.
“Before you sent me to prison and tortured me?”
“Before you started doing black work, yes.”
“You got the girls outside for a reason?” Nyx said, nodding to the front where she’d heard the bel dames take up position.
“Nyxnissa, if I wanted you killed, I’d have done it long ago. Your name has come up many times at the council… but the death vote never passed.”
“Which way did you vote?”
Fatima showed her teeth. “We’re no longer children, Nyxnissa. Let’s not fight.”
The matron returned from the back. “Blood test says the girl’s ours,” she said. She handed a coded note to Fatima. “Called Ara so Basmirah. One of Shadha’s girls.”
“Shadha?” Nyx said.
Fatima stared at the coded note. Nyx saw her mouth harden. Then she raised her gaze, and the slip in her expression smoothed.
“The council has encountered some conflicts of interest among its members.”
“So she’s rogue after all?” Nyx said. There was no more “conflicting interest” in Nasheen than bel dames policing a rogue bel dame.
“That term is a little extreme,” Fatima said. “We have full control over the matter.”
“Isn’t that what Alharazad said before she killed half the council twenty years ago?”
“Thank you for bringing in the head,” Fatima said, avoiding her look. “We’ll get her reanimated and interrogate her. I assume you checked to make sure the diplomat’s name wasn’t on a red note?”
“Obviously.”
“And—”
“And I checked for mine,” Nyx said.
Fatima nodded, showed her teeth again. Was that supposed to be a smile? Nyx wondered if the facial scar had severed something essential in Fatima’s face. Best she remembered, Fatima knew how to smile, when it suited her. “If nothing
else, we’ll discipline her for causing a public disturbance. You should come up to file a report.”
“Why the fuck would I file a report?”
“Records. The council loves them. Indulge me.” Fatima hesitated a moment, then, “What happened in Chenja was a misunderstanding.” Her words came out quickly, like pulling a scab on some old wound. “The Queen saw fit to clarify your purpose for being in Chenja after the fact, but you must have understood my position at the time. It’s another reason you aren’t dead. In the future, it would be… prudent if you informed us of your private notes. It ensures that our interests are aligned.”
So, Nyx thought, it had bothered Fatima that she tortured her back in Chenja. That was something.
“The Queen told you Rasheeda was working both sides back then?” Nyx asked.
“No note was put out on Rasheeda. She was reported dead six years ago. I assumed you’d killed her.”
“I did, but I never burned the head,” Nyx said. “I guess somebody could have had her reanimated within the thirty-hour window.” Tended to happen, with rogue bel dames.
“You, of all people, should know better,” Fatima said. “As it is here, there have been some changes.”
“Like you getting elected?”
They were only an arm’s length apart now. They could have reached out and strangled each other. Nyx thought about that for a while. “How many council members are rogue, now?” Nyx asked.
Fatima showed her teeth again in her half smile/half grimace. “Bel dames don’t go rogue.”
“Like Rasheeda didn’t go rogue? Or this Ara girl? You remember who I am?”
“I remember. Which is why you should come upstairs and file that report.”
Nyx could have filed a report in the office. Fatima didn’t invite folks up into Bloodmount proper for paperwork. All told, Nyx was idly curious about why Fatima wanted to pull her away privately. She could kill her easily and legally enough here.
Nyx shrugged. “Your time.”
Fatima’s mouth twitched.
Nyx followed Fatima back into the courtyard. The two bel dames posted outside the door took up the rear. She was struck by how young they looked. Neither was a day over twenty, but they carried themselves with the assurance of bel dames—the cool expressions, squared shoulders. She noted that the pistols at their hips were the new kind—those organic hybrids with green glowing barrels.
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