Fatima led her up toward the primary filter at the base of the hill. Nyx passed through it with a soft pop and hiss. She smelled something strange on the other side, and realized the filter had eaten at the hair on her arms. She touched her scalp, and found that her braids were dry and frayed.
“Turned up your filter?” Nyx asked. Her skin prickled.
Fatima half turned, continued walking. “No. Perhaps it simply doesn’t like you.”
Nyx frowned. She didn’t want to test any more filters.
Fatima turned off the paved road, toward the big stone residence where the bel dame and council offices resided.
“You come out for every call from the front desk?” Nyx said.
“I had your code flagged, as I said.” Fatima pressed her hand to the faceplate on the front door. It opened, and they stepped into the cool foyer. The bel dames continued to keep pace with them. Nyx heard the soft shush-shush of water being piped through the walls, cooling the building.
Fatima motioned to the stairs. “My office is this way.”
Nyx hesitated on the stairs. Offices for petty officials and bug pushers were downstairs. The bel dame council offices were upstairs.
“When were you actually elected?” Nyx asked.
“I joined the bel dame council last year,” Fatima said. She started up the stairs.
Nyx followed Fatima into a wide circular foyer. She saw runners on either side of the door, and lifted her head to see the ass-end of a metal portcullis hidden in the deep recesses of the ceiling. The floor was blood-red brick. The bel dame council offices ringed the foyer. All of the doors were made of metal-studded bug secretions. She noted personal filters on each door, and faceplates. At the center of the room stood a ragged bel dame with a face like a smashed melon. She already had both hands on the hilts of her pistols when Nyx and Fatima entered.
Fatima keyed Nyx into her office. Inside, there was very little furniture. A low table, some rugs, cushions to sit on, a big standing cabinet. The way the table was angled, nobody would have to sit with their back to the door. Still, Nyx took her time finding a good place to sit.
She eased herself to the floor and pushed one of the cushions behind her. The windows were filtered slits, set just above head height. Every building on the hill was built like a fortress.
“It’s quiet up here,” Nyx said.
Fatima sat across from her at the table. “We’re in the process of moving our operations,” Fatima said.
Nyx didn’t like sitting on the floor. It was one of the things she missed the least about being a bel dame. “Moving operations? Another bluff, like last time? Don’t shit me, Fatima, bel dames have operated out of Mushtallah for over a thousand years.”
Fatima shrugged. Nyx noted that she hadn’t pulled out a slide or some organic paper for a blooded statement. She wished for a cigarette, some sen, a glass of whiskey—something to do with her hands. Sitting across from Fatima this way felt like being back in bel dame school. So she did what they did in school—laid her hands flat on the table. Fatima did the same.
“We still have partial residences in Amtullah, which we had begun to establish during the last move.”
“You’re clearing the whole quarter?”
“Select training facilities will remain, as well as the reclamation office. We’ll continue taking our oaths in the tower, and Bloodmount is still sovereign. A consulate will remain.”
“A consulate? You’re not a foreign country.”
“After a fashion. It seemed only polite to keep an emissary in Mushtallah, near the Queen’s seat.”
Nyx mulled over that for a while. She watched Fatima’s dour face.
“You didn’t bring me up here for a statement,” Nyx said.
“No,” Fatima said.
Nyx’s fingers twitched. She considered stabbing Fatima with one of the poisoned needles stashed in her braids.
“I didn’t expect the rogues to come after you,” Fatima said. “But because they did, it does open some possibilities.”
“Can we talk about it over a drink?” Nyx asked.
“No,” Fatima said. “I know why the rogues want you dead. I thought about it myself, before things got… messy. You must understand the politics of bel dames using rogues to do their black work?”
“Yeah, I remember you and Rasheeda sending me to prison.”
“You weren’t rogue. Merely acting against our ethics. We don’t sell out our country on the black market. It’s dishonorable.”
“Ferrying zygotes is hardly—”
“This isn’t the time to discuss it,” Fatima said sharply. “Old days. Old arguments. I speak of today.”
Nyx thought about stabbing her with a needle again.
“Bringing in rogues is much trickier than merely disciplining a morally corrupt bel dame,” Fatima said.
“Cause then you’ve got to admit you’re dealing with a bel dame civil war?”
“Let’s not go that far.”
“What do you want, Fatima?”
Fatima’s mouth twitched. Another attempt at a smile? “The question is, what do you want, Nyx?”
Nyx shook her head. “I can’t do what you’re asking.”
“Who better?”
“Somebody who likes life a little less.”
Nyx began to rise.
“Wait.” Fatima held up her hand. “You haven’t asked what I can offer you.”
“What, money? Me and my team are doing all right. If you asked me up here for this you already know that.”
“What’s the one thing I can offer you that no one else can?”
“Prison?”
Fatima clucked her tongue. “Come now, anyone can get you that.” She got to her feet. Nyx noted her favoring her knee, again. She walked to the big cabinet behind her and pressed her hand to the faceplate. The cabinet opened. She pulled out a high-profile document case made of shiny black resin. They were fireproof, waterproof, and generally impossible to open without the right blood code. She palmed it open and pulled out a slick sheet of organic paper. She laid the paper on the table in front of Nyx and took her time sitting down again.
Nyx grabbed the paper. She couldn’t make out much. It was First Family nonsense on flowery monarchy script. Official documents like this were why she liked to keep somebody lettered on her team.
“What, you want me to wipe my ass with it?” Nyx said. She knew the bravado wouldn’t fool Fatima into thinking she understood it, but it made her feel better.
“That’s a six-year-old request from Queen Zaynab asking us to reinstate your bel dame status,” Fatima said.
Nyx felt her gut clench. “I didn’t think she bothered.”
“She did. We’ve been… processing it.”
“For six years?”
Fatima shrugged. “Rejected requests are forever rejected. Until it’s rejected, it’s still being… processed.”
Nyx really wanted a drink. “What’s your point?”
“I can make you a bel dame again.”
“If I hunt down your rogues for you,” Nyx said.
“Tell me about your life right now, Nyx.”
“I have a good fucking life.”
“Do you? Babysitting diplomats’ daughters. Hunting down First Family servants who’ve stolen their cast iron. Paying miserable wages to a venom addict and harboring an all but illiterate boy shifter—”
“Suha’s reformed, and the kid can read just fine.”
Fatima raised a brow. “My point. What happened to your honor, Nyx?”
“Like you know what that is. Fuck you.”
“Let me tell you something. I’ve worked twenty years to clean up the bel dame circle. I’ve hunted and bled a dozen petty rogues just like you. You’re the only one we didn’t reform or kill. Why is that?”
“You tell me.”
“Somebody was protecting you. I don’t know who it was, and I’m not sure I care to know. But whoever it was isn’t protecting you anymore. I can offer you protectio
n.”
“If I hunt down the rogues.”
“If you work for me.”
Nyx shook her head. “Fuck you.” She started to the door.
“Think about it. No one else is powerful enough to offer you protection anymore, Nyx. Not even the Queen.”
We’ll see about that, Nyx thought.
She pushed out into the foyer. The hulking bel dame guard was immediately at her side. Nyx jerked away reflexively.
“Hush, now, woman,” the guard barked. “I’m just escorting you out.”
Nyx left Bloodmount under escort, and walked back out through the primary filter and onto the girl-clotted street. She took a deep breath to clear her muggy head while she gnawed on Fatima’s offer. Bel dame? Why would she want that again?
Because you used to be something, she thought, and snarled. A young girl at the corner jumped at her look and shrank back, frightened. She grabbed at her companion, and ducked into the nearest doorway.
Nyx used to be young, and fiery, and strong. She used to be able to cut off a head in forty-five seconds with a dull blade. She used to be able to drive a bakkie like a demon.
She stopped at the corner to catch her breath. Her head swam. She blinked a few times. Fuck, she used to be able to cross the fucking street without gasping for air. What the fuck was she now? Some diplomat’s errand girl?
Better to be Fatima’s errand girl?
She stumbled around the block to the Montrouge and found Eshe and Suha at a corner table—the ugly weapons tech and the plain-faced kid clerk with the bent spine—gnawing on fried plantains and curried rice. She remembered meeting up with other teams. Better teams.
Don’t let her get to you, she thought. But it was too late for that. Honor. Sacrifice. Obligation. All the death she meted out used to mean something. When had it stopped meaning anything? When did it turn into worthless bloodletting, just like the front?
“How’d it go?” Suha asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Nyx said.
“I got some news you’ll like, then.”
Nyx sat next to her and ordered a whiskey straight. “Hit it,” she said.
“Just checked the bounty boards again.”
“Glad your contact’s still talking. She owe you something big?”
“Big enough to get me high-end news.”
“Tell me the name’s not mine.”
“Better. Somebody posted a bel dame note for Kasbah so Sabah.”
“The Queen’s head of security?”
“It came down half an hour after it was posted. Queen struck it, of course, but somebody in the bel dame council approved it before the Queen got wind of it.”
“Only the council can issue a note.”
Eshe whistled softly. “That’s pretty gutsy.”
“Fuck,” Nyx muttered. “That’s civil war. They’re going after the Queen.”
“The bel dames?” Eshe said. “That’s stupid.”
“Politics,” Suha said.
Nyx shook her head. She was tired. “We need to go,” she said. “This place isn’t safe.”
“When the fuck was Nasheen ever safe?” Suha said.
Nyx tried to get up, stumbled. Eshe jumped up to help her. She pushed him away. “I’m fine,” she said. “We need to go. We’re next.”
5.
On clear days, when the smog wasn’t so bad, Nyx and Eshe would drive out to one of the low hills outside Mushtallah. They would trap one end of a white burnous in the bakkie window and prop up the other end on two long poles and create their own shade. For a while they used old rifles as supports, but the sand and dirt jammed in the barrels afterward made Suha spit and mutter and bang around the hub like a woman possessed by gun-loving angels.
After they set up the shade, they watched the blue sun fire up over the black sky, its tail-end going lavender, then deep violet as the second sun—the big orange demon—overtook the horizon behind it. The cool blue dawn would turn the color of a bright bruise, then go deep scarlet, and the double dawn would bleed over the city. In the light of the cool dawn they would listen to the familiar wail of the muezzin and eat figs and naan and drink strong black buni and talk about the best ways to avoid a fight.
But this morning they weren’t up there for a picnic. Nyx and Eshe had spent the predawn hours digging up a weapons cache Nyx had buried the year before. She had some stashes in the border towns, too, but this one had some sentimental items—stuff she didn’t have room for at the storefront.
Nyx crouched in the cache hole and passed a pair of specs and a z22 carbine rifle up to Eshe.
“What do we need all these for?” Eshe asked for the third time.
Nyx waited until he reached for more, then handed him a bag of fever bursts. “Careful with those. They crack open and we’ll be snorting our brains out our nose.”
Eshe took the bag in both hands and made his way toward the bakkie. When he returned, the blue light of the first dawn touched his face. The call to prayer rolled out over the desert.
“I have to pray,” he said.
Nyx swore.
“I’ll be right back!” he insisted.
Nyx crawled out of the cache and sat at its edge. She took a long pull on a water bulb. She’d tried drinking whiskey earlier, but had retched it all up. Nothing had sat well with her since the fried plantains at lunch the day before. She’d vomited the fight night dinner she and Eshe had shared with Mercia, too.
Eshe lay prostrate on a prayer rug on the other side of the bakkie, his fingertips stretched toward the base of an old willowren tree that clawed at the sky with barren, charred branches.
She had another two hours before she was due at the gym for some conditioning. That gave her just enough time to clean up the storefront’s security. She’d been expecting bel dames to come after her for a long time. Trouble was these weren’t proper bel dames with notes for her head. These were rogues, and rogues were—at best—unpredictable. What protection could Fatima and her corrupt little circle give her?
Nyx walked over to the bakkie. She turned on her transceiver and punched in Suha’s personal code. The bug casing used for the diplomat job belonged to the diplomat. She would miss that bit of high-end tech. It was hard to come by a secure com method that didn’t require a magician to run it.
“You got me?” Nyx said.
“Yeah, I’m here. Just hitting the gym,” Suha said.
“You deliver that note to the bounty office?”
“Addressed for the Queen’s eyes only, yeah. I don’t know how you expect to get a note to the Queen that way, but yeah, I did, right when they opened.”
“She’ll answer,” Nyx said. The Queen would be just as interested in what the bel dames were up to as Nyx was. And the Queen might know why it was a bel dame who had tried to kill Nyx was running around the palace meeting diplomats. “Thanks.”
She liked to keep transceiver conversations short. Unlike a magician-bugged communication, archaic radio signals were easy to hack. She hadn’t had a com specialist on her team since the year before, when she found out the girl was selling zygotes and venom out of the storefront on fight nights. She didn’t much care what her team did in their spare time, but using Nyx’s hard-won resources to do it was one step to the left too many.
So until she replaced her com specialist or hired a hard up magician, her com was dodgy at best. The most secure way to get the Queen anything was through the bounty office. Best case, she’d get a list of recent bel dame visitors to the palace. She knew the Queen’s head of security, Kasbah, and figured her records would be meticulous. She hadn’t seen either Kasbah or the Queen in six years, not since she took their note on an alien gene pirate, but they’d remember her. Nyx was a lot of things, but forgettable wasn’t one of them.
Nyx leaned against the bakkie and watched the second sun rise. Eshe straightened and rolled up his prayer rug. He walked toward her, an awkward and gangly kid. Neither of them wore their burnouses, but in another hour the sun would get too hot to
stand.
“Why do we need—” Eshe began again.
He was stubborn. She’d give him that.
“Because I retired all my good gear three years ago. You think you need an acid rifle or perimeter mines to look after some drunk kid? You fight bel dames with bel dame weapons.”
“You really think they’re coming after us?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe we’ll go after them.”
“Suha says you’re crazy.”
“Suha’s one to talk. C’mon.”
They finished packing and loading the bakkie. Nyx pulled the bug door closed over the cache. They spread dirt and sand over the scar in the soil and headed to the bakkie.
As Nyx opened the driver’s side door, something in the air trembled. She paused.
A boom rolled over the city. The ground beneath her shook. She ducked behind the bakkie door. The rolling wave swept over them.
The world trembled, and was still.
Eshe scrambled out from behind the bakkie. Nyx poked her head over the door.
They looked over the city.
Mushtallah was the oldest city in Nasheen, built back when the only dangers to a city in the interior were wild sand cats and virulent strains of magician-tailored bugs, usually the ones coming from the Khairian wasteland in the north. The city stretched over and among seven prominent hills. The First Families lived on five of those hills, the bel dames on another. The seventh, the one nearest the center of the city sprawl, was Palace Hill, seat of the Nasheenian monarchy for the last three hundred years and the Caliphate for a thousand years before that. The city’s ancient walls had long since fallen into ruin. After the first time the city was burned out by the Chenjans, the Queen and the high council authorized the installation of an organic filter that barred all bugs and non-authorized organics from the city.
So the first thing Nyx looked for when she gazed over the city was the organic filter. Even this far out, she and Eshe were still inside the filter; it protected a refueling station just a mile west of them. Just beyond the filter was a freight rail station that unloaded the raw components of bug juice and station gear and loaded up goods destined for the front. The filter was visible as a hazy sheen along the periphery of the city.
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