Infidel (37 page)

Rhys twisted on the slab.
 
Yah Tayyib put a hand to Rhys’s chest to still him, murmured something.
 

Khos set Yah Tayyib’s case and carpet bag on the pedestal opposite.
 

Suha drifted back toward the door.

“How long has he had this fever?” Yah Tayyib asked.

“Since he came in,” Inaya said.

Yah Tayyib rolled up his sleeves and began to unpack his instruments from the carpet bag. “He would have died of infection in another twelve hours.”
 

“I don’t have flesh beetles here,” she said.
 

“I did not have time to get a proper match, or a proper fit, but I can get him functional,” Yah Tayyib said. He wore a long yellow bisht with a white khameez beneath, and as he brought up his hands, she saw a cicada the color of jade scurry back into the protection of the sleeve now hanging about his elbow.

“Yah Tayyib?” Rhys murmured. His eyelids flickered. He raised one of his stumps. The bandages were organic, but they were bloody. There was more blood than the bugs could eat.

“You have to find them,” Rhys said. “Yah Tayyib, my children. My wife.”

“Hush now,” Yah Tayyib said. Inaya was surprised at the tenderness in his voice.
 

The magician slipped a dagger from beneath his khameez and cut through the sleeves of Rhys’s bisht and khameez, releasing his arms. “I’m going to get you out of immediate danger, do you understand?”

“My children. My wife. There’s still time.”

“You’re going to feel a little pinch now, Rhys. When you wake up, you will be out of danger.”
 

Rhys. Inaya heard the strangeness of the name, then. Rhys wasn’t his real name, but some kind of Heidian moniker. It sounded somehow stronger in Yah Tayyib’s Nasheenian than it did with a Tirhani accent. Inaya had never thought to ask what it meant, or why he’d chosen it. If he was fleeing to Nasheen, why not choose a Nasheenian name?
 

“Elahyiah.”
 

“She’s fine, Rhys,” Inaya said. But as with all the other times she’d said it, he did not seem to hear it.
 

Yah Tayyib pulled a bug box from his carpet bag. He released a large pincher beetle. The spotted bug crawled along Rhys’s bare arm.
   

“I’ll need a basin of water,” Yah Tayyib said.
 

“I can bring you a few bulbs. We have no basin here,” Inaya said.

“That will suffice.”

“Shouldn’t we bring him to the gym? To your work room?”
 

“I don’t want to move him until he’s out of danger. And you’ll need him serviceable in the meantime. A magician with no hands is not a magician at all. What fool thing did she get you into now?”
 

But the last was not a question for Inaya. He said it to Rhys, softly, as the pincher beetle bit his naked arm.
 

“I have syringes,” Inaya said.
 

“Far too primitive. Imprecise,” Yah Tayyib said. “And far less controllable.” He waved his hand over the beetle, and it obediently crawled back into its box.
 

“Can I help?” Khos asked from the doorway.

Yah Tayyib motioned him in. “Let the big man help now, child,” he told Inaya. “I need someone strong to hold him down.”

“I’m—” she began.

“Please,” he said. “You are not built like a Nasheenian. Come now, we have little time. Tend to Elahyiah’s hurts while I restore her husband.”

Inaya went out to sit with Elahyiah.
 

Elahyiah was feverish, moaning. The light was still bad. Inaya retrieved her water bulbs and began to clean Elahyiah up while she trembled.
   

“My children,” Elahyiah murmured. “My children.”
 

Inaya did not tell her, you are lucky to have your life. Don’t beg God for more than that.
 

+

It was four hours, and full dark, before Khos emerged from the back room. Inaya had heated up some broth—enough to warm everyone’s empty bellies.
 

Suha slept in the main room, Eshe the raven tucked in the crook of her arm. He had returned after dark. Suha had cradled him and fallen immediately to sleep. He had not shifted. Shifting would mean a staggering desire for protein that they did not have, and a mess of mucus and feathers that would be difficult to clean up. Inaya was already worrying over the broth. They only had three days of supplies here now with so many to feed.
 

It was Suha’s watch, but Inaya didn’t have the heart to wake her.
 

Where would these two go now? Inaya thought. With Nyx dead, what would become of them? She imagined them walking the clean streets of Tirhan, Suha with her mashed-in face, Eshe picking up odd, dubious jobs as a messenger. They would not last long. How many notes could she and Khos spare?
 

“Did he live?” Inaya asked.
 

Khos was wiping his hands on an organic rag that ate the blood from his hands.
 

“I don’t know if he has much feeling or coordination in his fingers, but he has fingers again,” Khos said. “Not his own. But something. Yah Tayyib did the best he could.”
 

“At least it gives him a chance to rebuild.” Rebuild, she thought. Rebuild with nothing. We have
nothing
. The nothingness terrified her.
 

“Yes.” Khos looked out into the main room where Suha and Eshe slept. “No one’s on watch?”
 

“I was waiting for you.”

He nodded slowly, his eyes fixed on some far point.
 

“I don’t know where to go now,” she said. How much longer until it started to show? Until she was picking dog hair or feathers out of Tatie’s bed?
 
“Not Ras Tieg.”
 

“Let’s wait for him to come out of it. He’ll have his own ideas about what’s next.”
 

“His grief should have killed him already,” she murmured. And what she didn’t say was, I don’t know if I can take care of him, too. I don’t know if we can survive that. I don’t know if we’ll survive
this
.
 

Yah Tayyib stepped into the room. Under the dim light of the globes, he looked ancient, tired. He carried his carpet bag and case, and Inaya saw some kind of roach scuttle up underneath his long white hair. She shuddered.
 

“There are no longer signs of infection,” Yah Tayyib said. “I’ve had them all eaten or burned out, and stuffed him with enough bugs to clean a corpse.”
 

“Thank you,” Khos said.
 

Yah Tayyib gazed about the little room. She saw him note Suha and Eshe, before asking, “Where’s Nyx?”

“Dead,” Khos said.
   

Yah Tayyib tilted his head. “When?”

“Bel dames killed her last night,” Khos said. “When they did this to Rhys.”

“You seem very certain of that,” Yah Tayyib said. “Was her head cut off?”

There was a long, pregnant pause.
 

 
Khos looked at Inaya.
 

 
She didn’t want to say it, but it came out anyway: “No.”
 

“That is… odd. Where is she?”

“Where they left her. A ditch in the park,” Inaya said, and the image washed over her again: the broken bel dame, one leg twisted, face mashed in, the blood.

“I didn’t want to move the body in case someone was watching it,” Khos said. “I’m sure a patrol’s picked it up by now.”
 

“Bring her here.”
 

“Yah Tayyib,” Khos said slowly, “she’s a day dead. This isn’t a child whose heart stopped on the table.”

“She’s a bel dame,” Yah Tayyib said, and there was amusement in his haggard face. “They are difficult to kill for good reason.”

“She’s dead,” Inaya said, and it came out colder than she meant it to. “There is nothing in this world for her anymore.”

Yah Tayyib regarded her, but it was the same way he had looked at her when he came in, as if she were a particularly common insect, nothing more. “Isn’t there?” Then, to Khos. “Bring her here. I can’t be seen with you, but you can take that ugly woman out there, and the bird. Have him scout the body before you take it to make sure no one’s posted a watch. Bring her here.”

“She’s dead,” Inaya repeated. “Like Rhys’s girls. He wanted us to drag up his family from the well…”

“And if you had reached me twelve hours ago I may have been able to do something with them,” Yah Tayyib said sharply. “But what we have for Nyx is a sixty-hour window, and you have already wasted nearly fifty of those hours. If she died at thirteen the night before last, I have less than ten hours to get her heart beating.”
 

“We don’t have the tools for that here,” Khos said. “I’ve seen a magician’s work room—”

“You would be amazed what I can do with a few bugs and a bel dame,” Yah Tayyib said. “Bring her. I will need supplies from my operating theater. It won’t take more than an hour. All we need is a beating heart. Her head will do the rest.”

“We can’t afford—” Khos began.

“No, you cannot. I said nothing of payment.”

“But she tried to
kill
you,” Inaya said. That’s what they’d told her. This was the same man who tried to sell alien technology to the Chenjans and betray his own country. Who could trust this man?
 

“She has tried to kill a good many people,” Yah Tayyib said, “and succeeded in killing many more. Nyx and I have mutual enemies, however. With the bel dames and the monarchy corrupt, there are few people whose motives I know, understand, or trust. She may not be a friend, but her motives are certainly… predictable.” He took them all in again, one long look. “And to be honest, I do not know how this bunch of misfits will make it without her.”

“With her dead we have a chance,” Khos said softly. “You put her back together and you put us in danger. Our children—”
 

“We’re going to get Nyx,” Inaya said, suddenly, absurdly. Khos and Suha both stared at her.
 

Suha pushed herself to her feet and grabbed for her pistols.
 
“Let’s get the fuck going then,” she said.
 

“I may need another magician,” Yah Tayyib said. “Someone who won’t be noticed. It will be difficult enough to do it outside of a theater.”

“You know anyone?” Suha asked.
 

Yah Tayyib shook his head. “No one who is discreet. Not in Tirhan. You must know others. Others… like yourselves.”

“I know somebody,” Suha said. Eshe perched on her shoulder. “She was a magician once. She’ll work cheap. And I know where to find her.”
 

“Bring her,” Yah Tayyib said. “If you trust her.”

“Never said I trusted her. But she’s what we’ve got.”
 

Inaya knew who they faced. She knew what they could do. But she had also seen what Nyx could do, and it was far worse.
 

“Inaya—” Khos began.
 

“Don’t fight me,” she said.
 

He grimaced and walked into the dark with Suha and the raven.
 

Inaya watched after them. When they were well gone, she said, without turning, “Can you really bring her back?”

“It’s possible, if the head is intact. Not terribly probable, but possible. I’ve brought back worse cases. Under better circumstances, but worse cases.”

“Why bring her back?”

“We are not even, she and I.”

“What do you mean?”

“That is for her alone to know. God willing.”
 

But Inaya knew better.
 

God had nothing to do with it.
 

29.

R
hys woke alone.
 

The light was a dull orange haze. His body was cold and stiff, a body on a slab. He tried to move. He saw someone’s hand on the end of his arm, neatly stapled to his wrist with insect mandibles. The name of the bug flitted through his mind. Flesh roaches. Not to be mistaken for flesh beetles, which repaired skin. He could feel those too, repairing the flesh that bound his new hands to his arms.
 

They were ugly hands, not as dark as his own, short, stubby fingers. Calloused palms and fingers. Clumsy hands. A laborer’s hands.

He tried to move the fingers into a fist. Watched them twitch in response. He let his arm drop. His head swam with the twitter, click, and chatter of bugs. His blood was singing with them. Tiny blood mites to clean the contagion from his blood and scrub the foreign blood from his foreign hands, speeding recovery. The flesh beetles, too small to see, stitching his new tendons and flesh together. And blood boosts—tiny organisms that allowed his blood to transport and his body to absorb a higher quantity of glucose to feed the bugs while they repaired him. He knew them all. They were all a part of him, until he bled or shit or vomited them out when their jobs were done.