Rapture (48 page)

Her grip on the blade eased. She wanted to turn back. Go to Inaya and cry on her shoulder and confess everything. Eshe always said that a single death could change the course of the world, if it was the right one. She had known that in her heart, but refused it until she was the last of Saint Genevieve’s maids, the only one who could carry out the final judgment.

She tightened her grip.

The old man’s eye popped open.

Isabet froze. Sheer terror. For one long blink they regarded one another, the would-be assassin and the old man. And then her blade came down in his throat.

Blood rushed up. He gurgled and thrashed. Grabbed her hand. She shrieked. He held her hand there at his throat, and stared deeply into her eyes. She tried to yank herself away, but his grip was firm, even as his life ebbed out over the bed. Isabet lost her resolve, then. She fell to her knees and began to sob and pray. Blood soaked her sleeve.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. It’s the only way to stop the misborn, and what the saint has growing inside me.”

Finally, his grip began to loosen. She pulled her hand into her lap. Her arm was covered in blood nearly to the elbow, and it wet the front of her habit. She sobbed and sobbed as the body beside her went still.

“Oh God be merciful,” she said. “God forgive me.”

God could forgive anything. Surely he could forgive this. Was there any forgiveness to be had?

The body trembled.

Isabet clawed across the floor and dragged herself to her feet. She was unsteady, a little faint. She saw black spots at the edges of her vision. She wanted to retch.

“God have mercy,” she murmured. “Please, I’m sorry.”

She heard a strange sound, then. Like someone gasping. Was he still alive? Isabet stepped closer, cringing at the sight of her dagger thrust into his still oozing throat. She saw bubbles of blood around the blade, as if he were still breathing. God, would she have to strike him again? Her whole body began to tremble. She couldn’t do it again. She couldn’t.

As she watched, the bloody flesh around his throat began to shudder. Some kind of tiny… insect? Fear choked her. Was he being invaded by bugs already? Was he turning into one?

“Raine?”

Isabet looked up. Inaya stood in the doorway, hand to her mouth. “My God,” Inaya said. “What have you done?”

“He was meant for you,” Isabet said. “This was all meant for you.”

“I
know I’ve got an infiltrator on my team. If you’re it, let’s just get this done now,” Nyx said to Safiyah.

They stood just inside the roiling darkness of the magicians’ tunnels with Ahmed, the only light a faint glimmer from a glow globe Safiyah had spirited away from some inattentive trader. It was the safest place Nyx knew to talk about it, and the last place. Because the next stop was Nasheen, and she needed to know what she was facing back there.

“I am God’s hammer,” Safiyah said. “But I’ve not come for you. You’re just the bait.”

Nyx had been a lot of things, but never bait. It was kind of a letdown.

“Bait for who?” Nyx said.

“The Families want an end to the war. Your old friend Alharazad does not.”

“Fucking Alharazad,” Nyx said. Her fault, again, for not killing that scheming bel dame when she had the chance. How many could she have saved, with that one death? Eskander and Khatijah and Eshe, maybe Kage too. Who knew if Kage had made it across the desert on her own? Not to mention the Aadhyan women she killed. Or the men she shot and stabbed in Bomani. Or Mercia’s body guards. Bloody fucking.

One life. She could have taken one life, seven years ago, and spared them all of this.

My life for a thousand, the bel dame oath went, but she hadn’t sacrificed herself, had she? She’d chosen to live and eat and fuck and rebuild at the coast, the same thing she’d heckled Rhys for doing. And this is what came of it. This is what happened when bel dames went soft.

“Tell me truly,” Safiyah said. “If Alharazad was the catalyst for all this madness, where would we find her?”

“How the fuck should I know?” Nyx said. She remembered the desert, the murderous crows, hauling her team’s bodies across the sand. All that for nothing. All that because she had stayed her hand.

“I know you can find her,” Safiyah said. “I bet a great deal on it.”

“Then you’re a fucking fool.”

Safiyah sighed. “Child, where would you go if you sought to thwart the Queen’s plan of shooting the aliens out of the sky and ending the war? If you wanted to steal the aliens’ technology, and twist the bel dames against themselves, and seize power in the vacuum left behind as the Queen stepped down, the broederbond fought one another over Raine’s death, and the bel dames were implicated in that death? Where would you go? The last place anyone would look?”

“I knew the aliens were a part of this,” Nyx said. “Fuck.” She considered Safiyah’s words. As Safiyah had spoken things began to click into place, things she hadn’t been able to fucking put together because she was so caught up in smashing into Rhys again. “I’d be in Amtullah,” Nyx said. “I’d make alliances with somebody who had some power. I’d get her on my side. Then we’d open up shop in Amtullah, and wait the Queen out.”

Safiyah raised her brows. “Would you really?”

It was like some map unrolling in her brain. “That’s why Fatima moved everyone to Amtullah,” Nyx said. “She could keep an eye on the Queen, and build up her following there. Strike when the moment was right. Seize power. Make nice with our old alien friends.”

“I don’t get it,” Ahmed said. “If Fatima was in on this, why did she try and protect Raine?”

“She didn’t,” Safiyah said. “She bet your friend here would murder him. And do it as a bel dame. Then the bel dames get blamed for the death, the broederbond in an uproar, etcetera, etcetera. Someone has to fill that vacuum. Alharazad has not been a bel dame in some time. In fact, she’s well known for speaking out against the current council. You colonials really are terrible at thinking through politics. I’m surprised you didn’t pick all this up weeks ago.”

“What, we’re just going to walk up to Fatima and ask her where Alharazad is so we can kill her?” Ahmed said.

“No,” Nyx said. “I think Alharazad will come to us.”

“Why?”

“I’ll tell her we have Raine,” Nyx said.

“You should contact your little diplomatic liaison,” Safiyah said.

“You did your homework,” Nyx said. “How’d you know about Mercia?”

“I wasn’t wandering around in the desert with you for pleasure,” Safiyah said, “though I admit I had a rather enjoyable time.”

“She’ll want to know what her people are doing with Nasheenians out here,” Nyx said. “Unless she’s already in on it.”

“A possibility. But worth the risk,” Safiyah said.

“So you intend to just walk into Amtullah without any explosives or weapons or… and what? Just… talk to her?” Ahmed said. “Is this the plan? Please tell me this isn’t the plan.”

“There’s more to it,” Nyx said, “but I need to figure it out first.”

“Fucking mad,” Ahmed said.

“One condition in all this,” Nyx said to Safiyah. “You can have Alharazad, but I do what I want with Fatima. Understood?”

Safiyah shrugged. “I never developed much of a taste for politicians. The bloodletters were always far tastier.”

+

Nyx didn’t believe in martyrs, because she’d been one. It was easy to become disillusioned with something others thought she was. She knew the rot at her core. It was good to know what you were before you acted foolishly. It kept things in perspective.

The first thing Nyx did when they clawed their way back into Nasheen was buy a wad of sen from a street vendor in Amtullah. Nyx got Ahmed settled back into the storefront and had him contact Mercia. Nyx preferred an area of operations far from the bloodshed. She didn’t expect to come back from it. She gave Ahmed a list of people to call, and took care of some quick legal business, then locked it all away in a coded lockbox.

“I’m not back in two days,” she told Ahmed, “here’s the pattern for the lockbox. Take what you want and get out.”

She figured he would take it long before that, but didn’t mention it. With just one team member left, she could actually afford to pay him for the months he traveled with her.

“Anything else before you get started?” Ahmed said.

“Just one,” Nyx said. “No matter what happens, try to keep that pretty little face of yours intact.”

+

Nyx chewed sen as she and Safiyah approached Blood Hill. The bel dame novice at the gate asked their business. Nyx said, “Tell Fatima Kosan I’ve brought in Raine al Alharazad.”

The filter admitted them almost immediately. They were led to Fatima’s quarters on Blood Hill by no fewer than a dozen bel dames. Nyx thought that very complimentary.

The bel dames announced them. Nyx pushed past them before they’d finished.

And there Fatima sat behind her bel dame council desk, wearing her high council finery. Next to her, as Safiyah had promised, was Raine’s mother, and the most notorious bel dame in Nasheen, the one that nobody in the country had the stomach or the skill to bring in—Alharazad.

“Where is he?” Alharazad said.

“So you figured that he’d told me you were in on this,” Nyx said. “So you showed up to confirm I had him.”

“Obviously,” Alharazad said. “Where is he?” She spit sen on the floor. On the whole, she was much improved from the last time Nyx saw her. Her eyes were still a little bloodshot, nestled in a haggard face, but she had cleaned up quite a bit, cropped her white hair, and washed. She dressed in rather expensive maroon trousers and matching tunic with silver stitching. She had a pistol at either hip and a dagger lashed to one thigh.

Fatima set aside a ledger she had been consulting and pressed her hands to the table. An old bel dame show of respect, that—showing the person you were with that you were unarmed and come to parley in peace.

“I brought Raine home like you asked,” Nyx said.

Fatima’s eyes widened. “Not to Nasheen?”

“That’s where I was supposed to bring him, right?”

Fatima glanced to Alharazad. Alharazad shook her head. “He’s not in Nasheen,” Alharazad said.

“And what makes you think that?”

“Because we would all be dead,” Alharazad said.

+

Inaya watched as Raine’s body began to burst apart. There was something… leaking from him. Not bugs or bile or blood but… sand. Gray sand.

“What did you do?” Inaya said.

Isabet was crying. She dropped the bloody dagger, and pressed her filthy hand to her face. “I’m not Genevieve’s daughter,” she said. “I’m one of her handmaidens.”

“My G o d.”

Inaya stepped back into the doorway.

Isabet stretched her bloody hand skyward. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I am the last. Only I could do it.”

“Do what?”

“She says you’re an abomination. They infected all of us and brought us north. One of the girls refused. They had her dig her own grave with her hands, then cut off her hands and buried her there. I escaped, but they found me. They had another use for me. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. If I didn’t do this I’d be dead with the others in the desert. Eshe, I’m so s or r y.”

“Isabet, why didn’t you—”

“It’s my burden. If I didn’t kill him, what’s inside me would fester eventually. It’d kill me. I had to, Inaya. I’m sorry.”

The sand slithered from Raine’s body like a living creature. As Inaya watched, it leapt forward, adhering to Isabet’s body. The blood on her hand disappeared. Isabet began to scream. Blood appeared at her eyes, her mouth.

Inaya ran.

“Get out!” Inaya yelled. “Get out! Out, all of you!” She sprinted down the hall, crying out at the last of her people remaining in the old headquarters. As she ran, she heard more cries behind her. And then a hissing, spitting sound, growing louder and louder.

Inaya herded the cook up. She grabbed Adeliz by the arm and pushed her toward the stairs. She glanced back once. The gray sand had become a tide, multiplied. It overwhelmed one of her clerks. He screamed. It rushed into his mouth. His body seemed to burst, then disintegrate.

Inaya yelled at Adeliz to run.

They went up two flights and surged into the open air. The rain had let up. Inaya ran ahead. Her people had darted off into different directions. She stared at the rooftops. “Up!” she yelled after them. “Find high ground!”

The door behind her burst open. A rolling stir of gray sand poured out after her. She took off again, running for the church. It was the tallest building in Inoublie. Her skin prickled, then roiled, and as she ran, she simply let go and burst apart into a misty green cloud, pouring forward as fast as the wind could carry her. All around her, she saw more shifters transforming themselves into their alternate forms ahead of the gray tide.

Inaya reached the parapet of the church and found a safe place to reform. She pulled herself back together, painfully, and shook off long strings of mucus, coughing black beetles. The air was bitterly cold against her slimy, naked skin, but she ignored it, and stared, instead, at the tide of gray flowing out along the streets. With every person it devoured, it seemed to grow larger, stronger; a gray ocean come to eat the entire city.

She saw Adeliz across the street on the opposite roof, standing with two parrots and a raven. Below, those unable to flee fast enough screamed and disintegrated under the onslaught.

Inaya stared at the wave, wondering if it would ever crest. Surely it would run out of organic matter to eat? It couldn’t keep getting larger, could it? And what had Isabet meant, that this was all for her? Then she heard a terrible crackling sound, and gazed back to the factory. The sand had devoured the base of the structure, the bug secretions that had bound the base of the building together.

It didn’t just eat people. It ate everything organic. Inaya raised her head and gazed out past the filter, to the lush, wild jungle that surrounded Inoublie.

“My God,” she said, because Nyx had delivered them a plague after all.

+

“Well, you’re mistaken about that,” Nyx said. “He’s in Nasheen, and he’s very much alive.”