Infidel (30 page)

Nyx pulled off her hat. “Don’t worry about Rhys. You got yourself a virtuous man.”

“If it’s here, it’ll be upstairs,” Rhys said pointedly.
 

“Oh, you go right ahead,” Nyx said, still in Nasheenian. “I can keep Elhena company.”
 

“Elahyiah,” Rhys said. “Come upstairs, Nyx.”

Nyx grinned and winked at his wife. “Will do.”

He led Nyx up to the bedroom. Nyx hesitated under the archway. Inside, everything was clean and neat. The sheets were white, the pillows were white, the gauzy curtains surrounding the bed were white. Nyx wondered if the wife spent all her time cleaning. She must. It wasn’t as if Chenjan wives were officially employed outside the home unless driven to by dire necessity. Rhys wouldn’t want that from his little prize.
 

“So, why just the one wife?” Nyx asked as he got out a footstool and began going through boxes on top of his wardrobe. “You can afford more. Even the Tirhani Book gives you at least four, right? Khos used to talk about how great that would be.”
 

“I find one wife fully sufficient,” he said.
 

“What a rebel.”
 

He pulled a box down and brought it over to the bed. “I do love her, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Not my business.”

“No, it’s not.”
 

Rhys pulled open the box and waved his hand over another, smaller box of bug secretions inside. Something rattled. He pulled the lid off. Three sluggish beetles peered out. He stirred his fingers around in the contents, shook his head. “It’s not—” then pulled out a small rectangular casing. Inside was a beetle suspended in clear fluid.
 

“This is it,” he said. He waved his hand over the box to lock it and put it away.
 

He handed her the casing.
 

It was still warm from his hand. Nyx held it up to the light. Nothing at all remarkable about it. Green beetle in clear transmission fluid, wrapped in wiry strings of organic code. She tucked it away into her breast binding next to the one Alharazad had given her.
 

“Thanks,” she said. “Guess that’s it.”
 

“You should take this to somebody you can trust. A lot could happen between here and there.”

Nyx shrugged. “A lot can happen crossing the street.”

“I’ll take you to my transcription office. I have a com. You can translate it and have your answer today.”
 

“This is all I came for.”

“It’s not any trouble,” he said. “I’m curious to know who it was, myself. Her putting out a note on you drove me here. You remember?”

“That so?”
 

He looked away and started to the door. “Come down. I’ll tell Elahyiah I’ll be back before dark. We’ll have time to take the girls to the festival.”
 

“Your call,” Nyx said.
 

They walked downstairs. Nyx waited in the foyer while he talked to his wife in low tones. The wife raised her voice at one point, and they switched from Chenjan to Tirhani.
 

Nyx showed herself out onto the porch. As she did, she came face to face with a little girl, Chenjan-dark, with familiar eyes. Out on the sidewalk, a hunched little Ras Tiegan woman held the hand of another dark girl, smaller than the first, with braided hair.
 

The girl on the porch stared at her.
 

The Ras Tiegan woman took Nyx in with one long, penetrating look.
 

Rhys appeared then. He kissed the little girl on the porch, called her Laleh, and told the Ras Tiegan woman to go inside and help Elahyiah with the laundry.

“Yes’im,” the Ras Tiegan woman said, and Nyx had her answer about who kept the house so clean. Of course they’d have a Ras Tiegan servant. They were practically Tirhani.
 

“Your kids?” Nyx asked as the youngest pattered inside with the housekeeper.
 

“Yes.” He pulled on a hat. The day had moved into late afternoon.
 

Nyx dug around for her goggles. She’d taken to packing them, last few days. “This better not be far.”
 

“It’s near downtown. One more ride, then we’ll have some new answers to old questions. You owe me that much, at least.”
 

“I thought what I owed you was to go away.”

“That will happen soon enough,” he said.
 

They took a taxi to the transcription office, a battered little storefront tucked into a steep, narrow street. The language moved easily from Tirhani to Chenjan as they traveled, and the smell changed, the way it usually did when moving into a Chenjan district. Gravy and curry and heavy incense. They passed prayer wheels hung outside windows, bowls of milk put out for demons. Shadows were collecting along street. The day was moving fast.
   

Rhys unlocked the door. As they walked in, they passed a passive wasp swarm. It clung together, a humming nest of bodies, in a far corner. The office was small, little more than the storefront proper. It looked like he had a tiny storage area in back, curtained off. There were three writing stations, two cushions on either side of each low wooden table. Along the wall were jars of bugs, mostly locusts, and transmission fluid. The place even smelled like bugs, some subtle odor, like when you stuck your nose up close to some rotting forest floor at the coast. Thick, musty, death.
 

Rhys pulled the curtain away from the storage area. The com was there, a hulking console made of various types of scrounged metal and bug secretions. She handed over the mercenary’s transmission. Rhys inserted the rectangle into a free slot and held out his hand to her.
 

“You have the reel Alharazad gave you?”

Nyx handed it over.
 

Rhys slid it into another open slot. He stirred up the fire beetles at the bottom of the com and waved a hand over the filter. A cacophony of noise and vapors seeped from the filter. Blue and yellow mist colored the dim air.
 

“The hell?” Nyx said.
 

“It’s warming up. I haven’t used it in a while.”

Rhys played the transcription. Nyx hadn’t heard it the first time.
 

“We have a death note on mercenaries and bounty hunters accepting notes on Nikodem Jordan, an alien emissary from New Kinaan. Nikodem Jordan is to be kept alive at all costs. These aren’t pale notes. Deliver your heads to the Black Stag Beetle hotel in Punjai. Ask for Leveh.”
 

It was a pretty standard black note transmission. The Black Stag Beetle was a regular haunt for black note dealers back then. Now it was the Dire Wind cantina just outside Basra.
 

Nikodem. Nyx hadn’t heard that name since Kasbah invoked it. Hadn’t thought much about it. Some days it was just another body. Aliens bled red, just like everybody else. No ships had touched down on Umayma since Nyx sent them home with their sister’s head. She wondered how long it would be until they came scrabbling back to Umayma looking for genetic material. Maybe they’d had enough of the planet. Nyx didn’t blame them.
 

“Alharazad’s reel should have been preprogrammed,” Rhys said. “I’ll just activate it and ask it to match up the voice pattern.”
 

“Sure,” Nyx said.
 

Rhys pressed a button. A tinny-sounding belch came from the machine.
 

“How long’s it been since you used this?” Nyx said. He had never been great with a com.

“Matched pattern,” said a warm, matronly voice. A stir of red mist filtered up from the tinny speaker. “Voice pattern recognized as that of Shadha so Murshida. Run check again?”
 

Nyx folded her arms. “One of Shadha’s girls,” Fatima had said. Apparently Shadha’s girls had been running things their own way for a long time. Not terribly useful information, though she could have Suha ask around for somebody called “Leveh” now as well. If Shadha still ran with her, she’d likely be high up the food chain by now.
 

She turned to Rhys to thank him, and noted that he’d gone very still.
 

“What?” Nyx said. “You heard of her?”

“Nyx,” Rhys said softly.
 

“Yeah?”

He raised his head, and his eyes were wide, just like his daughter’s had been on the porch. “You should go.”
 

“You heard of her?”

“I did business with her last week.”

Nyx started. That was a bit of luck. “Where? What business?”
     

“Bad business,” he said.
 

“I need an address.”
 

He pulled both of the transmissions out of the com unit and pushed them across the slab toward her. “She’s selling some weapon from the red desert. Some kind of flesh-eating sand.”
 

“Selling it to who, Tirhan?”
 

“Yes.”

“No shit?”
 

“Nyx, I don’t know that this is the sort of woman you want to go up against.”
 

“What are you talking about?”

“The weapon. Nyx, this is more than cutting off a head. You cut off her head and there will be five more behind her. She had more bel dames with her.”

“I know there are rogue bel dames. It’s why I’m here.”

“It’s too big for you.”

“It’s my country, Rhys.”

“Yes, and my father is my father, but it doesn’t mean I obeyed him.”

“You’d obey your mullahs, though, huh?”

“Nyx,” he said, carefully, “there have been times… there have been times I didn’t obey
God
. I know when something is too much for me.”

“That’s because you’re a coward.”
 

“If you think your Queen is going to look out for you—”

“It’s not about that.”
 

“Then what?” he said. He ran his hands over his head. She hadn’t seen him do that in a long time. It was a nervous, familiar tic. Comforting. Come home with me, she wanted to say.
 

“Go home and tell her you couldn’t find anything,” Rhys said.

“I’m not doing this for the Queen. It’s not a note.”

He dropped his hands. “Then why?”

“You wouldn’t understand. I’m doing this for myself.”
 

“For God’s sake,
why
? You’re not up for this.”
 

“How would you know what I’m up for?”

“I just…” He was looking her over. Her body—not her face. Not her. Just the meat that had failed her.
 

“I’m not broken!” she said. She grabbed the transmissions off the com and stuffed them away. “Where did you see this Shadha?”

“Nyx…”

“Where, Rhys? I won’t ask nice again.”

“Beh Ayin,” he said. “Southeast. I met them at a hotel there. I don’t know where they stayed. Probably outside the city.”
 

“That’ll have to be enough.” She walked into the storefront proper. She didn’t stop at the door but pushed right on through into the street.
 

Rhys yelled at her from the door. “Don’t run off like a child!”
 

She turned, shouted back at him, “Says the man with the babies and bauble wife living fat and soft in the Tirhani suburbs! You got soft, old man. Coward.”

“I never said I was anything else.”

She stormed back toward him and shoved her face into his, so close she could smell the spicy Tirhani perfume on his collar.

“No,” she said, “but
I
always thought you were more.”
 

Nyx walked off down the street, heading in the direction she hoped was the Ras Tiegan quarter. She supposed it didn’t make much difference. The sun was going down. She had a lead on the rogue bel dames. She was one step closer to a bel dame title and averting civil war. Likely not in that order.
 

All she wanted to do now was get drunk.
 

24.

O
f all the people Nyx expected to be waiting for her back at the hotel, Khos Khadija wasn’t one of them. He sat at a sen-stained table near the opaqued window, playing cards with Suha. A ring of lethargic locusts sat at the center of the table. The smell of curried dog wafted up from the room below them. Nyx heard soft, shushing voices speaking muted Ras Tiegan next door.
 

“Watch out for him,” Nyx said as she walked in. “He cheated me out of a basket of scarab beetles the first time we met.”

“He says you met in a brothel,” Suha said.
 

“Where’s Eshe?”
 

The radio was on, spewing bubbly Tirhani voices and the green, misty images of some daytime romance. Both beds were unmade. The privy was ensuite, but the door was open, and the little closet-sized room was dark.