“Some assistance?” Fatima said, motioning to her bad arm.
“Gladly.” Nyx took hold of her arm and popped it back into place.
Fatima cried out and cursed. “Sit,” she barked.
“No more orders,” Nyx said. “I don’t work for you. Never did. You didn’t sit on the bel dame council till long after you stripped my title.”
Fatima winced. She settled back into her chair, favoring her injured arm. “Fine. I didn’t ask you here, Nyx, and it wasn’t my idea. I’d just as soon people forgot about you.”
“Me to o.”
Fatima pulled a wad of sen from her desk drawer, and took a pinch, offered some to Nyx. Nyx shook her head. She wasn’t stupid enough to eat or drink anything in this kill hole.
“Before I tell you the details, we have some unfinished business,” Fatima said. She reached into the desk drawer with her good hand. Nyx recognized the chittering click of an organic lock tailored to Fatima’s blood.
Fatima pulled out a piece of red organic paper. As she did, glittering silver words appeared on the page. She pushed it toward Nyx.
Nyx leaned back, as if the red paper emitted some terrible heat. Her heart beat a little faster.
“That looks… official,” Nyx said. The words were in a flowery script that was nearly impossible to read, but she didn’t need to read it. She’d seen one before.
“We finally got around to processing the Queen’s request to reinstate your bel dame status,” Fatima said.
“What, twelve years later?”
“Bel dames are not known for the efficiency of their paper pushing.”
“Why now?” Nyx said. She raised her gaze from the letter. She had been played often by her sisters. Promised much. Given nothing. “I saw the ship in the sky. Is that our friends from New Kinaan again, come to talk war and weapons and negotiate deals?”
“It has nothing to do with them. There are certainly disagreements between the Queen and the Families about what the aliens are proposing, but that is not your concern.”
“Aliens aren’t my concern? So what is?”
“This is a job bel dames need to be… involved in.”
Nyx raised a brow. “I thought the Queen wanted someone not associated with either. That’s why she called me.”
“What is best is not always…” Fatima sighed. “The Queen is set to abdicate. Those rumors are true. There will be a… different kind of government after her. You know me Nyx, and you know the bel dames. You’ve seen those men out there. We need to ensure that the bel dames become a part of whatever new government entity is built out of this mess. I need one of our own to do this.”
“But why me? You have hundreds of younger, faster women.”
“Young, fast, and stupid,” Fatima said. “And they do not know the man I need you to bring in the way you do.”
Nyx tried to parse that. She fixed her gaze on the letter again. What man did she know that needed bringing in? The first face she saw was Rhys’s—it was a face she had tried hard to forget. People said you forgot faces after a while, and maybe she had forgotten his, but the feeling she got when she thought of him was the same—a fierce protectiveness that left her with some mixture of anger and regret. But why would they want Rhys? What other man had she worked with who was still alive? Khos was off making babies in Tirhan. He wasn’t dangerous. There were a few more—men she had served with at the front, old partners, but most of those were dead now.
“Tell me his name,” Nyx said.
“Not until you agree to come back.”
Nyx stared hard at the page. It was everything she had wanted just a handful of years ago. To become an honorable bel dame again. But that was before she blew up a dozen bel dames in Tirhan. Before she let go of Rhys for the last time. Before Radeyah.
“My last day as a bel dame, you stripped my title and sent me to prison,” Nyx said. “Nobody puts bel dames in prison. You know what they do to us there? Not a great time. Then I ate dead bugs and dog shit for a year while I hauled in debtors and shoplifters. I slept in doorways and in trash heaps. Also not a great time. Everything I built since then, Fatima, I did without you and the bel dames. I’m not so sure I need you.”
Fatima’s mouth was hard. “If you knew what this job was, you would change your mind,” she said.
“There were a lot of other things you needed to take care of, Fatima. How about Alharazad? You ever take care of that, or did you fuck that up as well as you did the rest of the country?”
“You think I could get anybody to go after her? I know what I promised you, Nyx. But this is a delicate time. Have you heard some of the men talk? They make it out like we’re mindless monsters, and every lunatic that ever walked across the sand has it out for the Queen, or the diplomats, or the creepers, or the magicians, or the First Families. Now the Queen’s about to dissolve the entire monarchy—against all advice to the contrary. The people will elect a governing body, led by a minister elected by the body. It’s complicated. A bit like what the Mhorians do, only with less self-flagellation.
“Nyx, we’re so close to ending this war. But any little thing can fuck it up. Murdered Queen. Crazy bel dames. Mobs of unhappy boys… anything.”
“You really think Chenja’s going to abide by this ceasefire?”
“There’s a weapon on the table. Something we used against them that got them to talk.”
“Talk? Not retaliate?”
“They have the same weapon and blew up one of our northern outposts.”
“Let me guess. Is Yah Tayyib in the country?”
“He turned up in Mushtallah three years ago. Him and a bunch of the broederbond. It’s why I couldn’t touch him. Why?”
“Broederbond? Isn’t that the oath boys take to watch each other’s backs after they graduate from combat training?”
“Yes. They’ve… co-opted it as the name of their ridiculous men’s advocacy movement. They were just flies before, but they have numbers now. Don’t know what they find to natter on about. It’s not as if we treat them like animals the way Chenjans treat women.”
Nyx had her own opinions about that. “We’re done here, Fatima.”
Fatima scrambled up. She grabbed the paper, shoved it toward her. “Just bleed on it and you’re a bel dame again, Nyx.”
“And you can control me.”
“Nyx, if you knew who we were after—”
“Fuck you. And fuck the Queen.”
“The bel dames made you, Nyx. They can unmake you.”
Nyx started to the door, only half expecting to get a knife in her back.
“It’s Raine al Alharazad,” Fatima said. “Your old boss.”
Nyx stopped in the doorway.
“He’s head of the broederbond now. He went missing three weeks ago. Raine’s always been a disgruntled activist. You knew that. But he showed up here five years ago calling himself Hamza Habib and growing a far larger following than ever before. We think he’ll be elected to the ruling council after the Queen forms the new government, if the boys have their way.”
Nyx let out a long breath, like she’d been punched in the gut. “Raine is dead. I put a sword through him and left him to die in a ditch in Chenja. A long time ago.”
“People don’t stay dead in Nasheen,” Fatima said. “You know that better than most of us.”
“Who has him?”
Fatima sighed. “That’s the trouble, isn’t it? We don’t know, but we do have some idea where they’ve taken him. Could be bel dames, certainly. But not likely. Between your… theatrics in Tirhan and our cleanup here of the rogues, the bel dames are more united than ever before.”
“But you people sure do have a dog in the fight, don’t you?”
“Everyone does, Nyx. Anyone with a vested interest in Nasheen is about to get fucked. The Tirhanis aren’t happy. The Ras Tiegans aren’t happy. The Families aren’t happy. And no, not all of the bel dames are terribly happy either, I admit.”
“You have to have some idea of where he’s gone.”
“I thought you weren’t interested.”
“I’m not interested in working for you. But I’m interested in Raine.”
“Make no mistake, Nyxnissa. If you go after this man without bel dame authorization, you’ll receive no support from me. You become a bel dame or we do not back you. Do you really want to go up against a hundred bel dames or the most powerful families in Nasheen? Alone? I can give you an entire team if you’re one of us. Our best. Good, fast, fierce women.”
“And whoever took him will see that coming, won’t they?”
“Don’t do this alone, Nyx. I’ve seen plenty of assassinations backfire. You kill the leader of a revolution instead of bringing them home alive because you think it all just dies with them. That might work when you kill somebody who doesn’t have many followers yet, but you take a man like Raine who easily has the sympathy of two hundred thousand men, and you know what you get? A man made into a martyr. It’ll spur those men out there to start some violent regime and new, repressive government that puts bel dames and all other women back under some archaic law they carve out of the Kitab. No, we’ll have no martyrs here. Not while I’m serving on any council. He needs to come back alive. Dying is the absolute worst thing that could happen to Raine al Alharazad. You understand?”
“That’s why I let his mother live, Fatima. And look how well that turned out. Sometimes I wish I had come in here and blown up the whole bloody lot of you.”
“A proper bel dame only kills when she knows the kill will make a difference,” Fatima said. “That is where you always had trouble. You never believed in anything.”
“No. And I never pretended otherwise.”
“Let me help you with this. I can’t have you do this on your own.”
“I won’t be on my own,” Nyx said. “I have old colleagues, and you said yourself there are plenty of boys out of work.”
“And wouldn’t that be lovely?” Fatima said, biting. “Hauling along some men’s sympathizer with you?”
“Better than letting them all think it’s a bel dame job. You ever consider that giving this to a bel dame would send a message to those boys that we don’t intend to bring Raine in alive?”
Fatima frowned. “It’s more dangerous to send someone who’s not one of us.”
“I disagree,” Nyx said. “I’ve worked with a lot of boys, and they fucking hate bel dames. They hate what we do and they hate what we stand for. You want a chance at this, you let me run it my way.”
“No.”
“You’re the one who called me back,” Nyx said. “Tell me what you know.”
Fatima gritted her teeth. She proffered the paper again. “Sign it.”
“No.”
“Don’t make me play this card, Nyx.”
“I’m not going to be owned again.”
Fatima sighed. She pulled a gun from beneath her desk.
Nyx raised a brow, interested.
Fatima laid the gun on the table. “You said something to me, once. When I was torturing you, admittedly. But I’ll never forget it. You said you’d take everything from me, the way you had from Raine. My face, my license, my lover, my daughters. You know what I did after that? I joined the high council, so if I lost my bel dame license, I wouldn’t lose my livelihood. I stopped taking serious lovers, so there was no one to care about. And I happily sent my daughters off to war, so you could not take them from me. Last year I got word that the last of my children had died on the frontier, defending some mealy little outpost in Khairi.”
“That’s not my—”
“I’m not finished. Now I’m telling you the same. You will work for us this final time, Nyx, or I will take everything from you. I know where your house is. I had Mercia tailed, though the sorry little kitten thought us beat. You bleed on this page or I hunt down Anneke and her militant brats one by one and burn that place to the ground. The woman, though, I’ll save for you. Did you really think I wouldn’t find out about your little lover? Your little happy home? I’m a fucking bel dame. I can sense one of ours going soft on sight.”
Nyx stared at the gun. Then the paper. She felt as if she was watching everything from a great distance. There was a story, she knew, about bargaining with Iblis, and how the promises made meant nothing.
She had a choice. Die here, now, trying to murder Fatima. Or take the job, and see how deep this well went.
Fatima tapped the paper with the gun.
T
he cell was dirty, bare, and dark. The withered husk curled against the wall had been a person at some point in the hazy past, though it did not often recall it. Once, the world had been full of light—blazing, blistering, blaring light—like a chorus of angels burning in the sun. It had showered the world in stars, and danced on the graves of a thousand screaming points of life, and been content.
They fed it oranges in the mornings and rice and saffron at night, year upon year. The tainted food made the world even more muted, as if covered in a soft, gray shroud. Time yawned and stretched and twisted back in on itself, meaningless. The blinking syringes wielded by pleasant, humming Plague Sisters pinched and measured. Weighed and calculated. Plague Sisters only cared for the best and the worst of Nasheen’s monsters. But it did not remember which it was.
Time drifted. Ate itself.
And then, one day, they opened the door.
It garbled at them and laughed, the way it did whenever it conversed with those misty-honey illusions it summoned up for company. Memories always flickered, just there, at the edges of the gray world.
Brief images. Fighting. Blood. And that blazing, ethereal light. She… yes, she remembered a world eaten by plague and contagion and rebuilt into some other world’s image. Whether it was the world outside her cell anymore or if that world had become something else, she did not know. “Not this time,” they said, and clawed at her.
She twisted and fought. Dug fingers and teeth into flesh. But they pricked her, doped her, and her body went limp, like a fresh caught mock parrot. She tried to snarl—but that, too, had left her, so she snarled at them silently.
I had a name, once. Fear me.
I.
They dragged her into the light.
+
After a few days of detox, they lashed her to a chair in a dim, dry room. There was a large devotion mounted in a scarab carapace on the wall. No windows. Just the door. When the door opened this time, the world was not quite so gray, and she had a sense of herself. Knowledge.