Rapture Read online

  None but her.

  Which was why they had condemned her.

  She threw the squalling child at them. The child rolled across the floor. One of the men, Abdah, reached forward and scooped the child up. They all wore traditional clothes. Billowy white thobes for the men, and creamy khameezes for the women. They wore their hair long and covered—black turbans for men, and black hijabs for women. Within the pulsing dome of the ceiling ran several lines of silver prayer script that read, “God the Creator, the subduer, the provider, the forbearer, will return for you and light your path to the stars.”

  Inside the vast chamber, her stir of white-clad Family members were strangely frail, insignificant. She had spent a week outside among the mutant colonials, and she had been reminded of just how physically powerful those ravenous people had become outside the safety of the filtered residences and purified air enjoyed by the Firsts. Her Family and all those like it had stagnated here, desperately trying to maintain the conjurers’ bloodlines and eradicate the mutations among them. But even isolation had failed, after so many millennia, and all the Families truly had left to leverage were the secrets encased in these living tombs, and the shaping power that only a few could still wield.

  “Who’s matriarch?” she asked.

  When no one stepped forward, she simply cast her gaze across the sea of faces to suss her out. She knew much about being a matriarch. She had been one herself, for a short time. A very short time.

  “I am,” one of the older women said. She moved toward her from the back of the assembly.

  She recognized her as Parvaneh Ibraheem sa Hadiyah so Mushtallah. The woman was slight at the wrists and ankles, with a delicate face so achingly beautiful that for a moment she feared she would cry. The walking corpses outside weren’t half as pretty as the ugliest First Family outcast. After her exile among the colonials, this room of ravishing, large-eyed, soft-skinned beauties was like walking among aliens.

  “We were just recently informed,” Parvaneh said. A hundred years ago, Parvaneh had commissioned the building of the Orrizo, the great monument to unnamed dead men at the center of Mushtallah. She had lost three sons to the conflict—not an undue number for a woman who bore just four children in her lifetime. As a general rule, First Families did not serve. Protecting their blood from the same massive mutations that plagued the colonials required strict breeding practices, and they had long ago exempted themselves from service. But the boys had been willful, headstrong radicals, and got blown up into so many pieces that not even a well-trained scarab army could have put them back together.

  “It appears you were informed too late,” she said to Parvaneh. “As was I when they came for me. When they shut me up into that hole.”

  “It was for your protection,” Parvaneh said.

  “No. It was for yours.” She peered at the small child again, caught up in the older man’s arms. She knew him, too—Abdah sa Shukriya so Ifshira. Her great-grandfather’s brother. It was funny how time passed so quickly when you were free, but dragged on into what felt like century upon century when your brain was clogged with poison and your identity stripped away. Sometimes she felt as if she had been gone millennia. She expected some of them to have died, or show marked aging. But no. They were the same. All of them just the same.

  A pity she was not.

  Parvaneh followed her gaze. “Let us leave here and discuss your place with us,” Parvaneh said. “We are Family.”

  “Place?” she laughed. “I have no place with you.” She pointed to the child. The child with her eyes, her chin, her face. “You already replaced me. Replaced a woman still living. Thought you could do better this time? Thought you could control her? You cannot control what you don’t understand anymore. There are no more conjurers. Haven’t been since me, and won’t be again.”

  “Child—” Parvaneh stepped forward.

  She felt the air condense. Unlike the Family members upstairs, some of these were still moderately skilled magicians, though not conjurers. True conjuring entailed far more than the rote trickery of a colonial magician. It was about more than simply directing or breeding or codifying existing flora and fauna. It was about creating something from nothing. Or, rather, creating something dynamic from an inert soup of primordial possibilities—chiefly from the organic composites of ancient wrecks like this one. That had been their purpose, after all, and it was that nostalgia for the safety and malleability of this ancient technology that kept the Families winnowing through this wreck, feeding off its brain-dead corpse.

  “It’s your turn now,” she told them. She raised her arms.

  “Hear us out, child!” Parvaneh said. “How can we aid you? Your mission? Surely you would not condemn a Family that could aid your mission. Your mission protects Family interests. They wouldn’t have called you otherwise.”

  She smiled. The grin felt lovely on her face, but the faces that gazed back at her seemed to have no appreciation for it.

  “Perhaps you can be useful in that, certainly,” she said, because if she had suggested it, of course, if she had told them outright that it was information or death, these mantids would have gone deep into stony silence. She knew them well. It was what she would have done.

  Abdah said, “You must befriend her enemies.”

  “And where can I find those?”

  Parvaneh and Abdah exchanged a glance. Parvaneh said, “Go north, across the living seal, into the red desert. You still have the skill to open the Abd-al-Karim that far, do you not? They have been sent to the bones of Duha Dima. You remember it?”

  “Not half as well as you do,” she said, “but enough.”

  “You will know them when you find them,” Abdah said softly. “They are just like you.”

  She half-thought to ask why it was anyone in the Families knew where to find a rogue colonial woman, but thought better of it. She wouldn’t have been freed to bring the woman in if she was somebody her Family, too, did not find dangerous to the success of their political machinations. They had bent the world too far. It was too close to breaking. Now it had to stop.

  “I hope you succeed,” Abdah said. “There is a far more important task ahead. One only you can perform.” He gazed skyward.

  “Anything else you want to tell me?” she said.

  Abdah said, “I wish it were not too late for you, child.”

  “Funny. I’m quite pleased that it’s too late for all of you.”

  She raised her arms, and brought the whole fleshy cavern down upon them.

  Only the little girl looked surprised.

  14.

  Things weren’t particularly eventful until Kage shot Eskander.

  Nyx wasn’t even sure how it happened. They had stopped both bakkies at the side of the road for mid-afternoon prayer—at Khatijah and Ahmed’s request.

  Nyx was squatting just off the road’s right shoulder, taking a piss, when she heard loud voices, a shrill cry, then a shot.

  Eskander howled.

  Nyx pulled on her trousers and leapt onto the road. Kage was standing over Eskander’s prone body, the magician’s gun in her hand. Kage’s own custom gun was still slung over her back.

  There was some babbling among the others, but Nyx didn’t give a shit about that. She reached behind her for her scattergun, ready to put Kage down. When you took on a new team, you did it knowing that not everybody would work out. Oh, sure, you hoped it was all whiskey and fucking, but she had lived too long to expect it.

  Eshe grabbed for her arm before the gun was half pulled. She started to swing at him, and he leapt back.

  “It was Eskander!” he said. “She shot first.”

  “Why the fuck does it matter who shot first?” Nyx rounded on Kage. “Put that the fuck down.”

  Kage’s face was smooth and unwavering as a water reservoir, like she was taking a stroll out in some Mushiran field trolling for grasshoppers. She neatly unloaded the magician’s gun and placed it beside Eskander, who was clutching at her gut and shrieking.r />
  “Cat bitch,” Eskander said. She hissed and kicked at the dirt.

  “I’ll put a bullet in both of you if you don’t shut the fuck up,” Nyx said.

  “They were bickering,” Ahmed said, stepping up from the other side of the bakkie. “Eskander pulled a gun on her.”

  “Catshit,” Khatijah said. “That little maggot made a threat. I’d have handled it different, but it’s not a surprise she pulled a gun.”

  “First,” Nyx said, “Why the fuck does a magician choose her own gun before calling a swarm? Second, I don’t care who pulled what first. There’s no gun-pulling on teammates. None.” Nyx glanced over at Kage. Even though Eskander was small for a Nasheenian, Kage was shorter by at least a head and weighed a good twenty kilos less. Nyx half thought to gift them both boxing gloves and send them into a ring to sort it out.

  “You do it again and we part ways,” Nyx said. “Permanently. Understood?”

  Kage nodded.

  “She said something insulting, I think,” Ahmed said.

  “You think?”

  “It was in Drucian.”

  “You’re supposed to know Drucian.”

  “All I caught was something about hunting.”

  “Eskander?”

  “She’s crazy,” Eskander said.

  Nyx squatted beside the prone magician. She jabbed a finger at the bullet wound. Eskander screeched.

  “What happened? I don’t mind letting you bleed out.”

  Khatijah moved forward to protect her little magician.

  Nyx pulled her scattergun and aimed it at Khatijah. “Hush now, kid. I’m in charge. I don’t plan on killing anyone unless I’m provoked. Eskander?”

  “It was nothing. A joke. Fucking maggots can’t take a joke.”

  “You call her that?”

  “I just said she was a baby-eater, that’s all. I call all of them that.”

  “Well, stop,” Nyx said.

  Nyx glanced up at Kage. “And you—learn to deal with people slinging shit. I don’t care if you pull a gun on somebody on your own time, but while you work for me, you only shoot people I tell you to. Understood?”

  Kage nodded again.

  Nyx stood, taking Eskander’s empty gun with her.

  “You can fix her?” Nyx asked Ahmed, nodding to Eskander’s bloody torso.

  “I… well, I’m not sure. I haven’t before.”

  “Fuck you both,” Eskander said. “It’s deadtech. I need somebody to pull the fucking bullet before it festers.”

  “Just pull out the bullet, Ahmed,” Nyx said. “She can make sure it doesn’t fester on her own. Let’s get this done and get back on the road.”

  Setting everyone into motion didn’t take long. Like most folks, they just wanted somebody to make a decision, and if nothing else, Nyx was good at that. Whether they were always the best decisions was a matter of contention.

  Ahmed and Khatijah pulled Eskander up and off the road.

  Nyx went over to the other bakkie and checked the fuel gauge. They would need to juice it up in two hours. She sat next to the bakkie and pulled out a wad of sen.

  Eshe came over, hood pulled up. “You figure them for lovers?” Eshe asked.

  She followed his gaze to Khatijah, who stood watch just outside the group huddled around her partner in deception, Eskander.

  “No. The hand gestures are the same. They use the same tired sayings, mannerisms, that sort of thing. Partners mimic, sure, but there’s some stuff you just never pick up like you did when you were a kid.”

  “Sisters? They’re too different.”

  “You never met my sister Kine,” Nyx said. “There was stuff about us that was the same. Ways people stand, say things. It comes from growing up together.”

  “Inaya says I’m like you.”

  “Inaya doesn’t know me. I’d say she’s hardly in a place to judge how like me you are.”

  “Do you think people can be different? Different from the way they learned to be?”

  Nyx peered at him. “Who are we talking about now? Those bloody-minded sisters, or you?”

  Eshe shrugged.

  “Listen,” Nyx said. “Don’t let that little honey pot tell you what you are. You make who you are. It’s for nobody else to decide. Understand? If I learned any damn fucking thing in my life, it’s that. Got it?”

  “Sure,” he said, but he was staring at the ground, not at her.

  “Good. That’s a bunch of catshit, letting people tell you who you are. Who do you want to be? Come on—who?”

  “I… don’t know.”

  “Then you better start knowing, and soon. Because until you know what you want to be, other people are just going to keep trying to make you into something useful for them.”

  “Nyx?” Ahmed said.

  Nyx started. She hated it when they snuck up on her. Made her feel old.

  “What now?”

  Ahmed wiped his bloody hands on his trousers. A swarm of red mites clustered on a brownish spot just above his knee.

  “She’s ready,” he said.

  “Can she walk?”

  “Does she need to?”

  “Teach me to agree on a magician like Eskander who can’t hold her wormy little tongue.” She stood, dusted her trousers.

  Ahmed made a strangled sound. He turned away and coughed.

  “God, don’t you get fucked on me too,” Nyx said.

  He shook his head. “I’m fine.”

  “Then let’s go have some more fun,” Nyx said, and walked toward the forward bakkie.

  “I had a trench commander tell me that once,” Ahmed said, following her, “right before a burst blew her to pieces. Cleaned her guts out of my clothes for weeks.”

  “Charming,” Nyx said. “You chat up a lot of women with that line?”

  “I… What?”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Eshe said.

  Ahmed shook his head and hung back to speak to Kage.

  Eshe walked with Nyx to the lead bakkie. “What did Suha used to say? You always did go soft as old cheese for the pretty ones?”

  “I remember it was you always getting into trouble with pretty girls. How often did I drag you out of some mad woman’s bed after too much to drink, huh? More kick than a cat in heat.”

  “Let’s just go,” Eshe said as his face began to flush.

  Nyx banged on the bakkie’s hood. “All right, folks. Let’s go rescue some guy in distress.”

  That night, they camped outside a bug juice station, huddled just outside the comforting lights of the parking area. Eshe had first watch. He counted two bakkies and a cat-pulled cart come in after dark. That was it.

  When he hit his four-hour shift, Eshe turned back to camp to tell Ahmed it was his turn. Ahmed was still passed out, one arm around the scattergun Nyx had issued him. And Nyx was nowhere to be seen.

  Eshe walked away from the edge of the parking lot and into camp. He supposed Nyx could have gone to take a piss, but it was strange he hadn’t seen her.

  He crossed to the other side of camp, the side facing the desert. He waited for his eyes to adjust. Nyx always told him trouble was more likely to come from the desert, but he had fixated on the parking area. That’s where all the traffic was.

  “Eshe.”

  He started so violently he nearly tripped over his own feet.

  Nyx sidled up next to him, as if she’d simply congealed from desert shadow. How a woman that big could manage anything like stealth, he had no idea. Maybe I’m just out of sorts, he thought. He needed some sleep. Nearly twelve days with this crew was wearing on him.

  “There’s somebody following us,” Nyx said.

  Of course there was.

  “You know who it is?”

  “No. Single person, though. Tracks came in off the road, there—” she nodded in the direction she meant. Out past the camp, it was very dark. He couldn’t tell exactly where the tracks had started. Pretty far away from the station, that was certain. Whoever it was had walked all the wa
y past them, then doubled back through the desert.

  “You know where she’s hiding?”

  “I want to try and flank her. You come with me?”

  “Let me put Ahmed on watch first. In case she has friends.”

  “Good,” Nyx said.

  Eshe went back to camp and woke Ahmed. As soon as Eshe leaned over him, he jerked awake, clutching his scattergun.

  “Your watch. I’m checking something out with Nyx. Be careful. There might be more than one.”

  Ahmed rose. Took up his gun. “Done,” he said.

  Eshe crept back to where Nyx waited behind the station.

  Nyx motioned him beside her. She pointed toward a low rise behind the station. The moons were in recession, and wispy clouds streaked the sky, so it wasn’t the best vantage.

  “You sure it’s not just some vagrant camping for the night, like us?”

  “That spot gives her full view of our camp. Not the station. Not the road. Our camp. I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  She motioned him to the right. She took the left.

  He pulled his knife.

  They crept across the desert. Eshe had learned how to walk softly back in his street days in Mushtallah. The secret was to step along the outside of your foot and roll it inward to take your weight. He had avoided some potentially nasty fights that way.

  Nyx was heavier, and less patient. She got there first.

  It was a dangerous thing to sneak up on somebody. Best case, you actually caught them by surprise, and killing and incapacitating them was fast and easy. At worst, they had already made you, and were waiting with gun drawn or blade ready.

  Eshe always expected the latter.

  He dove behind the rise a bare second behind Nyx, but she already had her arm around the woman’s throat.

  Eshe saw the woman’s pistol on the ground. She had not been caught totally unaware, then. He needed to work on his stealth. Or not sneak around with Nyx.

  Nyx shoved her gun to the woman’s head. Not even so much a woman, really. She was petite, not too much larger than Kage, and swaddled in a large burnous and too-big trousers. But it was the pistol that gave her away.