The entrance to the city was worse.
Up close, the filter was a shimmering curtain. They pulled up at the bakkie barn outside the main entrance, the one opposite where the train pulled up, and it was teeming with dark figures. Asleep? Some of them. A few boys stirred and offered open hands. Others padded after the bakkie, pulling tattered coverings from baskets of bread or saffron or locusts for trade or sale. The cry and stink and closeness of the men made Nyx think of the front, and her nostrils were suddenly filled with the smell of lavender. She coughed.
The patrol alighted from the caravan and took up an immediate defensive posture around Nyx and Mercia. Around them, the horde of boys stared back.
“How bad is it inside?” Nyx asked the patrol leader.
“It’s been worse,” she said. “First few weeks we thought they were going to riot. Once they coded the filter to keep boys out, though, it settled down. Some.”
There were more enlisted women posted immediately outside the city’s filter, and some boys too, clad in full combat gear more appropriate to the front—shiny, body-hugging organic slicks, acid sprayers, fully automatic contagion guns, polished boots, and machetes. They held the line in groups of three and five, small but intimidating squads that gave Nyx the impression that there was some ravaging Chenjan horde waiting outside the gates, not a rag-tag stir of discharged Nasheenian boys.
The squad ushered them to the edge of the filter. Nyx slid through. Her skin prickled. The dog-leather thong on her left wrist crackled and smoked. Sand fleas turned to gray dust and dropped off her flesh.
They waited a few minutes for another bakkie, this one armed by a smaller patrol of three women.
“We’ll be going to the diplomatic residences on the south side of the city,” Mercia said, “in Nafisa Square.”
“Thought all the dips were living in Mushtallah,” Nyx said to Mercia as they waited. “You have places for them out here?” She had assumed Mercia was just renting a place near Fatima’s.
“The bel dames made them,” she said. “They purchased some of the old Family houses.”
“How’d the Families feel about that?”
“They bought them legally. I’m not aware of any political motive.”
Nyx doubted that.
“How about that ship in the sky? You know anything about that?”
“The aliens? No more than what I hear on the radio. They’ve come to parley with the Queen of Nasheen. What about, I’ve no idea. They have been here before, though. Have you heard of New Kinaan?”
Nyx’s chest tightened. “Sure have,” she said. She stared up at the light, and wondered just what it was Fatima had in store for her this time.
The new driver took them through a long, circuitous route across the darkened city. Inside the filter, the streets of Amtullah were paved in smooth, colored stones. It was quiet. Nyx had expected a young, drunk crowd of arty types or spoiled kids, but aside from the occasional creeper or order keeper patrol, there was nothing.
“You put in a curfew?” Nyx asked.
“Six weeks ago,” the driver said. “Had a lot of trouble with the boys who were let in early, after the ceasefire. Lots of rioting. Looting. There were too many to lock up all at once. It’s been quieter, last few weeks.”
They came to a ten-foot wall marking the border between the city proper and the private residences beyond. Even from this distance, Nyx could see how large the residences were, all of them carved neatly into the side of a hill overlooking the city. Beyond the wall, Nyx saw another filter. The guards at the gate had to code Nyx into the filter for safe passage into the district.
They drove through. The filter wasn’t nearly as sticky as the one that prevented the bugs, organics, and contagions of the rest of the world from entering Amtullah. This one just kept out the dangerous plague that was the Nasheenian underclass. Going through two tight filters in quick succession made Nyx’s skin itch.
Twisted thorn trees and hardy butterstalk hybrids with plate-sized leaves lined the roads. The compounds here were all walled. The tops of the walls were lined in hanging gardens of yellow spiderstalk, magnolia vine, amber grass, and lilac. The streets were clean as dinner plates. It put Nyx in mind of Tirhan and their blinding sidewalks and gratuitous parks. She even saw a wasp swarm patrolling a narrow alley.
“Have you been up here before?” the driver asked.
“My clients meet me on my turf. I don’t go to theirs,” Nyx said.
The driver eyed her over. “Yeah, I imagine that’s true.”
They pulled up to an amber-colored compound at the far end of the hill. Most of it was built into the hill itself, so all Nyx saw as she climbed out inside the compound wall was the main floor. But even from the assend of the place, she caught a striking view of the city.
“Your mom knows how to pick them,” Nyx said.
“I picked it,” Mercia said. “Fatima had a dozen houses to choose from.” Nyx wondered just how deep Mercia had put herself into Fatima’s pocket.
A small staff met them at the gate. The on-site magician introduced herself as Yah Rafika. The others were a half-breed servant and a housekeeper, and nobody bothered telling Nyx their names.
“This is Nyx,” Mercia told the housekeeper. “She is our guest. Please, see her in.”
The housekeeper took in Nyx’s full measure with an accusing stare. “This way,” the housekeeper said.
The house was some petty First Family’s place from back in the Caliphate days. Building into the hill helped cool the house, and so did the constantly running water pumped through the latticed walls of the compound’s interior. There was a central courtyard that everything else wrapped around, and on the side, a long, sloping yard with a ten-foot mud-brick wall topped in friendly poisoned needles.
Nyx bided her time in the living quarters downstairs. She faced a wide, tiled fireplace etched in fanciful geometric designs inlaid with gold. Most of the floor was bare stone, but there were carpets in every room—clean ones.
The housekeeper entered. “I have a meal prepared, if it would please you,” she said. “When you are clean and rested, Ambassador sa Aldred would like to see you.”
“Thanks,” Nyx said. She followed after the housekeeper and had a seat in the warm little kitchen. She asked for liquor, but the housekeeper said they had none. Mercia didn’t permit it. Nyx ate a late supper of curried locust rotis. As she ate, she watched where everybody ended up. The magician didn’t live at the house. She made nice with the housekeeper and said goodbye for the evening. When Nyx’s supper was done, the housekeeper dismissed the additional servant, as well, leaving just the housekeeper, Mercia, and the two bodyguards Mercia had brought with her to Druce still in the house.
The housekeeper led Nyx to the bathhouse downstairs to get washed up. They had clean clothes ready. She dressed. Everything was soft. Organic. Expensive.
When she was ready, the housekeeper took her upstairs. They followed a large, winding stairway made of burnished bug secretions. The housekeeper gestured to a door just across the hall, and Nyx went through the soft arch of the doorway. The bedroom was long and thin, running along the whole north side of the house. The room was dominated by a stone slab where a mattress draped in red and white held court. Mercia was unpacking her case on the bed. A giant tapestry above the bed was spun up in a dozen colors; a swirling Ras Tiegan garden surrounding a broken forest bathed in blood.
“That’s subtle, isn’t it?” Nyx said, nodding to the tapestry.
“My mother’s,” Mercia said. “I suppose she thought there wouldn’t be any Nasheenians in here. She forgot about the servants of course.”
As Nyx moved closer to her, she noted that Mercia had bathed and changed as well, even combed out her hair.
“Saw you don’t have any filters in the house. What is this, the year 1200?” Nyx said.
“I’ve never had need of it.” Mercia tucked a loose curl of dark hair behind one ear. She truly was unremarkable in nearly every way. Nyx had to admit she had a soft spot for plain folks. There was something to be said for finding beauty in the rough.
“Might be time to start,” Nyx said. “All those dead bodyguards and all.”
Mercia shrugged. “Yah Rafika has a swarm set out on patrol. It’s enough. You know Fatima will want to see you.” She went to her desk and palmed open a drawer. She removed a green envelope and passed it to Nyx. “That’s the official invitation, and her address.”
“I hope she paid you well,” Nyx said, slipping the invitation into the band of her trousers.
“I’m sorry,” Mercia said.
“I’m sure.”
“No, I am,” she said, and Nyx heard shame in her voice, like some little kid caught telling a lie.
“If you weren’t a diplomat, I’d kill you,” Nyx said.
“They said they wouldn’t hurt you. I didn’t let them follow me. We doubled back three times to make sure. I wasn’t followed.”
“You seem very sure of that.”
“You’re a bel dame. Aren’t you supposed to be able to know things like that?”
“People keep saying I’m a bel dame, but I’m not. Haven’t been in over twenty years. I’m just a woman, Mercia. And you lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie… all right, at first I lied, but I was doing a favor for the Queen.”
“In return for what?”
“It’s politics. It’s not personal.”
“Everybody says that when they’re the ones doing the shitting, not when they’re being shat on.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’ve said that already.”
Mercia flexed her fingers. Nyx wondered if there was a weapon in the case she was unpacking on the bed.
“I wanted to find you,” Mercia said. “They just gave me a good reason to do it.”
“But you found me all on your own?”
“Eshe helped.”
“You better not have mixed Eshe up in this.”
“I didn’t. When he learned I was trying to find him, he contacted me on an untraceable pattern. Well… the bel dame said it was untraceable.”
“And you found Anneke’s place the same way?”
“I didn’t use any of Fatima’s agents to find the house. Only me and Khanaya and Ayah—my bodyguards—know where the house is.”
“You’re making this a very easy interrogation.”
“Is that what it is?” Mercia’s voice was light.
Nyx realized she still didn’t get it. “You just told me that there are only three people in this country who know where Anneke and her kids are. Who know where my safe house is. Three people.”
“I don’t want—”
“Doesn’t much matter what you want, does it?” Nyx crossed to the bed in three long strides and took Mercia firmly by the chin, leaned into her. She smelled of cinnamon and cocoa butter. Her skin was incredibly soft, like some First Family kid.
“Leave me alone after this. All of us. I see you again… I hear something’s happened to them…”
“I didn’t go out there for them,” Mercia said. She raised her eyes, met Nyx’s look. “I went out there for you.”
Mercia kissed her.
Nyx wasn’t sure which of them was more surprised.
Mercia grabbed her by the collar of her vest and pulled her into the bed. Her leg slipped between Nyx’s thighs. Warmth bloomed through Nyx’s body, as if she’d been soaked in warm honey.
My God, she’s soft, Nyx thought, tangling her fingers in Mercia’s dark hair.
Mercia tugged Nyx’s vest open. Suckled her breast with her warm, wet mouth.
“Fuck,” Nyx said.
Mercia drew her head up, eyes glassy, cheeks flushed. “You’d better,” she said.
And that was the end of the interrogation.
For a time.
+
The sheets were still damp, tangled around their feet. The darkness clung to them like another lover, hot and close. Nyx watched the long rise and fall of Mercia’s chest. Gorgeous breasts. She had never seen such perfect breasts. She slid her hand up Mercia’s thigh. Mercia sighed and smiled, caught up her fingers with Nyx’s.
“That was worth going to Druce for,” Mercia murmured. The floor rumbled softly.
Nyx raised her head. Heard a pop-pop sound outside, distant. It was almost dawn.
“What is that?” Mercia asked.
Nyx pulled herself out of bed and walked naked to the window. Opened the shutters. Gazed out over Amtullah. The view from the bedroom was even more spectacular than the one from the front courtyard. Orange, yellow, green, and lavender lights blazed across the city. The filter above caught the light, reflected it back, made the world glow softly even in the deepest part of the night.
Nyx listened.
The pop-pop sound came again, closer this time. Another rumble. From the east. She turned and saw a flickering flare of fire, and a smoky haze over the lights. The floor trembled again.
Mercia padded over to the window, pulling on her robe. She took Nyx’s arm, pressed against her. Nyx wondered just how attached Mercia wanted to get. “Chenjans?”
“No,” Nyx said. “It’s coming from inside the city.”
“You think they’ve infiltrated the city?”
“No. It’s the boys.” Nyx pulled away and started getting dressed. “Stay up here. You’ll be safe in this district.”
“Where are you going?”
“It’s a good time to see Fatima. She’ll be all riled up.” Nyx holstered and stowed her weapons. It always took longer to get them back on than it did to get them off.
Mercia took a breath. “Nyx?”
“What?”
“Fatima promised me information I could use against our ruling Patron. I’ve long suspected that he has worked with Nasheen to repress our people. She said that if I went after you, she would give me that proof.”
“And you believed her?”
“It cost me nothing.”
Nyx felt her expression harden. “Didn’t it?”
Mercia pulled her robe closed. “That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it?”
“This is business, Mercia. This is all just business. You mistake it for something else, you get killed. You understand? Bodies are my business.”
Mercia raised her chin. “I understand,” she said.
“Good.”
Nyx walked to the door, looked back once. Mercia stood in the dim light of the window, robe slightly open, long, pale legs visible. Her expression was a little stricken. She’d be fine. Neither of the bodyguards had checked in on them, and they hadn’t exactly been quiet, which meant her people were used to her bringing lovers home. Nyx wondered if all the others Mercia dragged home were like her—scarred and twisted, something to gossip about back home over high tea. Going to bed with a Nasheenian was about as exciting a time as a rich dip could hope for. Not for the first time, Nyx wasn’t so sure that one of her impulsive fucks was a good idea. Especially knowing what she was about to do.