"Rhys gets us some information. I recover. Then we go get Nikodem."

"And Taite," Khos said.

"And Taite," Nyx said. Or whatever was left of him.

28.

Rhys wiped the dust from the window inside the bus with the already dusty end of his burnous. The clasp mechanism at the top of his window was broken, so hot air and red dust blew in from the road and covered him in a fine mist. He pulled his burnous over his nose and mouth. Red ants crawled along the floor. A man in a blue turban sat next to him, clinging with arthritis-knotted hands to a carpetbag. Rhys wanted to take the man's hands in his and soothe them, but healing without provocation might get a Chenjan magician killed, even if his poor skill had done any good. Chador-clad women sat three to a seat in the back of the bus, juggling luggage and children in their laps. The front was nearly empty. A few old men with wisps of gray hair and a young man just old enough to enter combat training took up a few seats.

He didn't know why the man with the turban sat next to him when there were so many empty seats, not until the man started speaking.

"I don't see many men on the roads," the old man said. "Not whole men, anyway. I sit alone in the teahouses. Most are run by widows, did you know? Have you come from the fighting?"

"No," Rhys said. "I keep a family in Dadfar."

It sounded like the truth.

"Is that so? How many sons do you have?"

"Just the one," Rhys said, and thought of his father.

"Just one? Just one? A great misfortune, many men would say. You must punish your wives or take another."

"It is not their fault alone," Rhys said. Most rural men still believed that women had some control over the s.e.x of their children and bore girls for spite. It gave them someone to blame for their misfortune. Someone besides G.o.d.

The turbaned man tapped his head and pushed up the blue turban to reveal a bald head. One-half of the visible bald skull was a pale green. His head must have been blown apart at the front. Organic fixes often replaced missing or shattered skulls.

"You see this? Too many boys in my family. I was first to the front," the man said.

"And the rest of your brothers?"

The man dropped the turban, crinkled his face. "Twenty brothers in all. Gone now. All gone. Gone to G.o.d."

"Yes," Rhys said. He thought of all the men at the front. Thought of the genocide of a gender.

Bahreha lay in a wide river valley about thirty-five kilometers west of Dadfar. The bus wound down a low rise of mountains that looked out over the wasted river plain. Rhys's father had shown him pictures of Bahreha before the first wave of bombings. Bahreha had been a desert oasis, one of the major trading centers along the border. What little trade that came down the river from Nasheen now consisted of shipments of black goods. They came in under the cover of darkness and departed in the same manner. Bahreha sold more slaves and illegal organics than it did bread, or silk, or lapis. The great palms that once shaded the river had been cut or burned, and the tremendous tiled fountains of the market and government districts were broken and dry. The green parks where children once played were now sandy brown lots infested with small dogs, feral cats, and refugees.

The bus pulled into a busy transit station packed with informal taxis, bakkies, and rickshaws. Vendors dressed in colorful but tattered clothing swarmed the bus when it arrived and pushed fried dog, hunks of bread, hard candies, and more useless items at the pa.s.sengers as they disembarked-shampoos, bath caps, costume jewelry, fake leather belts, and cheap cloth for turbans. A couple of creepers lurked at the edges of the crowds, carrying their drooping nets and collections of bugs in little wooden cages.

Rhys pushed through the heaving tide and started walking through the center of the ruined city toward the riverfront. Ten years before, he would not have dreamed of walking through these streets. His mother would have wailed at the thought. The city was full of Chenjeens-Nasheenian and Chenjan halfbreeds-but also Nasheenian refugees and Chenjan draft dodgers. They were a seething ma.s.s of the unemployed and the unemployable. The few businesses still open had security guards with muzzled cats on leashes posted out front. Those businesses that had retired from service entirely had heavy grates over the windows and wasp swarms humming just behind the barred doors. Rhys could feel them.

He walked the kilometer to the riverfront high-rises. Two decades before, the buildings had been the most sought-after property in Bahreha. Inside their now-barred courtyards, overgrown thorn bushes hid the blasted patterns of old succulent gardens.

Rhys buzzed at the gate of a wind-scoured building that needed a new coat of paint and a long visit from an exterminator. Geckos skittered in and out of crevices along the outside of the building, shielded by thorn bushes, and colonies of red ants pooled out all along the foundation.

He buzzed twice more before a tinny voice answered, "Who's there?"

Rhys hesitated. "Am I speaking to Abdul-Na.s.ser?"

There was a long pause.

"You an order keeper?"

"No. Kin."

Another pause. Then, "Come in quickly."

The gate swung open.

Rhys crossed the dead courtyard, and went up a set of wooden steps. Someone had applied new paint to the center of the steps, but neglected the edges. Under the awning at the corner of the building, down a short open corridor, was door number 316. Rhys raised his hand to the buzzer, but the door cracked open before he pressed it.

Rhys saw half a face; one dark weeping eye peering out at him. The cloying, too-sweet stink of opium wafted into the corridor, mixed with the old, heavy smell of tobacco.

"Rakhshan?" the old man said.

Rhys felt something stir at the name. No one had called him that in a long time.

"Abdul-Na.s.ser Arjoomand?"

"Hush. Peace be with you."

"And with you," Rhys said, his response automatic, like breathing.

Abdul-Na.s.ser opened the door just enough for Rhys to squeeze past him. The room was dim, and Rhys paused a moment in the door to wait for his pupils to dilate. Yellow gauze covered the windows.

He heard the door close behind him and turned to see Abdul-Na.s.ser bolting it with three heavy bars. After, Abdul-Na.s.ser swept his hands over the bars, and a stir of red beetles swarmed the edges of the doorway.

"Now we can speak privately," Abdul-Na.s.ser said, and offered his hands to Rhys. Rhys took them.

The sockets of Abdul-Na.s.ser's black eyes seemed to sag in his lined face, like an old dog's. The sleeves of his threadbare tunic were pushed up, so when Rhys took his hands he saw old and new bruises on the man's wrists and forearms.

"You're still taking venom," Rhys said.

Abdul-Na.s.ser shrugged, but he pulled away his hands and pushed down the sleeves of his tunic. "You know what I need for my work," Abdul-Na.s.ser said.

"I do," Rhys said.

The little one-room flat was a ruckus of equipment: bits of old consoles and bug pans, piles of disintegrating boxes and papers, worm-eaten books, tangles of leaking wires, and cracked bottles of organic feed and roach fluid. Bug cages and aquariums took up one wall. Dead locusts littered the floor. The dim lighting was in part due to the strain on the room's internal grid-most of the power was being rerouted to the water pumps that fed the frogs, cicadas, mark flies, turtles, tadpoles, water skimmers, and mult.i.tudes of fish in various states of living and dying that clogged the aquariums.

"How have you faired? Let me get you something," Abdul-Na.s.ser said. "Tea, something."

"Thank you," Rhys said.

Abdul-Na.s.ser wended his way around the cluttered room to the wall of the kitchen. Dishes overflowed the tiny sink. Flies circled the dirty plates. When Rhys followed after him to help with the tea, he saw something crawling in the sink-the damp, filthy plates bred maggots.

"Maybe we can just sit and talk," Rhys said.

Abdul-Na.s.ser shook his head. His hair was tucked under a turban, so Rhys did not have to look at the state of it, but Abdul-Na.s.ser did stink, as if he did not wash even for the ablution.

"No," Abdul-Na.s.ser said. "I am still civilized. We must have tea."

He clattered around, rinsed out a dirty teapot, and tried to get the fire bugs in his hot plate to stir.

In the end, the tea was lukewarm, in dirty cups, set on a tea table that had once been a com counter. There were no chairs. They sat on old cushions that stank of dogs.

"So you are a magician now," Abdul-Na.s.ser said. "Those old women took you in?"

"They did."

"No doubt they agreed with what you did."

Rhys sighed. "It was some time ago."

"Yes. I have not seen your father since."

"Have you been home?"

"A time or two."

"You've seen my sisters?"

"Yes, all married now."

"To whom?"

"Best I can recall, a local magistrate. The one who mooned over them."

"Nikou Bahman. The one my father hated."

"Yes, that man."

Rhys stared at the tea. He could not bring himself to drink it. He kept thinking of the maggots in the sink.

"He already had eight wives," Rhys said.

"Did you expect it would go differently? Your sisters, the household, were disgraced when you did not follow your father's will. G.o.d's will. Your father thought no one would take them, not even as a ninth or twelfth wife."

Rhys took a deep breath. "But they married."

"Yes."

"Good. Children?"

"All boys. You have four nephews." Abdul-Na.s.ser picked up his tea but did not drink it. He peered at Rhys. "But you did not come to me for news of your house. Not after eight years."

"No," Rhys said. He pulled the transmission canisters from his tunic pocket and set them on the table. "I need to read these. Our com man may have died for them."

Abdul-Na.s.ser set down his tea and took one of the rectangles into his hand. He rubbed it between thumb and forefinger, pressed it to his ear and shook it.

"Ah," he said. "This is expensive." He bit it. "This is government. Nasheenian."

"Can you read it?"

"Yes." Abdul-Na.s.ser stood, and went to a tangle of equipment piled at the far end of the aquarium wall. He unpacked some material, uncovered a com console, and inserted the rectangle into the panel. He tapped out a signal to the chittering bugs in the console.

Rhys got up and stood next to him.

A strong female voice bled out from the speakers; the cadence and inflection were like Nyx's, only more stilted, more educated.

"Don't tell anyone," she said, she said, "what I'm about to tell you..." "what I'm about to tell you..."

They only listened to half of the first canister.

It was enough.

"Can you get me a transcription of this?" Rhys asked with a growing sense of dread, as Nyx's dead sister talked about the end of the war, the end of Chenja. He thought of Khos and Inaya, and the alien with the big laugh.

Abdul-Na.s.ser pressed a b.u.t.ton on the console. "Put your hand here," he told Rhys, and Rhys put his hand on the faceplate next to the printer plate. He felt a soft p.r.i.c.kling on his hand.

Blank organic paper began to roll out of the console.

"It will respond only to your touch," Abdul-Na.s.ser said. "I've locked it as well, for forty-eight hours from now. It won't open until then. Keep it close until you need it. I hope you have a trustworthy employer."

Rhys stared at the paper as it came out of the machine, even as Kine's voice continued to a.s.sault him from the speakers.

"What sort of trouble have you gotten yourself into?" Abdul-Na.s.ser asked, staring at the speakers as if the voice would take on human form and step from the machine with a flaming sword.

"More than I know," Rhys said. "You'll destroy these?"

"Oh, yes. The moment it's done transcribing. You best not stay long."

"I'm sorry, Uncle," Rhys said.

"You were bound for trouble. Born under an inauspicious star, your mother said."

The printer stopped. Abdul-Na.s.ser tucked the papers into an organic case and handed them to Rhys.

"This is important," Rhys said. "I need to get this back to my employer and decide what we're going to do with it."