Free Infidel by Kameron Hurley

about it. No one else is powerful enough to offer you protection anymore, Nyx. Not even the Queen.”
    We’ll see about that, Nyx thought.  
    She pushed out into the foyer. The hulking bel dame guard was immediately at her side. Nyx jerked away reflexively.  
    “Hush, now, woman,” the guard barked. “I’m just escorting you out.”
    Nyx left Bloodmount under escort, and walked back out through the primary filter and onto the girl-clotted street. She took a deep breath to clear her muggy head while she gnawed on Fatima’s offer. Bel dame? Why would she want that again?  
    Because you used to be something, she thought, and snarled. A young girl at the corner jumped at her look and shrank back, frightened. She grabbed at her companion, and ducked into the nearest doorway.  
    Nyx used to be young, and fiery, and strong. She used to be able to cut off a head in forty-five seconds with a dull blade. She used to be able to drive a bakkie like a demon.  
    She stopped at the corner to catch her breath. Her head swam. She blinked a few times. Fuck, she used to be able to cross the fucking street without gasping for air. What the fuck was she now? Some diplomat’s errand girl?  
    Better to be Fatima’s errand girl?  
    She stumbled around the block to the Montrouge and found Eshe and Suha at a corner table—the ugly weapons tech and the plain-faced kid clerk with the bent spine—gnawing on fried plantains and curried rice. She remembered meeting up with other teams. Better teams.  
    Don’t let her get to you, she thought. But it was too late for that. Honor. Sacrifice. Obligation. All the death she meted out used to mean something. When had it stopped meaning anything? When did it turn into worthless bloodletting, just like the front?
    “How’d it go?” Suha asked.  
    “I don’t know yet,” Nyx said.  
    “I got some news you’ll like, then.”  
    Nyx sat next to her and ordered a whiskey straight. “Hit it,” she said.  
    “Just checked the bounty boards again.”  
    “Glad your contact’s still talking. She owe you something big?”
    “Big enough to get me high-end news.”    
    “Tell me the name’s not mine.”
    “Better. Somebody posted a bel dame note for Kasbah so Sabah.”  
    “The Queen’s head of security?”
    “It came down half an hour after it was posted. Queen struck it, of course, but somebody in the bel dame council approved it before the Queen got wind of it.”  
    “Only the council can issue a note.”
    Eshe whistled softly. “That’s pretty gutsy.”  
    “Fuck,” Nyx muttered. “That’s civil war. They’re going after the Queen. ”  
    “The bel dames?” Eshe said. “That’s stupid.”  
    “Politics,” Suha said.  
    Nyx shook her head. She was tired. “We need to go,” she said. “This place isn’t safe.”
    “When the fuck was Nasheen ever safe?” Suha said.  
    Nyx tried to get up, stumbled. Eshe jumped up to help her. She pushed him away. “I’m fine,” she said. “We need to go. We’re next.”  

5.
    O n clear days, when the smog wasn’t so bad, Nyx and Eshe would drive out to one of the low hills outside Mushtallah. They would trap one end of a white burnous in the bakkie window and prop up the other end on two long poles and create their own shade. For a while they used old rifles as supports, but the sand and dirt jammed in the barrels afterward made Suha spit and mutter and bang around the hub like a woman possessed by gun-loving angels.  
    After they set up the shade, they watched the blue sun fire up over the black sky, its tail-end going lavender, then deep violet as the second sun—the big orange demon—overtook the horizon behind it. The cool blue dawn would turn the color of a bright bruise, then go deep scarlet, and the double dawn would bleed over the city. In the light of the cool dawn they would listen to the familiar wail of the muezzin and eat figs and naan and drink strong black buni and talk about the best ways to