Infidel by Kameron Hurley

Author:Kameron Hurley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, Adventure, General
ISBN: 9781597802246
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Published: 2011-10-03T04:00:00+00:00

19.

For a long minute, Nyx didn’t think he recognized her. His large, square face was hard and blank, like the face of the mountain pass they’d just trudged through. He went very still. Then something in him seemed to catch, and his gaze darted to Eshe and Suha beside her, and out again into the street, as if they brought a plague of locusts with them.

“Get in,” he said, and pressed his hand to the filter release inside the doorway. The haze of the filter popped.

Nyx took off her hat as she stepped inside. Her boots squelched on the organic flooring. Khos was a big man. She had to turn sideways to move past him into the foyer. She was oddly aware of the heat of him behind her. As a general rule, she didn’t fuck people on her team anymore. He’d been a fun but brief exception.

“I’m not looking for you,” Nyx said. “Came looking for someone else.”

Khos shut the door behind Eshe and Suha. The foyer was suddenly dim. Nyx blinked and looked into the courtyard at the center of the house. To her left, the kitchen was brighter. The house had a funny smell, like old books and leather fermented in wine.

“This is Eshe and Suha,” Nyx said, without looking back at them. She stepped into the kitchen. The floor sucked the dust and grit on the soles of her boots. A thin shouldered but broad-hipped woman stood at a massive butcher block, hands elbow-deep in pastry dough. A smear of flour powdered her already pale face. Her hair was covered, tightly bound in a blue scarf. She raised her head and met Nyx’s look. Her battle with the pastry ceased.

A boy stood next to her, one chubby hand clutching at her apron string. It was all very domestic, all very Tirhani. If they had a couple more wives bickering upstairs with the nanny and a Ras Tiegan servant out back finishing up the laundry, Nyx would have called them native.

“You breeding an army?” Nyx asked.

“Women have babies,” Inaya said, pulling her hands from the dough as nonchalantly as if Nyx showed up at her house every ninth day for fried grasshoppers and tea. “Some of us even enjoy them.”

The kid turned his attention to Nyx. He was, what, five? Six? Had to be about right. Nyx was bad at guessing how old kids were. She didn’t see a lot of them, and certainly not all sorts of ages of them together.

“This is Taite,” Inaya said. “Taite, this is a bad woman.”

Well, Nyx thought. At least nothing’s changed.

The kid turned his eyes toward Nyx, and sized her up with the dead reckoning of a six-year-old from the desert. “What did she do?”

“Question is, what haven’t I done?” Nyx said. “Taite, huh?” She grimaced. “Tell your mother she’s morbid.”

Taite. Walking and talking. She remembered the squalling brat Anneke had carried around the garret back in Chenja, the wailing little feeder always at Inaya’s breast. And here he was, a real person.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.