City of Blades (28 page)

“Shara said that on our first few jobs,” says Sigrud, “tangling with the Divine.” He looks at her, eyebrow cocked. “Which makes me curious to hear what you are about to say.”

There's a silence. Mulaghesh holds up her hand. Sigrud, without a word, tosses her the jug. She catches it, pulls the cork out with her teeth, spits it into the fire, and takes a long pull.

She shuts her eyes as she swallows. “Grain alcohol,” she says, her voice now raspy. “That shit's not for the young.”

“That shit is often not even for seasoned Dreyling sailors,” says Sigrud, watching as she takes a second enormous swig. “This makes me think whatever you say is, ah, very bad news.”

“Yes. Yes it is.”

There's another silence.

“I'll need you to listen not as a chancellor of a foreign nation,” says Mulaghesh, “but as a former operative. And a friend.”

“So you are saying, do not use this information against you or your country.”

“Yeah, basically. Can you do that?”

He shrugs. “I have always been good at compartmentalization. And, to be frank…I am not particularly interested in the work of a chancellor.”

So she tells him. She tells him everything, from top to bottom, describing Choudhry, the murders, the mutilation of the bodies, her Divine encounter with that apparition that looked like Voortya, and her glimpse into what she now suspects was the Voortyashtani afterlife. And to her relief, he doesn't look at her like she's crazy, like she's absolutely out of her gourd. Instead he just sits there, one eye blinking slowly, as if he's just heard some rather disappointing gossip.

“So,” he says slowly when she finishes.

“So.”

“You, ah…You believe that the Voortyashtani afterlife—this City of Blades—still exists. Somehow.”

“Yes. Do…do you believe me?”

He puffs at his pipe, releasing a huge cloud of smoke. “Yes. Why wouldn't I?”

In her relief she chooses not to give him the many, many reasons why a normal person wouldn't. “I saw it, Sigrud. I
saw
it. It's hard to describe what I saw, but…it was real, and I know it was real. They're all there, all the Voortyashtanis that have lived and fought and died….It's a…a fucking
army,
Sigrud! How it's still around I don't know, but they're still out there.”

“And now, you think they are, how shall I put this…coming through?”

“That's my suspicion. Just as I was, I don't know, pulled through to them, they can maybe be pulled through to here.”

“And it's these sentinels who have committed these murders.”

“Yes,” says Mulaghesh. “A whole family cleanly massacred, then butchered, and all such perfect cuts….It's not something an ordinary person could do. But a single stroke of a sentinel's blade, they say, was able to part the trunk of an old oak as if it were but a length of straw.”

“But how are the sentinels coming through to here?”

“The strange woman spotted at the charcoal kilns,” says Mulaghesh. “That's my best guess. She must have found a way to open, I don't know, a door of some kind and let them through. And I think she's the same one who butchered that body to throw me off her trail.”

“And though you have not said so,” says Sigrud, very slowly, “it sounds like you believe this woman to be Sumitra Choudhry.”

Mulaghesh is silent. The wind slaps the windowpanes.

“Yes,” she says quietly. “Yes, it seems that way. From the drawings in her room, which seemed so insane, and the way she drew the murder scenes on her very walls…She's certainly the one person in Voortyashtan who would know the most about the Divine. And who else would want me to think Choudhry is dead besides Choudhry herself?”

“You think she is mad? That that is why she is doing this?”

“I don't know why she's doing this. But it's the most obvious answer.”

“What goal could she have in mind? Why do these things to these families?”

“I don't know what her endgame is. But it's like she's
testing
this process, figuring it out, getting better at it. She's refining her technique, whatever ritual it might be. Something with thinadeskite, though, since we found it at the first murder scene.”

“The material from the mines,” says Sigrud. “Which you said a Divinity caved in.”

“Voortya, yes. Some version or rendition of her, at least, and I
still
don't understand that one tiny fucking bit. And I don't know why the sentinels don't stick around, why they don't last, but…Maybe that's why Choudhry keeps trying. She wants to pull them all the way through and keep them here. But damned if I know why.”

Sigrud slowly sits back, absently carving at the block of cheese.

“What's your professional opinion?” asks Mulaghesh.

“My professional opinion,” says Sigrud, “is that Voortya is dead. That is known. That is undeniable. Shara said Voortya proved the
example
of what happens when a Divinity dies. None of Voortya's miracles work anymore.”

“Yet I walked into one last night.”

He scratches his eyebrow. “And how this is possible, I do not know. But…I have a troubling idea.”

“What?”

“Voortya was the Divinity of death, yes?”

“Yeah. So?”

“So, could it be possible for such a Divinity, who aided her own people in defeating death, to do the same for herself?”

“What are you saying? That I saw Voortya's
ghost
on the cliffs?”

“Is it so mad? If you saw all those souls in the City of Blades, if
they
still exist, then why not Voortya? Perhaps whatever mechanisms that allow an army of dead warriors to persist could also do the same for a god. If it is really the afterlife of these lands, then the City of Blades must hold, what, millions of souls? Tens of millions? All the dead warriors from centuries and centuries…Many times larger than any standing army in existence today. Keeping them there is no small feat.”

Mulaghesh goes still. Something in the fireplace
pops
.

She sits up, feeling the blood drain from her face. Then she slowly turns to look at Sigrud.

“What?” says Sigrud, wary.

“An army,” says Mulaghesh. “An
army,
you said. And I said it myself not too long ago.”

“Yes?”

“And what do armies do?”

“They, uh…”

Mulaghesh stands. “
That's
what this is all about. It must be! It's like what Signe said about the Voortyashtani afterlife!”

He frowns. “What does Signe know about the Voortyashtani afterlife?”

“Like…everything? You do realize she was raised here, right?” Sigrud is so disconcerted he appears not to have heard her. She ignores him and continues, “Signe said that when Voortyashtani warriors died, their souls went over the ocean to a white island, the City of Blades. She said the Voortyashtanis believed that one day all the souls would sail back over from the City of Blades…and then they'd make war upon all of creation in the Night of the Sea of Swords.”

“So?”

“So don't you see? That's what she's trying to do! Sumitra damned Choudhry is trying to trigger
the fucking Voortyashtani apocalypse
!”

“We need to tell Shara this right away,” says Mulaghesh. “Tell her that her operative hasn't just gone AWOL, she's gone fucking mad and wants to start a damned
war
! A Divine war, the
last
war!”

Sigrud shakes his head. “But there are too many unknowns here, Turyin. Imagine if we go to the Ministry, and tell Shara and her people to start investigating….She will have to make her case before the authorities, convincing them to act. But she has no case, just…guesses. Speculation. You must find more; you must find something concrete.”

“What's more concrete than
seeing
the damned City of Blades?” says Mulaghesh, frustrated.

“But
I
did not see the city in the statue yard. Nor did my daughter. And one cannot initiate a military action based purely on visions. Especially since much of the government is no longer purely under Shara's control. Many of her powers have been stripped from her in the past year.”

“So what now! What do we fucking do now! Wait for another murder?”

“I did not say that,” says Sigrud. “And I may be able to be of some use to you….Let me see your notepad. I wish to see these sketches you described.”

She hands it to him and he flips through them, examining each mad scrawl.

“What do you think?” asks Mulaghesh.

“I think,” he says quietly, “that it was not wise for my people to come here, and unearth the many things that should stay sleeping.”

“Don't let your daughter hear that.”

His face clouds over. She instantly understands that this was the wrong thing to say. She stays silent rather than fall all over herself apologizing.

The fire crackles and pops. A log gently shifts, sending up a spray of sparks. He flexes his left hand, its white glove rippling. “It still hurts, you know,” he says softly. “My hand. I thought it would go away, after Bulikov, after Kolkan. But it came back.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“Perhaps the past cannot be so easily forgotten. Tell me,” he says. “You did not ever have any children, did you?”

“Natural ones, no.” She snorts. “Had about a few thousand adopted ones, though.”

He looks at her, perplexed, then understands. “Ah. Your soldiers. I see.” He turns back to the fire, shaking his head. “I do not understand how to talk to young people.” He rethinks his statement. “Or, I suppose, to young people like her.” Another pause. “Or, perhaps, I do not know how to speak to her, specifically.”

Mulaghesh is quiet.

“She does not like me,” he says. “She does not like me coming back into her life.”

“She doesn't know you,” says Mulaghesh. “And you don't know her. But you will, if you want to.”

“Why would she
want
to know me?” he says. “How do I tell my daughter what I've seen, what I've done? How do I tell her that at times, in prison, I…I became so furious that my own blood would leap out of me, pouring out of my nose, and I would go mad with anger, a berserk rage, hurting anyone and everyone around me, even myself? Sometimes innocents. Sometimes mere bystanders. I throttled them to death with my bare hands….”

He trails off.

Mulaghesh says, “You're a different person now.”

“And so is she,” he says. “I thought I knew her. But I was foolish to think so.”

“Why?”

“Well.” He struggles with the words for a moment. “When I was a young man, and she was just a little girl, long ago, I…I used to chase her through the forest near our home. It was a game. She would hide, and I would pretend to chase her. And then she would pretend to chase me. And, later, when I was in prison…when I thought I would go mad…I held on to this very tightly, this memory of the little blond girl laughing as she ran through the forest. This tiny, perfect creature, darting among these great big trees. When the world grinds you down, you pick a handful of fires to hold close to your heart. And that was one of mine. Perhaps the brightest, the warmest. And after Bulikov, after Shara suggested I come back, and find my family and rebuild my country…I suppose I just assumed that she would remember this, too. That she would see me and remember that moment in the trees, laughing as we ran. But she does not remember. And perhaps I was foolish to think she would.” He pauses for a long time. “I have been hurt in many ways in my life, Turyin Mulaghesh. But I have never been hurt in this manner before. What should I do? What should I do with this strange young woman who does not care for me?”

“Talk to her, I suppose. Start there. And listen to her. Don't expect her to say things you want to hear, but listen to her. She's lived a life very separate from yours.”

“I have tried that. When I try to explain myself, all my words dry up.” He shakes his head. “Perhaps it would have been better for me to have died, after reclaiming my country. End on a high note, as they say. Or escape into the wilderness.”

“I never figured you as one for self-pity.”

“And I never thought I would be a father again,” says Sigrud. “Yet here I am.”

He stares into her notebook, and she suddenly realizes how intensely lonely Sigrud must feel, forced to play many roles—prince, husband, father—that feel hopelessly beyond him.

Then his eye falls on something: a seven-pointed star Mulaghesh copied in her notes. He sits up and points at it. “Wait. This…This star here. Did you copy it exactly?”

“Uh, maybe?”

“Are you
sure
?”

“I think so?”

“And it was found in Choudhry's room?”

“Yes. Why?”

He scratches his beard, anxious. “It's a…a signal, a piece of tradecraft. She's telling us what code she's going to use, what language she'll speak to us in. This star means she will be using Old Bulikov rules.”

“Uh, what? Old Bulikov rules? I never heard of those, and I was stuck there for twenty years.”

“When the Ministry first truly began its intelligence operations,” says Sigrud, “most of its work was focused in Bulikov. But they had no technology then, no signals and lights and telephones or whatnot. So they had to use much cruder means—a stroke of chalk, a pin in a wall, a carving in wood, or a splotch of paint. Things like this. It was mostly used to direct operatives to dead drops, often when someone felt they were being pursued.”

“As in, they might not survive, but they still wanted to send a message?”

“To leave behind information,” says Sigrud. “Yes.”

“Can we trust that, though? If all signs point to Choudhry as the suspect, do we really want to believe whatever it is she's trying to tell us?”