City of Miracles

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  Though he did do some prep work on a few of the crumbling floors, just in case the fight spills off into some of the other portions of the warehouse. Always pays to be careful.

  He grabs one rope, tugs on it to free it from its hiding place, and looks up. He’s fairly sure it’ll hold—he must have tied thousands of knots back in his sea days—but then, that was a very long time ago.

  As if this, he says as he begins to climb the rope, will be the stupidest thing I’m doing tonight….

  He climbs until he’s just below the second-floor window, where he pauses, listening. No voices within, no movement. He continues up.

  He pauses again below the third-floor window, listening carefully. He hears a voice, very faintly:

  “…pretty sure I heard him shout just now.” A woman, Sigrud thinks.

  “Something’s up with this client,” says a second voice—a man. “They’ve got Khadse doing some weird shit.”

  “Weird enough to frighten Khadse?”

  “Yes. That weird.”

  “Quiet,” says a third voice, softly. Another man. “We’re on duty, remember.”

  “As if anyone’s coming out to this reeking shithole,” says the woman’s voice.

  Sigrud slowly, slowly inches up a few more lengths of rope, arms quivering under the strain, and peers into the third-floor window. He can see faint illumination down a hallway, the castoff of their torches, probably. They’re close, in other words, but not too close.

  Sigrud slips into the third-floor window, hunches down behind a row of molding desks, and pulls out the shoulder-mounted, high-powered bolt-shot he hid there mere hours before.

  Most war markers and operatives these days prefer pistols and riflings, since they shoot much farther and faster—but if you’re operating in total silence, a bolt-shot is the weapon of choice, in Sigrud’s opinion. This particular bolt-shot sacrifices convenience for power, though, firing only one bolt at a time. There are some models that have clips, reloading automatically, but the reloading mechanism is extremely loud and could give away his position. He’s got a much smaller bolt-pistol hanging from his belt, which means he can get off at least two silent shots quickly.

  Leaving the question, he thinks, of what to do with the third guard. He’s caught a bolt in midair just twice in his long career, but he’s not willing to try the same with a bullet.

  He has one option: about twenty feet down the hallway is one soaking patch in the floor that he did some prep work on yesterday, using his knife to carve away at the beam below, his logging experience finally dovetailing with his operational work. He’s not sure if it will do what he needs it to do—so many variables involved—but it’s worth a shot.

  He hops over the wet patch as he proceeds down the hallway, surveying his work. If this doesn’t work out, he thinks, there’s a chance I catch a bullet in the back.

  He’ll have to take that chance. He comes to the corner, darts his head around and back.

  Three lights, three guards. All very much alert and ready.

  Sigrud plots his move. Three here. Then two more above. Then Khadse.

  He creeps around the corner and readies his high-powered bolt-shot and bolt-pistol. He aims the pistol first: its range is shorter and it’s much less accurate, so it’ll be harder to use under pressure.

  He draws a bead on the nearest guard, a Continental woman.

  He waits for her to look away, to expose her neck, waiting, waiting…

  She sniffs and glances to her right.

  Sigrud pulls the trigger.

  The shot is sure and true, the bolt hurtling through the air to bury itself right in the left side of her throat, almost punching through her neck altogether. She gags, drops her pistol and her torch, and falls to her knees.

  The guard immediately to her right—a man—jumps as he’s sprayed with blood, and stares at her. “What the fuck!” he cries. “What the fuck!” He hesitates, torn between going to help her and determining where the attack came from.

  Sigrud has already lifted the high-powered bolt-shot. He takes his time. It feels like forever, but it’s probably only four seconds or so, maybe less.

  He aims carefully, then fires.

  This bolt is slightly high: it hits the second guard right in the mouth, punching through his front teeth and his lower jaw, maybe lethally penetrating his throat. Sigrud doesn’t stop to confirm the kill: he rises and runs back down the hallway.

  The third guard cries, “Hey! Hey!” and fires. The shots are wild and late—Sigrud’s already rounded the corner, and the shots thump into the soaking walls behind him. He leaps over the wet patch on the floor, dodges through the molding desks, and hunkers down, reloading his bolt-shots and listening carefully.

  There’s quiet for a long time—perhaps the guard’s an experienced operative. Sigrud holds his breath.

  Then there’s a loud creaking, a tremendous snap, and a piercing, horrified shriek, which fades rapidly. Then, faintly, a crash from two floors below. Then silence.

  Sigrud grins wickedly. It is always so nice, he thinks, when things come together.

  He hops out the window, grabs the rope, and starts up to the fourth floor.

  Khadse draws his pistol and motions to his two teammates to take up positions around the top of the stairs. There’s someone down there, and from the crash and screams and the silence he’s hearing, it sounds like the whole damn rest of his team is disabled.

  He grimaces, thinking, How many out there? Five? Ten? How did they follow us? How did they know? He’s not looking forward to the idea of battling his way out of here with just two of his crew left.

  Zdenic looks to him. “What’s the move?”

  Khadse holds a finger to his lips. They’re likely trapped up here, if their attackers have brought a full team. The best option would be to find an alternate way out of the fourth floor—but Khadse’s made damned sure there isn’t another way. Which leaves one option.

  “Hunker down,” whispers Khadse. “Make them move first.”

  “We’re stuck up here like lobsters in a trap!” says Alzbeta, panicking.

  “Keep your head!” snaps Khadse. “We’re not like lobsters in a trap, because we’re armed, and they’ve got to come charging up those stairs! Take up defensive positions. Now.”

  They begin moving some of the rotting office furniture around the stairs down, forming crude fortifications that might or might not stop a bullet. Then they hide, and wait.

  And wait.

  Khadse feels sweat running down his temples. He hasn’t been forced into a situation like this in years. My whole team taken apart in fifteen minutes…Why aren’t they attacking? Why aren’t they…

  Then there’s a noise, one Khadse hasn’t heard in over a decade or two: the sound of a bolt thudding into human flesh.

  He jumps slightly as Zdenic slumps over, having seemingly sprouted a shaft of metal right where his skull meets his neck. He falls to the ground, shuddering and quaking.

  “What!” cries Alzbeta. She wheels around, looking for the attacker.

  But Khadse’s already figured out the location of their shooter, and is diving away.

  “They’re behind us!” he snarls. “How the hells did they get behind us?”

  Another click, another hiss as the bolt flies through the air. Then Alzbeta jumps like she’s just had an especially brilliant idea and crumples to the ground, a nine-inch bolt sticking out from just above her clavicle.

  A good shot, thinks Khadse, terrified. No, a great shot. But how the hells did they get up here?

  Khadse leaps up and darts across the hallway, popping off two rounds as covering fire. Then he sees a form sprinting down the hallway, away from him—a big form.

  He chases them down the hallway, then turns the corner again to see his assailant sprint through a line of tables toward an open window.

  And then they…jump.

  Khadse is so surprised he nearly comes to a halt. “What the hells,” he whispers.

 
But the figure appears to hang in midair, suspended in the night sky, before slipping down.

  And Khadse immediately understands what all this is. He knows this, of course he knows this.

  He comes to the window—where, as he expected, a set of ropes have been carefully tied up—and aims down just as the figure slips into the third-floor windows below. “Fuckers!” snarls Khadse. “You’re Ministry, aren’t you, you’re Ministry!” He lifts up his pant leg, pulls out the knife he has holstered there, and slashes the ropes, letting them fall.

  Cursing, Khadse holsters his knife and sprints back to the stairs down. I know that goddamn rope trick, he thinks. It’s textbook! Exactly what a Ministry operative does when badly outnumbered. Prep the environment against your opponents, then winnow them out, one by one.

  He leaps over the barricade, rushes down the stairs, intending to intercept them, catch them before they can prepare any other tricks. There’s just one of them…One, or maybe two.

  He wheels around the corner. Then his hand holding the pistol—his right—lights up with pain.

  Khadse cries out and tries to hold on to the pistol, but it falls to the floor. His right hand now feels curiously heavy, and it takes him a moment to realize there’s a ten-inch knife lodged in its back, severing many of the tendons there.

  He rips out the knife with his left hand, growling with pain. He finds the knife is familiar: the blade is black, the handle ornate, like some kind of royal heirloom.

  He recognizes it.

  “Harkvaldsson,” he spits, furious.

  A tall figure steps out of the shadows, dressed in black. They pull off their cloth mask, revealing a face Khadse hasn’t seen in years—a dour, Dreyling face, one eye dim and dull.

  “Well, you’ve certainly aged well,” spits Khadse, grasping his bleeding hand. “I’d hoped the world had the good sense to shit your rotten Dreyling self into oblivion.” He leans closer to the pistol on the floor.

  “No,” says Sigrud. He raises his right hand, which is holding a pistol. “And drop the knife.”

  Khadse, still growling with fury and pain, complies. “Taking me alive? Taking me in for killing your filthy whore Komayd? Is that it?”

  Sigrud’s face is impassive, indifferent. Khadse had always hated that about him back during their Ministry days.

  He tosses a pair of handcuffs at Khadse’s feet. “Put those on.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Sigrud sighs with an air of bored politeness, as if waiting for someone to make a play in a game of cards.

  “Fine,” mutters Khadse. He crouches and, groaning as he does so, clips the handcuffs over his bleeding hands.

  “Walk,” says Sigrud. “Down the stairs. And I know you, Khadse. One move and I shoot.”

  “Yes, but not to kill,” says Khadse, laughing savagely. “If you wanted me dead, you would have done so.”

  Sigrud says nothing.

  “Your conversational skills,” says Khadse, turning to the stairs, “have not improved.”

  Khadse walks down the stairs, thinking rapidly. He watches over his shoulder as Sigrud pauses to pick up his knife, pistol still trained on Khadse’s back.

  “You’re not here on real Ministry work, are you, Harkvaldsson?” asks Khadse.

  Sigrud is silent.

  “If you were,” says Khadse, “you’d be here with a team. A whole army. But you’re not, are you? You’re all on your lonesome.”

  Still silence.

  “And you want to get me out of here,” says Khadse, “to some secondary location, because you know the rest of my crew will come here to look for me.”

  Still silence. Khadse surveys the terrain ahead, the shifting shadows, uneven stairs, the concrete pillars.

  “Are your skills still top-notch, Harkvaldsson?” says Khadse. “You’ve been out of circulation for what, ten years? My, my. How many traces did you leave behind? Someone will find me or you, surely…”

  “If they have not found you,” says Sigrud, “after killing Shara—then odds are they won’t have networks wide enough to find me.”

  “Are you so sure it’s the networks?” asks Khadse softly. “Are you so sure you aren’t wading into the affairs of much, much bigger players than the Ministry?”

  Khadse can feel it: the faintest flicker of uncertainty in Sigrud’s bearing as he considers the implications of this.

  In that one split second Khadse jumps forward, plants his feet on a concrete pillar, and shoves himself backward, hard.

  He wasn’t sure it’d be far enough—Sigrud was wise enough to keep his distance—but he just barely makes it, the top of his head crashing into Sigrud’s belly. The pistol goes off just above Khadse’s head, the harsh snap deafening him, but Khadse’s already scrambling forward, pulling out his hidden knife from the sheath at his leg.

  But Sigrud is faster: he raises the pistol, and fires.

  Khadse cries out. He feels an immense warmth bloom in his right shoulder. He tries to gauge the damage done, grabbing awkwardly at his arm with his chained hands.

  Yet there’s no blood. Then he notices that—strangely—there’s no pain, nor any shock. And as someone who’s been shot before, Khadse knows he should be feeling these things.

  Khadse and Sigrud both look at his right shoulder.

  To their utter confusion, the bullet is hovering in the air about a half inch from the surface of Khadse’s coat, just above where he’s clutching his bicep. It’s rotating very slightly, like a record in a phonograph, a slow, dreamy rotation.

  Then, as if suddenly aware of their gaze, the bullet drops to the ground with a soft clink.

  “What the fuck,” says Khadse, bewildered and elated.

  Sigrud fires again. Khadse flinches.

  Again, a heat in his chest. Again, the bullet hangs in the air just before the surface of his coat—this time right above Khadse’s heart—before falling away.

  Khadse and Sigrud stare at each other, unsure exactly how to handle this development.

  So that’s what this coat does, thinks Khadse. Why didn’t the bastard tell me that?

  He grins at Sigrud and springs, stabbing forward with the knife.

  Sigrud leaps back and avoids the blade, but he’s too slow: Khadse manages to catch the pistol with his handcuffs’ chain and rip it out of his grasp. Then Khadse’s on him, slashing in, down, up. Sigrud ducks one stab, then another, then he rolls away and pulls out his own knife. Khadse, cackling, feints to the left, then the right. Sigrud draws back, unsure what other miraculous items Khadse has on his person.

  “Bit off more than you can chew, eh?” says Khadse, laughing.

  The two men circle each other, trying to determine which one will give ground first. Khadse jukes forward, then springs wide and almost slices open Sigrud’s shoulder. Sigrud ducks, thrusts his blade up and around—a clever move, one Khadse wasn’t expecting—but the point of his black knife bounces harmlessly off the back of Khadse’s coat, as if the fabric were made of thick rubber.

  Khadse rolls forward, laughing, delighted with this turn of events. He presses his full advantage, slashing in, down, to the side.

  Sigrud makes an unwise play, trying to strike Khadse’s head—the only exposed area he can attack anymore—but Khadse ducks away and rakes his blade across Sigrud’s arm, slashing it open. Sigrud roars in pain, falls back, and sprints down the hallway.

  Khadse, laughing, follows. He had no idea he’d been so empowered with such protections. If he’d known this damned coat made him indestructible, he’d have killed Komayd’s guards and gutted the woman with his bare hands.

  Sigrud’s faster than he expected, fast for a big man, running ahead into the warrens of the old warehouse. Sigrud turns down a set of narrow stairs, and Khadse speeds up, trying to keep pace, intent on putting his knife into the big Dreyling’s neck one way or another.

  As he crosses the last step he feels something strange at his ankle. A resistance, somewhat, as if he caught his pant leg on something…

&nbs
p; His eyes widen. A tripwire?

  Then a crash, a tremendous bang, and everything goes white.

  The next thing Khadse knows he’s lying on the stairs, groaning. There’s a ringing in his ears, even louder than when the pistol went off next to his head. The world is white and bursting with black bubbles, and he can hardly think or move.

  A flash-bang. That bastard led me right into it….

  He can feel things, though, reverberations in the wooden stairs below him. He can feel a door open nearby, feel footsteps coming toward him. He tries to stab forward with the knife, but he’s so stunned he merely stumbles forward.

  Then there’s pain. A lot of it. Pain in his hands, forcing him to let go of the knife. A snap as someone stomps on his ankle, making him howl, though he can barely hear his own voice. Then he feels big hands grasp him, undo his handcuffs, and rip his coat off of him.

  There’s a voice in his ear, hot and full of rage: “Like you said, I need you alive.”

  Khadse is hauled to his feet, his broken ankle screaming. He feels himself being dangled above the ground, and is suddenly aware of how much larger Sigrud is than him, how much stronger. Khadse’s vision begins to coalesce, the bursting white bubbles fading, and he can see now: he can see Sigrud’s face just before his own, his weathered, scarred features twisted in pitiless glee.

  “How happy I am,” says Sigrud, pulling a fist back, “to finally get my hands on you.”

  After he’s done with him, Sigrud wipes sweat from his brow and leans up against the wall, still gasping for air. This was his first real combat in over a decade. He remembers it being a lot easier than this.

  His gaze trails over Khadse’s split lip and broken nose. Broken ankle and slashed-open hand.

  This man killed Shara, he tells himself. This man killed dozens of people just to kill Shara.

  And yet—why doesn’t he feel better about what he’s done? Why isn’t he enjoying this more?