City of Miracles

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “Nokov? Just Nokov?”

  “Yes. Just that.” He leans forward. “You’ll die, you know. Whatever he does will be a thousand times worse than anything you’re about to do to me.”

  Sigrud furrows his brow. Never in my life, he thinks, have I heard of a Nokov—neither in the world of tradecraft or the Divine.

  Sigrud stands, unsheathes his knife, and gently lifts Khadse’s chin, exposing the thread of white scar running across his throat. He places the blade of his black knife to the scar, as if following the cutting instructions on a child’s piece of paper.

  “And you’ll deserve it,” says Khadse, staring into Sigrud’s eyes. “For all you’ve done. You deserve it too.”

  “Yes,” says Sigrud. “I know.” Then he whips the blade across Khadse’s throat.

  The splash of blood is huge and hot and wet. Sigrud steps back and watches as Khadse chokes, coughs, and gags, his chest and stomach flooded over with his own blood.

  It doesn’t take him long to die. No matter how many times he’s seen it, Sigrud is always struck by how only a few seconds separate life from death.

  How many seconds, he wonders, watching Khadse’s body quake, did it take for Shara to die?

  Khadse’s head slumps forward.

  Or Signe?

  He stops moving.

  The room is silent now except for the patter of blood. Sigrud, wiping his hands on a rag, sits down on the floor and pulls back out the list of Khadse’s targets.

  He stares at the last name on the list: Tatyana Komayd. A girl he’s seen only once in his life, and perhaps the only piece of his friend that still persists in this world.

  The pale Continental girl watches the slaughterhouse from the reeds by the canal. She slowly starts creeping up to the edge of the property, mindful of any movement in the windows. Thankfully the big man didn’t take Khadse far, just a few miles downriver. As no one watches this stretch of the river, it was easy enough for her to follow, though she’s now soaking up to her knees.

  She doesn’t know who this big man is, but she knows she doesn’t like him much. It took months of work to track down Khadse’s movements, months of work to tap into Khadse’s communications, months of work to get this close to figuring everything out. It was especially hard since Khadse often had some kind of miracles on his person, something that made him hard to see, hard to follow—yet she’d figured out how to get around them.

  And then this big, stupid man with his guns and his knife has to go in and ruin everything, swooping in at the last minute to haul Khadse off like he was a sack of damned potatoes.

  She crept in after and saw the bodies. Saw what he’d done to them. Whoever he is, she doesn’t want someone like that near her plans.

  Dawn is slowly breaking, but it does nothing to lighten her mood. She looks around at the ruins of the slaughterhouse. She doesn’t like this place. It’s ugly and decrepit, sure, but mostly it’s because she doesn’t like its past.

  And for her, the past is a thing she can see at any given moment.

  She shudders. This was once a place of tremendous death. If she’s not careful its past leaks through to her, and she glimpses giant herds of cattle or goats milling about in the fences, anxious and fretting, wondering what will happen to them. Sometimes she can hear them bleating and bellowing and screaming, smelling blood up ahead and knowing what’s coming. She can hear them now, hear them shrieking in the slaughterhouse….

  She shakes her head, banishes such sounds from her mind. She considers her options. The big man took Khadse somewhere deep within the slaughterhouse, and she’s not willing to exercise her abilities to locate him, not yet. It could put her at risk. But she must get something out of this. She can’t have watched Khadse for days and weeks for nothing.

  Then the light begins to shift. She looks around, confused. The orange rays of dawning light filtering through the slaughterhouse yards stutter, flicker, and finally fade.

  “Oh, no,” she whispers.

  She looks up. The sky is darkening directly above, black hues bleeding through the pale blue, bringing cold, glittering stars in their wake. The patch of darkness intensifies and spreads, a curious, dark dawn in the center of the sky.

  How could he have found me? How could he be here?

  Then she realizes that the patch of night in the sky is not really above her: it’s above the slaughterhouse, and presumably above the two men within.

  She realizes that, whoever the big man is and whatever he wants, he likely has no idea what’s coming for him.

  She debates what to do.

  “Fucking hells,” she mutters. Then she stands.

  Sigrud sits on the floor, thinking.

  This isn’t good. None of it’s good, of course, but some parts are worse than others.

  For starters: how did Khadse’s employer get his hands on miraculous items? All the original Divinities—he frankly can’t believe he’s having to debate this again—are very dead, except for Olvos. But most of Olvos’s miraculous items were lost when Saypur’s secret warehouse of them burned down eighteen years ago. Sigrud knows that, because he was one of the people who burned it down. So even those should be incredibly rare.

  Was there another secret storeroom of them? He scratches his chin. Or—worse—has someone found a way to make more of them? That shouldn’t be possible without Olvos’s help. At least, he thinks that’s the case. He’s well out of his league here.

  He looks back at the list of names. He wishes there were more information, especially their locations, for one. But if they had locations of these people, he thinks, odds are they would already be dead.

  He only really knows the location of one: Tatyana Komayd, whom he read had been living in Ghaladesh with Shara.

  He folds up the list again and puts it in his pocket.

  So what’s the next move? There’s one idea he’s gravitating toward, though the concept frankly terrifies him.

  He tries to think of any alternatives. Try to track down this Nokov? Ferret out any more contacts from Khadse’s associates? Start pounding pavement and looking up these names?

  He doesn’t think any of these options will bear fruit. And none are more pressing than the task before him:

  Someone is targeting Shara’s adopted daughter. And odds are no one in the Ministry knows about it.

  He needs to go to Ghaladesh. Ghaladesh, the capital of Saypur, the richest, most well-protected city in the world. The place with perhaps the most security in the civilized nations—and thus the place that he, a fugitive from Saypur’s justice, is most likely to be caught, imprisoned, tortured, and possibly—or probably—executed.

  He’s not quite sure what he’d do if he was to find Tatyana, though. Warn her, get her somewhere safe, then get out. Yet Sigrud has seen what happens to people who fall within the shadow of his life. He has no desire to allow such a thing to happen to Tatyana.

  But he must do something. It pains him to wake each day and know that he was not there when Shara needed him most. To imagine allowing the same thing to happen to her child…The idea is abominable to him.

  Then Sigrud pauses. Listens.

  There’s silence, but something’s…wrong.

  He glances over his shoulder. The room stretches out behind him, the train of oil lamps dangling from the track of hooks. He cocks his head.

  He’s pretty sure he lit nine oil lamps when he first brought Khadse here. He found a giant cupboard of them in the south end of the slaughterhouse, so he figured he’d make use of them. Yet now there are only six lit, as if the three at the far end of the room have fizzled out. But there’s no breeze in here.

  Are they burning out? That’s odd….

  He watches as the farthest lamp dies. There’s no noise, no hiss, no smoke. It’s just…gone, with only five lamps remaining. And as the lamp dies, that whole end of the room fills with impenetrable darkness.

  Then he hears footsteps. Someone is walking across the long, darkened room to him. He narrows his eye
, peers carefully, but he can’t see anything in the shadows. Whoever they are, they’re not trying to be stealthy: they’re walking with a quick, measured pace, like someone trying to make the next meeting.

  Sigrud stands, grabs his pack, and pulls out a pistol. “Who is there?” he says.

  The steps don’t slow.

  The fifth lamp dies. The wall of shadow grows closer.

  Sigrud throws his pack over his shoulder, raises the pistol, and points it down the long, thin room. “I’ll shoot,” he says.

  The steps don’t slow.

  The fourth lamp dies. The darkness grows closer.

  He gauges the position of the footsteps and pulls the trigger. The retort is incredibly loud in this confined space. The muzzle flash does nothing to illuminate the darkness. And though he’s firing into a small space, the bullet doesn’t seem to hit anything, or intimidate whoever’s out there—because the steps just keep coming.

  The third lamp dies. Just two left, hanging just above Sigrud. The wall of darkness is very close now, as are the footsteps.

  Then he sees it.

  Something penetrates the penumbra of darkness, only a dozen meters away now. But it’s…impossible.

  There at the edge of the light is a shadow, a shadow surely cast by two legs, walking toward him. But he cannot see anyone casting the shadow. There is the light from the lamp, and the shadow of a human figure walking toward him—but no actual human to project this shadow.

  “What in all hells,” says Sigrud.

  The footsteps stop. The shadow of the human figure stops advancing as well.

  Silence.

  Then a man’s voice, high and cold and brittle. It doesn’t seem to come from any one place—not from the shadow of the person before him, nor from the wall of darkness beyond—but rather it seems to be coming from all the shadows in the room, as if they were all vibrating at once, creating this…voice.

  The voice says: “He’s dead.”

  Sigrud glances over his shoulder at Khadse’s corpse. He says, “Uh.”

  “I know this one,” says the voice. More footsteps. The second lamp dies, and the shadow advances across the floor, swirling as the invisible person—whoever or whatever he is—walks around the final remaining lamp. “Khadse, wasn’t it? He was a good one.” The footsteps stop, and the shadow hangs on the floor in a position suggesting that the invisible person is standing directly before Khadse’s body. The voice says softly, “He did as he was told. He didn’t ask questions. I hate when they ask questions….I always feel obliged to answer them.”

  A long silence. Sigrud wonders if he should attack, or dive away, or…what. But one thing he suddenly, fiercely believes is that he should not leave the light. He’s not sure why, but he feels that if he crosses that border of shadow—which suddenly seems so firm, so very hard—then he’s not coming back out.

  “I had wished to do it myself,” says the voice with a faint tone of regret. “Not wise to have a man walking around with so many secrets in him. But oh, well….”

  More footsteps. The shadow of the human figure rotates as he circles around the lamp. The shadow falls across Khadse’s corpse….

  And then it’s gone. It’s as if the man’s passing shadow wiped Khadse’s being from existence, like a rag wiping away a spot on a windowpane.

  Sigrud glances around at the tiny island of illumination at his feet, cast by the one remaining oil lamp. Do not leave the light.

  The next thing he knows, the shadow of the figure is gone, blinking out.

  Sigrud grasps the radio transmitter at his belt with his free hand—part of the preparations he’d put together in case someone tried to ambush him. It wouldn’t do any good here, so far from the entrance, he thinks. He puts the idea aside, wondering what to do.

  Then Sigrud feels it: a sudden attention, as if all the darkness in the room is turning to look at him and examine him.

  There is a low, awful groaning in the darkness, like the sound of tall trees slowly shifting in the wind. His left hand suddenly aches, aches horribly, as if the scar there were made of molten lead.

  From what sounds like a distant corner, the voice whispers, “And who are you?”

  Sigrud lowers the pistol. He’s not quite sure what to do in such a situation—being addressed by a wall of shadow is not something he was trained for—but questions, well, those he knows how to handle.

  He instinctively resorts to the cover story that corresponds with the Papers of Transportation in his pocket. “Jenssen,” he says.

  There’s a silence.

  The voice says, puzzled, “Jenssen?”

  “Yes.”

  “And…what are you doing here, Mr. Jenssen?”

  “Looking for work,” says Sigrud determinedly. “In Ahanashtan.”

  A much, much longer silence. Then a rhythmic tapping from his right, like the twitching of a snake’s tail. And slowly, slowly, he thinks he can see light in the darkness….Tiny pinpricks of cold light, like terribly distant stars.

  “I am not sure what this means,” says the voice softly. “You are either stupid, or you are lying, which is still quite stupid.” Then, closer to him: “But you called me. You did, or he did, or both of you did.”

  Sigrud looks down. The circle of light is slowly contracting. Sigrud is reminded of a water rat being suffocated by a python.

  The voice whispers, “Are you working for them? Are you one of theirs? Tell me.”

  Sigrud doesn’t know whom the voice is referencing, but he says, “No. I am alone.”

  “Why did you kill Khadse?”

  “Because…Because he killed a friend of mine.”

  “Hmm…But it should have been quite hard, shouldn’t it? I arrayed him in protections, in defenses.” A brief, soft burst of cheeping, like crickets in a vast forest. Sigrud wonders—Where am I? Am I still even in the warehouse? Yet he sees the oil lamp still hangs above him.

  The voice continues: “You should not have been able to follow him, should not have been able to wound him. And yet I sense the protections I gave him are in your bag…”

  The circle of light contracts a little more. Sigrud’s one eye widens as he realizes what the voice is saying. Is this…this thing, he thinks, Khadse’s employer? Could this thing be…Nokov?

  “And I smell about you,” says the voice in the darkness, “my own writing, my own list, passed through my own channels. A letter. My letter.”

  Sigrud swallows.

  “You are lying to me,” says the voice. “I don’t believe you could have killed Khadse without some help. Their help.”

  “I did it alone.”

  “So you say. Yet I don’t believe you.”

  A long silence. Sigrud feels something shifting out there in the shadows, a dry rustling, a hushed shuddering.

  “Do you know who I am?” whispers the voice. The border of shadow is just inches from Sigrud’s toes now. He stands up very straight and tall, trying his hardest not to allow an elbow or knee to enter that veil of shadow. “Do you know what I can do to you?” says the voice. “You killed Khadse, certainly—but what I can do will make murder feel like a wondrous blessing.”

  A sigh beside him. The scrape and scratch of something being dragged across the concrete floor. His hand hurts so much he can’t stop making a fist.

  “Wandering forever in darkest night,” whispers the voice, now on his other side. “A vast, black plain, underneath distant stars…You’d walk and walk and walk, walking for so long, until you’d forget what your own face looked like, your own being. And only when this had happened—when you’d forgotten your own name, the very idea of yourself—would I breach your isolation, and ask you questions.”

  Something hisses before him. A chuckling sound—certainly not a sound made by a human throat—comes from behind him.

  “And you,” whispers the voice, “sobbing, would tell me.”

  The shadow inches closer. Sigrud feels like he’s standing in a tiny tube of light.

  A murmu
r in his ear, as if the thing in the darkness is just beside him. “Do you wish me to do this to you?”

  “No.”

  “Then tell me if…”

  The border of shadow trembles. Sigrud waits for the first blow to fall.

  Then the voice makes a noise of peculiar discomfort: “Unh.”

  Sigrud cocks an eyebrow. “Unh?”

  The circle of light at his feet expands, as if whoever—or whatever—is out there is losing their grasp on it. The voice says, “Who is…Who is doing that?” It sounds as if the speaker is suffering a terrible migraine.

  Sigrud glances around. “Doing…what?”

  The circle of light keeps expanding. And then he hears the cows.

  The world shifts, changes, contorts.

  Sigrud opens his eye all the way in total surprise.

  He’s not sure when things changed—last he knew, mere seconds ago he was in the darkness, being threatened by that…whatever it was. But he’s sure they definitely have changed.

  Because right now Sigrud is standing in a concrete hallway, staring at a giant herd of cows, all milling around and mooing in mild discontent. Bright white sunlight is pouring over his shoulder. He looks behind him and sees what appears to be a wooden gate to a livestock yard. Obviously at some point the gate will open, and the cattle will be herded out, but for now the cattle are all stuffed together into the hallway, and they vocally don’t appreciate it.

  Sigrud, personally, does not appreciate not understanding what in the hells is going on. It feels strange to say it, but the last time he felt at all sure of his reality was when he cut Khadse’s throat. Now everything’s gone…soft.

  A woman’s voice: “Hey!”

  Sigrud turns back around. A young woman is dodging through the cattle to get to him. He finds he recognizes her: short, pale, and Continental with a strangely upturned nose….

  “You,” says Sigrud faintly. “I know you….”

  The young Continental woman dances her way past the last few cows. “What in the fuck is wrong with you?” she demands.

  Sigrud has no idea how to respond. He stares at this young woman, just five and a half feet tall, with a tremendous mane of black hair and a taut, pugnacious mouth, as if some acerbic comment is swilling around on her tongue.