“Sounds like the one.”
“Mmm. Yes, I remember her. Very strange person, she was.”
“What makes you say that?”
“The way she acted,” he says, as if her question was powerfully stupid. “The way she looked at things. I take a pellet of drangla weed every morning—it helps me notice things about people.” He taps the edge of his right eye with a dirt-encrusted finger. “Helps me glimpse the edges of their secret selves. Not easy to make, but I have it reasonably pri—”
Mulaghesh loudly cracks her knuckles against her jaw, bending each finger.
“Right, right. Well. This girl, she made me think of someone who’d come out of hiding, and was counting the seconds until they could sneak away again. She bought some very strange things, too—things I hardly ever sell.” He tilts his head back, eyes closed, thinks, and says, “Rosemary. Pine needles. Dried worms. Grave dust. Dried frog eggs. And bone powder.”
“That’s an impressive memory.”
“Stems from a concoction I make.” He sniffs. “Which I, ah, would never be interested in selling you.”
“Smart move.”
“Of course, it did help that she came back and bought those same ingredients over and over again. Each time in larger quantities, too.”
Mulaghesh makes a note of all this. “And I suppose you wouldn’t know,” she says, “exactly what all this could be used for.”
The little man scratches his head theatrically. “Mm, I might have once known, but the thought escapes me now….”
Mulaghesh puts another twenty-drekel note on the table.
The little man snatches it up. “Well, the reason I never sell any of those items anymore is that their primary use doesn’t exist anymore. In that their primary purpose used to be Divine.”
“I see,” says Mulaghesh.
“Yes. They were popular reagents for performing some of the more mundane miracles, with the sole exception being the frog eggs, as those were more top-tier, I suppose you could say. All of the ingredients she bought were Voortyashtani-oriented: rosemary and pine needles, for their evergreen nature; dried worms, for their regenerative properties; grave dust and powdered bone, for their finality; and frog eggs, for their capacity for metamorphosis. All of these things, you see, deal with the threshold dividing life from death.”
“The domain of Voortya,” says Mulaghesh.
“Uh, yes,” he says, somewhat nervous to be so candidly discussing the sacred.
“And what exact miracle do you think someone would try to accomplish with these reagents?” she asks.
“That I can’t say. All the specific stuff was banned when Saypur enforced the Worldly Regulations. They took all those books and packed them away somewhere. I only know the general stuff, which wasn’t quite so illegal.”
“Do you know anyone who might know what miracle they could be used for?”
“Well…” He scratches his chin. “Komayd did roll back a whole lot of the Worldly Regulations when she took the crown, but so far it hasn’t trickled down to us little fellers yet. The only folk who might know are the highlanders.”
“Like, the tribes?”
“Them’s the ones. They’re old traditionalists, they are. They wouldn’t have forgotten a thing like that. Though it’s a bit hard to just sit down and have tea with them.”
Mulaghesh makes another note of this. “What do you have in the way of sleeping aids?”
“Oh, well…that depends on the sleep you need. Do you have trouble falling asleep? Or staying asleep?”
“Staying,” says Mulaghesh, rubbing her left arm.
“And what kind of sleep do you seek, ma’am? Light? Dreamy? Or deep?”
“Deep,” she says immediately. “No dreams, if you can.”
He looks at her, and there’s a curious shine to his eye that makes her think that maybe he wasn’t lying about the drangla weed. “Is it sleep you want to find?” he asks quietly. “Or dreams you wish to escape?”
She looks at him hard. “The latter.”
He reviews his shelves, then takes down a small glass jar filled with tiny brown dots. “Nickletop mushroom caps,” he says, “have a distinctly soporific effect—they make you sleepy, I mean, ma’am. Gets stronger when you steam ’em.” He carefully pours some of them into a tin and affixes the cap. “Sometimes used to put horses asleep before surgery. What this means, ma’am, is don’t take too much of ’em. Cut one in half, and put it below your tongue before bed. You can brew it in tea, too, but the effects take longer. And don’t lick your fingers or prepare any food without washing your hands. Or, ah, engage in any manual intimacy. A dusting of nickletop will render any man’s trouser eel worthless for hours.”
“Now that I’ll keep in mind.” She takes the little tin, pops the cap open, and looks inside. The mushroom caps look like tiny, flaky brown pearls. “Any side effects?”
“Just the one on your purse,” he says. “Thirty drekels, please.”
She grouses for a moment—thirty drekels would be enough for a steak dinner, if there was any beef to speak of around here—but she forks it over. She needs sleep more than she needs money.
***
Back in her room at the SDC headquarters Mulaghesh massages her arm, pulls the carousel from its holster, and sets it on her nightstand. Then she sits on the edge of her bed, alone in her sumptuous room, listening to the wind and the sea bickering outside her window.
The images of the farmhouse swirl about in her mind: bodies ravaged beyond recognition, the black smoke unscrolling from the tips of the dark trees, a human form half-concealed by a clump of clover.
She tries to tell herself that she’s just disturbed, as anyone would be. She just strolled through the scene of a brutal mass murder and abominable desecration—that’s why her heart is beating so fast. It has nothing to do with the fact that these sights, however grisly, are somewhat familiar to her.
She rummages through her coat, pulls out the little tin of nickletop mushrooms, and taps out one of the dark little buttons. She uses her combat knife to cut it in half and examines the tiny, crumpled half-circle balanced on her index finger. After a second’s hesitation she opens her mouth, sticks it under her tongue—it tastes of wood and wool—and lies down on the bed.
The effects are almost instantaneous. She feels woozy, like her brain is waterlogged, and everything is suddenly incredibly heavy. It’s as if her bones are so dense they’re about to fall through her flesh and through the bottom of the bed.
She remembers what Biswal said to her: It helps me fight the feeling that I’m a fiddly old man wondering if the past ever really happened….
Her lids grow heavy. The nickletop might keep her from dreaming, but it’s helpless to keep her from remembering so much in the few fleeting minutes before sleep.
***
If you were to bring up the Yellow March in Saypur these days, chances are you’d get a variety of reactions, none of them positive: there’d be a lot of sighs and eye-rolling—not this again—and perhaps a snicker or two. Among the more patriotic quarters such a mention would likely evoke outright hostility: you could be booted from the premises, or even struck in the face.
This is because, in Saypur, all talk of the Yellow March has long been considered either a smear campaign or a paranoid delusion, a dangerous or ludicrous conspiracy theory that only crackpots and the unpatriotic would ever entertain.
Everyone respectable agrees that the Summer of Black Rivers (called such even though it lasted nearly three years) was one of Saypur’s greatest triumphs. It was the war that defined Saypur’s modern national identity, so who would dare besmirch its reputation? Those Saypuris who wish to appear thoughtful will concede that, yes, there might have been something that inspired the wild tale of the Yellow March—war is war, after all, and full of horrors—but it was certainly far short of the events the conspiracy theorists detail.
But Mulaghesh knows it was no conspiracy. Because she remembers. Even though it was almost f
orty years ago, she remembers.
The Kaj captured the Continent in 1642, and Saypur pulled off the Great Censoring just eight years later, scouring the Continent of all of its sacred images and art. Shortly after that Saypur plunked down the Worldly Regulations, hoping—in futility—that outlawing mention or acknowledgment of the Divine would mean it would no longer affect modern life. Saypur was pretty strict about the WR for most of the Continent, but they tended to tiptoe around Bulikov: even in its postwar, decimated state, it was still a massive metropolis, and it still wielded a lot of power by sheer population. So, to a certain extent, the WR were enforced in Bulikov in name only, so that Saypur could remain unchallenged and keep the remainder of the Continent in check.
Up until 1681, that is. By then Saypur had built up its military and started to flex its muscles, and it was decided Ghaladesh could no longer tolerate such lax control over the Continent’s central city. A litany of severe laws were passed and the crackdowns began. Things escalated—first a protest, then a riot, and then municipal buildings were occupied and the clerks there held hostage—until by ’85 Bulikov was in a full-fledged revolt: the Bulikovian Uprising, they called it. And what started out as an uprising quickly evolved into an outright war.
It was to be the world’s first taste of modern warfare, of battle bereft of Divine intervention. Saypur had just scaled up its production of bolt-shots and other mechanized weaponry to the extent that common infantry could utilize them, and its forces were fresh and eager to fight, keen to prove to their old repressors that Saypur deserved to be a world power. But the Continent had numbers and territory on its side, and despite General Prandah’s claims that this would be a “lightning-fast war, a lot of noise followed by a long silence,” and the vigorous public campaign that all hostilities would merely last a summer—hence the name, which stuck—soon both Saypuri and Continental forces found themselves dug in two hundred miles east of Bulikov on the banks of the Luzhkov River, with no indication that either could break through the other’s fortifications.
Enter Captain Lalith Biswal, then twenty-three years old, a careful, bookish student of what few non-Divine wars could be studied. And, under his command in Yellow Company, a sixteen-year-old Turyin Mulaghesh who had run away from home, lied about her age, enlisted, and gotten her stupid ass promoted to sergeant without even realizing what was going on.
It was during the fifth Battle of the Luzhkov when Captain Biswal and Yellow Company were dispatched in an ambitious flanking maneuver, marching upstream, floating the river, and attacking the Continental positions from the north. It should have worked perfectly and caused massive disruptions in the Continentals’ lines…or it would have if the Continentals hadn’t been aware of the pending attack, right down to the minute it started.
The Saypuri attack was routed both quickly and brutally. The skiffs that had been used to float across the Luzhkov were captured and burned, leaving Yellow Company stranded on the wrong side of the river. All order and discipline collapsed, and the Continentals drove them mercilessly north, away from the battle and the Saypuri lines.
Yellow Company retreated through the night, a rambling, uncoordinated rush through the Continental countryside, pursued by forces far more knowledgeable about the territory than they were. The woods were filled with screams, sprinting horses, distant firelight. When the sun came up, the ragged Saypuri soldiers looked around and realized they did not recognize where they were.
They had never seen this particular set of hills before. Their scouts reported settlements nearby, but not fortifications: they were simple farms.
It took Biswal a moment to realize: “We’re past their fortifications,” he said, sitting atop his horse. “By the seas, we’re behind them!” Though Yellow Company could not have known, the Continental brigade that’d been dispatched to pursue them had been distracted by a full-frontal assault by General Prandah’s forces far to the south. Which meant Yellow Company no longer had any pursuers, no one to push them out of Continental territory.
It should not have happened. But it did.
Mulaghesh still remembers the evening of that first day, when Biswal approached her and took her aside. The mist gathering on the hills, the moaning and weeping from the scattered troops. Fires were forbidden—the smoke would give them away—so all of them clutched their arms and legs and shivered, eating dried meats. This had not been intended to be a far-ranging mission, so they had very few provisions, and many of those had been lost in the retreat.
He led her to a small forest clearing. “Lieutenant Pankaj died of wounds this morning,” he said.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. Though I’ve heard a lot of sorries today. The word’s losing meaning.” He sighed. “We can’t find Niranjan, or Kapil, or Ram. Which means that I’ve lost nearly all of my officers overnight. I don’t have powers of promotion, but you’re more or less going to have to be my lieutenant, Mulaghesh, so that’s what I’m going to call you. And if we live to get busted down for that, I’ll be grateful.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re young, but I’ve watched you fight. You’re not stupid, and other soldiers listen to you. That’s a valuable thing.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Biswal turned to watch the hills. “So. It seems like we have three choices. We can return south, survey the enemy’s position, and try and flank them again when the time’s right, carrying out our original orders. Or, we can go east, try and ford the Luzhkov, circumvent the enemy’s position, and rejoin Prandah.” He paused.
“And our third choice?”
He looked at her, his pale eyes sharp. “What do you think our odds are of pulling either of those two options off, Lieutenant?”
“Minimal, sir.”
“And why’s that?”
“The Continentals aren’t stupid. At some point they’ll realize we’re still here. If they aren’t in pursuit by now, they’ll be ready for us to return. They’ll watch the river. That’s what they’ll expect.” She glanced, side-eyed, at the ragged, wounded soldiers sitting below the pines. “And I don’t think we’re in any shape for serious combat, sir. We don’t have any supplies. I’m not sure if we can last more than a handful of days.”
“I agree.” He looked at the hills surrounding them again.
“Sir?”
“Yes?”
“You mentioned a third option, sir.”
“I did.” He sucked his teeth. “Do you know what keeps the Continental forces on their feet, Lieutenant? What keeps their fortifications so firm?”
She was smart enough by then to know not to answer a superior officer’s rhetorical questions. “I don’t, sir.”
“Farms,” said Biswal. He walked to a tree, leaned against it, and watched a tiny hamlet nestled in a distant valley. “Food and farms. We’re in the middle of the breadbasket of the Continent, Mulaghesh. By complete and total accident, sure, but here we are.” He paused. “And there are lots of ways to win a war. A war isn’t between armies, it’s between nations.” He pursed his lips, sighed, shook his head. “But by the seas, what a way to fight.”
“Are you suggesting we…”
He looked over his shoulder at her. “Go on, Lieutenant.”
“Are you suggesting that we make war upon the civilians here?”
“I’m saying one option is we destroy their farms, their infrastructure, their irrigation systems. Take what we need to survive, destroy the rest, then move to the next town, and do it again. We’d cut right through all of the Continentals’ supply lines. But it’s a damn bastard thing to do, that I’ll say.”
He looked at her, and she somehow understood that he wanted her to judge him, to say something, perhaps to approve. And what lay unspoken between them was the knowledge that they now made war in the nation of those who once enslaved them.
All Mulaghesh could manage was, “We’re dying, sir.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“We’re starving.”
“Yes.”
“I think we’re going to die here no matter what we do.”
He was silent. Then: “Yes. I agree.”
“My conclusion, if I might be so bold to give it, sir, is we might as well try and do our part,” she said quietly. “With as much time as we have left.”
He nodded and stared off into the distance, lost in thought. Then: “Gather as many troops as you can. Comb the forest, comb the hills—carefully. Round up the survivors. Tomorrow morning, we’re going to move.” He took out his spyglass and watched the little hamlet in the valley. “We’ll approach from the southwest, through the forest. It’ll be slow going, but we’ll want to surprise them. And damn it, Mulaghesh…” He ripped away his spyglass and held it tightly in his hands, as if imagining choking someone, and she understood how furious all this made him. “If…If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this right. We’ll do it peaceably. We’ll be organized, disciplined. No casualties, unless we can’t avoid them. I will not condone the shedding of innocent blood, even if it is Continental. Certainly not women or children. We are soldiers, not raiders, with strategic goals. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly, sir.”
“Do you think we can achieve that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you have your orders, Lieutenant. Dismissed.”
She saluted and trotted away through the woods.
***
Lying upon the bed in the SDC headquarters, head swilling with the fog of nickletop, Mulaghesh looks back on that moment and thinks, What wild promises we make in order to justify the worst of decisions.
Yet even as her body grows leaden and numb, one last thought persists, nagging at her.
Something she saw today isn’t right.
She remembers the corpses from the farmhouse that afternoon, and thinks, I’ve seen those bodies before. I’ve seen something like that before.
She tells herself: Bodies in the Continental wilderness. Certainly. I know that sight well.
Yet still: No. No. I saw those bodies just recently. I saw that sight just today, before I went to that farmhouse….
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