City of Blades

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  But was there a fire on the ground once? The mud below the tremor still bears charred sticks and a smattering of gray ashes, as if someone once camped here.

  Mulaghesh’s brain starts whirring. Just like in the thinadeskite tunnels. Did Sumitra Choudhry come here to perform her miracle, too?

  She walks over, eager to see if there’s any sign of burned rosemary or dried frog eggs.

  But as she rushes over, things…change.

  Mulaghesh stops and looks up into the face of Voortya.

  The world goes still.

  There is someone in the statue. It’s the strangest of sensations, but it’s undeniable: there is a mind there, an agency, watching.

  “There’s someone in there,” she whispers.

  “What?” says Signe’s voice, faraway.

  She stares deeper into the empty, vacant gaze. “There’s someone behind those eyes. There’s someone…looking back.”

  The statue of Voortya seems to lean forward to her. And then she sees the sea.

  ***

  Dark waters churn under the light of the yellow moon. She plunges down into the sea, down, down, through the rippling depths and the glimmering spears of moonlight, the swirls of bubbles and the flick of distant fish.

  The light changes below her, as if there is a second moon and a second sky at the bottom of the sea, and this moon is not yellow but white, white, the purest white.

  She bursts through dark waters, rises up into this second sky, and sees…

  An island resting on the horizon, surrounded by mists. Strange peaks cut through the clouds gathered about it, like the growths of coral.

  There are voices in the night: Mother, Mother. Why did you leave us?

  The island speeds up to her. Beaches white as bone, delicate as mother-of-pearl, and rising from those strange sands is a mass of enormous structures, massive towers that have the look of chitin and claw. Some of the buildings, she sees, are not buildings at all, but statues, bigger than the biggest skyscraper in Ghaladesh, so vast she can hardly see their tops….

  Mother. We loved you. We love you. Please, give us what you promised us.

  Mulaghesh floats through the white city. The cold white moon fills the dark sky above her. She thinks: Am I really here? Have I been brought here? She finds she cannot say. She simply drifts through this strange, bloodless world of bulging structures that rise to become curling, delicate towers, a world of massive, silent giants concealed by the clouds.

  Yet then she realizes she is not alone.

  The streets and beaches ahead are filled with people….But not normal people. She needs only glance at the hundreds of points on their shoulders and backs to see what they really are.

  Thousands and thousands of Voortyashtani sentinels stand perfectly still in the moonlight, shoulder to shoulder in the streets and the city squares and on the distant beaches. Mulaghesh nearly screams, terrified, certain that these monstrous creatures will turn and tear her to pieces. But they do not. Instead they watch the horizon, their thorned hands resting on the pommels of their massive swords, staring at something high up above them.

  Please, Mother, they whisper. Please, speak to us.

  Mulaghesh drifts among these malformed warriors, staring at their skeletal masks and their hideous armor, half antlers and half seashell. Then she slowly follows their gaze.

  They are staring at a tall, white tower at the center of the city. At the very peak of the tower is a balcony, and though she knows that in waking life her eyes would never be this clear, she can see someone up there, pacing back and forth.

  Mother, they say. Come to us.

  Then one of the massive statues ahead of her…shifts. Just the barest of movements, the tiniest twitch, yet she knows she saw it. The statue is turned away from her, but she recognizes this figure, gleaming in the moonlight—didn’t she pour all of her carousel into that very thing no more than two nights ago?

  Voortya, she thinks.

  Beautiful and terrible and resplendent, cruelty incarnate, Voortya stands up straight in the mist. To see such a massive figure move so silently fills Mulaghesh’s heart with pure terror.

  Then the goddess slowly turns, twisting her head around as if she heard someone mention her name.

  No, no, thinks Mulaghesh. No, please, no…

  The dark, blank eyes turn to face her.

  Mother, whisper the sentinels. Mother, Mother…

  Then there’s a voice just over Mulaghesh’s shoulder: “Are you supposed to be here?”

  She turns to see something huge standing over her, a towering creature of chrome and metal. Before she can open her mouth to scream she’s suddenly plunging into the ocean again.

  Up, up, up. Back through the swirling dark waters, rocketing up to the fluttering light of the yellow moon.

  She bursts through, and the world spins around her.

  ***

  “Turyin?” says Sigrud’s voice. “Turyin!”

  She feels cold mud on the back of her neck and realizes that the back of her head hurts. She draws breath into her lungs and is suddenly racked with coughs.

  “General Mulaghesh?” says Signe’s voice. “Are…Are you all right?”

  She opens her eyes and sees, to her horror, pale white statues standing over her…but they’re the ones from the harbor yard, not the massive, terrifying things she glimpsed in the other place.

  But what was that other place?

  I know what it was, she says to herself, terrified. I know where I just went.

  Sigrud’s face appears above her. He kneels to help her. “Turyin? Say something, if you can.”

  “It’s still there,” she says, gasping. “It’s real….”

  “What? What is?”

  She feels herself growing weak, as if what she saw bruised her very mind. Before she passes out she tries to shout to them, “The City of Blades! It’s still there! The City of Blades is still there!”

  But before she can, darkness takes her.

  Life is but a prelude to death. Other worlds await.

  Live your life and choose your path knowing this secret. We shall all find one another past the dark veil at the edge of this land. We shall embrace one another on distant white shores and celebrate our final victory.

  —WRITS OF SAINT ZHURGUT, 721

  She wakes with a start and realizes she’s screaming. She sits up and her hand goes to her hip for the carousel, but it’s not there. She slowly realizes she’s lying on her bed in her room in SDC.

  “For the love of…,” says Signe’s voice from nearby. “What is the matter with you?”

  Mulaghesh’s head snaps to the side to see Signe sitting in a chair in the corner. From the pile of black cigarette butts in the ashtray on the floor beside it she’s been there for a while.

  “The fuck are you doing?” asks Mulaghesh. She sniffs and rubs her eye. “Keeping vigil?”

  “Looking after you. You passed out like you had some episode or something. I chose to keep an eye on you while my father began to make the formal rounds.”

  “Shit.” Mulaghesh sits forward and rubs the center of her forehead. It feels like insects are trying to gnaw their way out of her skull.

  “Head hurt?” says Signe.

  “Shut the fuck up for a second.”

  “Mm. Aren’t you a pleasant creature in the morning. Though it’s closer to noon.”

  Mulaghesh replays the last thing she saw in her head—or what she thought she saw. That moment, that vision, felt like it was beyond seeing, as if she experienced that world with senses beyond the common five.

  Her pulse rises immediately. It’s still there. The City of Blades is still out there…somehow.

  It’s an absurd idea, yet what she saw doesn’t leave a trace of doubt in her mind. To say otherwise would be like walking through a rainstorm for the first time in your life and then denying you were ever wet.

  There’s another world out there, she thinks. There’s a place below this one, floating on an ocean under
neath reality.

  She thinks of the sentinels, the dismembered bodies, Gozha whispering about the man made of thorns, and everything starts to suggest a dreadful idea to her.

  And maybe the boundaries are beginning to blur.

  “Are you all right?” says Signe, worried. “Is it…Are you having flashbacks?”

  “What?” snaps Mulaghesh.

  “Flashbacks. You’re a soldier. I know…What is it they call it…War echoes? Battle echoes?”

  “Where’s your dad? With Biswal?”

  “No,” says Signe. “That was canceled. And that’s another reason why I’m here. There’s been a…development.”

  “Which is?”

  “They’ve…found another body. Or parts of another body. Much as you found them at the farmhouse, or so I’m told, but these were on the cliffs west of the fortress.” Signe sucks at a cigarette hard enough for Mulaghesh to hear the crackle across the room. “It’s a Saypuri woman. It was, I mean.”

  The pulsing in her ears goes silent.

  “Choudhry?” she asks quietly.

  “I don’t know, I’m afraid. They haven’t found the head. A patrol discovered it on the cliffs west of the fortress, just where she used to walk. It seems…likely.”

  “Where’s the body now?”

  “The”—Signe searches for the right word—“parts are with Rada. I suggested to Biswal that this would be wise, as she’s the medical expert here, and I thought you’d wish to do a dissection.”

  “Autopsy.”

  “Yes. One of those. He consented. The rest of the fortress is quite busy with the collapse of the installation, or so it appears, so he was happy to give this duty to you. He mentioned that there are rather a lot of dead Saypuris for him to worry about these days.”

  Mulaghesh tries to leap out of bed, but her legs fail and she almost plummets to the floor.

  “By the seas…” Signe stands and helps her up. Mulaghesh is surprised at how strong she is. “You’re not well.”

  “You’re damned right I’m not well! Where’s my weapon?”

  Signe retrieves the carousel from a drawer and hands it to her. “Off to duel with someone, General?”

  “You see your father, you tell him I want to see him,” says Mulaghesh, holstering the pistol.

  “And what shall I tell him you wish to see him for?”

  Mulaghesh tries to think of how to say this without sounding barking mad. “Tell him it’s Ministry work. Just tell him that.”

  ***

  Two hours later Mulaghesh knocks on the front door of Rada Smolisk’s house. It’s pouring rain, a bitter thunderstorm suddenly springing on them from offshore, and Mulaghesh is thankful she wore her peaked cap today. Rada’s house is nestled in a small forest just below the clifftops on the northwest side of the city, so it’s somewhat equidistant between the Galleries and fortress, perhaps as a grand metaphor for Rada’s difficult position. The home also overlooks the harbor yards, which lie about five hundred yards below. Mulaghesh can even see the yard of statues, including the tiny hole she carved in its canvas roof last night.

  Rada answers her front door wearing a ridiculous and quite ugly fur dress, which she almost completely jumps out of when she sees Mulaghesh standing on her door. “G-General! You’re up. I h-heard you w-weren’t w—”

  “Another body?” says Mulaghesh. “Another one?”

  Rada nods solemnly. “I’m afraid so. A woman, this time. A S-Saypuri. Biswal and Nadar did g-g-give me p-permission to perform an a-a-uhhh-autopsy, though they s-said to w-wait for—”

  “Show me.”

  “Certainly. C-Come in.”

  Mulaghesh brushes rain off her sleeves and steps over the threshold. The front room is dark, messy, and was obviously never intended to receive visitors, as every surface is concealed by tottering towers of books and cups of tea. It’s terribly cold inside, a common symptom of a lonely house, in Mulaghesh’s experience. But most curiously, Rada’s walls are covered in taxidermied animals: sparrows, thrashing fish, the heads of deer and hogs and certain mountain cats. It’s as if all the fauna of the hillsides crept down her walls and suddenly found themselves frozen.

  Mulaghesh says, “Uh. Do you hunt?”

  “No. W-Why? Oh, yes, the a-animals. No. Th-Those I do m-myself.”

  “You…stuff them yourself?”

  “Oh, y-yes. It’s a hobby of m-mine. There’s a lot of hunters here, and they t-tend to d-d-discard much of animals. I f-find a way to use them. I pr-practice in these r-rooms, through here,” she says, leading Mulaghesh through a door. On the other side is a much more normal space—a white, plain, medical office one would normally expect to see when looking for a doctor. “N-no one, um, ever actually c-c-comes to the other d-door.”

  “Oh. I’m, uh, sorry.” She coughs. “I didn’t realize.”

  “No, it’s qu-quite all right.”

  Rada’s taxidermy skills are still on display here, though in a more restrained capacity: the snarling head of a boar and a duck in midflight hang on the walls just beside the entry door. Rada asks Mulaghesh to wait while she changes into something more functional. “The body is qu-kwuhhite, uh, m-messy you see.”

  “I see.” Mulaghesh takes off her rain-slick greatcoat and hangs it in the corner.

  Rada withdraws while Mulaghesh sits and thinks. She’s more dismayed than she expected: she’d thought for some time that Choudhry was dead, and then after that she thought she was somehow involved in the murders. But to hear she was desecrated so abominably is something Mulaghesh never expected.

  Rada returns, now dressed in dark tan clothing with a rubber apron. “She’s in the b-back room. If you’re r-ready.”

  “I am.”

  Rada nods and leads her through the door. On the other side is a small room that looks fit for surgical or perhaps funerary purposes, and in the center is a large stone slab with drainage holes in it. On the slab are…

  Things. That’s all her brain can process them as: items. Objects. Fragments of something. Not a person, certainly not a human being, because she simply can’t conceive of such a thing. To see a fellow person cut down to such crude elements is dehumanizing beyond words.

  She tries to get ahold of herself. She focuses, and looks.

  On the table are two torso halves. Dark-skinned, breasts withered and sagging. The hint of thick pubic hair at the crotch. A woman vivisected carefully and cleanly, her arms and legs pruned away. Only her left thigh remains, but this segment too has been dismembered, placed close to the hip as if to try to give these ravaged pieces of a human the semblance of a whole. It only highlights the monstrousness of all of this.

  “It’s the s-same as you saw,” says Rada. “Yes?”

  “Yeah,” says Mulaghesh quietly. “Close. But they left the heads and limbs behind the other times.”

  “We’re not wuh-wrong that it’s a S-Saypuri woman, th-though?”

  Mulaghesh shakes her head. “No. Even though she’s bloodless now, the skin’s the right tone. They found her on the cliffs?”

  “Y-Yes. Where the m-missing M-Ministry officer used t-t-to walk, or so I’m t-told.”

  She looks at Rada, breathing hard. “And you can do an autopsy?”

  “P-partially, yes. Th-the b-body isn’t f-fresh, so to suh-speak, but…I can t-try. What do you hope t-to find?”

  “Anything. Something. I want to find something to use to pin these bastards down.”

  Rada nods meekly. “Then we’ll begin.”

  Mulaghesh takes a seat on the far wall and pulls up a second chair to prop her feet up. She slouches in the chair, hands resting on her stomach, and watches, much as someone would a spectator sport, as Rada Smolisk carefully and thoughtfully dissects the once-human husk lying on her table. It is not, as Mulaghesh feared, an inhuman, monstrous violation; rather, Rada makes remarks throughout her examination more suggestive of a boat trip through a pleasant and familiar countryside.

  “Remarkably clean cuts,” she says quietly. “Alm
ost surgical. Yet even surgical cuts, on this large of a scale, would leave…how shall I put this…sawing marks. It takes work, getting through so much tissue. And yet there’s none here. It’s as if she’s been put through a mill saw.” She rummages about for some ghastly instrument to aid her.

  She doesn’t stutter while she works, Mulaghesh notes. It’s as if such close interaction with the corpse transforms her into a completely different person, someone much more confident and focused than she is in waking life.

  Mulaghesh herself can hardly focus at all. Through the hours of the autopsy—and it takes far longer than she expected—the echoes of her vision keep screaming in her head. Now that she’s faced with yet another corpse—again, mutilated as a Voortyashtani sentinel would do—she feels as if the entire world is about to fall apart, and they shall all go plummeting into the inky dark sea, past columns of glimmering moonlight, to a strange white island on the other side of reality….

  Are they coming through? Are the sentinels poking through bit by bit, to attack anyone they can find? And how is this even possible, if Voortya’s dead?

  “I very rarely have an audience for this,” Rada says absently. Her brow is wet with sweat. It must be hard work, Mulaghesh realizes, parsing through all the bone and muscle walls.

  Mulaghesh rubs her eyes, trying to focus. “Does an audience make it any better?”

  “Perhaps. It’s something I feel better having a witness for, this sort of thing. It’s remarkable, isn’t it?”

  “What? The corpse?”

  “No. Well, yes, in a way. It’s this…this opportunity to examine what we are, the many disparate and curious elements that make up our beings.” There is a snap of breaking bone. “So many systems, so many pieces…More complicated than the most complicated of clocks. I wonder, sometimes: are we truly one thing, one being, or many, many different things, simply dreaming they are one?”

  “I guess that’s a good point,” says Mulaghesh, feeling surprised, impressed, and somewhat discomfited. She wonders if Rada always pontificates during such procedures, either to her trapped patients or to the empty walls.

  “What do you think, looking at her?” asks Rada.