City of Blades

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “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?”

  “You said she went mad. So perhaps once she was not mad. Perhaps she did this when she was still a good agent.”

  “I wouldn’t know what to look for, though. I don’t know the first thing about Old Bulikov rules.”

  “And I cannot go with you. It would be rather difficult to explain away my absence here and my presence there. Even though I would much rather be doing that than this.”

  “You’d rather be digging around in the affairs of a madwoman than work here with your daughter?”

  Sigrud grumbles to himself. “When you say it like that, I do not sound very reasonable at all.” He sighs. “I wish I did not have to do this. I was never a good controller, never a good case officer. I was always the man down in the muck, not the one waiting at home. That was Shara’s game.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I am saying that you are an operative in need of a case officer,” says Sigrud. “You are all alone up here, and maybe this work is so sensitive that Shara could not bring anyone on board….But, you suffer for the lack of one. And I do not exactly see anyone else around who could do the job.”

  “You don’t work for Saypur anymore, you know.”

&nbs
p; “If what you say is right, then everything happening in Voortyashtan is under threat. Including the harbor, the one thing currently sustaining my whole country’s economy. Frankly, I wish Shara had brought me on sooner—but she likely did not know what you would find here.”

  “So what now?”

  He looks at the clock. “So now, I suggest you get comfortable. And put the liquor down.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are going to have to memorize a lot of tradecraft before morning, if you want to do this right.”

  ***

  “So it was not Choudhry’s body they found, ma’am?” asks Nadar the next morning as they walk through the fortress.

  “No, it wasn’t,” says Mulaghesh. “I don’t know whose body it was, but it wasn’t hers.” She wipes a bead of sweat from her brow and tries not to shiver. She hiked up here rather than be chauffeured, and now her perspiration grows frigid in the cold air of the fortress, like she’s being wrapped in bedsheets pulled from an icy lake.

  “Fucking shtanis,” says Nadar, shaking her head.

  “Shtanis?”

  “They’re mocking us, ma’am. They must be. A Saypuri corpse, butchered and put on display just beyond where they blew up the mines? They’re showing us how close they can get to us, General. I’ve increased patrols, but as yet we’ve spotted nothing. They’re talented in moving unseen in this terrain.” Nadar shakes out her keys and begins opening the door to Choudhry’s rooms.

  “Have you…considered any alternatives?” asks Mulaghesh, uncertain how to phrase this.

  “Alternatives, ma’am?”

  “Yes. I had been considering that it was Sumitra Choudhry herself who was involved in the murders, Captain,” says Mulaghesh.

  “Choudhry?” says Nadar, startled. “Why, General?”

  “These murders…They’re like some kind of old Divine ritual.” The door swings open. Both of them stare in at the graffiti-covered room. “And everything here suggests Choudhry was neck-deep in the Divine. To her misfortune.”

  Mulaghesh walks into the room, watching Nadar over her shoulder. She can’t tell Nadar everything, but she needs someone in command here to start thinking in the right direction. If she can get Biswal or Nadar to consider it, then perhaps they can call in more Ministry reinforcements, who might be able to find something solid—something verifiably Divine.

  But Nadar’s face has gone cold and closed. “It seems unlikely that a Ministry operative could be capable of all that, ma’am.”

  “You don’t know Ministry operatives, Captain.”

  “And, to be fair, you didn’t know Choudhry, General,” says Nadar. “Whereas I did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Nadar hesitates.

  “Permission to speak freely, General.”

  “Granted.”

  “Choudhry was, like many out of Ghaladesh, a somewhat ineffectual officer.”

  “Ineffectual.”

  “Yes, General. Lots of titles, ma’am, lots of certifications, certainly. But no on-the-ground experience in a combat zone. Experience that we here in Voortyashtan have in excess, General.” She meets Mulaghesh’s eyes very briefly before looking away. “Experience not known in Ghaladesh.”

  Mulaghesh steps closer. “You wouldn’t be doubting my combat experience, would you, Captain?” she asks sharply.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Do you disagree that what we see on these walls are the markings of a madwoman?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Do you disagree that the timeline for these murders and the theft of the explosives overlaps with Choudhry’s presence here, and disappearance?”

  Nadar’s face twitches. “No, ma’am. But—”

  “But what?”

  “But…I’ve been at Fort Thinadeshi for six years now, before the Battle of Bulikov, General. And though Bulikov alerted us to threats of the Divine, here in Voortyashtan we’ve only ever seen one threat. The one that’s just beyond our walls.”

  “You need to remain mindful of threats beyond the insurgents and the tribes, Captain,” says Mulaghesh. “Otherwise you blind yourself.”

  “I have seen our soldiers killed in the wilderness, ma’am,” says Nadar softly. “I’ve held them in my arms as they died. I’ve seen the trains sent back to Ahanashtan, loaded up with coffins. I’ve seen these things time and time again, General. With all due respect, I personally do not believe myself to be blind at all.”

  ***

  Nadar leaves Mulaghesh alone while she conducts her inspection. Mulaghesh furiously rubs her arm, so angry that it’s difficult to focus. Well, at least I know where Nadar stands. Leaving only Lalith as an option.

  She shakes herself and begins to scan the walls of the room, her eyes tracing over the black scrawls and splashes of paint.

  Look for things so simple, Sigrud told her, that they seem to have no meaning in themselves.

  She asked, What in the hells does that mean?

  It will not be a curious picture, or a carving in the wall that seems to communicate something, he said. No riddles or codes, in other words. It will be an ordinary thing that simply does not belong. A stripe of chalk or paint that looks like a painter’s error. Something stuck in the walls, like a staple or a pin, or a nick in the walls like someone banged them while moving furniture. Or a slash in a carpet that looks like someone damaged it.

  She looks over the images on the walls, trying not to be disturbed by them. Thousands of swords, stuck in the earth. An arrow piercing the heart of a wave. A face she now knows to be the cold, regal visage of Voortya herself gives her pause—Choudhry did an impressively good job of capturing the Divinity’s likeness.

  Perhaps she painted over it, thinks Mulaghesh. Whatever it was. Perhaps her signal’s no longer here at all.

  Her eye falls on the window in the far wall. It’s long and thin, the barest slit of glass. Mulaghesh recognizes the intent of the design immediately, built to allow in light and air and nothing else.

  Yet in the corner of the window frame, almost tucked out of view, is a tiny white dot.

  She steps closer. It’s a thumbtack, she sees, pushed deep into the wall.

  Mulaghesh feels the window, testing the frame for any weaknesses or hollows. She finds none, but it does have a clasp that allows you to open it. With a squeak, she jimmies the window open, wincing at the blast of cold air, and feels the outside of the window.

  There’s something there, just barely: a piece of string, dangling down. She grabs it and begins to pull it in. It’s long, nearly four feet.

  Of course, thinks Mulaghesh. If you’re paranoid about room searches, put whatever it is you want to hide outside your room….

  But when she finishes pulling the string all the way in, she’s disappointed: at its end is nothing but a small hook, like a clasp from a woman’s necklace. Something hung here once, clearly, but it’s gone now: maybe she moved it, or maybe it fell.

  Tied to the string just above the hook, however, is another white thumbtack.

  She remembers what Sigrud said: Ministry officers are trained to leave behind caches. Dead drops. If they disappear or get killed, they want to tell whoever comes next what they were doing.

  Mulaghesh asked, So she wouldn’t have hidden anything away in the mines or something crazy like that?

  Not if she was following SOP. She will have hidden something in a place accessible to you. And she will tell you what to look for.

  Mulaghesh holds the white thumbtack up to the light and begins to understand the message: I moved it. To find it, look for this.

  “So search all of Fort Thinadeshi,” says Mulaghesh. “For one white thumbtack.” She bows her head. “Fuck.”

  ***

  Mulaghesh wanders the innards of Fort Thinadeshi. She can’t help but fight the feeling that she’s stepped back in time. The walls are bulky, thick constructions, an architectural design that was abandoned long ago, as it was forced to create alternatingly huge or tiny rooms. She’s
never sure what she’ll find on the other side of any given door: perhaps some dusky, yawning chasm of a room, or a tiny hallway full of cramped offices, like a honeycomb carved in stone. The hallways swim with shadows, for much of Fort Thinadeshi still lacks gas or electric lighting and is forced to use candles and literal torches. All around her are thuds, slams, laughs, and shouts, echoing through the misshapen chambers riddling this vast, crumbling relic.

  It’s hardly any different from the ruins in the wilderness, thinks Mulaghesh. It suddenly seems unusual that Choudhry was the only one who went mad here.

  But more troubling than the atmosphere of the fortress is the amount of firearms and ammunition she sees in motion. The soldiers here are preparing for something. She doesn’t want to think the word “mobilization” and all that it implies, but she can’t help it.

  What is Biswal planning to do in Voortyashtan?

  What she hates most, perhaps, is the feeling of distance. She is not truly stationed or in command here, no, and it’s true that no one bothers her or even looks twice as she wanders the winding hallways; but with every step Mulaghesh feels like a thief or a liar, sneaking through the shadows and silently watching these boys and girls, most of them hardly more than children.

  I am one of you, she wishes to say to them. I am a soldier just as you. All that has happened to me has not made me any different from you. But beyond a few salutes, she exchanges little with the rank and file.

  Mulaghesh is roving through the medical wing when she nearly abandons her search. She can’t imagine a more futile task than this, combing through this ocean of dark stone for a single white dot.

  She remembers something Sigrud told her during their hours-long briefing: Assume she knows you. Assume she believed you would know who she was and what she had been doing when you came to look for her. If she has something to hide, she would hide it in a place you know she has been.