City of Blades

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  Mulaghesh decides to tell the truth. Or some of it, at least. “I was sent here to find Choudhry.”

  “Why keep that a secret?”

  “They weren’t sure what had happened to her. They thought maybe—”

  “That one of her own comrades had killed her, one of her fellow soldiers.” Biswal laughs bitterly. “The prime minister thinks so poorly of the soldiers in her service. She thinks us cutthroats and brigands.”

  “She didn’t know what had happened. She thought it better to be careful tha—”

  “Oh, of course she did, and I am so tired of being told to be careful!” snarls Biswal. “I am so tired of being told to draw back, stay firm, appease, and placate! And I am so tired of being told that this is not a war. Any fool with eyes in their head can see that these people will never cooperate, never be civilized! They treat us like enemies. And those who treat us as enemies should be treated the same in turn.”

  “What are you saying, Biswal?” asks Mulaghesh.

  Biswal draws himself up to his full height. “I am saying that, in light of recent events, I am reinterpreting my orders,” he says. “I will defend the harbor. I will placate the tribes. And I will do this by pursuing those who dared attack us, and destroying them and anyone who might give them shelter.”

  Mulaghesh stares at him. “You’re planning an invasion of the damned highlands?”

  “I am saying that Fort Thinadeshi, along with the other installations of Voortyashtan, will be conducting a full-scale counteroffensive against these aggressors.”

  “Will you just ignore the fact that a damned saint appeared in the city outside your gates, and killed what is likely dozens if not hundreds of people?” says Mulaghesh, furious.

  “Oh, I’ve flagged the Ministry,” says Biswal. “I’ve notified them. They’ll send their agents here, I’ve no doubt, and I will let them deal with that. That is their jurisdiction, just as mine is to pursue the insurgents to my full satisfaction. We each have our purposes, don’t we, Turyin?”

  He walks to the door and places his hand on the handle. Before he can open it, Mulaghesh says, “It’s the wrong move, Lalith. They know the terrain, and they’ve likely had time to prepare. The casualties you’ll suffer will be terrible.”

  He looks over his shoulder at her, his eyes glittering with disdain. “You doubt the effectiveness of my soldiers?”

  “What I doubt, General Biswal, is that this will have the same effect as the March,” she says. “Times have changed.”

  He looks at her for a moment longer. Then he says, “You’re a coward, Turyin. You fled the military because you couldn’t live up to the trials of true leadership. Instead, our gutless prime minister has turned you into a craven spy. Perhaps you’ve forgotten after the Battle of Bulikov, but this”—he gestures to Nadar’s body—“is what real combat looks like. Or perhaps you were too busy being commended for bravery to visit the frontlines.”

  “You sound,” she says acidly, “a little jealous, General Biswal.”

  He stares at her coldly. “Do what you need to in the city, Turyin. But if I see you in my fortress again, I’ll have you locked up.” Then he walks out and slams the door, leaving Mulaghesh alone in the morgue.

  ***

  Mulaghesh limps down the road to Voortyashtan. She borrowed a crutch from the medics at the fortress, but it’s not easy to operate a crutch one-handed, even with Signe’s prosthetic—especially when your good arm is covered in bruises. She badly, badly needs to see a medic, yet as she approaches the checkpoint she sees a familiar figure standing in the road, smoking and apparently waiting for her.

  “Ah, General,” says Signe. “I was told you’d passed through here recently….I’ve something you need to see.”

  “A bed?” says Mulaghesh miserably. “And opiates?”

  “I’m afraid not,” says Signe. “Rather, it’s something you’ve seen a lot of recently—a security breach.”

  Thirty minutes later Mulaghesh slows as they approach the statue yard. It looks much the same to her eye—same high walls, same giant door, same canvas roof—except for two key differences. One is that the door is open, just slightly, something Mulaghesh is sure the guards would never allow. The other is the dead body lying in the mud before the door.

  “That’s the door guard, isn’t it?” says Mulaghesh.

  “Yes,” says Signe. “Ericksson was his name. Shot through the neck with a bolt.”

  “So while we were dealing with Saint Zhurgut, someone made a beeline for the statue yard, shot the guard, took his keys, and opened the door?”

  “It would appear so. We’re being carefully watched, I think.” She looks up and around them. “But as most of Voortyashtan is uphill from here, it would only take a good vantage point and someone with a high-powered telescope to track us.”

  Mulaghesh hobbles toward the door. “I assume nothing’s stolen? They’d have to use a truck to get any of those damn things out.”

  “Not as far as we can tell. Nor have any changed in any way—no secret doors opened, no missing trinkets. Again, as far as we can tell.”

  “So…someone knows about your stolen statues,” says Mulaghesh. “That’s plenty bad as it is. If Biswal gets a whisper of that, he’ll come down on you like a monsoon. He’s already on the warpath. He’s going toaaaargh!”

  “I’m sorry, he’s going to what?”

  She grips her side, almost bending double. “Ahh, damn. Starting to get the idea I broke a rib last night…”

  “Oh. So I’m getting the idea that I shouldn’t have brought you here first before going to a medic.”

  “For someone who’s so smart,” growls Mulaghesh, “you’re also pretty damned stupid sometimes.”

  “Now, now. Why don’t I take you to see Rada? That’s where I sent my father; he was pretty banged up too. She’ll do a much better job of patching you up than our people will.”

  Mulaghesh sighs. “That’s a long way up. But I do need to get the gang together. Someone needs to know what Biswal’s about to do.”

  “I’ll have someone drive us.” She pauses, suddenly awkward. “I suppose I must say…Well.” She grimaces, as if trying to remember how to speak a phrase from another language. “The thing I wish to say is…thank you.”

  Mulaghesh looks at her cockeyed. “Come again?”

  “Thank you for stopping the bloodshed, for saving the harbor last night. For putting down Saint Zhurgut—which I still frankly can’t believe you did. I know I’ve not been easy. None of this has been easy. But—thank you. Now. Let’s get you to Rada.”

  ***

  Rada Smolisk’s home no longer has the feel of a medical office as much as it does a field hospital. Civilian men, women, and children are packed in in front of her door, almost all of them wounded or tending to the wounded. When they climb out of the SDC auto Mulaghesh shakes her head. “I can’t get treated here. I won’t take up Rada’s time, not when these people so desperately need it.” Then she pauses, noticing the many medics in SDC uniforms wading among the civilians. “Wait. What are so many SDC medics doing here?”

  “Following orders,” says Signe.

  “Huh?”

  “I consulted with the other SDC senior officers, and we decided to dispatch nearly all of our medical staff to Voortyashtan.”

  “Don’t you have your own injured to look after?”

  Signe gives her a grim look. “Do you believe that in hand-to-hand combat, Zhurgut left people merely injured?”

  “Ah. Ugh.”

  “Yes. We have all experienced tragedies in the past day.” Signe walks to Rada’s side door and knocks three times. “Best to focus on the tragedies one can still fix.”

  The door opens, and the bruised, scowling face of Lem, Signe’s security chief, peeks out at them. Then he nods and holds the door open. Mulaghesh and Signe step inside to be greeted by the glassy, terrified stares of the numerous taxidermied animals arranged on Rada’s walls.

  “Well,” sniffs Signe, “she h
asn’t changed her décor much.”

  They find Rada in the operating room, performing a grisly procedure on a young Voortyashtani girl with a mangled knee. Sigrud and an SDC medic stand beside her, and though Sigrud is in his shirtsleeves and his arm is in a sling, he seems to be acting as a fairly competent assistant.

  “Most of the debris has been removed,” Rada mutters—again, Mulaghesh notes, her stutter is gone. “And the wound is clean. I’ll close it up now. You’ll be turning cartwheels again before the end of the month.”

  The girl blinks languidly. She’s obviously doped to the gills.

  Rada sticks out a hand, and Sigrud—his big, rough fingers surprisingly gentle—hands her a needle and thread. As she takes it Rada glances at Mulaghesh and Signe by the door. “If you w-w-will b-be so k-kind as to wait.”

  After about an hour Sigrud and Rada emerge from the operating room, their hands dripping wet and reeking of alcohol. “I d-do n-not normally pr-protest such things,” Rada grumbles, “but I d-do n-n-not relish the idea of p-preferential t-treatment.”

  “Then we’ll make it double duty,” Mulaghesh says. “I just spoke with Biswal this morning. You all need to hear this.”

  As Rada puts her through her paces—making her extend her arms, stretch her ribs, lift her shirt—Mulaghesh recounts her conversation with Biswal mere hours ago.

  “He wants to invade the highlands?” asks Signe, horrified.

  “I don’t think ‘invade’ is the right term,” says Mulaghesh. “I expect this will be a much faster, less permanent maneuver. Pursue, engage, eliminate, then retreat. At least, that’s what he thinks it will be.”

  “It w-won’t be,” says Rada. “B-bend your h-hip this way, p-please.”

  Mulaghesh groans as something in her backside insists it’s moved as far as it possibly can. “It’ll be messy, then?”

  “ ‘Messy’ doesn’t begin to describe it,” says Signe. “The highland tribes are always prepared for combat. That’s practically all they do. He abandons his duties to go chasing after those who have wounded his pride.”

  “Thirty-seven soldiers died,” says Mulaghesh. “Including the commander of Fort Thinadeshi. A lot more got wounded than his damned pride.”

  “Fair enough,” says Signe. “But would you do the same as he intends, General?”

  Mulaghesh hesitates. “No. He has no plan, no exit. He’s going to lead his kids out there, but how will they get out?”

  “And with so many Saypuri forces allocated to pursuing the insurgents, who will be defending Voortyashtan?” asks Signe. “Who will rebuild? They obviously can’t help themselves.”

  Sigrud, who has so far been sitting in silence in a moldy overstuffed chair in the corner of the room, rumbles to life. “I have been thinking about that. What if we did that?”

  The three of them stare at him. “We?” says Signe. “We who?”

  “We as in us,” he says. “SDC.”

  There’s a pause.

  “What are you saying?” says Signe. “You want us to rebuild a city?”

  Sigrud shrugs. “We have lots of resources here. A bunch of workers, builders, construction teams. Surely it cannot be harder than building a harbor.”

  “But…But we don’t have the funding for that! If we wanted to do that and keep the harbor on schedule, we’d have to apply for much more onerous loans!”

  “Well, I was thinking about that, too,” says Sigrud, scratching his chin, “and I was thinking that I could just ask them to, ah, not make the loans more—what did you say—onerous.”

  “What!” says Signe.

  “Well…Am I the dauvkind or am I the dauvkind? Am I to put this stupid image of me to no good ends at all? If they want, I will put on as many stupid hats as they like if it gets us more workers and more resources.”

  Signe stares at him, suspicious and mystified. “You really want to do that?”

  Sigrud smiles slightly as he stuffs his pipe. “It’s as you said the other night,” he says, sitting back and readjusting his sling. “One big push.”

  ***

  “How am I?” says Mulaghesh.

  “N-not twenty years old anymore,” says Rada, rifling through a drawer of ointments and salves. “S-so I s-suggest you s-stop acting l-like it.”

  “Circumstances dictated otherwise.”

  Rada throws a few tubs of something whitish gray and foul-looking into a box for her. Mulaghesh can hear Sigrud and Signe standing outside, talking in low voices about Sigrud’s ostentatious plans. “Then I s-suggest y-you a-uhh-avoid those c-circumstances in the f-f-future.”

  “When Biswal gets back, and finds SDC rebuilding a city under his jurisdiction—what will you do, Polis Governor?”

  Hearing her own title evokes a sardonic smile. “I am n-not a true actor in th-this play,” she says. “Rather, I d-deal with the consequences of the actions. I will c-continue dealing with the w-wounded. More w-will be coming in. People t-trapped under rubble, tr-trapped in their homes…”

  “Familiar.”

  “To b-both of us, yes,” says Rada. She slumps her shoulders, sighs, and says, “Have y-you ever h-heard of Saint Petrenko?”

  “Can’t say that I have.”

  “V-Voortyashtani saint. He is interesting, t-to me at l-least. Pr-Probably the antithesis to Z-Zhurgut. Where Zhurgut was all attack and ag-aggression—as you no d-doubt w-witnessed—Petrenko was…passive.”

  “A passive warrior?”

  “Yes. He p-preached that to live l-life, one m-must accept that one was already d-d-dead. Every m-morning, one m-must arise and m-make peace with death, accept that it was c-coming.” Her words grow stronger as she speaks. “He said, ‘Time is a river, and we are but blades of grass floating upon its waves. To fear the end of the river is to fear being on it at all. And though we may look ahead, and see countless forks, when we look back we see only one way things ever could have gone. All is inevitable. To argue with fate is to argue with a river.’ ”

  “Why do you bring this up?”

  Rada shuts a cabinet with a harsh snap. “I had several deaths on my table last night, and this morning. I will have more today. Some will be children. This, like so many things, is inevitable. I woke up knowing this. And I accepted it. Just as I accept that war is coming here.”

  “War?”

  “Yes.” Rada stands and looks her in the eye, and her gaze is not half so fearful now. “I can smell it. I have smelled war before, General. Its smell is q-quite familiar to me. This is only the b-beginning. So what I will mostly be d-doing, General,” she says, opening the door, “is awaiting the inevitable. G-good day to you.”

  ***

  Outside, Signe and Sigrud look out at the ravaged cityscape of Voortyashtan, ruby red in the glow of the sunset. Smoke spills out of countless crushed hovels. There is the distant crack of gunfire—looters, probably, Mulaghesh expects. Three of the giant, deformed statues have been sliced in two, one at the waist, one at the knees, then the final at the feet.

  Yet despite this, there is a warmth to Signe and Sigrud’s discussion that Mulaghesh hasn’t ever seen before. They stand close together, shoulders almost touching, and whereas before Signe stood still and rigid around her father, now she’s animated, her movements excited, natural, and unself-conscious. She’s found a way to feel at home with him, thinks Mulaghesh.

  Signe seems to remember Mulaghesh standing beside them, leaning on a crutch. “I can’t precisely say you look better, General, but…Are all your various organs in the right place?”

  “More or less, though my hip got pretty scrambled. Rada says no fun and play for two weeks.” She struggles to light a cigarillo while still leaning on her crutch. “But she’s going to have to accept two days.”

  “Two days? You’re only going to rest for two days?”

  “Yes,” says Mulaghesh. “Because then you’re going to take me to the Tooth.”

  Signe pales at the mention of it. “Even after Zhurgut…You’re still determined to chase Choudhry?�
��

  “Someone out there has access to Voortyashtani swords,” says Mulaghesh, starting the long walk back to the SDC headquarters. “Just one of which can wreak devastation in minutes, if activated. They’re practically weapons of mass destruction, and someone has been perfecting them, testing them out on innocent, isolated families out in the country—likely, I assume, building up to bring on the Night of the Sea of Swords. And now they’ve got the process figured out.”

  “How do they plan to do it, though?” asks Signe.

  “I don’t know. But Choudhry thought she’d find something out on the Tooth. Maybe something that could tell her how this was all supposed to go down.” Mulaghesh rubs her eyes. “By the seas, I’m tired. I can’t remember the last time I slept. What time is it?”

  Signe checks her watch. “Sixteen hundred.”

  Mulaghesh laughs hollowly. “Almost evening again.”

  Signe glances over her shoulder, then twitches slightly and grunts. “I think you have the right idea. I have one last piece of business to do, and then I am off to enjoy a giant feather mattress while I can. Good evening.” She turns and trots away.

  Mulaghesh watches her go, frowning. “That was rather abru—”

  “I will go too,” says Sigrud. “I need to get very drunk and lie down somewhere very dark.”

  “Typical Dreyling curative?”

  “Something like that.” He stands and lumbers away, limping down the steps.

  Mulaghesh stands alone on the hillside, wondering what tomorrow will bring. But something troubles her.

  Signe saw something, she thinks. Just now. Didn’t she? She saw something that made her want to leave.

  She scans the streets of Voortyashtan with a keen eye. Eventually she notices the short, gray-coated figure standing in the shadow of a tumbled-down house, his peaked cap barely visible in the evening mist.

  “Pandey,” says Mulaghesh quietly.

  She sits perfectly still, waiting for him to move. When he does she follows, carefully.

  ***