City of Blades

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  Mulaghesh kneels at the door. She’s not yet forgiven him for what he’s done, but at least now she understands what sent him into a rage. “Biswal had Signe shot?”

  “I don’t know,” he says through his tears. “I don’t know. But she is dead. They have her on a table here. They stole her body and hid it away.”

  “I’m…I’m sorry, Sigrud,” says Mulaghesh. “I’m truly sorry. I…I would never have asked her to come if…” She trails off. She knows such comments are useless.

  “I wasn’t there for her!” he says, sobbing. “I wasn’t there! Never when she needed me, not ever!”

  “I’m sorry,” whispers Mulaghesh. “I’m so sorry. But it wasn’t your fault. None of it was your fault, Sigrud. It wasn’t.”

  Sigrud covers his face, beyond words.

  She leans her head up against the bars of her jail cell. “Listen, Sigrud…Listen, she chose to be there. She chose to help me get to Smolisk’s house. She did so because she saw a threat was coming and she wanted to do something to stop it. Signe spent her whole life trying to do something remarkable here, trying to make life better for millions of people. And if we don’t do anything now, she’ll have spent her life in vain.” She reaches through the bars and rests a hand on his leg. “Please, Sigrud. Help me. Help me make what she did matter.”

  Sigrud sits up, still weeping. “I don’t…I don’t even understand what is going on.”

  “Take the keys and unlock my cell,” she says, “and I’ll tell you.”

  ***

  Captain Sakthi paces up and down the coastal walls of Fort Thinadeshi, though he is not at all sure what he and his men are doing here. They’re trained for reconnaissance and surveillance, certainly, but not naval reconnaissance and surveillance. Almost no one in Fort Thinadeshi is really, thoroughly trained for naval assault, because no other nation has ever had a real navy besides Saypur, not since the Blink: the idea of any Continental nation ever being rich enough to fund such a venture is absolutely insane.

  “See anything, Sergeant?” he asks, stopping behind Sergeant Burdar.

  Burdar is currently nestled down atop the coastal battery with a giant telescope on a tripod glued to his eye. “Not a thing, sir,” he says, his cheek crinkled as he watches the horizon. “Though it would help if we knew what we were looking for.”

  “Ships, Sergeant,” says Sakthi. “We are looking for ships.”

  “That’s what the general said, sure,” says Burdar. “But what kind of ships, I ask you, sir?”

  “Continental ones,” says Sakthi. “Voortyashtani ones, I suppose.”

  “And those I don’t know the look of,” says Burdar, “being as they haven’t been seen in nearly a hundred years, sir.”

  “Well, keep looking. If you see so much as a sole farting swan, I wish to know of it.”

  Burdar smirks. “Yes, sir.”

  Sakthi paces back over the walls. He has a few other soldiers monitoring the horizon with binoculars and telescopes, but, as Burdar so accurately put it, without knowing exactly what they’re looking for, it’s a little hard to adequately prepare.

  Sakthi doesn’t want to admit it—he is, like nearly every Saypur officer, a patriot to the core—but he’s been feeling increasingly ambivalent about his service here in Voortyashtan. From the instant Saint Zhurgut surfaced in the Solda Bay, everything has gone to hells. General Biswal seemed so confident when he led the expedition out into the highlands to pursue the insurgents, but what they met was anything but conventional combat: it was ambush after ambush, and when they began to prepare for the ambushers they found it increasingly difficult to separate civilian from insurgent. And when Sakthi returned with Biswal’s few elite officers, he found it impossible to determine if they were close to fulfilling their primary objective: Had the people they’d driven out of the highlands really been the planners of the attacks? Or had they been just a handful of shepherds with riflings in the wrong place at the wrong time? Either way, Biswal seemed content to treat it as a victory.

  But now, to come back and discover some kind of invasion has been brewing on their very doorsteps…It’s unthinkable.

  And if all that wasn’t bad enough, what in the world is wrong with Sergeant Major Pandey? Ever since the news spread of the polis governor’s assassination, the man has been in a melancholy fury. Burdar even reported he’d stumbled across the sergeant sitting on the edge of the coastal walls, weeping.

  Burdar speaks up: “Sir? Sir!”

  Sakthi paces over to him. “Do you have something, Sergeant?”

  “Things, sir,” says Burdar, squinting into the telescope.

  “What?”

  “I have somethings, sir,” says Burdar. “Many, ah…Many things…” He positions the telescope just right, then backs away so Sakthi can take his place.

  Captain Sakthi crouches down and puts his eye to the telescope. It takes a minute for the optics to make sense to him. At first he thinks he’s seeing a strand of electric lights, dangling out there on the waves, but then he realizes he can see forms in the light.

  They’re not lights. They’re ships. Glowing ships, ancient ships with sails and oars and pointed prows, but still ships.

  He tries to count their number. His eye flexes in and out of focus. It seems like he’s seeing the night sky, with a million twinkling stars before him.

  Sakthi clears his throat. “Sound the alarm,” he says hoarsely. “Now.”

  ***

  Mulaghesh flips the dead guard over and strips her of her uniform. It feels deeply dishonest to do such a thing, and the uniform is bloodied, but it’s better than running around with her fatigues stained an unearthly red from the City of Blades. And she may have need of the pistol and sword.

  Sigrud sits still and placid as Mulaghesh describes what she discovered, what she saw in Rada Smolisk’s house, what Biswal did and said. Sigrud is no longer weeping, but an awful, cold stillness has seeped through him, as if he’s stepped behind a veil of ice and she can no longer see the man behind it.

  “So we must destroy these swords,” he says softly.

  “Yeah. Biswal has them here, or so he told me. He’ll either have them in his quarters, or he’ll have them in the thinadeskite labs, down below.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “As sure as I can be. We need to split up. I don’t like it, but time is of the essence—if we even have any left. I might be able to make this uniform work until I get to him. Do you think you can sneak down to the labs on your own?”

  Sigrud nods, not a trace of doubt in his face. “Many of the lower parts of the fortress are deserted. Everyone is on the walls, manning the coastal batteries.”

  She shakes her head. “By the seas, he’s serious about trying to fight them. Let’s go. If you don’t find the swords, come to Biswal’s quarters. If I don’t, I’ll do the same and come to the labs. Does that work?”

  He nods. “Then let’s go. The main stairway is this way.”

  They walk down the hallway. Mulaghesh keeps her carousel up and quietly opens the door.

  She stares at what lies beyond, turning pale. “By the seas…”

  “What?” says Sigrud, behind her. “What is it?”

  She looks at him. “You don’t know?”

  “Should I?”

  She grimaces and pushes the door open. There at the foot of the stairs are four corpses, all Saypuri soldiers, all abominably ravaged and mutilated. One man has been disemboweled, another dismembered. One soldier sits in the corner with a rifling bayonet thrust up into his abdomen. On one, a woman, she sees teeth marks on her face and neck.

  Sigrud stares at the carnage. “I…I did this?”

  Mulaghesh doesn’t bother answering. They’ll kill him for this, she thinks. There must have been witnesses. They’ll never forgive him, never let this go. Hells, I’m not even sure if I can.

  Then the sirens start to wail: a low, rising note of alarm that echoes throughout the hallways of the fortress. The very sound of it makes all
of Mulaghesh’s hair stand up on end.

  Sigrud looks up at the ceiling. “What is that?”

  Mulaghesh listens as more and more sirens begin to join until it’s a shrieking chorus. “Oh, no,” she says quietly. “Oh, no, no no.”

  “What is it?”

  “Damn! Damn it all! It means the ships must have been spotted!”

  “The…Voortyashtani ships?”

  “Yes, damn it! It means that even if we did destroy the swords, it’s too late!”

  “What options do we have now?”

  Mulaghesh is about to say nothing: the invasion is here and there’s nothing they can do about it save fight, and lose. But then she recalls one of the last things Thinadeshi said to her: It’s a token, a symbol. It can be unlocked, unfolded, interpreted to be many things. You can do many deeds with it if you use it the right way, if you think about it the right way.

  “Our hand’s all played out,” she says quietly. “Except for one thing. But I’m not sure what I’m even supposed to do with it.”

  “Do with what?” says Sigrud.

  She looks at him, jaw set. “The sword of Voortya.” She describes what it looks like to him.

  “And what will you do with this sword?”

  “I’m not sure—but I know it’s a weapon of terrific power. I just don’t know how to activate it….Maybe you have to get close to the sentinels for it to work—it’s almost powered by them, in a way. But if Biswal took it, odds are it’s wherever the swords are, too. So, again—the labs and Biswal’s quarters.”

  “The plan hasn’t changed, then.”

  “Oh, hells, yes it’s changed,” says Mulaghesh. “It means we need to book it twice as fast! Come on!”

  ***

  Mulaghesh looks behind her as she trots up the stairs to Biswal’s quarters. It’s hard to sneak about with these sirens wailing all around her, as she can’t hear if anyone’s ahead of or behind her, but so far these areas are deserted. Everyone’s manned the walls, as Sigrud claimed.

  She guessed that Biswal wouldn’t keep the swords in his makeshift office at the top of the tower. But she knows where the officers’ quarters are, and due to the lack of available space in Fort Thinadeshi, odds are Biswal’s is there as well.

  She knows she’s right when she walks down one empty hallway and hears a voice in the back of her head:

  “…and our swords will fall like rains…”

  She grits her teeth and keeps moving. The awful, babbling sound of the swords intensifies in her mind. The doors get more and more ornate until finally she comes to one thick oaken door with a bronze handle.

  She tries the handle. It’s unlocked. She pushes it open.

  The whisper of voices becomes a blast. The room beyond is wide and spacious, with a large fireplace set in the wall. To her surprise, there’s a fire going—but then she sees the room is not unoccupied.

  Lalith Biswal looks out of a bay window at the far end, hands clasped behind his back. Between him and Mulaghesh are the racks and racks of Rada’s swords, all of them whispering and muttering in Mulaghesh’s head.

  She stands there for a moment, not sure what to do. She thought he’d be up on the walls with everyone else.

  Then Biswal says aloud, “They only speak to people who have killed, don’t they.”

  Mulaghesh hesitates, then walks in, shuts the door, and locks it. She takes the pistol from its holster and turns to face him. “Yeah. That’s right.”

  “I thought as much,” he says. “Most of the soldiers here think they’re a figment of their imagination.” He turns around and looks at her, head cocked, listening to the voices and the rise and fall of the sirens. “It’s happening.”

  “Yes.”

  “So what are you here for, Turyin? I’ve started it. The first shot in the war. One that should have been fought long ago. There’s no going back now.” His words are soft and airy, and his eyes have a glazed-over look to them, as if he’s on some drug. He looks at the pistol in her hand. “Are you going to shoot me?”

  “Not if I don’t have to.” She scans the area, looking for the sword of Voortya. His living quarters aren’t as sparse as she’d imagined them to be: he has a comfortable-looking couch, a few paintings, a nice table, and a half-full bookshelf.

  “Are you looking for this?” he asks quietly. He reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out something small, black, curved, and strange-looking—something that could resemble a human hand clutching at air if you looked at it the right way.

  Mulaghesh goes still when she sees the sword.

  “What is it?” he asks.

  She doesn’t answer. She can’t tell if he’s armed or not: she doesn’t see a sidearm on him, which is odd.

  “What is this thing you had, Turyin? We found it on you at Smolisk’s house.”

  Mulaghesh slowly begins moving toward him.

  “I felt it ask me a question,” he says softly. “It spoke to me as I carried it in my pocket, when the sirens started going off, when I knew what was coming. It was so startling I had to walk away.”

  Mulaghesh’s grip on the pistol tightens. “What did it say, Lalith?”

  “It asked me something—it asked if I was it. It asked if I was this…this thing, this thing I was holding, or maybe it asked if it was a part of me or if I was a part of it. I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know how to answer. What is it, Turyin? What is this thing you found?”

  “Something that doesn’t belong to you. Give it to me. Now. And I’ll leave peacefully.”

  “And if I call for the guards?”

  “I know there aren’t any. You’re alone here.”

  He considers it. “No,” he says. “No, I won’t give it to you.”

  She raises the pistol and points it at him. “I’m not joking, Lalith. I don’t have time for this, not while those ships are closing in.”

  “I know you, Turyin,” he says. “To murder one’s commanding officer…That’s something you can never come back from.”

  “But it wouldn’t be the first time that I killed a comrade,” she says softly.

  “I see,” he says. “But I will still not give this to you. Did you think I wasn’t willing to die for this?”

  “And all your soldiers with you?”

  “I remain confident,” he says serenely, “of our inevitable victory. We are soldiers of Saypur. We have never lost a war.”

  “You’ve gone mad.” The pistol trembles in her hand. “Is that why you had Signe killed?”

  “Harkvaldsson? It was an accident. An unfortunate casualty.”

  “You suffer so many of those, it seems.” Mulaghesh is breathing heavily. “She was my friend.”

  “She was a Dreyling. She was in a hostile region. Both you and she were acting against the orders of the Saypuri authority here. But I am attempting to serve the greater good.”

  “Your idea of the greater good involves far too many innocent deaths, Lalith,” says Mulaghesh. “Give me the sword, or I swear I will shoot you dead.”

  “A sword?” He looks down at it. “Is it a sword? For a second, when it was in my pocket, I got the strangest feeling that it was a human hand….And then when I held it, I looked out on the world, and imagined I saw seas of fire, and thousands of banners in the air….” He looks at her. “It’s not just a sword, is it. It’s more than these things that Rada made. What is it?”

  “I’m going to give you one more chance.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” says Biswal, suddenly eager. He stows the sword back in his coat. “I remember when you trained under me almost no one could beat you in a sword fight. You used those wooden swords, and I could tell when someone had tangled with you. They’d be moving slow and covered in livid bruises. I remember that.” He walks to one of the racks and picks up a sword—it must be a crude one, one that didn’t work, because he isn’t instantly possessed by a sentinel.

  Lucky for him, thinks Mulaghesh, and lucky for me.

  “I never contested you, of course. It would have
been unseemly for me to do so, an officer so high above your rank. But I did wish to. To test my mettle against the best fighter under my command…We’re both creatures of battle, Turyin, here at what might be the greatest battle of our lives. It seems only just for us to fight for the possession of this thing, this strange, whispering trinket.”

  Mulaghesh keeps the pistol pointed on him but doesn’t speak a word.

  He smiles and whips his sword through the air. “Rada’s workmanship seems quite capable. Will these things break skin?” His smile dims a little. “Will you still be a worthy opponent, despite being one-handed?” He walks to one side of the room and kicks the couch away, clearing some space. Then he turns to face her, a strange light in his eyes. “Come on. Test yourself. Let the art of combat decide who is the righteous one.”

  Mulaghesh pulls the trigger.

  The bullet punches through Biswal’s chest and smashes the window behind him. A cold, chilly breeze comes pouring in.

  Biswal stares down at himself in astonishment. The wound is bleeding freely, his blood striking the floor below him.

  He looks up at her, outraged, shocked. “I can’t believe you…you…”

  She shoots again, hitting him again in the chest. He blinks, eyes wide, and the sword in his hand clatters to the floor. He takes one step toward her, then collapses to the ground, pawing limply for the blade that’s now just out of reach.

  Mulaghesh keeps the pistol trained on him and slowly walks over.

  “You shot me,” he says softly. “I can’t believe you shot me.”

  “I’m not quite like you, Lalith,” she says. She holsters the pistol, bends down, and reaches into his coat. “You’ve always believed war to be a grand performance. But to me it’s just killing, just the ugliest thing a person can ever do.” She pulls out the sword of Voortya. It’s covered in Biswal’s blood. “So when you need to do it, there’s no need to make a show of it.”

  He stares at her in disbelief. Then he says, “I’m…I’m not going to die, am I? I can’t. I just can’t….”

  Mulaghesh watches him.

  “I wasn’t…I wasn’t supposed to die like this,” he says softly. “I was supposed…to have a hero’s death. I’m owed a better death.”