She holds the sword high and screams in fury, “THEN I FIND YOU WANTING! NO SOLDIERS ARE YOU IN MY EYES! NO TRUE SOLDIERS ARE ANY OF YOU! AND SO I SAY OUR AGREEMENT IS BROKEN!”
She hurls the blazing sword down.
***
Captain Sakthi stares in disbelief as Voortya swings her hand out and throws the glittering, burning sword down to the waters. It is a bolt of lightning, a comet, a blaze of light so bright it’s like the sky has been split open. He raises his hand to shield his eyes, watching through the cracks in his fingers as this fiery, flickering star comes shrieking down to touch the waters at the very center of the fleet.
The horizon erupts. It’s like a thousand shells have gone off, like the death of a star, a wall of purest, bright white light flying at them.
Sakthi shuts his eyes. He cries out and crumples to the ground, covering his face with his arms, bracing for the impact. Surely this explosion will send a crushing wave of water roaring up the shores. Surely shrapnel will fall on them like screaming rains, rending them to pieces. Surely they’ll dissolve in a wave of hot fire that will set the whole of the countryside alight.
But nothing comes.
He waits. Then he lowers his arms, raises his head, and looks.
His eyes are still adjusting, so the dimly lit world bursts with faint blue-green bubbles. Once this passes he sees the bay is covered with thick, curling smoke. But he can’t see a single mast or burning hull in any of it.
The wind picks up. The smoke curls faster, then withdraws like a curtain.
He slowly stands.
The bay is empty. No, not just empty—it’s calm and placid, as it has been nearly every night this week. Not a lick of flotsam or jetsam bobs upon its shores, and the figure of Voortya has vanished with it.
“Gone,” he says. “They’re all gone.”
He is still too stunned to react when all of the technicians begin cheering.
***
Sakthi tries to run faster, but his body is rebelling against him now. He’s been racing about for nearly four hours, moving at breakneck speeds since Biswal first mentioned this mad night was happening, and now his feet ache and his knees creak and some of his lower vertebrae are complaining terribly. Yet he knows his fellow soldiers must be as exhausted as he is as they sprint over the rocks to where they saw the Divinity, their torches bobbing up and down in the dark, so he pushes himself a little harder, raising the guttering red flare in his hands and crying, “To me, to me! Hurry, my boys and girls, hurry!”
It’s all so impossible. He’s thinking the same thing everyone else is: Did they really see the Divinity of war tonight? And did she really strike down her own army, wiping them out in a single blow? Or did something…else happen tonight?
Sergeant Burdar flings out a finger. “There, Captain! Over there!”
There, on the farthest point, the shape of a single person sitting on the cliffs.
Captain Sakthi sprints toward them, crying, “Don’t shoot, damn you, don’t shoot a damn thing unless you have to! Don’t you damned well fire a shot, my boys and girls!”
They drop back, allowing him to be first on the scene. He’s not sure what he’s expecting: perhaps they’ll find the sword of Voortya still buried in the side of the cliffs up to the hilt. Or perhaps they’ll find some unearthly, Divine wound in reality, like they have in Bulikov. Or perhaps the cliffs will be sloughing away entirely, unable to support the madness of this evening.
But as his soldiers encircle the people on the cliffs, he finds it is nothing so strange, nothing so surreal. Captain Sakthi is a veteran of combat, so the sight is not unfamiliar: a young soldier, lying on the ground, pale and still with a wound in his side; and there next to him curled over double is a woman, sobbing hysterically, as if it were she, not the soldier, who was mortally wounded.
She says the same words over and over again: “No more, no more. Please, please, no more.”
People often ask me what I see when I look at the world. My answer is simple, and true.
Possibilities. I see possibilities.
—LETTER FROM VALLAICHA THINADESHI, 1649
Mulaghesh stares at the ceiling of the jail cell.
Everything hurts. Her head, her left arm, her right arm, her knees, both ankles, though one a little more than the other. Even her left hand hurts, her missing hand—a curious, ghostly ache, though perhaps that’s because she still doesn’t have her prosthesis back. Yet none of it’s a real hurt, somehow. It’s all far away, muted, as if it’s happening to someone on the other side of the world.
It takes her a second to hear the sound of the footsteps. That’s unusual: ever since Major Hukkeri had them throw her in here they’ve mostly left her alone, except for bringing her food or taking out her latrine. They treat her, in many ways, like a bomb that’s about to go off, and she can’t quite blame them. So who’s brave enough to get near her now?
She watches as the visitor comes to the door of her cell, and though it’s dark she can tell by the scintillating wall of medals and ribbons on their chest that this is a person of consequence. In fact, there’s only one person she knows of who could have ever accrued that many commendations.
She lifts her head a little. “Noor?”
General Adhi Noor leans forward so that a blade of light falls across his face. It’s him, though he looks about a thousand years older than when she last saw him.
He smiles. “Hello, Turyin. Mind if I come in?”
“Do I have a choice, sir?”
“You do if you’d like to.”
She nods and stands to attention. He unlocks the door and steps in. “There’s no need for that. You look like you’ve had a rough time of it. I’d not put you through any more.” He sits down on the cot at the other side of the cell. “Why don’t you take a seat.”
She does as he asks. She thinks for a moment. “Sir, what are you doing here?”
He smiles again, but there’s a bitter touch to it. “When Biswal messaged the Ministry about Zhurgut’s attack on the city, that put a lot of things in motion. I happened to be in Taalvashtan at the time. The prime minister recommended I jump on a boat and get here as soon as I could. It was only on the way that she…apprised me of your operation here. It sounds like a damn tricky one.” He gives her a piercing glance. “And from what everyone has said you’ve either caused quite a bit of commotion or you’ve walked right into a mess of it.”
Mulaghesh is silent. He looks her over, and she knows the look: she herself has given it to soldiers under her command many times.
He takes off his hat and sets it in his lap. “Why don’t you tell me what happened, Turyin?” he says quietly.
She hesitates. It seems so much easier to just let it all be walled up inside of her, to pack it away and keep it in the dark, away from her waking life. But before she knows it, she begins to talk.
She tells him everything. She describes it in the only language available to her: the dry, clinical, officious vocabulary of an officer making a report. And he listens throughout, hardly moving.
When she finishes he’s silent for a while. Then he says quietly, “That’s some story.”
She swallows. “It’s the truth, sir.”
“I know it is. I believe you.”
“You…You do?”
“Yes. I have never known you to lie, Turyin. I’ve never known you to stretch the truth one jot—even when I really would have preferred you to. And maybe you forget that I was with you just days after the Battle of Bulikov. I know what this country is like just as much as you do.”
“I wasn’t doubting you, sir. It’s just that…that General Biswal…”
Noor purses his lips and nods. “Yes. Biswal. I’ve been in communication with Major Hukkeri and one officer who has, in my opinion, thoroughly distinguished himself, a Captain Sakthi. Their assessments of Biswal’s actions don’t quite enter into the realm of the fantastic like yours do, but…they’re close enough. It appears Biswal told numerous officers numerous d
ifferent stories about what was happening here, anything to get his men to support his mad endeavor to start a new war. That’s reason enough to doubt him. And it is my personal opinion that his command here, while brief, has been nothing short of a catastrophe.”
“That doesn’t acquit a soldier of killing a superior officer, sir.”
“No. No, it doesn’t. But being that we did discover fragments of these swords you describe in Biswal’s rooms, I am tempted to believe you had reasons for your actions.”
“Fragments, sir?”
“Yes. Both the swords and the statues that SDC so carefully hoarded have all more or less disintegrated. If you’re right—if these miracles persisted only because the will of the dead insisted they did so, as a way to be remembered—then it seems that power is gone. The thinadeskite no longer registers any extraordinary properties at all. It’s simply dust.” General Noor rotates the hat in his hands, fingering the brim. “If the swords—damn, I hate discussing this odd stuff—if these swords drew that fleet to these shores, and if Biswal was passively willing to allow them to do so, for whatever reason, then it is an extraordinarily damning piece of evidence. That you managed to defuse the situation—however you managed to do it—is remarkable.” He glances at her. “I’ll probably regret this—I hate asking about anything miraculous—but how did you do it? You just threw the sword at them?”
She shakes her head. “The sword was…it was like a symbol, sir, an idea made real, or maybe many ideas made real. It was a symbol of their agreement—they’d be soldiers for Voortya, and she would give them eternal life and their final war. It was a matter of just…rewriting the agreement.”
“How so?”
There’s a glint of steel in her eye. “They didn’t qualify as soldiers in my opinion, sir.”
“And as such…you were no longer obligated to allow them their war,” says Noor. “Ah. It seems simple now, but…Well, actually, no, it doesn’t seem simple. I hardly understand a bit of it.” He sighs. “I admire the prime minister, but I don’t much enjoy having to parse through all of her miraculous nonsense. But I’m glad she put you here. She’s foresighted, I’ll give you that.”
“I didn’t do it alone, sir. CTO Harkvaldsson was an enormous asset, and…and…”
“Yes.” Noor’s expression darkens. “The dauvkind.” He is silent for a great while. “Did he really kill those soldiers?”
Mulaghesh nods.
“If he was your friend…If he helped you…well, why didn’t you just lie? Why did you tell me that?”
“Lying about how a soldier died, sir,” says Mulaghesh, “is a damned cowardly thing to do. It would dishonor them. Even if it hurts me to admit what happened, I have to tell the truth. He…He did it in a blind rage. They’d just killed his daughter….” She trails off.
“And you know that won’t matter,” says Noor. “Even if he is the dauvkind. We cannot let such a thing pass. When we find him, we will have to hold him accountable for his actions, no matter who he is.”
“When we find him, sir?”
“That’s right, I suppose you wouldn’t know. The dauvkind has not been found anywhere since the night of the attempted invasion. He’s a Ministry-trained operative. Those sorts can be hard to find.” Noor clears his throat. “He has, however, left a letter behind.”
“A letter?”
“Yes. He confesses that the entire plan about the yard of statues—hiding the Divine here amongst the harbor works—was his idea. His daughter had nothing to do with it, he says. He claims it was an act of patriotism, anything to support his country, and he takes full responsibility for his actions—though that’s not quite true, what with him having fled and all.” He looks at Mulaghesh. “Is this true? Was this his idea?”
Mulaghesh rubs her aching left arm. “Possibly. I don’t know.”
Noor looks her over again, carefully.
“I do know that the statues had little to do with the situation in Voortyashtan,” says Mulaghesh. “Their presence was wholly coincidence—everything that happened here was a consequence of the actions of Rada Smolisk and Lalith Biswal. That is the truth.”
“And why did you never try to contact me? Why did you never reach out to the military council?”
“The idea of the prime minister running an unofficial operation, investigating the Divine…” Mulaghesh shrugs. “What sort of reaction would that have evoked? Even if we had discovered a true threat?”
Noor nods, sighing. “That is probably true. There are some who already think this whole thing was a hoax concocted by the prime minister. I suppose denial is a much more comfortable bed to lie in than the truth.”
“And what’s to become of me, sir? Will I face a trial?”
“A trial?” he says, surprised. “No, not a trial. Not yet, at least. There’ll be a hearing, and likely an inquiry—but I expect they will mostly find your actions commendable, Mulaghesh. There were thousands of witnesses to what you did last night, even if they don’t quite understand what they saw. There are dozens of soldiers here who can testify to General Biswal’s erratic actions before the invasion.”
Mulaghesh feels herself trembling. “But…But Pandey, and…”
His expression softens. “Yes, the poor sergeant major. You explained to me that was an accident. And we did find part of his sword in your false hand. That is proof enough to me.”
“But…But someone has to…to hold me accountable, sir.”
“For what?”
She almost says, “For everything,” because before this only once in her life has she ever felt responsible for so many ills in this world, so many wounds and so many deaths.
General Noor looks at her for a long, long time. “We need to get you home, Mulaghesh. You’ve been out here too long, out on the front lines. Both in body and in mind.” He stands and pushes the door of the cell ajar. Then he turns and says, “I’m going to leave this open, General Mulaghesh. You come out when you’re ready. When you think you deserve it. And you do deserve it, Turyin.”
She waits until she knows he’s out of earshot to finally begin to weep again. It takes her more than an hour to summon the strength to walk out.
***
The next day Mulaghesh walks the cliffs in the morning air, reveling in the sunlight. A front has blown in out of the south, pushing the clouds away and bringing warm air with it. Noor has given her a new uniform and has allowed her time to clean herself up and seek first aid, and all of this makes Voortyashtan feel like a different world to her.
She wanders the copses and woods atop the cliffs, walking north of the fortress and the city. It takes only a few minutes to lose her tails—two of them, both plainclothes Saypuri officers, neither of them very good. Then she turns toward the coast.
She finds it almost immediately: the hidden place where the tiny, terrifying stairs wander down to the shore. She remembers sitting on the cliffs and watching Pandey rowing out to sea, and the girl in the boat who met him.
Mulaghesh climbs down the stairs. It would normally terrify her, but it doesn’t anymore. Having been death itself for a little bit, she’s no longer much afraid of the idea.
She pauses when she’s almost at the bottom. She calls out, “Sigrud? I’m coming down! Don’t…Don’t fucking kill me or anything!”
A silence.
Then, quietly, “Okay.”
She climbs down the rest of the way and finds him hiding in a cut-in up under a shallow roof of stone. He looks like shit: he’s starved, filthy, and he’s set his own broken arm, albeit poorly.
“Gods be damned,” she says. “How did you survive the past couple of days?”
“Not well,” he admits. He looks at her balefully with one sunken, exhausted eye. “How did you know where to find me?”
She walks over and sits beside him on the gravelly shore. “I thought you would want to come somewhere you could remember her.”
He bows his head, but says nothing.
“Is all well?” he says after a while.<
br />
“No. I told them the truth,” she says. “About what happened. About what you did to those soldiers.”
“And the harbor?”
“What, your lie about how it was all your idea? Well…That I didn’t contradict.” She looks at him sadly. “Did you not want to disparage the memory of her?”
“I…I wanted to keep one last part of her alive,” he says. “The one thing she devoted her life to. But now that you’ve found me…Will you tell them? Will you allow them to arrest me, to cast down all the things my daughter built?”
“No. That I won’t do. I’m already arranging meetings with the tribal leaders before I ship out of here about that.”
“About what?”
“About how if they fuck up all that Signe did for them, and fail to make a nation out of this place…Well. Then I’ll come back and kill every single one of them.”
He looks at her. “Do…Do you think that they’ll believe you?”
She thins her eyes. “I was their god the other night, Sigrud. Just a little bit, and just for a little while. But I was still Voortya. They’ll fucking listen.” She sniffs. “But first I’m going to talk to Lem at SDC.”
“About…what?”
“About leaving Signe’s yacht at this location along the shore,” she says, handing him a map. “It’ll be there tomorrow morning.”
He looks at the map, confused, then slowly takes it. “You…You’re letting me get away?”
“No. I’m giving you a head start.”
“But…I killed those soldiers.”
“Yeah. And that’s a hard thing, and I damned well hate it.” She watches as the waves grasp at the stones at her feet, trying but never quite managing to tug them away. “But I did something similar once. And people gave me a second chance. I’d be a shit to deny that to others.”
“I don’t deserve such kindness.”
“Ah, there’s that word.” She looks out at the ocean. “ ‘Deserve.’ How preoccupied we are with that. With what we should have, with what we are owed. I wonder if any word has ever caused more heartache.” She watches as he folds the map, his fingers trembling, his face pinched like a child not to cry. “I’m sorry about Signe.”
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