The Divine Cities Trilogy: City of Stairs, City of Blades, and City of Miracles, With an Excerpt From Foundryside

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  Mulaghesh and Sigrud look over the seawall. The waters are dark and swirling, sloshing up and down a small concrete loading dock just fifteen feet below them. “I assume that would have happened to me if I’d gotten it,” says Mulaghesh. “Who gave you the box to deliver? Was it a woman?”

  The Dreyling nods.

  “And what did she look like?” asks Mulaghesh.

  “I could not see her. She wore a cloak, and a scarf….And it was raining then.”

  Sigrud leans out over the water, frowning, though Mulaghesh can’t see what worries him so.

  “What did she sound like?” asks Mulaghesh. “Old? Young?”

  “She sounded…I do not know. Normal. No strong accent, nothing notable. She was short. Wore dark robes. She just went up to the street there.” He points.

  Sigrud cocks his head, still staring at the waters below the seawall.

  “We could do searches in the city,” says Signe. “But a fat lot of good that will do. So many people come i—”

  Sigrud says, “There is something down there.”

  “What? Besides the ocean, you mean?” says Signe.

  “Yes…There is something rising u—”

  There’s a sudden thrashing sound in the water below them, and something huge goes whirring up into the night sky, bursting from the waters like a startled dove. The crowd of Dreylings gasps and watches its ascent, a spinning, whirring arc of glimmering steel that dances through the air toward one of the SDC cranes—

  It’s a sword, thinks Mulaghesh, but who threw it?

  —and slices through the crane’s supports like they were made of butter.

  There’s a pause as physics decides what to do with the several tons of metal suddenly suspended in the sky. Then the crane tips, yaws, and with the groaning sounds of an old man climbing out of bed, begins to slowly tumble to the ground.

  “Run!” screams Signe. “Run! Out of the way, out of the way!”

  It seems to happen in slow motion, like a battleship falling from the sky. The very impact is so great it knocks people off their feet. Dust and sea spray washes over them, even though it fell several hundred feet away. Mulaghesh watches in mute terror as some of the closer, unluckier Dreylings fall in a shower of deadly shrapnel.

  Mulaghesh continues tracking the sword spinning through the sky as the plume of dust pours over them. She watches as it slashes up, up, up, and finally begins to turn, hurtling back down to them, perhaps threatening to cut the very world in half.

  But it doesn’t. Instead its grip smacks into the open palm of someone’s hand, raised up high above the seawater.

  She stares at the hand, then at its owner, who is now walking up the dock, water still pouring off their back.

  At first the thing seems to be no more than some tangled wreckage washed ashore, a repulsive amalgam of coral and metal and bone. But as the water pours off of it her eyes discern shoulders, arms, and a crude, skeletal face. She sees the back adorned in horns and tusks and blades, the wrists lined with serrated teeth, every inch built to harm, to hurt, to destroy, as if this thing’s mere passage through the world could wreak unspeakable destruction.

  The sword hums in the figure’s hand. It looks at the sword, head cocked, as if beholding a beauty it has not experienced in ages.

  It is a Voortyashtani sentinel. But it is far larger than the sentinels she saw in her visions, and its armor is far more ornate, far more terrifying.

  The sword vibrates, humming and buzzing, and somewhere in that awful sound is a voice—one that does not speak to their minds as much as directly speak to their souls, crying, Battle and war! The last war, the last war!

  Suddenly she recognizes the thing standing on the dock, and understands what—or, rather, who—is now striding into Voortyashtan.

  “Holy hells,” says Mulaghesh. “I don’t know how but—it’s fucking Saint Zhurgut!”

  * * *

  —

  “Who?” says Sigrud.

  “It can’t be!” says Signe. “How is that possi—”

  She never finishes the sentence: Saint Zhurgut studies his surroundings, raises his sword, and flings it forward once again. Everyone dives to the ground as the massive arc of steel hurtles through the air. It smashes into the SDC trucks, punching through one of them like it’s made of paper and clipping another, which then slowly tips over from the blow.

  They watch as the sword rips through the air with a low om hum that sounds, Mulaghesh realizes, a lot like what Björck described. The sword goes speeding back into the saint’s hand, who then turns at the top of the dock and begins to calmly walk toward them.

  Mulaghesh takes a deep breath and bellows, “Open fire!”

  She’s not their commander, but the Dreyling guards quickly oblige, lining up along the seawall and opening up on Zhurgut. The sound that fills the air is a dreadfully familiar one to Mulaghesh: it is the sound of countless bullets uselessly bouncing off of Divine armor. She still hears it in her dreams, echoes of the Battle of Bulikov, and even though the bolt-action riflings are far more advanced they don’t seem to do much damage: Saint Zhurgut pauses as if taking a moment to regard this new phenomenon, his masked face swiveling to take in the sparks flying off of his chest and arms. Then he crouches and leaps.

  Mulaghesh hears the om sound again, and thinks, The sword’s dragging him. It’s pulling him through the air.

  The saint comes plummeting down, his sword moaning and shrieking. Again, Mulaghesh hears words in that strange sound, murmuring, I am battle incarnate. I am a weapon wielded by Her hand.

  When he lands one of the SDC guards dissolves in a spray of blood, vivisected from collarbone to crotch. She watches in horror as the man has a moment to take in his situation—his dangling head craning down, wide-eyed—until the two halves of his body fall away and he topples over. The saint rolls forward—dragged, it seems, by some propulsion emanating from his sword—and the giant blade slashes up, around, and through the crowd of SDC guards. Mulaghesh watches as six stout men seem to dissolve, like cloth puppets having their threads pulled apart.

  “Fucking hells!” shouts Mulaghesh. “Take cover!”

  Sigrud and Signe sprint in one direction toward a rickety fish shop up the hill, while Mulaghesh, Lem, and the other SDC guards take cover down the street. They find an old slate wall along a vacant lot and immediately take up positions. The guards wheel around and aim at the metal figure slowly stalking up the oystershell street.

  “Don’t shoot yet!” says Mulaghesh quickly. “Don’t attract his atten—”

  Too late: there’s a series of pops as the riflings go off. Saint Zhurgut swivels his crude face to look at them. Then he raises the sword, there’s the droning om sound, and then…

  The slate wall seems to explode. A rain of stones shoves her to the ground. Dust clouds her eyes. Then everything goes dark.

  * * *

  —

  Children screaming. Fires dancing beneath the night sky. The bright cold face of the moon and the cold clinging mist.

  I always knew I’d come back here, she thinks dreamily. Back to this place, where we wrought death so gladly…

  She watches through puffy eyes as a ragged child totters through the firelit streets, screaming for its mother.

  It’s good that I’m dying here, she thinks. I deserved it. I deserve it.

  “General? General?”

  Mulaghesh tries to speak. Her mouth is thick and bloody. “Wh-Where am I?”

  “Are you all right, General?”

  She opens her eyes to see an unfamiliar face standing over her: a young Saypuri officer, apparently a captain, wearing a closely wrapped headcloth and sporting a trim, neat beard. He has the look of a poet about him—something dreamy to his large, dark eyes—and she wonders who he is. Perhaps he’s one of her long-forgotten comrades who died in some faded conflict o
r another.

  “Am I dead?” she croaks.

  He smiles weakly. “No, General. You’re not. I’m Captain Sakthi. I’m here from the fortress.”

  There’s a crash and then a rumbling from somewhere behind them.

  “What’s going on?” asks Mulaghesh.

  “CTO Harkvaldsson sent word up to the fortress of a possible attack….And it seems that the attack is, ah, still ongoing.”

  Mulaghesh slowly sits up. Her arms and side scream in anguish. No doubt she got banged up by the raining stones—her nose is broken, for the umpteenth time in her life—but she seems to be in one piece. She appears to be in some sort of temporary housing structure, one that no one ever got around to living in. Fourteen other Saypuri soldiers stand at the windows, riflings ready, though they’re obviously terrified. She also sees Lem, Signe’s security man, sitting at the door, staring out. His face is wildly bruised, and from the feel of it hers isn’t much better.

  “How long was I out?” she asks.

  “I’m not sure, ma’am. You were carried here by Mr. Lem, who flagged us down. We have not attempted to engage the, ah…the enemy. He seems remarkably difficult to engage at all, as you’ll see.”

  He helps her stand and walk to the door. He points out, but he doesn’t need to.

  Voortyashtan is under siege. It’s as though it’s been through a day’s worth of shelling. Fires dance and caper in the tattered ruins of countless yurts and tents. She watches as a slate-roofed house collapses in on itself and goes tumbling down the slopes, raining debris on the homes below.

  It takes no time to spot the source of all this damage: Saint Zhurgut stands on the corner of a tall, ragged home, hurling his sword out at the city again and again, carving huge swaths through the buildings and people and structures with each toss. The air seems to vibrate with the constant om of his blade’s progress, and she watches, horrified, as he successfully levels most of a city block in barely half a minute.

  By all the seas, she thinks. It’s like someone’s anchored a dreadnought in the bay and it’s raining death on us!

  It takes a moment for her ears to discern it, but she realizes Zhurgut is singing, chanting through the sword as he flings it across the city:

  I who gave my life and mind

  To be beaten smooth and hard

  And shorn of all distraction

  I who gave the hand of my son

  I am Her weapon, I am Her blade

  And I shall rend creation asunder

  She watches as the sword slices through one of the malformed statues standing along the Solda. The stone figure—which looks like it was carved to resemble a man drawing the string of an arrow—buckles at the waist and tumbles down the slopes, crushing houses and buildings as if they were no more than toothpicks.

  “By the fucking seas,” she whispers. “He means to slaughter every last one of us!”

  “And it looks like he can do it, too,” says Lem.

  “I’ve called up to the fortress for reinforcements,” says Sakthi. He pats an enormous lead-acid-battery-powered radio on the floor beside him. It must weigh forty pounds, at least. “They’re sending down an entire battalion as fast as they can. Everyone and everything’s on full alert.”

  “And what are they supposed to do?” asks Lem. “He shrugged off our fire like it was nothing!”

  “I haven’t exactly heard any other options!” says Sakthi.

  Mulaghesh spits a mouthful of blood out on the floor. “Divine creatures are tough,” she says. “But they’re not invincible. Do we have anything heavier than riflings?”

  “We’ve got the rock guns up in the truck,” says Sakthi. “Could that make any difference?”

  “Ponjas?” says Mulaghesh, surprised. “You brought those?”

  “Per the general’s orders, it’s SOP for any squadron exiting the fortress,” says Sakthi.

  Of course it would be, she thinks. A Ponja rifling would be a pretty standard weapon for this region: firing a half-inch-caliber round, a Ponja can punch through most walls, most light armors, as well as plenty of other obstructions—including stones, which makes it useful when fighting highland insurgents in the upper ranges. After being put to this use by caravans traversing the mountain passes, the Ponja rifling met with great success, earning the nickname “rock gun.” So of course Biswal would make sure his soldiers used them.

  Now it’s just a question of whether a Ponja can punch a hole in Divine armor as well as it can stone.

  Another om, another rattling crash as a Voortyashtani structure collapses.

  “Fuck,” says Mulaghesh. “He’ll tear through this place like tissue paper if we let him!”

  “But the second we open up on him, he’ll be on us like a buzz saw,” says Lem.

  “The Divine warriors you fought in the Battle of Bulikov…,” says Sakthi.

  “What about them?” says Mulaghesh.

  “They couldn’t survive artillery fire, could they?”

  “No. That they couldn’t. What are you getting at?”

  Sakthi glances down at the radio in his hand, then up at Fort Thinadeshi and its countless cannons pointed at them.

  “Hold on,” says Mulaghesh. “Are you seriously suggesting we shell the city? With us in it?”

  “We could evacuate,” says Sakthi. “Try and keep him contained. Then pound away at him.”

  “That would incur the losses of thousands of civilians!” says Mulaghesh angrily. “Not to mention the likely destruction of the harbor, which we’ve spent billions to build!”

  “And if the Ponjas don’t work on him?” says Sakthi, with more backbone than she expected. “What then, General?”

  Mulaghesh starts thinking. She’ll be damned if she sheds more civilian blood in her lifetime without even trying another way.

  She remembers, suddenly, Shara’s face, suspended in the pane of glass at the SDC headquarters: You have a military fortress at your disposal, as well as a massive construction fleet. Though they may be unwilling, they are still potential resources.

  An idea starts forming in her mind. The harbor’s basically a factory, she thinks. And what’s more dangerous than getting stuck in the machinery?

  “Where’s Sigrud and Signe?” she asks.

  “The dauvkind and his daughter?” says Sakthi. “I think they’re holed up in the harbor yards. Just down that way.” He points down the street.

  “And do we have anyone here who’s a damned good shot with a Ponja?”

  “I would say Sergeant Burdar is a capable shot,” says Sakthi, pointing to a short little man with a huge mustache, who gives her a curt nod.

  “All right,” she says. “I think…I think I have another option.”

  “You do, ma’am?” asks Sakthi.

  “Yeah.” Then she thinks and adds, “Maybe.”

  * * *

  —

  Mulaghesh sprints through the streets of Voortyashtan, struggling with the weight of the Ponja gun in her arms. Sergeant Burdar runs alongside her, carrying two Ponja guns as well, one under each arm. When she explained her overall idea to him he seemed to treat the idea of using such a weapon on a saint as no more troubling than dove hunting: “A dancer he isn’t,” the sergeant said. “He hops about a bit, but he’s a slow one. I can plug him pretty ably, marm, if I get a clear shot.”

  A clear shot, thinks Mulaghesh as they run up to the harbor yard gates. And the right timing.

  She hears an om on her right, up north into the city, and a smattering of screams. The sounds of gunfire are near constant. She keeps waiting for a pause, for Saint Zhurgut to take a breather, but he doesn’t: he is an engine of destruction, and he’s doing what he knows.

  “Sigrud, Signe!” Mulaghesh shouts to the harbor gates. “Are you in there? It’s me!”

  The gate falls open and she walks in
. She sees Signe standing along the wall, pointing a pistol at her. Then Sigrud’s face emerges from behind the gate. He jerks his head impatiently, as if to say, Well, come on.

  “Good,” says Mulaghesh. “You’re all alive.”

  “He’s paying more attention to the homes and residences,” says Sigrud. “He seems to have forgotten the harbor altogether. So we’re safe, for now.”

  “We are, but he’s destroying the city!” says Signe. “He’s killing everyone he can! He’s a damned monster! Where did he come from?”

  “From the sword, I suppose,” says Mulaghesh. “You said that in the old days departed sentinels could possess the bodies of the living, yeah? I guess picking up that damned sword was the trick.”

  “How the hells could a Voortyashtani sword still be…be, well, active?” asks Signe.

  “Beats me,” says Mulaghesh. “But someone meant for me to pick it up. If it’d worked, that’d be me standing on top of that chimney, trying to kill everyone within a mile.”

  “Can we stop him?” says Sigrud.

  “I have some options,” says Mulaghesh. “And we can stop him. It’s just a matter of simplicity, provided we’re all healthy and willing.” She looks at Signe. “That PK-512 of yours—is it operational?”

  “The what?”

  “The minigun. The giant fucking cannon you’ve got set up in front of your yard of statues!”

  “Yes, I think so….My predecessor had it installed, but…but no one really knew how to use it.”

  “Well, I do.” Mulaghesh squats down and starts drawing a map of the harbor in the mud. “Listen. There’s a chance that one of the Ponja guns we’ve brought can maybe penetrate his armor. So there’s a chance there’s literally a one-shot solution to all this.”

  “Then why haven’t you shot him?” says Signe.

  “Because if it doesn’t work he’s going to know where we are and slaughter us like cattle. If that’s the case, we need a backup.”