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

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  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 countr
y—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.

  * * *

  —

  Pandey heads north, climbing up out of the city and across the cliffs. Mulaghesh falls back when he enters the open country, moving from stone to stone and tree to tree, her hip screaming that she is a complete and utter idiot with every step.

  Mulaghesh curses herself for not acting on this sooner. Signe accused me of being an industrial spy once, she thinks, and here she is with a spy of her own up at the fortress! She ducks down behind a boulder and watches Pandey hurry over the cliffs. Oh, Pandey, you stupid boy. What have you gotten yourself into?

  They pass the ruined mines, the copse of trees where she found the tunnel, farther and farther north. She makes careful note of his boot print and begins to read its small, ridged scar in the landscape. It should be almost impossible to lose him now.

  Yet she comes to the cliffs, and finds she has. She looks to the left and right, wondering if she could have missed him, or perhaps he dove off into the sea itself. Yet when she looks over the edge, she sees only a smattering of sharp, murderous rocks, and the gray gravelly shore.

  She pauses. A small sculling shell rests on the shore with two oars nestled inside. As she leans out to look she sees a small stone staircase has been cunningly hidden in the folds of the cliffs, perhaps carved by someone decades ago.

  Mulaghesh gets down on her elbows and knees and watches as Pandey finishes climbing down the narrow staircase and walks over to the sculling shell. He looks around, then looks up.

  She moves back, waits, and then looks back out again.

  Pandey is now stripping down to his undergarments, carefully folding his clothes and setting them on the gravel. Even though it’s evening and cooling off quick, he’s naked to the waist now, wearing only a pair of dark gray breeches. He shoves the sculling shell out onto the waves, wading in chest-deep, and then ably lifts himself up and into the shell. She sees his rowing prowess hasn’t diminished one jot, for he capably navigates his way through the jagged rocks and out to the sea, where another craft is ponderously making its way north to meet him.

  Mulaghesh shields her eyes and squints at the craft. The boat is not half as sleek as Pandey’s, a fat washtub of a thing. She takes out her spyglass and places it to her eye, and is not surprised to see it is Signe laboring away at the two oars…though she is a little surprised to see that SDC’s chief technology officer has also stripped down quite a bit for this jaunt, though she still wears her scarf. Even if she’s holding a clandestine meeting with a spy, it’s…a bit much.

  “What the hells?” mutters Mulaghesh.

  When Pandey’s shell nears Signe he pops the oars out, slides them in, and hops into the open water. Mulaghesh feels cold just watching him. He loops a rope to the prow of his shell, frog-kicks over to Signe’s bathtub of a boat, and knots it to the stern, with her assistance. When he grabs onto the edge of the boat Signe leans out over him, and Mulaghesh frowns when she sees the huge, ecstatic grin bloom on the Dreyling girl’s face.

  Pandey lifts himself out of the water, shoulders rippling and flexing, and places a kiss upon the smile.

  Mulaghesh’s mouth drops open. “Oh. Oh.”

  Pandey climbs in with Signe and rows to some hidden, rocky inlet along the coast. As the boats slowly leave Mulaghesh’s range of vision Signe undoes her ponytail, her bright gold hair rippling down in a shimmering curtain, and then she reaches down and starts to lift her shirt.

  “Oh, shit,” says Mulaghesh. She lowers the spyglass, ashamed.

  “Yes,” says a voice behind her.

  Mulaghesh jumps so much she almost goes tumbling off the cliffs. She turns to see Sigrud about twenty feet down the cliff, sitting with his legs dangling over the edge and watching the waters with a strange look on his face, as if he is both puzzled and pleased by what he just saw.

  “Damn it!” says Mulaghesh. “You nearly made me kill myself just then!”

  Sigrud is silent.

  “You were following her, weren’t you?” asks Mulaghesh.

  “Yes,” he says. “And you were following yours.”

  “Right. So your daughter…Uh, and Pandey…” Mulaghesh scratches the back of her head.

  “They are lovers,” says Sigrud.

  “Well, if they weren’t already it sure looks like they’re going to be.”

  “No…The familiarity of their movements…They have done this before, many times.”

  Mulaghesh holds up her hands. “Okay, please stop. Remember this is your daughter you’re talking about.”

  “Why should this discomfort me, to see my daughter doing this?” He looks into the sunset. “Two young people who nearly died last night, embracing life. That was what I saw.”

  “With a…With a damned sergeant major in the Saypuri Military? I thought Signe would be into, I don’t know, some astronomically wealthy banker or something. Or at least someone of her own race. A Saypuri courting a Dreyling…I can’t imagine how such a thing would work. He’d need to tie cans on his feet to dance with her.”

  “You underestimate her.”

  “Maybe. Either way, it’s dangerous.”

  “Affairs of the heart often are.”

  “Don’t get sentimental with me. There’s a lot that could go wrong here. If either of them is telling the other anything…”

  Sigrud thinks about it. “I do not care.”

  “You what?”

  “I do not care about espionage, about decorum, about security. I worried my daughter had only work in her life, only success or miserable failure. To see her smile in such a manner makes my heart glad.”

  “Well, goody for your fucking heart! Pandey was one of my soldiers. I can’t believe he’s…fraternizing with a foreign official in such a manner!”

  “Didn’t you sleep with a member of the Bulikov police department?” asks Sigrud.

  “That’s beside the point!” snarls Mulaghesh. “The stakes were different then!”

  “Were they?” Sigrud scratches his chin. “They are young. Both of them leave soon for uncertain fates. I say let them be humans for as long as circumstances allow. Why is this breach of decorum your concern, when so much else is at risk?”

 
; “And I thought I was getting old and soft. You sound like a cheap novel, Chancellor.” She sighs. “Come on. Help me get my broken ass back to HQ.”

  Ask a person what they want most desperately and they will say a child, a home, a fortune, a power, or an influence over their fellow men.

  These are all variations on the same thing—a wish for lasting influence, for legacy, for eternity.

  We wish to be remembered.

  —WRITS OF SAINT PETRENKO, 720

  Two days later, three hours before the break of dawn, Mulaghesh—still stiff, still bruised, still aching—reviews the craft that Signe has bobbing beside a small SDC dock.

  “So…are we sailing or going on holiday?” she asks.

  “I take it you’re no sailor,” says Signe as she makes her preparations. Despite the impending voyage, she’s still dressed the same: same black boots, same scarf, though she is now wearing a life jacket. Mulaghesh tries very hard not to remember the proper young CTO in the state of undress she saw just days ago.

  “Maybe not, but I’m not sure how keen I am to get on that thing in the open seas.” She walks the length of the craft. It’s a forty-foot white yacht labeled Bjarnadóttir, which Mulaghesh isn’t going to even attempt to pronounce, and it looks to her eye to be more suited for a jaunt across a still lake than navigating the rocky coastlines of Voortyashtan.

  “Don’t doubt it,” says Signe. “I know a Dreyling who sailed one of these fifteen thousand miles single-handedly.”

  “If you are talking about old Hjörvar,” says Sigrud, walking down the dock, “that man sailed slower than a cow gives birth.” He’s still moving gingerly, his right arm still in a sling. Mulaghesh shakes her head: firing a Ponja from an upright position would be like getting hit by a truck. But never was there a person more born to bear punishment than Sigrud.