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

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  He cocks his head, like he has to think about it. “I have, in my time here, borne witness to ninety-six winters.”

  “How is that possible?” asks Mulaghesh softly.

  “I am memory,” he says. Smoke curls up around his head like a ghastly crown. “I need nothing. All I must do is remember. Which I do.”

  “But this is all…miraculous, isn’t it?” asks Mulaghesh. “Isn’t Voortya dead?”

  Silence. Then: “The Great Mother is gone from this world. This I remember.”

  “Then how are you still here?”

  A pause, as if he’s accessing some hidden part of himself. “Pass from this world,” he says finally, “and your agreements will still exist. Your contracts and oaths and debts will carry on. Promises were made. And some of those promises are being kept. I am here to remember the dead. When those oaths are fulfilled, I shall fade also.” He shudders a bit. “I will finally pass on, out of this room, into the light. Into the light…Into the air of the world I once knew…” He closes his eyes.

  Mulaghesh suppresses a shiver. Enough of this. “There was a woman who came before me,” she says. “She asked about a ritual. I think it was a ritual to cross over to the afterlife, to the…to the City of Blades. Is this so?”

  “I remember this.”

  “I need to know what you told her.”

  A gray, dry tongue wriggles up from the depths of his mouth and runs over his tiny, discolored teeth. Mulaghesh nearly gags in disgust.

  “What did you tell her?” she asks. “How can I get to the City of Blades?”

  He reaches over to the tree, and pinches off one thin, silvery leaf. He places it in the bowl of his pipe, and takes a drag—yet then he freezes, as if an idea has struck him. His blank white eyes widen, and he turns to look at her—the first time she feels he’s actually looked at her yet, focusing on her with all of his energy.

  He stares at her, then softly says, “I…I remember you.”

  “You what?”

  “I remember you,” he says. He takes another puff from the pipe, and this seems to fuel his memory. “Young and bright and filled with cold anger. I remember you. You swept across the land like a screaming storm. In one hand you carried fury and in the other you carried slaughter.”

  Mulaghesh’s skin goes cold. “What are you talking about?”

  “War incarnate,” he whispers. “Battle made flesh. This is how I remember you. This is how I remember you as you shed blood in the lands east of here. That blood took a long journey to reach the taproots of the silver tree….But when it did, you bloomed in my mind like the brightest of stars. How the Great Mother would have loved to have an arrow such as you in her quiver. What a prize you would have been.”

  Mulaghesh fights the urge to retch. The idea of this thing—she can’t think of it as a man, by any means—knowing what she did during the Yellow March, and approving of it, is utterly revolting to her. “Shut your mouth! I didn’t ask about that!”

  He sucks on his pipe and watches her with a strangely critical gaze. “You wish to find the City of Blades,” he says. “I remember this. Why?”

  “To follow the woman who came here before.”

  He shakes his head. “No. No, that is not so. I have watched your journey from the west countries. I remember your coming; I remember how you battled your way to me. You have shed blood upon my mountains, upon my country. And when you did, I glimpsed your secret heart.” He shuts his eyes. “I remember…I remember…” His eyes snap back open. “You wish to find the Victorious Army there, upon the white shores of the City of Blades. You mean to find them, and stop them, halt their final war.”

  Mulaghesh does not speak.

  “Why?” he asks. His tone is that of someone politely puzzled.

  “Wh-Why?” says Mulaghesh. “Why would I want to stop an army from destroying the world? That’s your question?”

  “You speak,” he says, “as if they were an aberration. A violation. As if warfare was a passing phenomenon.”

  “I know I don’t want it on my damned doorstep!”

  He shakes his head. “But this is wrong. Warfare is light. Warfare and conflict are the energies with which this world functions. To claim otherwise is to claim your very veins are not filled with blood, to claim that your heart is still and silent. You knew this once. Once in the hills of this country you understood that to wage war was to be alive, to shed blood was to bask in the light of the sun. Why would you forget this? Why would you fight them and not join them?”

  “Join them?” says Mulaghesh, appalled. “Join the very soldiers who enslaved my people?”

  “Do you not enslave people now?” asks the man. “Chains are forged of many strange metals. Poverty is one. Fear, another. Ritual and custom are yet more. All actions are forms of slavery, methods of forcing people to do what they deeply wish not to do. Has not your nation conditioned this world to accept its subservience? When you wear your uniform and walk through these lands, do the people here not feel a terrified urge to bend their knees and bow their heads?”

  “We didn’t leave any fucking mass graves in our wake!” snarls Mulaghesh. “We didn’t torment and slaughter and brutalize people to get what we needed!”

  “Are you so sure? You burned down homes in the night, and families perished in the flames. I remember. And now you look back, full of guilt, and say, ‘It was war, and I was wrong.’ ” He leans forward, his ancient face burning with intensity. “But this is a lie. You saw light. And now, when you have returned to the darkness, you wish to convince yourself the light was never there at all. Yet it remains. You cannot erase what is written upon the hearts of humanity. Even if the Great Mother had never walked among us, you would still know this.”

  Mulaghesh feels tears spilling down her cheeks. “Times,” she says furiously, “have changed. I have changed. Soldiers no longer devote their lives to slaughter and conquest.”

  “You are wrong,” says the man. His voice is low and resonant. The metal walls of the dome, all the knives and swords and spears, all seem to vibrate with each of his words. “Your rulers and their propaganda have sold you this watered-down conceit of war, of a warrior yoked to the whims of civilization. Yet for all their self-professed civility, your rulers will gladly spend a soldier’s life to better aid their posturing, to keep the cost of a crude good low. They will send the children of others off to die and only think upon it later to grandly and loudly memorialize them, lauding their great sacrifice. Civilization is but the adoption of this cowardly method of murder.”

  The smoke is so thick about her it’s hard for her to see him. “Only a savage would think of peace that way!”

  “No. It is the truth. And you know it. You were so much more honest when you slaughtered your own.”

  Mulaghesh freezes. The smoke hangs still in the air. The old man slowly blinks his blank white eyes, and sucks at his pipe.

  “What did you say?” whispers Mulaghesh.

  “You know what I said,” says the man calmly. “Once those under your command did not wish to obey. And when that happened, you did what was necess—”

  The rifling is on her shoulder and she’s striding forward, leaping through the smoke. The old man doesn’t grunt or make a sound as the muzzle of the rifling strikes his forehead, pushing him back against the wall of knives.

  Mulaghesh leans close. “Keep talking,” she whispers. “Keep talking to me, old man, and we’ll see if I can spill the waters of your memory clean out of your fucking head.”

  “You see what you are now,” he says serenely. “You see where your instincts lead you. Why do you deny what you are?”

  “Tell me the damned ritual! Tell me how to get to the City of Blades!”

  “The ritual? Why, you know it. You know the Window to the White Shores.”

  “But that won’t let me cross over!”

  �
��But you know the missing element that will augment it,” says the old man. “You’ve spilled so much of it in your time, and it flows through your own veins—the blood of a killer. What else?”

  Mulaghesh pushes slightly harder on his head. “What do you mean? And if you speak another riddle then I swear, you will fucking regret it.”

  “You saw a statue, once,” hisses the man. “A statue of the Great Mother, seated before a wide cauldron. Were you to fill this cauldron with seawater and the blood of a killer, enough blood to fill a goat’s bladder, and then perform the Window to the White Shores at the base of the cauldron, then you would be able to pass through—through the sea, through the world, and into the lands of the dead.”

  Mulaghesh thinks back. She remembers that when she saw the City of Blades it was in the yard of statues, before the giant white statue of Voortya…and at her feet was what looked like a giant bathtub.

  “The living essence of a life of death,” she says, “used to push a living person into the land of the dead.” She takes a step back, releasing him. “Ironic.”

  The old man blinks his wide, blind eyes. “You think you are invading. You think you are assaulting enemy grounds. But you are not. You are going home. This life beyond death is one you deserve.”

  “Fuck you,” says Mulaghesh. “Tell me about the swords, the sentinels’ swords. Someone’s found them and learned how to make them—who?”

  “This I do not know,” he says quietly. “I do not know these things.”

  “Someone’s been on this island robbing your damned sacred graves! They must have come to you!”

  “I do not remember them,” says the man. “I do not have these memories.”

  “Someone fucking resurrected Saint Zhurgut! Don’t tell me you don’t know who was behind that!”

  “I remember those who have shed blood,” says the man. “I remember the dead. I remember the battle, the victors, the defeated. I remember what matters. All else is trivia.”

  “Someone is trying to bring about the Night of the Sea of Swords! How is it going to happen? How does it work?”

  “Work? As if it were some device, some machine? What you describe is inevitable. Ask why the stars dance in the sky, ask why water flows downhill. Ask the mechanics behind that.” He lowers his eyelids. “She promised it will happen. And thus, it will happen. This is the way of the world.”

  “I’ll kill you, damn it!” cries Mulaghesh, raising the rifle. “I’ll do it if you don’t answer me!”

  “If I could die,” says the man, “I would let you. I do not fear death. But you are in my world, and this place will not allow me to die.”

  “I bet I can hurt you th—”

  He shakes his head. “You think you have forced the truth from me. But you are wrong—I wish for you to see the City of Blades again, for you will see truth there. Truth about the world, and your secret heart. Now go—and see.” He opens his mouth wide, and a hot cloud of acrid smoke comes pouring out. It’s so much that Mulaghesh has to stumble out, covering her eyes with the crook of her arm. She spies a hint of flickering moonlight, goes reeling toward it, and takes a deep grateful breath when she finds herself in clear air.

  * * *

  —

  She collapses onto the mud, reveling in the feel of the cool, damp earth between her fingers, relieved to be free of that awful place.

  “Was he there?” says Signe. “What happened? Did you get what you needed?”

  Mulaghesh looks up. Signe is watching her with wide eyes, holding a grenade with one finger hooked around the pin. She smiles nervously and stows it away in her pocket. “Well. You did say thirty minutes.”

  Mulaghesh coughs and spits to the side. “Motherfucker,” she says hoarsely.

  “What’s the matter with you?” says Signe. “Are you all right?”

  “No. No, I’m not fucking all right.” Mulaghesh stands on wobbly legs, then looks back at the dome of blades. “Get back. Get back behind the trees. Now!”

  Signe starts backing away. “Why?”

  Mulaghesh pulls a grenade from her belt, rips the pin out with her teeth—Signe shouts, “What!” behind her—and lobs it into the entrance in the dome of blades. Then she and Signe start running.

  Mulaghesh sprints through the circle gate and slides down into a crouch on the hillside, covering her head. Then she waits. And waits.

  Nothing. No blast, no bang.

  She waits a little longer. Then she releases her head and looks up, finding Signe flat on her belly in the brush.

  “A…A dud?” Signe asks.

  “No,” says Mulaghesh furiously. She stands. “No, it wasn’t a dud. It won’t let him die, he said. That motherfucker. It won’t let him die!”

  She walks to the circle gate and stares at the dome, trembling with rage. “Fuck you!” she screams at it. “Do you hear me in there? Fuck you!”

  There is no answer. Just the trees swaying in the wind.

  Signe stands up. “General Mulaghesh, I…I think we should leave.”

  Mulaghesh wants to try again, to throw another grenade into that damned dome and hear the echoing crash, to just hurt that bastard a little…

  “General Mulaghesh?”

  “What?” she says dimly. “Huh?”

  “We should go,” says Signe. “Come on. Let’s go. It was a mistake to come here.”

  As if in a dream, Mulaghesh turns and begins walking down the Tooth with her. She’s nearly halfway down when she realizes she’s been crying.

  * * *

  —

  Far out on the open seas, Mulaghesh sits on the deck and stares down at the face of the moon reflected in ocean. Signe’s at the tiller, deftly steering the yacht among the dark waves, but neither of them has spoken for over three hours.

  Then, finally, Signe says, “You saw him, didn’t you?”

  Mulaghesh doesn’t respond. She imagines how nice it’d be to slip off this deck and into those dark waters and feel herself being tugged downstream to the sea.

  “You’ve looked terrible since you walked out of that place,” says Signe. “Like you’re ill. You haven’t talked about it at all. Did he…Did he do anything to you? Did he, I don’t know, poison you?”

  “No. Hells, I don’t know. Maybe.” Signe slips down to sit beside her on the deck. Mulaghesh doesn’t look at her. “Maybe I poisoned myself a long time ago. Only I’m just now realizing it.”

  She stares into the waters, then down at her false hand. Her elbow aches. Her head feels heavy, her eyes feel heavy. It suddenly feels so difficult to look at anything, to even move.

  She starts talking.

  She tells Signe about the March, and about Shoveyn, the little town in the middle of nowhere outside of Bulikov, forty years ago. She tells her about the camp the night after, butchering stolen hogs, the night filled with their squeals and the scent of blood. About the smoldering ruins of the town beyond.

  She tells her about how she sat there, sharpening her knife outside of Biswal’s tent. And then Sankhar and Bansa walked by, entering the captain’s tent, and they spoke to him in quiet voices.

  Biswal called to her. She came in, and he said, “Lieutenant Mulaghesh, these two young men here have decided they don’t wish to continue any farther.”

  And she said, “Is that so, sir.”

  “Yes, that’s so. They feel that what we’re doing here is…how did you put it, Bansa? Deeply immoral?”

  And Bansa said, “Yes. Yes, sir, I…We just don’t think it’s right to keep doing this. We can’t do it anymore. We won’t. And I’m sorry, sir, but we simply cannot continue to cooperate with this, sir. You can try to lock us up, but if you do we’ll just try to escape.”

  Biswal said, “That’s eloquently put. We don’t have the resources to imprison you, and I can’t waste the time to have you flogged. So I suppose we don’t h
ave any other option than just to let you two go.”

  How surprised they were. Just shocked. But as they left Biswal looked back at her and said only, “Try not to waste a bolt.”

  And she understood. She’d known what this would lead to the second she heard Bansa speak.

  They walked out, and Biswal stopped them outside the tent. He turned, smiling, and said to them, “Boys, just one more thing…”

  His voice so chummy, so cheerful. But then he looked at Mulaghesh, his eyes glittering, and her knife was already out.

  The night so full of squealing, and the scent of fresh blood.

  They watched her do it. The whole camp. They didn’t react. Just listened as Biswal told them these two were deserters and cowards, which Yellow Company would not tolerate. Could not and would not tolerate, not at all. “Those who will not make war upon our enemies,” he told them, “are also our enemies.”

  She wiped her blade on her sleeve. How bright the blood was.

  “And we will treat them as such,” said Biswal. He turned around and went back into his tent.

  Signe and Mulaghesh sit in silence in the boat.

  Signe asks, “How old were you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “By the seas…”

  But she tells Signe that that’s not an excuse. She knew it was wrong. These children trusted her. But if they’d deserted, and led the Continentals to Yellow Company, then it would have all been for nothing. Every awful thing they’d done would have been for nothing.

  Or perhaps…Perhaps Mulaghesh simply didn’t want for the March to end. It was all she knew by then. If Bansa and Sankhar left, then the spell would break.

  But the spell broke anyway, when the Summer ended.

  How she wished to die then. Out of the service and adrift in the civilized world, she couldn’t tolerate what she’d done. She tried to bait the world to kill her, to do the thing she had no courage for. But it wouldn’t. Life went on; it just kept happening.

  She tries to tell Signe what a curse that is, to keep living. To have nothing happen to you at all.