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

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  He looks down. “Hells,” he mutters. “Here I am again.”

  At his feet, on the floor, is a perfect circle of total darkness that was definitely not there before.

  Khadse wrinkles his nose again, sighs, and pulls out the silver knife. “Well. Let’s get to it.”

  * * *

  —

  In the darkness, Sigrud begins to move.

  He keeps his lips clamped around the steel tube running up through the six inches of coal covering his form, taking deep breaths before he starts to shift the coal off of him. He picked particularly dusty coal, small particulates, so it creates little more than a soft hush as he rises.

  He removes the tube and the cloth from his face, and blinks. He’s been lying hidden in the coal for nearly twenty hours now, having sat totally still as Khadse’s team searched the warehouse. His head is light with hunger, his crotch damp with urine—unfortunate, but a necessity. He swallows, shakes himself, and goes over what he heard.

  Two at the bay door. Six more upstairs. Probably guarding the stairs. Eight total, then, including Khadse.

  He listens closely, hears a quiet cough from the bay door around the corner. He slinks off the coal pile and creeps to the edge of the wall. His entire form is shrouded in black and his boots are wrapped in cloth, masking the sounds of their soles against the concrete. He darts his head out and back.

  Two, yes. Both with pistols and torches.

  Sigrud picks up his handheld radio, turns it on, checks the frequency. He readies himself—bolt-shot at his belt, knife on his thigh—holds up one finger, and taps the receiver, hard.

  Three bays over, the radio’s mate—which is turned up very, very loud—makes a sharp tok sound, which echoes through the darkness.

  “What in hells was that?” says one of the guards.

  A long silence.

  “Maybe some coal fell,” says the other. “Or rats, probably.”

  More silence.

  “Khadse would want us to check it out,” says the first guard.

  “He also wouldn’t want us to leave the door unguarded. If you want to go look at your damned rats, I’ll stay here.”

  “Fine.”

  Footfalls. Not heavy. Light. A small man?

  The guard rounds the corner, his torchlight bobbing ahead. He doesn’t see Sigrud standing in the shadows. The man is small, maybe five and a half feet. Sigrud takes full measure of him, estimating the way his body will move. Then he slinks after the guard, slipping through the darkness to hide behind the walls of the second coal bay.

  The guard walks to the entry to the third bay, where Sigrud’s hidden his radio. The guard stops, the torchlight slowly crawling across the piles of coal.

  This won’t do, thinks Sigrud. I need you to turn the corner….

  He turns his radio back on and taps it again, softer. Another tok, but not quite as loud.

  “What?” says the guard. “What is that?”

  The guard turns the corner and walks behind the wall, out of sight from his partner.

  Sigrud slips around the corner behind him, knife in his right hand. When the guard has gone far enough, Sigrud springs.

  He worried that he’d botch it up, but muscle memory takes over. With his left hand he reaches around the guard and rips the gun from his hand, and with his right he whips his black knife up and around the guard’s throat, cleanly severing the jugular.

  The guard chokes and the torch falls to the ground, though its beam is still out of sight from the other guard. The spray of blood is terrific, painting the dark concrete wall before them. Sigrud holds the guard up, hugging the man’s body so it won’t fall and make noise. Warmth spreads throughout Sigrud’s arms, then his thighs, a tremendous surge of blood soaking over him.

  The guard struggles, his legs beating uselessly against Sigrud’s knees. Then the blows taper off, weaker and weaker, and he goes still.

  It takes less than twenty seconds. Sigrud is breathing a little too hard for his liking.

  I’m out of shape, he thinks. And slow…

  He gently lowers the guard’s body to the floor. His entire front is wet with the man’s blood. Then he creeps to the edge of the corner to peer out at the second guard.

  In the darkness, his scarred, beaten face twists into a savage grin. But one, alone—this should be easy.

  * * *

  —

  Khadse takes the silver knife, holds out his left arm, and makes a slight incision across the back webbing of his hand, grimacing as the blade cuts. At first he thinks he barely broke the skin, but then the blood comes welling up, bright red.

  He squats over the perfect circle of darkness, stuffs his torch up under his armpit, and wipes his right thumb across the blood. Then he takes his thumb and reaches down to the circle of darkness….

  I hate this part, he thinks.

  His bloody thumb penetrates the dark circle as if it were just a hole, but then he feels a gauzy membrane, as if within the circle of darkness is a layer of spiderwebs, except he can’t see them….

  Something squirms up against his thumb, like a creature running its back under his hand, eager to be petted.

  “Eugh!” cries Khadse. He pulls his hand away, shaking it as if it’d been burned. There’s no pain, but the sensation is so disturbing, so alien, as if there were some blind, wet creature asleep in the bottom of that black pit, waiting for his touch.

  Which might be the case. This being his third time here, he understands that the hole functions something like a safe, carefully guarding its package until someone can provide the right identification.

  Though there’s no visual change, he can’t help but get the sensation that the circle of black is shifting, changing, flattening, and then…

  Something rises up in the circle, like a fishing bob floating to the surface in a pond: a small square, made of black paper—an envelope.

  Written on the front of the envelope, in spidery handwriting, is a word: KHADSE.

  Khadse shivers. He bends down, picks up the envelope, and stores it away in his coat.

  Well, he thinks as he turns around. I’m fucking glad that’s over.

  Even Khadse has his limits, though. After his first trip to the warehouse—the first night with the knife, the blood, and the gap of darkness—he was so disturbed he worked his own networks to find out a little bit more about his employer, trying to figure out who he was and how he had access to such…means.

  What he found out was two things.

  One was a name.

  The other was a rumor that whoever said that name out loud, no matter who or where they were, tended to disappear.

  He chose to drop his investigation there.

  Remember your retirement. Remember the light at the end of this very long tunnel….

  He walks out the office door. Zdenic looks at him, eyebrows raised. “All good?”

  Khadse is about to tell him it’s all fine, thank you very much, now let’s get a damned move on—but then they hear the gunshots and the screams from downstairs.

  They stare at each other.

  “What in the hells is that?” says Khadse.

  * * *

  —

  It’s all coming back to him now. Sigrud finishes up the second guard at the bay door pretty ably: he clocks him on the temple with the handle of his knife, rips the gun out of his grasp, and slashes his throat.

  He takes the man’s pistol. He has no intention of using it, as he wants to keep this as silent as possible: to fire a gun would give away his position, and could alert Khadse to the fact that he’s just one man, not an army. He holsters the pistol, then runs to the ropes dangling from the side of the warehouse.

  He tied these up two nights ago, a set of ropes dangling from the fourth floor all the way down to the very bottom, hidden up against one column. Much of the
coal warehouse is wet and crumbling, whole floors falling away after years of so many Ahanashtani rains. Using ropes to traverse the floors not only gives him the element of surprise, it also prevents him from taking one wrong step and tumbling to his death.

  Though he did do some prep work on a few of the crumbling floors, just in case the fight spills off into some of the other portions of the warehouse. Always pays to be careful.

  He grabs one rope, tugs on it to free it from its hiding place, and looks up. He’s fairly sure it’ll hold—he must have tied thousands of knots back in his sea days—but then, that was a very long time ago.

  As if this, he says as he begins to climb the rope, will be the stupidest thing I’m doing tonight….

  He climbs until he’s just below the second-floor window, where he pauses, listening. No voices within, no movement. He continues up.

  He pauses again below the third-floor window, listening carefully. He hears a voice, very faintly:

  “…pretty sure I heard him shout just now.” A woman, Sigrud thinks.

  “Something’s up with this client,” says a second voice—a man. “They’ve got Khadse doing some weird shit.”

  “Weird enough to frighten Khadse?”

  “Yes. That weird.”

  “Quiet,” says a third voice, softly. Another man. “We’re on duty, remember.”

  “As if anyone’s coming out to this reeking shithole,” says the woman’s voice.

  Sigrud slowly, slowly inches up a few more lengths of rope, arms quivering under the strain, and peers into the third-floor window. He can see faint illumination down a hallway, the castoff of their torches, probably. They’re close, in other words, but not too close.

  Sigrud slips into the third-floor window, hunches down behind a row of molding desks, and pulls out the shoulder-mounted, high-powered bolt-shot he hid there mere hours before.

  Most war markers and operatives these days prefer pistols and riflings, since they shoot much farther and faster—but if you’re operating in total silence, a bolt-shot is the weapon of choice, in Sigrud’s opinion. This particular bolt-shot sacrifices convenience for power, though, firing only one bolt at a time. There are some models that have clips, reloading automatically, but the reloading mechanism is extremely loud and could give away his position. He’s got a much smaller bolt-pistol hanging from his belt, which means he can get off at least two silent shots quickly.

  Leaving the question, he thinks, of what to do with the third guard. He’s caught a bolt in midair just twice in his long career, but he’s not willing to try the same with a bullet.

  He has one option: about twenty feet down the hallway is one soaking patch in the floor that he did some prep work on yesterday, using his knife to carve away at the beam below, his logging experience finally dovetailing with his operational work. He’s not sure if it will do what he needs it to do—so many variables involved—but it’s worth a shot.

  He hops over the wet patch as he proceeds down the hallway, surveying his work. If this doesn’t work out, he thinks, there’s a chance I catch a bullet in the back.

  He’ll have to take that chance. He comes to the corner, darts his head around and back.

  Three lights, three guards. All very much alert and ready.

  Sigrud plots his move. Three here. Then two more above. Then Khadse.

  He creeps around the corner and readies his high-powered bolt-shot and bolt-pistol. He aims the pistol first: its range is shorter and it’s much less accurate, so it’ll be harder to use under pressure.

  He draws a bead on the nearest guard, a Continental woman.

  He waits for her to look away, to expose her neck, waiting, waiting…

  She sniffs and glances to her right.

  Sigrud pulls the trigger.

  The shot is sure and true, the bolt hurtling through the air to bury itself right in the left side of her throat, almost punching through her neck altogether. She gags, drops her pistol and her torch, and falls to her knees.

  The guard immediately to her right—a man—jumps as he’s sprayed with blood, and stares at her. “What the fuck!” he cries. “What the fuck!” He hesitates, torn between going to help her and determining where the attack came from.

  Sigrud has already lifted the high-powered bolt-shot. He takes his time. It feels like forever, but it’s probably only four seconds or so, maybe less.

  He aims carefully, then fires.

  This bolt is slightly high: it hits the second guard right in the mouth, punching through his front teeth and his lower jaw, maybe lethally penetrating his throat. Sigrud doesn’t stop to confirm the kill: he rises and runs back down the hallway.

  The third guard cries, “Hey! Hey!” and fires. The shots are wild and late—Sigrud’s already rounded the corner, and the shots thump into the soaking walls behind him. He leaps over the wet patch on the floor, dodges through the molding desks, and hunkers down, reloading his bolt-shots and listening carefully.

  There’s quiet for a long time—perhaps the guard’s an experienced operative. Sigrud holds his breath.

  Then there’s a loud creaking, a tremendous snap, and a piercing, horrified shriek, which fades rapidly. Then, faintly, a crash from two floors below. Then silence.

  Sigrud grins wickedly. It is always so nice, he thinks, when things come together.

  He hops out the window, grabs the rope, and starts up to the fourth floor.

  * * *

  —

  Khadse draws his pistol and motions to his two teammates to take up positions around the top of the stairs. There’s someone down there, and from the crash and screams and the silence he’s hearing, it sounds like the whole damn rest of his team is disabled.

  He grimaces, thinking, How many out there? Five? Ten? How did they follow us? How did they know? He’s not looking forward to the idea of battling his way out of here with just two of his crew left.

  Zdenic looks to him. “What’s the move?”

  Khadse holds a finger to his lips. They’re likely trapped up here, if their attackers have brought a full team. The best option would be to find an alternate way out of the fourth floor—but Khadse’s made damned sure there isn’t another way. Which leaves one option.

  “Hunker down,” whispers Khadse. “Make them move first.”

  “We’re stuck up here like lobsters in a trap!” says Alzbeta, panicking.

  “Keep your head!” snaps Khadse. “We’re not like lobsters in a trap, because we’re armed, and they’ve got to come charging up those stairs! Take up defensive positions. Now.”

  They begin moving some of the rotting office furniture around the stairs down, forming crude fortifications that might or might not stop a bullet. Then they hide, and wait.

  And wait.

  Khadse feels sweat running down his temples. He hasn’t been forced into a situation like this in years. My whole team taken apart in fifteen minutes…Why aren’t they attacking? Why aren’t they…

  Then there’s a noise, one Khadse hasn’t heard in over a decade or two: the sound of a bolt thudding into human flesh.

  He jumps slightly as Zdenic slumps over, having seemingly sprouted a shaft of metal right where his skull meets his neck. He falls to the ground, shuddering and quaking.

  “What!” cries Alzbeta. She wheels around, looking for the attacker.

  But Khadse’s already figured out the location of their shooter, and is diving away.

  “They’re behind us!” he snarls. “How the hells did they get behind us?”

  Another click, another hiss as the bolt flies through the air. Then Alzbeta jumps like she’s just had an especially brilliant idea and crumples to the ground, a nine-inch bolt sticking out from just above her clavicle.

  A good shot, thinks Khadse, terrified. No, a great shot. But how the hells did they get up here?

  Khadse leaps u
p and darts across the hallway, popping off two rounds as covering fire. Then he sees a form sprinting down the hallway, away from him—a big form.

  He chases them down the hallway, then turns the corner again to see his assailant sprint through a line of tables toward an open window.

  And then they…jump.

  Khadse is so surprised he nearly comes to a halt. “What the hells,” he whispers.

  But the figure appears to hang in midair, suspended in the night sky, before slipping down.

  And Khadse immediately understands what all this is. He knows this, of course he knows this.

  He comes to the window—where, as he expected, a set of ropes have been carefully tied up—and aims down just as the figure slips into the third-floor windows below. “Fuckers!” snarls Khadse. “You’re Ministry, aren’t you, you’re Ministry!” He lifts up his pant leg, pulls out the knife he has holstered there, and slashes the ropes, letting them fall.

  Cursing, Khadse holsters his knife and sprints back to the stairs down. I know that goddamn rope trick, he thinks. It’s textbook! Exactly what a Ministry operative does when badly outnumbered. Prep the environment against your opponents, then winnow them out, one by one.

  He leaps over the barricade, rushes down the stairs, intending to intercept them, catch them before they can prepare any other tricks. There’s just one of them…One, or maybe two.

  He wheels around the corner. Then his hand holding the pistol—his right—lights up with pain.

  Khadse cries out and tries to hold on to the pistol, but it falls to the floor. His right hand now feels curiously heavy, and it takes him a moment to realize there’s a ten-inch knife lodged in its back, severing many of the tendons there.

  He rips out the knife with his left hand, growling with pain. He finds the knife is familiar: the blade is black, the handle ornate, like some kind of royal heirloom.

  He recognizes it.

  “Harkvaldsson,” he spits, furious.

  A tall figure steps out of the shadows, dressed in black. They pull off their cloth mask, revealing a face Khadse hasn’t seen in years—a dour, Dreyling face, one eye dim and dull.