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

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  This disturbed her. Mishra’s residential address was a carefully kept Ministry secret. Direct correspondence was strictly forbidden.

  But another thing that disturbed her about this letter was the color of its paper.

  It was black. Not dyed black, like a shirt—but black, as if someone had taken the idea of blackness and cut a perfect square from it.

  Mishra opened the letter. And though she couldn’t understand how, she could see writing on it, letters in black, but it was in different shades of black.

  …or perhaps the letter did something else. Perhaps when you looked at it, rather than seeing the words there, the paper wrote words upon your mind.

  The letter said:

  DO YOU FEEL THAT THE CONTINENT HAS FAILED?

  DO YOU FEEL THAT SAYPUR HAS FAILED?

  DO YOU WISH TO DO AWAY WITH BOTH?

  DO YOU WISH TO START ALL OVER AGAIN?

  IF YOU DO, I CAN HELP YOU. AND YOU CAN HELP ME.

  SIMPLY SAY THIS WORD ALOUD:

  And at the bottom of the letter was a name.

  Mishra stared at the letter. Not just because all of this was so odd, but because the words spoke to a deep dread that had been metastasizing within her, this idea that perhaps no state or nation could ever truly succeed in this world. The Continent had been an abomination, and now Saypur, the world’s best chance at a fair, proud, and free democracy, was being ruined by mercantilism and vain, fruitless quests for peace. Ten years into her military career she’d found herself waking up and thinking: We’ll never get it right. We’ll always find a way to cock it all up. Every time. And as her comrades fought and suffered and died, she found herself doubting the point of it all.

  To see these thoughts written down before her, no matter how strangely they arrived, was a powerful sensation for her. It felt, for the first time in many years, like she was not alone.

  So she took a breath, and read the name aloud.

  And then the boy came—he still looked like a young boy back then—and they talked for a long, long while.

  Captain First Class Kavitha Mishra has done a lot of odd things for the controller in the years since. There are other members of the Ministry who work for him too—she knows this because she personally recruited some of them—but none of them work as closely with him as she does. He wouldn’t have picked anyone else to send to Bulikov, for example, when they needed to trap that laughing boy, the one who could seemingly appear out of thin air. And though that was her oddest job yet, she suspects he’ll have stranger ones for her in the future.

  Especially after Komayd, and Khadse, and whatever in hells happened last night.

  Standing in the tunnel, Mishra checks her watch. She takes a breath, then opens the door.

  The piece of black paper is still on the floor of the closet. She picks it up and unfolds it.

  There are new words on the letter. Just like that first time in her apartment, they seem to be written in black—or perhaps they write themselves on some deeper, hidden part of her mind:

  DO NOT ALERT THE MINISTRY YET.

  USE THE MIRRORS. WATCH THEIR ACTIONS. REPORT IMMEDIATELY IF ANY MENTION OR MOVEMENT IS SPOTTED, ESPECIALLY CONCERNING THE SUSPECT.

  HE IS WITH THEM. HE IS DANGEROUS.

  She sighs.

  Then she takes a match, lights it on the wall of the closet, and holds the flame to the corner of the paper.

  The flames slowly crawl across the black page, turning it into ash. She blows on it a little to help it spread, then stamps it out when it’s finished. Then she climbs back into her auto and drives away.

  “Shit,” she says. She hates mirror duty. But an order is an order.

  * * *

  —

  In some ways the modern world now seems very new and advanced to Sigrud. In his day, autos were a rarity, telephones even rarer than that, and pistols and riflings were expensive exoticisms.

  Yet in some ways, to his disbelief, it remains absolutely the same. For example, if you were to tell Sigrud that in this very modern, very advanced society, one could still use a forged labor visa—one of the stalwart fallbacks of the intelligence industry, when he was active—to cross the South Seas to Navashtra in Saypur, he would think you a fool. Surely the bureaucracies and authorities must have closed the various loopholes that made such forgeries possible? Surely this new generation, swimming in so much technology and innovation, must have found a way to eliminate this common deceit?

  But it appears that the wheels of government move even slower than Sigrud imagined. For he, along with dozens of other scruffy Dreylings and Continentals, is able to painlessly book passage across the South Seas and sail to Navashtra without incident. The various Saypuri officials barely even glance at him. Perhaps Saypur is so hungry for skilled labor that it doesn’t particularly care if a few of those laborers are malicious agents.

  From Navashtra, it’s a shockingly simple thing to make it down the coast to Ghaladesh. All forms of transportation, whether roads or boats or trains, inevitably curve toward Ghaladesh, second-largest city in the world, but the undisputed capital of civilization. And though the checkpoints and security measures are higher in Ghaladesh than anywhere else, they’re still not as high as what Sigrud had to go through in service to Saypur’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs—so, to his surprise, they pose no threat to him.

  Perhaps this is a world I could have never imagined, he thinks. Perhaps this is a world that is, more or less, at peace.

  And then, suddenly, he’s there. He’s walking free and unthreatened in Ghaladesh, the city that, in many ways, has decided his life and the lives of countless others. Because the choices made here, whether about war or commerce, have surely had millions of consequences and casualties apiece.

  Sigrud tries not to stare around himself as he walks through Ghaladesh. He is mostly struck by how clean the city is, how organized. Bulikov was a schizophrenic, crumbling mess, Voortyashtan was hardly more than a savage outpost, and Ahanashtan was built specifically to serve the shipping channel, creating a half-industrial, half-urbane hybrid of a city.

  But Ghaladesh is different. Ghaladesh, unlike all the other cities he’s ever seen, is intentional.

  You can see it when you walk from block to block. From the graceful wooden posts that so many houses sit on to the drains in the street to the curves of the elevated train, you can see how this was not just done well but done just—so. Ghaladesh, he sees, is a city of engineers, a city of thinkers, a city of people who do not act rashly.

  Or at least act rashly within their own territory. The rest of the world, well, that he knows is a different story.

  He can’t help but marvel at how it flows, how it breathes. How the old stone, commercial buildings downtown flow into the graceful residential sections, where all the houses sit on poles or posts in case of flooding—for Ghaladesh is a city built on the sea, and thus is at constant war with the waters. Perhaps that’s why so much of the city feels planned and designed to a fault. Or perhaps Saypuris, who after all served as slaves to the Continent for centuries, are incredibly, intensely sensitive to the possibility of ever infringing on the life of another. After glancing at the papers, it seems that if someone ever proposes constructing a new building of apartments, Ghaladeshis immediately hold a giant debate about the ramifications and effects of such a building, and whether such effects are acceptable. It is a little too civilized for Sigrud, who was raised in a culture where the person who yelled the loudest was usually considered to be in the right.

  He goes to work right away. In this highly organized metropolis, it takes no time at all to find the address. It’s close to the heart of Ghaladesh, in one of the richest and most exclusive areas available. When he gets there he can’t see the house behind the tall wooden walls, but he can tell he’s come to the right place by the Saypuri guards out front—plainclothes, certainly, but
he knows soldiers when he sees them.

  Sigrud waits for evening, then skulks through the yards of the adjoining houses. No one sees him, no one raises an eyebrow. These are civilized people. They have no need to be watchful of their properties.

  He waits on the other side of the walls, listening for a footfall or a sigh. He hears none. They must only put security out front, he thinks. Which is…remarkably stupid. He readies himself, then hops the fence.

  He lands in a very austere garden in the back of the house. Mostly just grass and rock and the odd shrub, pruned within an inch of its life. There’s a sliding glass door in the back, and he finds nothing remarkable about the lock on it. He picks it in less than a minute and a half, then slips inside.

  He checks his pocket watch. It’s late evening now. She should be getting home soon.

  He pads through the house, finds a deep bit of shadow on the balcony above the foyer, and waits.

  After about an hour, there’s the clink of keys. The door opens. Then the old woman walks in.

  She is slightly bent, her hair gray and white, her skin lined with years of sun and stress. She has a cane now, which she uses with a great air of reluctance, as if someone glued it to her hand and she’s not sure how to get it off. He watches as she walks to the coat rack and sticks the cane in the bottom, muttering, “Fucking thing,” as she does, and then she begins the long, slow, complicated process of removing her coat. Such a thing takes time, for not only are her joints clearly paining her, but her left arm is a prosthetic, shining metal from the elbow down.

  Sigrud goes totally still at the sight of her, not even breathing. Not because he fears her, but because he never could have expected how old she’s gotten. She is not at all the striding, powerful creature he once knew, the person who seemed like she could punch through the hull of a battleship if she but willed it. In thirteen years, she’s become someone else.

  He watches as she limps over to the kitchen, where she pours herself a glass of brandy. She stands there at the sink, sipping it. But he can tell something’s different about the way she moves. It’s too stiff, too careful…

  She puts down the brandy. “If that’s not you, Sigrud,” she says, “I’m going to turn around and start shooting.”

  “It is,” he says, emerging from the shadows. “How could you tell I was here?”

  “Because you smell,” she says. “Very bad. Smells like you’ve been stuck in the hold of some ship for weeks. Which you probably have. Turnabout’s fair play, isn’t it? You smelled me out in Voortyasht—”

  General Turyin Mulaghesh trails off as she turns around and looks up at him. Her face goes slack with shock. “By the seas, Sigrud,” she whispers. “Look at you. Just look at you.”

  Sigrud looks down at her from the balcony, unsure what to do.

  “You haven’t aged a day, Sigrud,” she says softly. “Not a single, solitary day.”

  * * *

  —

  Sigrud waits in the reading room, the spacious bay windows framing the rambling spill of downtown Ghaladesh beyond. He can’t stop staring out the window at them.

  “Ah,” says Mulaghesh, returning with a bottle of wine and two glasses. “First time in Ghaladesh?”

  He nods.

  “Very nice city,” says Mulaghesh. “If you can afford to live here. Most can’t. This damn house they have here for me, I’d have to live my life ten fucking times over to be able to ever afford it.”

  He smiles politely, not sure what to say.

  “So has anyone told you yet,” says Mulaghesh casually, pulling the cork out of the bottle of wine with her teeth and spitting it out on the floor, “how absolutely fucking stupid you are to come here?”

  “Yes. Including myself.”

  “But it didn’t work.”

  “No. Circumstances.”

  “Those must have been some fucking circumstances. You’re still a wanted man, Sigrud. Lots of military brass want to see your head on a platter for what you did.” She glances at him as she pours him a glass. “And I’d be hard pressed to blame them.”

  “Yes. I understand.”

  “Where have you been for the past decade or so?” she asks, pouring her own.

  “Nowhere good.”

  She laughs sullenly. “Doubt it was any better than where I was. Sitting in the Parliament chambers for over a decade, dealing with these little-minded fools…”

  “It was probably better,” he says. “You probably had a toilet.”

  “Ah. Well, yes. That certainly puts things in perspective. Now how, exactly, did you get in here without alerting any of my security team?”

  He shrugs. “Quietly.”

  She grunts and hands him a glass. “Well. You were always one creepy spook, Sigrud. It’s nice to see at least one thing hasn’t changed. But I suspect I know why you’re here.”

  He picks up the glass and smells it. He won’t drink tonight. He needs to be on his toes. “Yes. Shara.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah.”

  Mulaghesh eases herself into a chair beside him, groaning as she does. He watches her movements, watches her give her left hip a little more time to adjust than her right—arthritis, probably.

  “Ah,” she says, seeing his face. “Has time not been kind to me? Or is it kind to anyone, really?”

  Sigrud isn’t sure what to say. He’d imagined so much of how this would go, but now that he’s here, words fail him.

  “It certainly seems to have been kind to you,” she says, sipping her wine. “You look exactly—exactly—as I remember you, Sigrud. And if you got in here without anyone noticing, you must be moving pretty good too.”

  “My mother aged very well,” he says. “Or so I am told.”

  “If anyone ages as well as you have,” says Mulaghesh, “It’d be a medical fucking miracle.”

  The mention of the word “miracle” makes him cringe. His left hand throbs. To be so close to the woman who was there when his daughter died…It all comes rushing back to him, too much, too fast.

  “How are you doing, Turyin?” he asks, wishing to think about anything else.

  “Good, or so I’m told. Now that Shara’s policies have really kicked in during the past, what, five or six years, I’m hearing a lot less ‘no’ and a lot more ‘how may we assist you, Minister.’ Quite an about-face. Turns out people like opening up borders, if it makes them money. Maybe they’ll thank Shara, now that she’s dead. If it doesn’t put their seat at risk, that is. That’s politicians for you.”

  “You are…the minority leader?”

  “Mm,” she says, sipping her wine. “Of the Upper House of Parliament. But next year, they say, I’ll be the majority leader. Won’t that be fun? I expect I’ll have to talk to a lot more foreign delegates then.” She glances at him. “Speaking of which…Do you want to know how Hild is doing?”

  Sigrud blinks, startled at the mention of his wife. “You’ve been in contact with her?”

  “She was the trade chancellor for the United Dreyling States. I couldn’t avoid talking to her.”

  “I…suppose.”

  “She just stepped down, actually. They’re doing quite well up there, so they don’t need her on the watch anymore, or so she said.” She glances at him. “She’s remarried. I suppose you should know that.”

  “I see. I had wondered.” He rubs his mouth, his face slightly puzzled. How odd it is to hear of the lives of your loved ones in a briefing. “Is she…I don’t know. Happy?”

  “I think so. There are more grandbabies now.”

  Sigrud swallows. “Carin’s?”

  “I would assume so. You only had her and…and Signe, right?”

  He nods, feeling strangely alien, as if someone else is wearing his body.

  “Carin has had five now,” says Mulaghesh. “Four girls and one boy.”

  He l
ets out a breath. “That’s…that’s quite a brood.”

  “Yes. It would be.” She pauses, then asks kindly, “Would you like to see if I could get their pictures for you?”

  He thinks about it for a long time. Then he shakes his head.

  “No?”

  “No. It would make what I am about to do much harder.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Saypur will not let me go back,” he said. “So there is no need for me to know of such things. Because I will never have them.”

  There’s an awkward silence. Mulaghesh sips her wine. She says, “Did she ever contact you, Sigrud?”

  “Who? Hild?”

  “No. Shara, of course.”

  “No,” he says. “I only learned she was dead secondhand.”

  Mulaghesh nods slowly. “So…You don’t know what she was doing on the Continent.”

  “No.” He sits up. “Why? Do you?”

  She smiles mirthlessly. “No. Not a whit. Wish I did. And I did ask. She wouldn’t tell me. Seemed to think it’d put my life in jeopardy. Which, considering what happened to her, might have been true. The only thing she told me was that it was…how did she put it…Ah, yes. She said it was, quote, ‘increasingly likely that Sigrud will visit you one day.’ ”

  Sigrud blinks, surprised. “She told you I would come to you?”

  “Correct. I didn’t understand it. You were a gods damned criminal. But she said that, if you were to come to me, I was to give you a message—but I assume you have no knowledge of this message, do you, Sigrud?”

  He shakes his head, stunned. He hadn’t anticipated this at all.

  Mulaghesh stares into space, thinking. “She must have known,” she says. “Must have known there was a chance she’d be killed. Must have known you’d find out. And that you’d come to me. Eventually.” She laughs hollowly. “Clever little woman. She finds such delightful ways to make us all do her dirty work for her, even beyond the grave.”