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

by Robert Jackson Bennett

“What is the message?”

  “It was very simple,” says Mulaghesh, “and very confusing. She said that if you ever came to me, I was to tell you to protect her daughter. At all costs.”

  Sigrud is still for a moment. Then he shakes his head, exasperated. “But…But that’s what I’m already here to do,” he says. “I came to you to find out where Tatyana Komayd is!”

  “You didn’t let me finish,” snaps Mulaghesh. “Because no one knows where Tatyana Komayd is. And apparently no one has for months.”

  “What?”

  “Yes. After the assassination, finding Tatyana was a national priority—and yet the Komayd estate was utterly empty. Apparently Shara had been circulating the idea that her daughter was staying behind at the Komayd estate…yet that was far from the truth. But now is where it gets confusing,” says Mulaghesh, sitting forward with a pained grunt. “Fucking arthritis…It’s just bullshit, how your body rebels against you. Anyways. Shara told me to tell you to protect her daughter—but she also told me that her daughter could be found with the only woman who ever shared her love.”

  Sigrud stares at her, bug-eyed. “What?”

  “That’s what I thought too,” says Mulaghesh. “I never really thought she was, you know, that kind of a person. I try not to assume anything, since lots of people have assumed things about me over the years, none of which I’ve exactly appreciated, and I—”

  Sigrud holds up a hand. “No. I don’t think this is right.”

  “Well, hells, Sigrud. What right do you have t—”

  “No. I mean, that sort of message, Turyin. I think it is intended to be confusing, to anyone but me. Perhaps she is referring to someone both she and I knew, once.” He sighs and grips the sides of his skull. “But…I don’t know who that could be.”

  “Why wouldn’t she just tell me who it was?” asks Mulaghesh. “Wouldn’t that be easier?”

  He remembers the pale Continental girl saying that Nokov would pull every secret out of his guts. “Your address is publicly listed,” he says. “And your security is not very good, as I have proven. I think she believed she could take no chances. Even with you, Turyin. But wait…When she told you this, did you not do anything? Did this not alarm you?”

  “It alarmed me plenty,” says Mulaghesh. “But by then I was already pretty alarmed.”

  “By what? What had Shara done?”

  Mulaghesh sighs, sits back down, and drinks the rest of her wine in one giant gulp. “Now, that is a very interesting question.”

  * * *

  —

  “It was early 1733,” says Mulaghesh. “I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Shara in, what, two years? She left office in 1726, and though we’d stayed in touch it’d been a damned while, I’ll say that. But then one day my assistant lets me know that a woman left a message for me, and this woman was quite insistent—said she was a friend of Captain Nesrhev, from Bulikov.”

  Sigrud smiles. “The police captain you were involved with.”

  “Right. But it was only a few times,” says Mulaghesh defensively. “At least, by my standards it was only a few. Anyways. So I’m damned curious to find out who this woman is, and I show up at the restaurant mentioned in the message, and who is it but Shara. I was surprised. I mean, the former prime minister can get a meeting with anyone she wants, right? But she wanted to keep all of it a secret. She couldn’t be seen meeting with me, couldn’t be seen asking me what she was about to ask.”

  “Which was what?”

  “It was about an intelligence compartment, an operation. One she didn’t have access to, had never had access to throughout her career in the Ministry, even when she was prime gods damned minister. One called Operation Rebirth. You know it?”

  “I have been forced to do a lot of remembering in the past few days, Turyin, but this I do not know.”

  “I’d never heard of it either. She asked me to look into it. She looked shaken too. Paranoid. It was odd—she’d been living on the outskirts of Ghaladesh with her daughter, just…keeping quiet. But then there she was, coming out of nowhere with this. Said it’d be a pretty old operation—back when Vinya was running the show, maybe during the 1710s, while you and she were just young pups and barely knew how to slit a throat.”

  Sigrud was actually very much aware of how to slit a throat by 1710, but refrains from correcting her.

  “So I did some checking. Reached out to some trusted sources in the Ministry, in the archives. And all they came back with was a file with one piece of paper in it. Just one. A report on a Saypuri dreadnought, the SS Salim. Know it?”

  Sigrud shakes his head.

  “Me neither. It was lost in a typhoon in 1716. That was all I had to give her. But it seemed to excite her plenty. She suggested she’d discovered something ratty, and it smelled pretty ratty to me too. ‘I see Vinya’s fingerprints all over this,’ I told her, and she…suggested that was right but said she wouldn’t tell me more. Again, for my own safety.”

  “What happened then?”

  “After I gave her that file she stopped living so quietly. Threw herself into her charity work, started visiting the Continent more and more, arranging shelter and foster homes for orphans. Seemed like the usual charity shit. But I wondered—was it really a charity? It couldn’t have been a coincidence that I’d told her about this operation and then suddenly she starts practically living on the Continent. And then, three months ago, she makes a surprise visit to me, tells me the bit about you and Tatyana—and then…” She trails off. “I had to identify the body, you know.”

  Sigrud sits up and looks at her, alarmed.

  “They found parts of it,” she says. “Of…her, I suppose. And it was odd to ask me to see her. She was the fucking prime minister, everyone knew what she looked like. But I guess you have to be formal in such situations. I thought maybe she’d faked it all, up until that moment. But maybe that’s just what one does in reaction to such things. The unreality of death. Hoping it was a dream. You know?”

  Sigrud shuts his eyes. He sees Signe standing on a pier, staring out to sea, watching all her astonishing contraptions going to work, forging a new age.

  “Yes,” he says softly. “I know.”

  “Did you come straight here once you heard about her?”

  “No,” he says. “And I am here to tell you that you were right, Turyin. Shara was not just involved in some charity. I think when she went to the Continent, she was going to war.”

  * * *

  —

  Mulaghesh listens as he tells her about the past month of his life. When he tells her what happened in Ahanashtan, she drops all pretense of polite attention and instead grabs the bottle of wine.

  By the time he finishes talking the bottle of wine is almost gone. Mulaghesh, rolling her eyes in dismay and sighing heavily, keeps pouring glass after glass of it, tossing each one down her throat with a weary resignation. The one piece of information he withholds is Nokov’s name: he’s not willing to take the chance that she could repeat it and bring that creature down on her head.

  When he’s done, Mulaghesh takes a deep breath and says, “Okay, first off—you are the stupid asshole who left seven bodies in a coal warehouse in Ahanashtan last week?”

  “Oh. You heard about that?”

  “Gods damn it, Sigrud, a former prime minister got assassinated in Ahanashtan a month ago! If so much as one body hits the ground in the whole of that province, I get briefed about it, let alone seven!”

  “Well. If it is any consolation, things mostly went to plan….”

  “Except for the part where it sure sounds like a gods damned Divinity showed up and nearly killed you!” says Mulaghesh, furious. “Not to mention you telling me that the streets of Ahanashtan are apparently riddled with what sounds like some damned Divine booby traps. And fuck knows if I can understand what that’s all about!”

  “You
will need to keep your voice down,” says Sigrud. “Your guards have ears.”

  Mulaghesh rolls her eyes again and tosses herself back in her chair.

  “I do not think,” he says, “that the things I met were Divinities.”

  “Oh? And what makes you say that?”

  “In…In Voortyashtan…When you held the Sword of Voortya. What did it feel like?”

  “What are you digging up that awful memory for…?”

  “Turyin. Please.”

  She stares out the window, her eyes wide and haunted. “Like I could have…could have done anything. Anything. Cut the world in two if I wanted to.”

  “Yes. Even a shred of a true Divinity’s power is incomprehensible to the human mind. They can warp reality without even thinking. But the two beings I encountered…They struggled. They had limitations. The world was filled with boundaries and limits for them.”

  “So, what are they? Divine creatures? Living miracles?”

  “I’ve no idea,” says Sigrud. “But I think Shara knew. They both knew Shara, I suspect. Though one fought against her, and the other with her. And it sounds as if all of what she did on the Continent was started by the file you found….”

  “Operation Rebirth.”

  “Right.” Sigrud breathes deep. “So. This is…a lot to take in.”

  “You’re telling me, asshole. What I can’t figure is, if Shara was tangling with these things that sure as hells acted like Divinities, why not use her black lead on them, just as she did Kolkan? Why not use the one thing she knew could kill them?”

  “I don’t know,” says Sigrud. “I assume she still had it. She did not even trust it with the Ministry, after Bulikov. Such weapons, she said to me, should not be trusted with governments.”

  “As someone who’s been trying to lead one for a while, I can understand that.”

  “I think she trusted nothing and no one,” says Sigrud darkly. “The Shara I knew would have at least written a message for me. Something encoded, something secret. But a spoken word, passed along verbally…Such methods speak of desperation.”

  “I don’t like the idea of Shara desperate.”

  “Nor I,” he says. “Especially when her enemy, whoever he is, seems to be after her daughter.”

  “I don’t understand that at all. She’s just a kid.”

  “Khadse said his employer was targeting Continental youths,” says Sigrud, thinking. “Children. Adolescents. First their parents were killed, then the children vanished.”

  Mulaghesh’s face grows grave. “Then you…You think Tatyana might already be…”

  “I don’t know. It sounded as if Shara’s enemy had just gotten that list of Continentals. So there might still be time.” He pokes at his false eye, trying to get it into a better position.

  “Can you please not do that?” says Mulaghesh. “It’s creepy.”

  “Sorry. Tell me. I only saw her the one time. What do you know of Tatyana?”

  “Not much,” says Mulaghesh. “Shara zealously guarded their privacy after she left office. I suppose she put her Ministry skills to good use there. People barely even knew she’d adopted a daughter, let alone a Continental. I met her only once. She was young. And she was obsessed with the stock markets.”

  “The…the what? The stock markets?”

  “Yeah. She was a weird kid, I’ll be honest. Read a lot of economics books. But being around Shara probably makes anyone weird.”

  Sigrud sits back in his chair, thinking. “Where did Shara live? Before she died, I mean.”

  “Her ancestral estate. Eastern Ghaladesh.” She gives him the specific address. “It’s a huge place, belonged to her aunt. Why?”

  “Because I think, yet again, that there is something I need to remember,” he says, “and I need something to jog my memory.”

  Mulaghesh frowns at him. Then her mouth falls open. “Whoa. Wait. Are you saying you’re thinking of breaking into Shara’s estate? Just to jog your memory?”

  Sigrud shrugs. “That is where I was going originally. I don’t know where to go otherwise. Shara was trying to make me think of someone, but we knew so many people….If I can see her records, see what she was doing, it would help me understand.”

  “Are you mad? Sigrud, that place is part of an international investigation! A Ministry investigation! It’ll be watched!”

  “Then I will have to be careful.”

  “Shara’s house won’t be like mine,” says Mulaghesh. “She was beloved, hated, and now she’s dead. They’re taking this fucking seriously, Harkvaldsson! It’s not something for you to go gallivanting into. They’ll have soldiers and guards!”

  “I will not do any gallivanting,” says Sigrud. “I will be very good.”

  “Are you even listening to me?” says Mulaghesh. “I don’t want you killing any more innocent people, people who are just trying to do their jobs!”

  There’s a long, awkward silence.

  “You know,” Sigrud says quietly, “that I did not mean to do any of that.”

  “I know those soldiers in Voortyashtan are dead. I know that people who tangle with you tend to wind up that way. And I don’t like the idea of pointing you toward any other dumb kids who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “It was thirteen years ago,” says Sigrud. His voice shakes with a cold fury. “And my daughter had just died.”

  “Does that justify it? Some other parents are still mourning their kids, because of you. You’re a hard operator, Sigrud, that’s the truth. Are you willing to play hard for this operation? Are you willing to react lethally if you need, to get what you want?”

  Sigrud doesn’t meet her eyes.

  “That’s what I thought,” says Mulaghesh. “We trained you to do one thing, Sigrud. And you’re good at it. But I think maybe it’s all you know how to do anymore. Looking at you now, it’s downright disturbing—because you don’t seem worried about this at all.”

  “I am worried,” says Sigrud, confused.

  “Yes, but not about yourself,” snaps Mulaghesh. “When most people talk about going up against what sure sounds like a Divinity, they at least mention that they’re anxious. But I’ve heard not a peep of that from you, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson. You don’t seem to care about whether that thing can kill you.”

  Sigrud sits in silence for a moment. “She was all I had left,” he says suddenly.

  “What?” says Mulaghesh.

  “She was all I had left. Shara was. For thirteen years, for thirteen miserable years, I waited for her, Turyin. I waited for word from her, waited for her to tell me that…that things were going to go back to normal. But it never came, and now it never will. It has been thirteen years and I am still here, still alive, my hand still hurts, and I…I am still exactly that wretched fool that Shara dug out of prison so many years ago. Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed. Except now I have no hope that things could ever change.”

  Mulaghesh glances at his left hand. “Your hand still hurts?”

  “Yes.” He opens it up, shows her the grisly scar there. The sigil of Kolkan: two hands, waiting to weigh and judge. “Every day. Sometimes more than others. I thought it would stop, after Shara killed Kolkan. But it never did.” He laughs weakly. “It is the one thing I still have. Everything else has been taken from me. Everyone else. This is all I am now. I am scrabbling for memories and pieces of the people I have lost. Trying to save the fragments that are left. If I can keep Shara’s daughter alive, keep a bit of her burning in this world with me, then maybe…Maybe I can…”

  He trails off, and bows his head.

  “Sigrud…Sigrud, listen to me. Signe…” She grabs his shoulder and squeezes it. “Signe’s death was not your fault. You know that. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Even if I believed that,” says Sigrud, “it would not make me any more whole,
Turyin. So much has been taken from us. I must do something about that.”

  They sit in quiet for a long time. The scar on his left palm aches and throbs. Mulaghesh shifts in her chair, her metal prosthetic clicking softly.

  Sigrud softly asks, “Can I see your hand?”

  “My hand?”

  “Yes. Your prosthetic.”

  “I…Sure, I guess.”

  She holds it out to him. Sigrud gently takes it, holding it as if it were some holy relic, and adjusts its fingers, feeling the movements of its thumb, touching every dent and scrape and scar in its metal surface.

  “Still holds up,” he whispers.

  “Signe did a good job making it,” says Mulaghesh. “She did a good job on everything she made.”

  Sigrud holds the index and middle fingers of the prosthetic a little longer, perhaps imagining the grasp of the young woman who once created it.

  “It’s not the only thing left of her in this world, Sigrud,” says Mulaghesh.

  He looks at her, brow creased.

  “She changed Voortyashtan,” says Mulaghesh. “She changed Bulikov. She changed your country. Those things are all still here. And all those things are worth saving. As are you.”

  He shuts his eyes and lets her fingers go. “Thank you for your help,” he whispers. “I’ll leave now.”

  They walk back downstairs to the sliding glass door. “It was good to see you again, Turyin,” he says.

  “It was good to see you too,” says Mulaghesh. “Listen…I suspect you don’t have too many friends in this world now, Sigrud. But if you need anything—anything—you tell me. I owe you that much. Send a telegram to this address with a telephone number on it.” She writes a note and hands it to him. “I’ll call the number you give me from a secure line.”

  “But what if I’m very far away?”

  She smiles gently. “Oh, Sigrud. How long have you been in the wilderness? Telephones can call very distant places now.”

  “Oh.” He looks at her. “There is one thing you can do.”

  “What?”

  “Find the SS Salim.”