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

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  A long, long silence. There is a strange, curious rumbling in the darkness, like the sound of a wild boar growling in the undergrowth.

  She shivers. Whenever she talks to him like this she can’t help but get the feeling like she’s alone in a deep, ancient forest on a moonless night….

  “What…what orders would you have, sir?” asks Mishra.

  “Do you have assets in Ghaladesh?” asks the voice, cold and fierce.

  “Yes. I can reach out to them with the Frost of Bolshoni. I’ve become somewhat adept at it.” Being as I have to do it about thirty to sixty times a day, thinks Mishra, to maintain the mirrors.

  “Can they respond quickly?”

  “Quite quickly, sir.”

  “How many? Ten? Twenty?”

  “I think I have twelve ready contacts, sir.”

  “Good. Mobilize all of them.”

  “Um. All of them?”

  “Yes. And do they have access to the trunk full of soil?” says the voice. “The one we sent along?”

  “Yes, sir, they do, but…Are you saying you wish to personally approach this man?”

  “Yes, if I can,” says the voice. “I have questions for him—if he survives that long. He’s in Saypur, which makes it difficult for me….Even though I have grown since my last encounter with him, I still cannot extend my influence far beyond the Continent. But he knew Komayd. And one of the others interrupted my time with him. He is valuable, I’m sure of it. We must treat him with the utmost precaution. Tell them to use the trunk to prepare all entrances and exits to the Komayd estate.”

  “Certainly, sir. Shall I keep watch on him through the mirror?”

  “Yes. And if he tries to leave, stall him if you can.”

  “Yes, sir.” As Nokov seems so interested, she opts not to tell him that she might have been seen in the mirror. We’ll just cross that bridge if we come to it. “And…for the assets and contractors you wish to mobilize…”

  “Yes?”

  “They will expect payment, sir.”

  “Oh. Right. Yes.” The voice pauses, as if he’d forgotten about this inconvenience. “How much? And to which bank accounts or locations?”

  She gives him the amounts and the accounts.

  “One moment,” says the voice.

  There’s a pause. The flicker of faint, white stars up above, pinpricks of luminescence that somehow fail to illuminate anything.

  Then the voice is back. “It is done,” he says. “As you said. I have also provided you with a sum, in case you need to deal with any…irregularities.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll proceed shortly. And, ah, one last thing?”

  “Yes?”

  “The Ministry officers there at the Komayd estate?”

  “Yes?”

  “What should we do with them?”

  “Oh.” A pause. “Well. I don’t see another option but to kill them.”

  Mishra winces. “I see. Yes, sir.”

  “I mean, do you? Do you see another option?”

  “I…No. I don’t think so, sir. Not if this man is that valuable.”

  “Yes.” A pause. “Mishra…”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Do you still believe our actions are for the good? That what we are accomplishing here is necessary?”

  From his tone, she understands he is not interrogating her: this is a genuine question, as if he’d like to hear her thoughts. “I believe I do, sir.”

  “The Divinities failed,” he says. “Now Saypur has failed. You know that. It is just a long, grand cycle of suffering. Someone must end it. I shall take up that task, if no one else will. I never thought it’d be easy. It will test me. And it will test you. Do you see?”

  “I see. I think I see, sir.”

  “Good. That is good.”

  Then silence. It’s difficult to tell, as it always is with him, when he’s really gone.

  She opens the door to leave. Light floods in. She’s alone in the tiny room. Except now there are three items on the floor at her feet, items that definitely weren’t there before.

  One item is a large burlap sack full of silver drekels—probably a thousand of them or so. The other two items are solid gold bars, about ten pounds each, at least.

  She sighs. She appreciates the payments he gives her, being as it’s a fortune every single time—she just wishes he paid her in ways that were easier to hand in at the bank.

  * * *

  —

  Sigrud is very accustomed to moving through the homes and spaces of other people. He’s operated beyond the normal boundaries of law and property for so long that the idea of ownership has faded and blurred for him. If he can grab anything, or break into anywhere, then it’s difficult for him to imagine a real reason not to do so.

  Yet he feels a powerful violation here, here in the living quarters of his friend.

  Her books, worn but cared-for. A half-finished painting she’d made of a pair of hands—Tatyana’s?—peeling an apple with a knife. Stacks of letters to friends and confidants, none in code, not that they needed it: these are all innocent inquiries and missives, letters of “how are you” and “doing fine, thanks” and “oh my goodness she’s gotten so big.”

  And then there are the pictures. Sigrud leans close to one, staring at the woman—and the child—trapped behind the glass, arms thrown about each other as they laugh, unable to bear the ridiculousness of posing for a picture….

  By the seas, he thinks, is that old woman really you, Shara?

  He stares at her lined skin, her graying hair—prematurely white, surely. The effects of office. Her eyes are still the same, though, large and dark, magnified behind her bulky spectacles. He imagines that, though he hadn’t seen her in a decade and a half, she still looked at the world the same way.

  But he looks closer at the girl next to her.

  It’s a very curious thing. Tatyana, maybe six in this photo, is obviously adopted: the pale white skin and brown hair, cut in a short, modern bob, make that very clear. Her nose is a little sharp and pointed in a way he finds strangely familiar, yet he can’t place it. But the way she stands, the dresses she wears—all of it is so much like Shara that it’s disorienting to him. It’s as if this little girl wished so much to be like her adopted mother that she took on all of her physical mannerisms.

  And the love in their eyes…That is very real. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Shara make such a face in his life.

  I should not have come here, he thinks, ashamed. This place is theirs….I should have let it sleep.

  He keeps walking, moving silently from room to room.

  A half-empty bottle of plum wine. A handful of rings soaking in a cup of cleaner. A bundle of yarn and crochet needles, unused—a hobby picked up but never pursued. Fragments of a life interrupted.

  He pauses at Shara’s room. It feels deeply dishonest to do so, but he steps inside. He looks at the books on the desk, and notes one in particular, very worn and stained: Collected Essays Upon the Divine, by Dr. Efrem Pangyui.

  Sigrud thinks, then picks up the book and holds it. Then, operating off of a hunch, he holds the book above the table, spine facing down, and lets it fall.

  The spine of the book clunks into the table, and the covers fall open. For a moment the pages hang in the air, unsure where to fall, but then they part…

  And the book falls open to a well-annotated page, one that Shara must have looked at a lot, slowly breaking the bindings. Sigrud smirks, pleased to see this trick actually work—he wasn’t at all convinced it would—and reads:

  …perhaps dozens of Divine offspring, if not hundreds, or thousands. And each offspring was naturally granted with a domain of reality that was affected by the domains of their Divine parents. For example, Lisha, the daughter of Olvos and Jukov, was a spirit of all fruiting trees, thus mak
ing her a creature of hope, like her mother—for who has more hope and anticipation than a farmer awaiting a crop?—and a creature of wildness and excess, like her father, as fruit ferments into wine.

  There was one Divine offspring, however, whose domain is unclear, and was particularly dreaded and feared in the Continental texts, so much so that the Divinities defaulted to a common tactic of theirs: they edited history and memory, preventing all mention of this offspring from persisting to this day. We do not even know the being’s name or its parentage.

  But we do know some things. One is that the offspring’s domain was apparently so vast that it somehow threatened the original six Divinities themselves. There have been numerous ideas about exactly what this offspring’s domain could have been—the sun, death, perhaps motion itself—but we have no real way of confirming this.

  Regardless, the original six Divinities, fearing disruption, took an unusual action: they mutilated the child horribly, crippling it. Exactly what they did is also unclear—vivisection and amputation are both mentioned—but as with all things Divine, one cannot be sure if this is metaphorical or literal. But this mutilation, whatever it was, weakened the offspring terribly, and prevented it from threatening reality ever again.

  As with many of the Divine children, we are forced to conclude that the Kaj either successfully slaughtered this being during the Continental holocaust, or perhaps the being perished during the Blink. But I note that we are forced to conclude this solely because we have not witnessed any evidence of its existence as of today. We know little about the original Divinities, but we know even less of their children, who were often too unimportant to record, except perhaps for this one child, who was too important to put to paper.

  Sigrud stands in Shara’s room, thunderstruck.

  It all begins to make a terrible sense to him.

  “Holy hells,” he whispers. He slowly sits down on the bed.

  The two beings he encountered in the slaughterhouse must not have been true Divinities, but children of Divinities. This would be why the Continental girl had such queer control over the past, and the other, the thing in the shadows, had such control over darkness: they each had their specific domains, which would naturally come with boundaries and strictures.

  But how could they have survived? He supposes that, since they are very much like a Divinity, then the only way to kill them would be with the Kaj’s black lead—the last piece of which was held by Shara. Yet what she’s done with it he has no idea.

  He scratches the stubble on his chin as he thinks. So this Divine child, this Nokov, was fighting a war. Perhaps one against Shara, or one Shara had waded into. But a war over what? And why target Continental adolescents? Why send Khadse out to track down children and teenagers?

  He slowly leans forward, elbows on his knees.

  Unless, of course—the Continental children he targeted were not really just children.

  He remembers the girl from the slaughterhouse, desperately gasping: He’s killed so many of us, and now he might have me….

  The gods are dead, thinks Sigrud. And when a ruler dies, what happens? The children fight over the kingdom, eliminating competition. It’s all so startlingly clear now. Perhaps some of these Divine children hid themselves away, pretending to be average, to be normal, to be mortal. But if you wish to rule your parents’ territory, you must be thorough. Every scrap of your family must be eradicated except for you.

  He glances back at the page and reads one line that’s been repeatedly underlined: There was one Divine offspring, however, whose domain is unclear, and was particularly dreaded and feared in the Continental texts….

  He remembers the scraping and shifting sounds in the shadows, the cold voice whispering in his ear: What I can do will make murder feel like a wondrous blessing….

  He shudders. I must find Tatyana, he thinks.

  Though now he worries about her too. If some of these children were just pretending to be normal, then…

  No, he thinks. It could not be. I saw her as a child, as a little girl. She was hardly more than a toddler. Surely she has aged and grown like any other mortal?

  He walks down to Tatyana’s end of the quarters. He expected something strange, something curious, but he finds it is…very average. A bed. Some books, all more or less intended for children or young people. Lots of books and papers about economics, which is a little odd—but not that odd, he supposes. It does not look like the bedroom of a child of the Divinities, in other words.

  He shakes his head. You’re going mad with paranoia. Focus on finding her before worrying about such foolishness.

  He walks farther down the hallway and comes to the kitchen. It has a gas oven—a rare luxury—and a small, modest table. A drying rack, still full of dishes. Bottles of plum and very potent apple liquor. He peers into the trash can by the far wall. Not much inside: a few napkins, a cracked jar.

  Sitting on the counter above the trash can is a folded-up newspaper. He glances at it, and sees it’s old—very old, nearly two years.

  Which means Shara kept it…but why?

  He picks it up. The paper’s folded back so that whoever was holding it was reading one page, the financial section, and it looks as if they were paying attention to one article in particular. He reads it carefully, wondering if it could have mattered to Shara.

  Then his eye falls across one name that sounds familiar, something about land purchases outside the walls of Bulikov:

  …however, the deal has been consistently blocked by Ivanya Restroyka, the largest shareholder of the trust company, who refuses to break up any of the parcels for sale, though she has refused to comment on exactly why. Despite having the reputation of being a recluse, Restroyka has consistently been an active and forceful figure in Bulikovian real estate—regardless of whether that real estate lies inside or outside the city’s walls.

  Sigrud cocks his head, thinking.

  Restroyka…He knows that name. Doesn’t he? He massages his forehead as he thinks. The Ministry trained him for this, trained him to learn how to compartmentalize and then access his memories when needed….

  And then it comes to him.

  Smoke, wine, a fire. A party. Years ago, in Bulikov, before the Battle. Shara had been there, as had Mulaghesh—the first time he’d ever met her. And the man who had been throwing the party…

  “Vohannes Votrov,” Sigrud says quietly.

  Speaking the name aloud summons up his face: a handsome Continental man, with curly, brown-red hair and a closely cropped red beard. His jaw is strong, his smile bright, and his blue eyes have an equal measure of confidence and wildness to them.

  Sigrud takes a breath as the memories come flooding back to him. Votrov had been Shara’s ex-lover, a Continental construction magnate who’d died during the Battle of Bulikov. Sigrud had not been there to see him die, but Shara had, and the trauma had been terrible for her. The man had given everything for his city, for his nation, for the future he wished to build. Sigrud knows that sacrifice wore off on Shara, catalyzing her to return to Ghaladesh and try to genuinely change things.

  Which she had. Though they killed her for it. Much as the Divinities had Votrov.

  But Votrov had been engaged before the Battle, to a woman. A girl, really, barely in her twenties. A pretty young Continental thing who wore entirely too much makeup. He remembers meeting her at the party, how she laughed in delight at the sight of him, thinking him—a crude, glowering Dreyling—to be a tremendous amusement.

  “Ivanya Restroyka,” he says quietly.

  He keeps reading the article. To his surprise, he finds that Restroyka is now one of the richest people in the world. If she inherited all of Votrov’s money, thinks Sigrud, then she is probably the richest Continental alive by leaps and bounds.

  Why would Shara keep a two-year-old article about Restroyka?

  He remembers Sha
ra’s message: She is with the one woman who has ever shared my love.

  The sight of Vohannes’s face swims up in his memories again.

  You were Shara’s only love, he thinks, at least as far as I know. And what other woman shared you…

  “Could Tatyana Komayd,” he says aloud, “be hiding with your ex-fiancée?”

  * * *

  —

  Sigrud paces back down the hallway, checking each room. He finds nothing more, no sign of a struggle or hidden secrets. Just two women living their lives, hidden from society.

  He thinks about Restroyka as he paces from room to room. She’s surely not a girl anymore; she must be in her forties or fifties by now. The more he considers it, the more he’s sure he’s right: if Shara was so intent on building up the Continent’s economy during her time in office, who else would she speak to but the Continent’s foremost millionaire? One with whom she had a personal connection, to boot? And perhaps they became allies, thinks Sigrud, walking toward the stairs. Allies close enough that, if Shara needed to hide her daughter, she felt she could reach out, and ask…

  It’s all still theoretical. But it’s also all he has.

  “Time to get the hells out of here,” he says, starting up the stairs and switching off his torch.

  He comes to the dining area, trots down the hall, and heads toward the glass doors leading to the back patio, and the stream beyond.

  He places a hand on the doorknob. Then he hears a voice behind him: “You’re not leaving so soon, are you?”

  He leaps to the side, whirls, and pulls out his knife, readying himself for an attack…though now that he looks, there’s no one in the entry hall with him.

  A burst of laughter. A voice says: “My, my, you’re quite high-strung, aren’t you? You know what you need? A vacation.”

  Sigrud cocks his head. Then he stands and stalks over to the mirror hanging on the wall.