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

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  He wipes tears from his eye, ashamed of his weeping. “After you, and Mulaghesh, and Hild and Signe…I…I don’t want to be alone again.”

  “I know. I know, Sigrud. And I am so sorry. But listen to me. We are all of us but the sum of our moments, our deeds. I died, Sigrud, and I died doing something I believed in. I will die doing it again. But if I lived my life rightly, what I did during it will echo on. Those I helped, those I protected—they will carry my moments forward with them. And that is no small thing.”

  “You say this to me,” says Sigrud, “a man whose moments are little more than slit throats, and sorrow, and skulking in the dark.”

  “And if you had not been there to do the things you did,” says Shara, “I certainly would not have lived as long as I did. And I, personally, would not have liked it that much.”

  He sniffs. “I hate arguing with you. You always win.”

  “Well, console yourself with the fact that this is probably the very last request I make of you,” says Shara.

  He nods, sniffs once more, and straightens up. “So. Olvos. She’s at the polis governor’s quarters—yes?”

  “Something like that,” says Malwina.

  He shakes his head. “How absurd it is to go lurking at a Divinity’s doorstep, as if she were hiding from creditors. How will I get there? Are there any magic doors or stairs that can take me?”

  “There’s a secret back exit there,” says Malwina, pointing at a distant, dark fireplace along the far wall. “One only I use and know about.”

  “Only you?” says Sigrud. “Not…what was his name…Voshem?”

  She shakes her head. “No. Wouldn’t be smart to put so much power into one person’s hands. The exit only leads to a tollbooth in the park next to the Seat of the World, nowhere fancier than that. We’ll use it, as we can’t leave by the Solda Bridge door again—too much traffic there might give watching eyes ideas.”

  “And what shall I do once we’re out?” asks Sigrud.

  “Well,” says Malwina. “You said you were good at stealing cars, yes?”

  “Steal a car and drive it through all those checkpoints to the polis governor’s office…? I will be shot before I get outside the walls.”

  “Bulikov isn’t as you remember it anymore, Sigrud,” says Shara. “Those checkpoints are gone, mostly.”

  “I’ll get you through the exit,” says Malwina, “and then I’ll stay at the tollbooth in the park, waiting for you.”

  “How will I get word back to you if I succeed?” asks Sigrud.

  “If you succeed, you’ll have a damned Divinity on your side,” says Tavaan. “She’ll probably drive you across the sky in a chariot pulled by swans.”

  “And if I fail?” he asks.

  “If you fail…” says Malwina. “If you knock on the door, and there’s no answer…then you just come back, I suppose. And we try and think of something else.”

  Sigrud rubs his face. “And do we have any other backup plans?”

  Tavaan looks to Malwina. Malwina looks to Shara.

  Shara sits very still, staring into space, as if deciding something. And then she does it again: she raises her right hand, lifts her glasses, and wipes the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger.

  She looks at Sigrud. Her eyes are hard and cold. “No,” she says firmly.

  He knows she’s lying. He can see she knows that he knows. She has some other trump card she’s holding back. But he can see that she desperately, desperately does not wish to play it.

  “All right,” he says. “I’ll do it.”

  “Good.” Shara turns to Tavaan. “Then we need one final thing.”

  “What’s that?” asks Sigrud.

  “This is war,” says Tavaan. “A poor war, yes, a lopsided one with the odds against us. But this will be the one real strike against our enemy. So if it’s to be war, it’s best to outfit you appropriately.”

  Sigrud waits for more. “Meaning we need…”

  Malwina gives him a faint smile. “A seneschal.”

  * * *

  —

  Sigrud kneels on the floor of the room, feeling both awkward and confused. Malwina and Tavaan stand before him, holding hands, while Shara looks on from the comfort of her chair. Though no one’s done anything yet, he feels something’s changing in the room. It takes him a while to notice it: the snores and mutterings and gentle sounds of slumber are all fading. The hundreds of sleepers are growing still.

  “Are we sure this is necessary?” asks Sigrud.

  “It’s likely our enemy knows Olvos’s location too,” says Malwina. “He can’t get to her, just as we can’t, but he’ll know the region. He could have prepared it against you. So you need to be prepared in turn.”

  Tavaan looks down at him, her wide, strange eyes filled with a curious light. “Are you ready?”

  “And you’re sure I won’t become a monster,” says Sigrud, “like the woman on the aero-tram?”

  “You won’t be a true seneschal, Sigrud,” says Malwina. “That’s what the enemy tried to make—a mortal with a piece of a god in them.”

  “We aren’t that powerful,” says Tavaan. “Unfortunately.”

  “But we do have gifts to impart to you. Yet in order for these gifts to be used to their full effect, they must be transferred with an agreement.”

  “These gifts are a part of us,” says Tavaan. “So the gift can only be given to a part of us—an aspect, a facet.”

  “Which means what, exactly?”

  “A lost child,” says Malwina quietly. “That is our communal domain, so to speak. We are refugees. We can only give these gifts to someone of a similar state.”

  Sigrud sits in silence.

  “Are you ready?” Tavaan says.

  “I don’t know,” he says. He looks to Shara. “Am I?”

  Shara shrugs. “This is likely the first time such a thing has been attempted in global history.”

  “Which means what?” asks Sigrud.

  “Which means I’ve no idea what could happen. But I’ve never known you to turn down a weapon, Sigrud.”

  He grimaces and scratches his neck. “Fine,” he says.

  “Shut your eye, Sigrud,” says Tavaan.

  He does so. One of them takes his left hand—Tavaan, maybe. Then he feels cold, hard fingers pressing upon his brow. Then there are voices. He thinks he hears Tavaan’s loudest among them, but he’s not sure—he hears many voices wrapped up in it, like it’s not one person but many speaking at the same time.

  “Do you hear us?” ask the voices.

  “Yes,” he says.

  “Do you feel this?” ask the voices.

  A juddering in his skull. He feels like the fingers are penetrating his brain, reaching into the deep, dark caverns in his thoughts, to scrawl upon a secret wall there….

  He tries not to gag. “Yes.”

  “Good,” say the voices. “Now, listen. You must find a memory in yourself, Sigrud. A memory of desperation, of loss, of hope eclipsed by sorrow.”

  More voices chime in: “When you fled. When you ran. When you fought not for pride or for purpose, but simply to live.”

  “When you were like us,” the voices say, swelling. “Alone. And forgotten.”

  Dozens of voices flit through his mind, whispering: Please. Please, help us…Please, we’ve wandered for so long…

  Then he feels them: feels every year, every hour, every minute of their purgatory, the miserable, dispossessed mass of Divine children, all lost, all aimless, mindlessly seeking shelter and warmth.

  And then he remembers something: a moment long, long ago, when he was a young man, barely twenty. Returning from a sea voyage to find his parents murdered, his home reduced to ashes. He remembers sitting on the blackened hillside, staring into the empty, frigid vale before him, and feeling a powerful
aloneness, a wordless isolation in whose shadow he has lived his entire life.

  If there had been someone there for me then, he thinks, would I be who I am today?

  And then he realizes that there had been someone to help him, though it took some time for her to find him: Shara Komayd. Though his life has been far from perfect, it would have been much worse without her chance intervention.

  And now, perhaps, he can finally repay her.

  “That’s it,” say the voices.

  There’s a tremendous pressure in his skull, as if the two fingers there have paused, suspended in his head, waiting to hear his answer.

  Then one voice stands out, very slightly. “Is this you, mortal man? Is this memory you? Is this what makes up your heart?”

  “Yes,” he whispers. And he knows this is true. “Yes, it is.”

  With these words he feels a warmth flooding into his left hand, like he’s holding it close to a fire.

  “In your hand is a sword,” say the voices. “Do you feel it?”

  Sigrud frowns. At first he felt a hand gripping his own, perhaps Malwina’s or Tavaan’s, but now it feels very…strange. There is something new in his hand, and it is not another hand. It is something hard yet warm, with a slight give to it, like that of wood.

  “Do you feel the blade?” the voices whisper. “Do you?”

  “I…I think I do,” he says, but he’s not certain.

  “Do you see it, Sigrud?” asks Malwina, her voice quiet and close. “Do you see it in your mind?”

  Sigrud furrows his brow. He’s not sure what they mean—see in his mind? He doesn’t see anything with his mi—

  Then he sees it.

  A flicker of gold-white light, just to his left, like the flicker of a candle flame. A golden ribbon, whipping about brightly in a stiff breeze. A blade like the wing of a yellow butterfly, flitting through shafts of sunlight in the forest.

  He feels it being bound to him, not to his hand but to him, the idea of him, the thing that makes him who he is.

  “A tool,” the voices say, “to find a path in empty shadows. Will you use it wisely and well, to protect us and guide us to a new home?”

  “Yes,” says Sigrud. “Yes. I will.”

  “Then take the sword,” the voices say. “Take it an—”

  Then there’s a sharp cry of pain. The warmth in Sigrud’s hand suddenly vanishes, the pressure in his skull evaporates, and his eye snaps open.

  It takes him a moment to get his bearings. Tavaan is kneeling on the floor, cradling her right hand like it’s been burned. Malwina crouches beside her, helping her sit up. His hands are empty, and the sleepers groan quietly.

  “What…What happened?” asks Sigrud.

  Tavaan swallows and shakes her head. Then she glares at him like he hurt her. “There is something nasty living inside you,” she rasps.

  “I felt it too,” says Malwina. She glances back at him, her face troubled. “Whatever it was, it didn’t want us to bind the sword to you. But we did. I think we did.”

  “How can you be sure?” asks Shara.

  “Ask him if he can find it,” says Tavaan. “Ask him if it’s there.”

  “Can you reach out and feel it, Sigrud?” asks Malwina. “Can you find it near you?”

  Sigrud’s not sure what they mean. Feeling absurd, he reaches out and paws the space in front of him like someone trying to find a doorknob in a dark room. But then his hand feels magnetically drawn to a spot in the air…

  And then it’s there, as if he’d always been holding it: a short, thin blade that looks like it is made of gold or bronze. Its handle is warm, even somewhat hot, as if it were sitting near an open flame.

  Malwina and Tavaan let out a breath of relief. “Thank goodness,” says Malwina. “For a moment I thought we’d done all that work for nothing….”

  “What…is it?” asks Sigrud, examining its edge.

  “Flame,” says Malwina. “That’s the name it chose for itself, when we made it.”

  “Like we said,” says Tavaan, “it’s a tool. It won’t harm the enemy, but it can destroy his works.”

  “He is here, and he is anxious. The stronger he gets, the more he’ll send at you,” says Malwina. “And us.”

  Sigrud tosses the blade back and forth between his hands. It feels solid enough, not at all like how it felt in his mind, where it was an idea rather than a physical object. “How did you two make it?” he asks.

  “We didn’t,” says Malwina. She waves at all the sleeping children in the beds. “We all did.”

  “In our minds,” says Tavaan. Then she taps her temple. “In our slumber. We dreamed it, you see. There was a reason they put me in charge of this place, after all.”

  “Put it away,” says Malwina. “Hide it away again. The more it’s out in the open, the easier it is for him to sense it. It’s Divine, after all.”

  Sigrud waves the sword around, trying to feel for that pocket of air again, as if it was an invisible sheath he could just slide it back into. But then something in his mind kicks in, as if he’s remembering a motion he did long ago: it’s not like he’s sheathing the blade, but rather like he’s pressing it into soft mud, submerging it into a pocket in the reality beside him. His hands begin the motion, and then suddenly it’s gone.

  Though Tavaan still looks weak, she nods, pleased. “Good.”

  “Will it cut flesh?” asks Sigrud. “And metals? Or merely the Divine?”

  “It will perform like a very good sword, I suppose I should say,” says Malwina, “and it won’t break. But its primary use will be against the enemy. And it won’t do shit against Olvos’s defenses. She’s far more powerful than we are.”

  “What happens if I drop it?” asks Sigrud. “Or someone steals it?”

  “It won’t leave you or work for anyone else,” says Malwina. “Unless you give it to them. It’s bound to your will.”

  Sigrud nods, impressed. “I could get used to Divine trinkets.”

  “Don’t,” says Tavaan. She sits up, shaking her hand like the pain is lingering. “There won’t be any more where that came from. It’s time to go.”

  * * *

  —

  Together the four of them walk to the fireplace, which is huge and old and dark. As they walk, Sigrud realizes how much this exchange has drained Shara: she seems faint, and she blinks repeatedly, as if fighting back a stupor.

  “Do you know…I wonder if this will make a difference,” she says.

  “Why else would we do it?” asks Sigrud.

  “I mean in the lives of average people,” says Shara. “We do our backstage skullduggery in the halls of power…but little changes for the people in the streets. They live their lives at the mercy of people like our enemy…and people like me. I worry Vinya was right.”

  “About what?” says Malwina.

  “That power doesn’t change. It just changes clothes. The Divinities formed reality for their people. And when they were gone, government picked up where they left off. Few have any choice in how they live. Few have the power to decide their own realities. Even if we are victorious—will that change?”

  “We focus on the tasks at hand,” says Sigrud. “Such grand problems are beyond us.”

  “You’re right, Sigrud. Of course you are.” Shara sighs as they approach the fireplace. “I don’t know how you do it, Sigrud.”

  “Do what?”

  “Keep going,” says Shara. “There are some crimes that you don’t understand the awfulness of until you’re older. I sit here now, separated from Taty, knowing that…knowing that it is likely I will not see her again. I won’t hear her voice, smell her hair, feel her fingers in mine. And it is as if someone buried a thorn deep within me, and I feel it pressing on my heart with every breath. And then I worry you were right.”

  Malwina climbs into the fireplac
e and gestures to Sigrud to do the same. He does so, but looks back at Shara, confused and concerned. “Right about what?” he asks.

  “When you said to me that the fight could not ever be worth it,” Shara says, “when it asks us for our children.” She looks at him, her tired eyes burning in her lined face. “I’m sorry about Signe. I regret so many things. But that I regret more than any other.”

  They share one moment longer, each looking at the other across the boundary of the fireplace, separated by years and sorrow and death itself. Sigrud tries to think of something to say, but the words do not come.

  Malwina touches the side of the fireplace. The world twists.

  Sigrud finds himself toppling out of the shadows and into the night air. He manages to catch himself before he falls, staggering forward a few more steps. He stops and looks around—they’re in the park, just as Malwina said they would be. He looks back to see a small, abandoned tollbooth standing by a little concrete path. There’s a shiver in the shadows in its doorways, and then Malwina steps out, looking grim.

  She looks him up and down. “Are you ready?”

  Sigrud walks over to the tollbooth to find it’s a simple, empty wooden structure. He feels the walls with one hand, perhaps wishing he could reach through them, find Shara, and touch her once more, just one moment longer with his friend.

  “I said, are you ready?” says Malwina.

  Sigrud drops his hand. “Yes.”

  “Good. Then listen.”

  * * *

  —

  Voshem slips through the streets of Bulikov like a mote of dust through a sunbeam. He moves cautiously now, listening to the crackling hum of electric lights and the honk and putter of distant automobiles. He’s walked these paths many times before, and everything seems the same, but that vision lingers in his mind: the walls turning into the dark base of a tower, which stretched toward the skies….

  He shivers as he comes to his apartment building—one of them, at least, as one must stay mobile to stay safe—but pauses before the door.