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

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  The creature then does what he expected it to do: it hesitates, assuming he’ll summon Flame to force it into a duel again.

  But he doesn’t. He keeps rolling, then stands up, fires a haphazard shot at the seneschal, and runs.

  Now to see, he thinks, if it will do what I hope it will do.

  He tries not to look over his shoulder to check—to do so would give the game away—but he can’t help but sense that the seneschal is keeping its position by the stairs, not at all willing to pursue this irritating man who’s just attacked it even though the man doesn’t appear to have his sword with him anymore….

  Then the world goes silent.

  I knew you couldn’t resist, he thinks, smiling. You hate me so….

  He feels the reverberations in the soil behind him as the creature pursues him, and turns into the warren of tenements just as the seneschal’s spear licks out at him, its point slashing through the wooden walls behind him.

  The chase is on, he thinks, sprinting down the alley. Now for Malwina to make it count.

  * * *

  —

  Malwina waits, watching the seneschal. At first she’s sure it won’t take the bait—it’s fairly obvious bait, in her opinion—but the thing apparently hates Sigrud that much, because it springs after him with a silent roar.

  Its aura of silence fades as it gives chase. Malwina waves a hand to the other children. “Come on! Now!”

  They run down the black walls toward the staircase. It’s a motley crew, that she knows. Malwina doesn’t understand exactly what these Divine children could hope to do against Nokov, but they have to do something—don’t they?

  Her eyes cloud over as she reviews the past. She can see the huge towers that once stood at the gates in the old days, and the giant, moving chamber set in the interior of the closest one—a splendid, gorgeous, white-and-gold structure that makes her think of swans in winter.

  “Stand right here,” she says to the other children, pointing at the ground. “Are we ready?”

  No one says yes, but no one says no either.

  “Hold tight,” she says.

  She builds a bubble of the past around them, and pushes them back….

  Suddenly they’re standing in the chamber, surrounded by tall, broad men in flowing, golden robes, their faces hale and hearty, their teeth white and clean—not at all the Bulikovians Malwina grew up seeing. They talk amongst themselves in hushed tones, debating the will of the Divine, the wend and weft of creation. They are creatures of optimism, and ignorance: ignorance of what is happening in Saypur in their era, all the misery and slaughter their luxury breeds, and ignorance of the destruction it will bring down on their heads.

  The men ignore Malwina and the other Divine children, creatures of the past blind to the chaos of the present. The white chamber begins hurtling up, up, up through the tall spire.

  The Divine days of old, she thinks. Would I wish to go back to this, and live only here, living the past over and over again?

  One thousand feet. Two thousand feet. More.

  No, she thinks. She shuts her eyes. Because then I would have never met Tavaan.

  She opens her eyes. Now. Now!

  She pops the bubble of the past around them. For a moment they all keep continuing up, just a few feet—but then they begin falling, crashing into the broad, black staircase that’s suddenly appeared below them. As they recover, Malwina looks up and takes stock of their circumstances.

  They seem to be about a mile or two above the city, whose buildings are a clutch of gray architectural anarchy below. It’s freezing cold up here—she can see ice forming on the walls.

  Then she sees Nokov.

  It’s hard not to see him. Tall as a tree, eyes like holes in space, a broad, swaying, shadow-flecked figure slowly advancing up the stairs toward them, his every movement thrumming with power.

  “Oh, man,” whispers one of the children next to Malwina.

  “Quiet,” she snaps. “Stand up. And get ready for him.”

  “What are we supposed to do?” asks another.

  “He’s distracted by building the tower,” says Malwina. “He won’t be as strong as he could be, in other words. Knock his ass off these stairs. Anything we can do to keep him from taking another step is a victory.”

  A nervous silence falls over them as they take their positions. Malwina’s hands won’t stop making fists, her knuckles white with strain.

  Nokov slows as he sees them, his black, glittering brow wrinkled in puzzlement. “Oh,” he says quietly. His voice doesn’t seem to come from his mouth, Malwina notes, but rather from the walls, as if the entire tower is speaking.

  “We’re not going to let you do this, Nokov!” says Malwina.

  He takes another step. “There’s little you can do against me.”

  “Little it may be,” says Malwina. “But we’re going to do it anyway.”

  “Do you wish it to end this way?”

  “If it has to, yes.”

  He cocks his head. “Were your lives just? Content? Happy? I will remake reality now. I will make it better. I will fix it. All the wrongs we lived under will be righted. I promise you this.” He extends a hand. “You can join me, you know. Be a part of me. Come into the night, and I will show you greatness.”

  “You’re not some savior, Nokov,” says Malwina. “And you’re not some justified rebel, avenging past wrongs.”

  “No?” says Nokov.

  “No. You’re just some fucking selfish kid who thinks his misfortunes are bigger than everyone else’s, and you’re taking it out on everyone around you. You’re not special. If I lined all the people like you up, you’d go around the world twice. We’re just unlucky enough that you happened to be able to actually do something about it, and unluckier still that you were stupid enough to try!”

  Nokov blinks, outraged. Then he begins to tremble. “I’ll kill you last,” he hisses. “I’ll kill you last.”

  Malwina smiles. “Try it.”

  He leaps at them.

  * * *

  —

  As Sigrud sprints through the alleys the sky above erupts with thunder, or something a lot like thunder—it sounds a little louder and sharper than the thunder he’s used to hearing, and it doesn’t seem to echo as much. But the really odd thing is that with the seneschal chasing him, everything should be silent—yet that particular sound breaks through.

  He knows he should be focused on trying to avoid the seneschal, but he takes a moment to glance up….

  The space at the top of the tower is flashing with light. Light of many colors—reds, blues, greens, and some other colors that his eye can’t quite interpret correctly.

  So that’s what a Divine battle looks like, he thinks. He’s glad he’s several thousand feet below it—though he does hope nothing comes raining down on them.

  He can feel the seneschal behind him, feel its feet pounding the concrete alleys. Sigrud takes a gamble and dives through a window in one of the tenement homes, breaking through the glass and the frame. He crouches next to the wall, waiting. He can feel the seneschal’s footsteps; he knows it’s close. His right shoulder starts hurting again, aching powerfully….

  The spear smashes through the wall of the home. Sigrud drops to the floor, but it’s not fast enough: the spear comes hurtling at his chest, and stops only a few feet away. He sees that the seneschal happened to break through a tenement wall with a lot of plumbing in it, and has been slowed down by the pipes. If it had completely broken through, it would have managed to extend its thrust a handful of feet farther, and probably run him through.

  Sigrud doesn’t wait to see more. He rolls over, scrambles through the bedroom door, and flies out the front window, turning east down the street toward the trap they laid.

  But this is bad. It’s bad because it seems like the seneschal can
track him, somehow, like it can sense where he is, which means eluding it will be impossible. And he’s starting to think that he knows how it’s tracking him: the spear point was speeding toward a certain spot on his right breast, the spot that aches terribly whenever the seneschal is near….

  The distant skies echo with crashes, bangs, cries, and shouts.

  Whatever Malwina is doing up there, he thinks, I hope she wins, and soon. He turns down the next alley, hopefully leading the seneschal onto the final leg of their trap. Because I am less and less certain this will work.

  * * *

  —

  Taty narrows her eyes, watching the tops of the tenements down the sights of her rifling. Her right shoulder aches from the recoil, but then she sees the seneschal pop up, and forgets all her pain.

  She puts the sights on it and fires. She hits it in the shoulder and it seems to stumble very slightly for a fraction of a second—but hopefully a fraction of a second that Sigrud can use.

  “He’s headed toward Ivanya,” says Shara. “I think.”

  “Yes.” Taty fires again, this one a miss. “Will he make it?”

  “I don’t know,” says Shara.

  Taty fires again—the last round in the clip. The empty clip comes shooting out with a ping. “Next one,” she says, extending a hand.

  Her mother passes a full clip over. Taty pushes it in until the bolt smoothly slides into place, chambering the top round. She raises the rifling to her shoulder, but then pauses, noticing her mother’s gaze and her broad smile.

  “What are you looking at?” Taty asks.

  “Nothing,” says Shara. “I just…I just want to remember this. To keep this. We lose so much. I hope I keep this.”

  “Keep it until what?” asks Taty.

  Shara looks away, face now clouded. “Nothing. Nothing.”

  * * *

  —

  Sigrud makes another corner, now sprinting down the main street that runs along the black wall, back toward the foot of the staircase. He needs to get into position before the yellow brick tenement on the corner, and soon—but the seneschal isn’t running the route he needs it to. He was hoping it’d take the alley running through the tenements, but because it seems to know how to track him, it’s not bothering with this complication, and is instead making for the main road, looking to cut around and through.

  He eyes the brick tenement on the corner, its sides painted bright yellow, and the window on the second floor. The seneschal rounds the corner, its spear low, its silence thrumming.

  Sigrud considers his options—maybe lead it back down into the warren of tenements?—but he knows there’s no time. He sprints toward the yellow brick building, knowing full well he won’t make it.

  Not even with Taty shooting will he make it.

  * * *

  —

  Taty sits up straight. “Something’s wrong.” She aims and fires, hits the seneschal in the belly, but it keeps coming.

  “I know,” says Shara.

  “He’s too exposed!” says Taty.

  “I know!” says Shara.

  Taty pulls the trigger, and there’s a click. She blinks and looks down at the rifling. “Misfire!” she cries. “Shit!” She watches in horror as Sigrud sprints down the street, small and tiny before the black form of the seneschal.

  “Oh, no,” she says. “Oh, no…”

  Shara sits up and looks out the window, her face calm and watchful.

  * * *

  —

  A hundred feet from the tenement. Fifty. He feels the ground shaking with the steps of the seneschal behind him.

  Please, Ivanya, he thinks. Please be ready….

  Impossibly, he makes it to the yellow brick wall, but he can see from the shadows over his shoulder that the seneschal is going to cut him off, keeping him from escaping down the next alley.

  He whirls around, hoping he can perhaps leap aside and dodge under the seneschal’s stance, but…

  A flash of darkness.

  It’s close, he sees. Too close.

  The spear flies at him.

  There’s a crunch sound. His right side goes numb.

  Sigrud tries to stumble back, but finds he can’t. He can’t move.

  He stupidly looks around for the source of the sound, and sees that it came from behind him, where the spear has penetrated the brick wall.

  He looks down.

  He sees that the spear hit the wall after passing cleanly through his right breast, beside his shoulder. Right where it left that dark little spot just a few days ago.

  Sigrud tries to breathe and finds he can’t. His chest is bright with pain.

  The seneschal crouches low, its featureless face staring into his own. He can’t help but get the sense that it is wickedly gleeful in its victory.

  And it is victory, he knows. Sigrud je Harkvaldsson has seen enough mortal blows to know that this is one.

  * * *

  —

  “No!” screams Taty from the window. “No, no, no!” She drops the rifling, going white as the seneschal impales Sigrud, pinning him to the wall.

  Beside her, Shara Komayd silently stands and begins walking downstairs.

  * * *

  —

  The seneschal leans close to him, its silence now an odd purr he can feel in his bones.

  He coughs and manages to laugh. He grins at the thing. He hopes she can read his lips as he says, “Don’t get too close. I don’t want to get nicked when she guts you.”

  The seneschal cocks its head and looks up…

  Just in time to see Ivanya leap from the second-floor window of the tenement, Flame in her hands.

  The strike is strong and true. The edge bites through the seneschal’s neck as if it were but a switch of straw.

  The head of the seneschal strikes the ground with a loud thump—which means, he dimly realizes, that sound has returned.

  The seneschal’s tall, spindly body follows, collapsing before him like a suspension bridge. Ivanya falls beside the carcass, rolling as she lands, but he can tell the fall was rough, maybe spraining or breaking an ankle. She turns to look at him, sees him impaled on the wall, and her mouth opens in horror.

  Sigrud tastes blood in his mouth. He tries to smile. “You…You did a very good job,” he says. His voice is a whisper.

  “Oh, no,” says Ivanya.

  * * *

  —

  Malwina lies on the black staircase, beaten and bloody and faint. She knew it would be hard. But not this hard.

  She looks up to see Nokov run through one of the Divine children with nothing more than a finger, as if his digit were a rapier, then turn and snatch another Divine child out of the air and stuff it into his huge, black maw. Malwina slowly realizes that she is now the only one left—Nokov has proven too strong, too shifting, too mutable, too powerful for them to even make a mark on him.

  “I thought I would enjoy this more,” says Nokov. He lifts his finger, the Divine child hanging limp from his knuckle, and stuffs her into his mouth. “But none of you are even much of a challen—”

  Then Nokov sits up straight like he’s just heard a terrible sound. He whirls and stares down at the city below. “No,” he whispers. “No, no! Not Mishra, not Mishra!”

  It’s at this moment that Malwina summons up all her strength and uses the trick that she’s been sitting on for a while. She’d wished to do it before, but Nokov was too slippery, too fast—yet now he sits stock-still, peering over the side of the staircase in dismay.

  Lightning is a curious thing. Most lightning is cloud-to-cloud lightning, dancing through the air. If one were to look back through history, picking a random spot in the skies, and wonder how many times, say, one cubic foot of atmosphere had lightning course through it, the number of instances would be quite extraordinarily high—and the cumulat
ive amount of electricity would be nothing short of inconceivable.

  Malwina focuses, and tracks down all the lightning that has ever passed through the spot of air that currently happens to be occupied by Nokov’s head.

  She focuses more, and makes past and present twist, just slightly.

  Nokov’s skull lights up with a luminescence brighter than a million suns. The force is so great that it blows him forward, shooting him down off of the staircase like he’s been fired out of a cannon, leaving a trail of black smoke in his wake.

  Malwina leans over the edge and screams, “That was for Tavaan, you piece of shit!”

  Nokov hurtles down toward the city, but his black form slows after about three or four hundred feet. She can see him righting himself, floating above the city, and he turns to look up at her, his face still smoking.

  When he speaks, the walls and stairs vibrate with each word. “That,” he says, “was quite tricky.”

  * * *

  —

  Sigrud tugs at the spear lodged in his right breast, but it doesn’t move. He knows this is the wrong thing to do anyway, since removing the spear will likely cause him to bleed out, but he can’t stop himself from trying. It’s as if he has a piece of food stuck in his teeth and he can’t stop tonguing it.

  Ivanya rises and comes to him. “No, no…Don’t. Don’t, Sigrud, you’ll just make it worse.”

  “It…It doesn’t hurt that much,” he says to her, his words thick and slow.

  “You’re in shock. You don’t know what’s happening.” She looks at his back, where the spear protrudes and enters the brick wall. “Oh, by the seas…Oh, no, Sigrud, oh, no.”

  He tries to say, “I saw a man get impaled with a tree when I worked as a logger, and he survived for six hours with the trunk lodged in him,” but he briefly blacks out, and the words are lost to him.

  There’s a tremendous boom from above and the world fills up with bright, white light. Sigrud blinks in confusion, wondering if this is what dying feels like. But then the light recedes, and the world coalesces into sense again, though it bursts and warps with blue-black bubbles as his eyes adjust.