City of Blades (Divine Cities #2)

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  But her hands are an anomaly: when Signe removed her gloves Mulaghesh expected to see smooth, soft, perfectly manicured digits. But instead her hands are hard, callous, cracked things suggesting years of brutal labour, and they’re smudged and smeared with black ink, as if she’s been handling cheap newspapers all day.

  Mulaghesh shivers as a draught snakes into the train car.

  ‘Late winter,’ says Signe. ‘It’s quite harsh here, as it is for the rest of the Continent. But Voortyashtan sits on the Great Western Current, ensuring its waters will never freeze over. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘What a pity that would be.’

  ‘Perhaps so. It does bring with it a great deal of moisture. Did you know, for instance, that Voortyashtan is the flood capital of the world?’

  ‘Another charming trait to recommend it. As if its history wasn’t enough. Is it Voortyashtan or Voortyavashtan? I’ve heard it both ways’

  ‘A common issue. Cities on the Continent often had two or more names – one for the spiritual aspect of the place, and the other for the worldly, the mundane. They might have been two literally different cities occupying the same space, one being an extension of the other’s reality. No one’s sure. But Voortya is dead – so Voortyavashtan, the spiritual aspect of this place, is no more.’

  ‘Leaving only Voortyashtan. Shit. What a fucking headache, these names.’

  ‘You’ve no idea. The contracts are a nightmare, and maps are very tricky. Taalhavras apparently had a half-dozen realities built into Taalvashtan, so they had to redo the road signs about twenty times after the Blink. But after the Battle of Bulikov, some Continental cities and polises find themselves forced to decide which world they wish to reside in. What do you know about Voortya, General?’

  ‘I know she’s dead.’

  ‘Besides that.’

  ‘I know I like that she’s dead.’

  Signe rolls her eyes. Smoke pours from her nostrils.

  ‘Fine,’ says Mulaghesh. ‘I know she was the Continental Divinity of war and death. I know she was terrifying. And I know her sentinels once essentially controlled the known world, shipping out of this very bay by the thousands.’

  ‘By the hundreds of thousands,’ Signe says. ‘If not more. And you are correct that she was the Divinity of war and death, but she was also the Divinity of the sea – something many forget. Likely because her martial exploits are . . . much more memorable.’

  ‘If by that you mean her sentinels killed and maimed and tortured Saypuris by the millions, yeah. That’s pretty memorable, for us. Maybe a little too memorable.’

  ‘True. But what many forget is that, as the Divinity of the sea, most of her domain was built on the sea. The original Voortyashtan, as we understand it, was one giant, floating city, constructed on many docks and plinths, or perhaps floating on the sea itself. Either way, we’ve gleaned from its current position that, whatever its methods of support, they were definitely miraculous.’

  ‘You mean because it’s at the bottom of the bay.’ This part of the story is familiar to Mulaghesh: there’s hardly a part of the Continent that wasn’t devastated when the Divinities were killed by the Kaj, which caused all the miracles that supported the Continent’s way of life to abruptly vanish – an event known as ‘the Blink’. If the original city of Voortyashtan was allowed to float on the ocean by miraculous means, that would definitely explain why it’s currently playing home to the fish of the North Sea.

  ‘Correct.’ Signe flashes her cunning smile. How the hells does she keep her teeth so white, Mulaghesh thinks, irritated, if she smokes so much? ‘What you see now of the city was not the city. Just the entrance portion of the Voortyashtan of old. Those two peaks east of the city aren’t mountains, General – they’re the frame of a door.’

  Mulaghesh chews her cigarillo. ‘So modern Voortyashtan is built on ruins of the old city’s gates?’

  ‘Correct. And the original city now clogs up the Solda, causing massive seasonal flooding downriver and preventing one of the grandest rivers in the world from becoming a passageway of incredibly lucrative trade.’

  Mulaghesh laughs wickedly. ‘So your job here is to give the whole of the Continent an enema, is that it?’

  This doesn’t even put a dent in Signe’s smile. ‘That is one way of putting it, yes.’

  ‘And you actually think you’ll make this rendition of the schedule?’

  ‘Oh, well . . . In truth, my current calculations suggest we’ll beat the latest iteration of the dredging deadline by nearly three months.’

  Mulaghesh stares at her, mouth open. ‘You . . . You think you’ll beat it?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Signe mildly.

  ‘You’ll beat this deadline that keeps getting pushed back years?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re not being completely and utterly mad?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge, no.’

  ‘How do you think you could possibly manage this?’

  ‘I don’t begrudge you your skepticism,’ says Signe. ‘For years, SDC struggled with figuring out how to dredge the bay, how to rectify this decades-old damage done by sustained catastrophes. But eventually our engineering staff came up with a solution: modular component processing.’

  ‘What?’

  Signe smiles, and Mulaghesh realises she’s just given the expected reaction in Signe’s little presentation. ‘We can’t work from the outside in of the Solda Bay – there’s a whole undersea city between us and, well, the city. So we decided to work from the inside out. We broke down the two main pieces of equipment – a crane, and a cargo ship – into their most basic components. Simple, cheap, functional components requiring the least amount of effort to put together and take apart. Then we made a small landing depot a few miles from Voortyashtan where we could get to shore’ – she motions out the window toward the approaching lighthouse – ‘and built track that would allow us to ship the components closer to the bay. Once we could get the components to the mouth of the Solda, and once we got our first two cranes built, the game was over.’

  Signe takes a nonchalant puff from her cigarette. Mulaghesh studies her, waits, and finally asks, ‘How was it over with just two cranes?’

  ‘Why, get two cranes in the right places, and you can do anything. First they built ships and piers. Then they built four more cranes farther out in the sea, one on either side of each of them. Then those four cranes hauled up rubble, loaded up the ships, and built eight more cranes out into the sea, one on either side of each of them. Then the eight new cranes hauled up rubble, loaded up the new ships, and built sixteen new cranes . . . and then thirty-two, and sixty-four, and so on, and so on. This is a gross simplification, but you get the idea.’

  Mulaghesh looks at the forest of cranes out the window. ‘So all that out there took . . .’

  ‘The state of the project, as you see it today, took just under twenty months to produce.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Signe, with a very slight pout of vanity. ‘We’re told the Solda has already stopped flooding downstream – something your old station of Bulikov will be glad of. And one day, very soon, parts of the Continent that were once completely isolated and cut off will now be linked. Pretty soon the rejuvenation of the Continent will truly begin.’

  ‘Whose brilliant idea was all this?’

  ‘Oh, why, the credit belongs to a variety of teams, as each component and each step in the process required incredible oversight and planning, and—’

  ‘It was you, wasn’t it.’

  Signe pauses just long enough to satisfy modesty. ‘I had the idea on a . . . somewhat grand, abstract scale. I did formulate the modular process and oversee its sourcing and detailing, yes. And portions of the arm design are mine. Though there were countless other SDC teams that played their part.’

  ‘I guess you don’t get to be chief technology officer for nothing.’

  ‘Who can say? My position is the first in the compan
y’s history. We’ve never had a CTO before me.’

  ‘So . . . how exactly does a member of the Dreyling royal family come to have a hand in all this?’

  Signe blinks, confused. ‘Dreyling royal family?’

  ‘Your daddy is, unless I’m forgetting, the heir to the Dreyling throne?’

  Signe exhales slowly through her nostrils and taps her cigarette ash into the ashtray in the armrest. ‘The United Dreyling States are a free democracy now. We no longer cater to a monarchy, or to the pirate kings like we did back during the Republic days.’

  ‘Even if that monarchy was originally yours?’

  Her eyes glitter. ‘It is not mine, General. It was never mine. And that has nothing to do with the harbour.’

  ‘So you’re saying your father has nothing to do with your position here?’

  Signe pinches out the end of her cigarette with her thumb and forefinger, her skin hissing as it touches the ash, though her face registers no pain. Those calluses run deep, thinks Mulaghesh. ‘My father, General,’ Signe says slowly, ‘has terribly little to do with anything significant happening these days, as far as I can tell. And if you want his opinion on the matter, I suggest you find someone who would know more than I do. Or, moreover, someone who would care to know.’

  Signe looks up as the train comes to a halt. The white shaft of the lighthouse hovers above them. Signe’s composure immediately returns, the clever smile blooming back on her pretty face. ‘Ah! We’re here. Allow me to take you to dinner. I know it’s late, but I’m sure you’re starving.’ Without another word, she strides off the passenger car, leaving Mulaghesh to struggle with her bags.

  *

  Mulaghesh and Signe dine in the private dining room just below the control rooms for the lighthouse. It’s clear this is reserved for the upper echelons of the company: Signe had to use multiple keys just to get to this part of the building. Their server – a Dreyling boy with a wispy half-beard – enters and exits through a secret panel door beside the bookcase in the corner. Everything about the room is designed for privacy, a place to hold conversations and do the real work once the formal meetings are done, though it feels like an extremely upscale whalers’ inn: everything is dark, ornate wood, and most of the walls are covered in the bones of unsettling sea creatures, some with harpoon barbs still lodged in them.

  ‘One way to keep a skilled workforce,’ Signe explained to her when they entered, ‘is to give them every creature comfort. These men have come out to the end of the world to risk their lives – so even if they are hard labourers and seamen, we give them the best chefs, the best entertainment, and the best accommodations money can buy.’

  But Mulaghesh also notes that the accommodations are quite permanent. One wouldn’t build such a site if one wasn’t intent on staying for a while. And if they truly expect to get the harbour ready in a matter of months, then what comes after?

  From this angle she can see Fort Thinadeshi: a dark, squatting, massive installation on the cliffs just north of the lighthouse. Its most immense cannons are pointed at the city, threatening to rain death down on them at any second. She wonders how the Voortyashtanis must feel with those cannons pointed at them day and night.

  ‘You’re briefed on the situation?’ asks Mulaghesh quietly.

  Signe picks up her napkin and delicately dabs at the corner of her mouth. ‘Sumitra Choudhry. Yes.’

  ‘So,’ says Mulaghesh. ‘What can you tell me about her?’

  ‘She came here a half a year ago. Sent to investigate some discovery made just on the outskirts of the fort.’

  ‘Do you know what discovery that was?’

  ‘No. When I volunteered to be your contact here they made it very clear that, for me, this was a need-to-know situation, and I did not need to know that.’ She sniffs. ‘Anyway. At first Choudhry stayed up at the fortress, but then she started coming down and asking questions of my employees. I chose to handle it for the company. She seemed quite . . . disturbed.’

  ‘Disturbed?’

  ‘Yes. I wondered if she was slightly mad. Bit loopy in the head, if I may say so. At some point in time she had suffered a head injury,’ says Signe, gesturing to her left brow, ‘a white bandage here, so I wondered if that was it, but I wasn’t sure.’

  ‘How’d she get injured?’

  ‘I’m afraid she didn’t say, General. She asked us a lot about geomorphology – the way land is formed. I suppose that because we were doing all this work on the bay, she thought we would know something. But we’re just fixing damages done a few decades ago, not millions of years.’ She points out the window to an area just west of the fortress. ‘People would see her wandering the cliffs with a lantern at night, looking out to sea. I’m told she looked like a painting – the maiden awaiting the return of her beloved, or whatever. Like I said, we thought she was mad.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘Well, then one day we got word she was just . . . gone. I heard rumours it took the fort some time to even realise she was AWOL – that’s how odd her movements were. They conducted searches out as far as they could, but found nothing. And that, quite seriously, is all I know.’

  ‘Would any of your employees know anything more?’

  ‘Possibly. Why? Would you like to talk to each and every one of them? How much time do you have, General?’

  ‘I was thinking you might have an alert you can send out. A notice to all SDC employees to come forward if they ever had any contact with Choudhry.’

  ‘Well . . . we do have a system somewhat like that, but it’s usually reserved for emergencies, an—’

  ‘If you can put that alert through I’ll be quite grateful, CTO Harkvaldsson.’ Mulaghesh studiously ignores Signe’s irritation. ‘But what I find most curious right now is – why you?’

  ‘Why me what?’

  ‘Why are you the one to help me, of all people? You’re not involved with anything at the fortress. And I’m surprised SDC can spare their CTO to help out on a clandestine military operation.’

  ‘Oh, they can’t. Not really. Though we did just go through one of the more difficult crane sitings, so that does make it a little easier. Less burdens upon my back.’

  ‘So why you?’

  ‘I’m familiar with the country, the culture,’ says Signe. ‘I was raised just outside of this polis, after all.’

  ‘You were?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Signe. She kneads her napkin in between her finger and thumb. ‘I’m a Dreyling, certainly. But after the coup we couldn’t stay in the Dreyling Shores. There were plenty of people who wished to see me and my family dead. So we had to hide away somewhere. Voortyashtan was closest, and the least likely place for anyone to look.’

  ‘What did you do when you got here?’

  ‘Survive, mostly. And little more than that.’ She smiles, and there’s a touch of bitterness to it. ‘So, after thirty years here, I know the culture. I know the people. I know the geography, and I know the history. And I have resources that you can’t get at the fortress without raising questions.’

  ‘But you don’t actually want to help,’ says Mulaghesh.

  ‘Does anyone actually want to help in a clandestine investigation?’

  ‘Saypur says, “Dance”, you say, “How many turns?” Is that it?’

  ‘Hm . . . True enough,’ Signe says acidly. ‘Your nation does have mine by the delicates, as one might say. But there is also the matter of your reputation.’

  ‘My reputation? And what reputation is that?’

  ‘General Mulaghesh,’ she says, ‘you are, whether you like it or not, something of a celebrity. You’re not only associated with the prime minister of Saypur, you are also associated with the death of two Divinities. And you’re also associated with an unimaginable amount of destruction and devastation done to the city of Bulikov, damage that city still hasn’t fully recovered from – if it ever can.’

  ‘I couldn’t have helped that!’

  ‘Possibly. But, nevertheless, your
reputation is such that your very presence in this city makes me wary. It also makes a lot of investors wary. Voortyashtan is an old friend of violence. The concern is that you, as innocuous as your cover story may be, could be a catalyst.’

  ‘So what? They think I’m going to show up and destroy the city?’

  ‘You forget that these people have cannons pointed at them day and night,’ says Signe. ‘And although you might have developed a reputation as something of a cautious taskmaster in Bulikov, there are still many rumours surrounding what you did before your stint as governor.’ Signe smiles so wide Mulaghesh can see her molars. ‘None of it’s confirmed, of course – but you and General Biswal have some kind of special connection to the capture of Bulikov during the Summer of Black Rivers, don’t you?’

  Mulaghesh says nothing.

  ‘Continentals fear you, General,’ Signe says. ‘They fear Biswal, especially. And they fear those cannons. And now you’re all in the same place. I think their concerns are quite valid – don’t you? So it’s wise that someone has to keep an eye on you. It might as well be me.’

  4. The black room

  I do not envy Lalith Biswal. He made what was likely the most difficult choice of his career, if not the whole of the Summer, and I believe no matter what he chose he knew he and his soldiers would be punished for it – if they survived, which he surely thought unlikely.

  Perhaps history will one day be a better judge of him than you or I shall be. For though the Yellow March was likely the very thing that turned the tide during the Summer of Black Rivers, such was its nature that we cannot ever acknowledge that it actually happened.

  – LETTER FROM CHIEF OF ARMED FORCES GENERAL ADHI NOOR TO PRIME MINISTER ASHARA KOMAYD, 1722

  Mulaghesh sits at the window of her spacious room, staring out. The view is gorgeous – Voortyashtan is like a wall of fireflies below her – but she cannot bring herself to enjoy it. Not after that conversation.