City of Blades (Divine Cities #2)

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  Yes, she thinks.

  She twists her wrist, points the sword down, and diverts all its power, driving it into the cliff at her feet. The stone parts as if it were made of cotton.

  The ground trembles underneath her, threatening to collapse. Yet it holds.

  The warriors aboard the ships stare at her, confused. Why does she not do as she promised? Why does she not permit them to wage the last war?

  Mulaghesh looks out at the bay, sets her jaw, and rips the sword out of the cliff.

  Somehow the sword understands what she wishes to do, and cries to her, No, no! You cannot, you must not!

  She forces her will upon it, using every measure of her conviction to change it, to unwrap and unfold and redefine and rewrite it and all it stands for – an invisible, agonising battle that exhausts her, nearly kills her.

  The sword cries out: I was meant for death! I was meant for battle! I was meant for war!

  Mulaghesh’s answer has the ring of cold iron: Times have changed.

  She finishes her work. Then she turns to the warriors below.

  She begins to speak, her voice quaking with fury: ‘Listen to me, my children! Listen to me! You have slain many and taken many lands! You have won countless battles and waged countless wars!’ Her voice rises until it echoes like thunder. ‘Yet I now ask of you – are you marauders or are you servants? Do you give power to others, or do you hoard it? Do you fight not to have something, but rather fight so that others might one day have something? Is your blade a part of your soul, or is it a burden, a tool, to be used with care? Are you soldiers, my children, or are you savages?’

  The bay is silent save for the flicker of flames and the slap of the waters. The sentinels stand upon their ships, staring at her in confusion.

  Then one sentinel calls to her, ‘Mother, Mother! What is this you speak of? What is this you describe? That is not what a soldier is! A soldier does not give, they take! A soldier does not serve, but forces others to serve! A soldier does not cede power, but wields it, wrests it from the hands of any who dares lay claim to it! A soldier never gives, a soldier never serves! A soldier fights only to kill, to claim, to take, to conquer! That is what we are!’

  The dead murmur their agreement, their low mutterings floating over the waters.

  Mulaghesh bows her head. Her disgust and outrage and contempt burn bright within her, and the sword reacts, flaring brighter than the midday sun, a white eruption of purest light, as if she holds in her hand the morning star.

  She holds the sword high and screams in fury, ‘THEN I FIND YOU WANTING! NO SOLDIERS ARE YOU IN MY EYES! NO TRUE SOLDIERS ARE ANY OF YOU! AND SO I SAY OUR AGREEMENT IS BROKEN!’

  She hurls the blazing sword down.

  *

  Captain Sakthi stares in disbelief as Voortya swings her hand out and throws the glittering, burning sword down to the waters. It is a bolt of lightning, a comet, a blaze of light so bright it’s like the sky has been split open. He raises his hand to shield his eyes, watching through the cracks in his fingers as this fiery, flickering star comes shrieking down to touch the waters at the very centre of the fleet.

  The horizon erupts. It’s like a thousand shells have gone off, like the death of a star, a wall of purest, bright white light flying at them.

  Sakthi shuts his eyes. He cries out and crumples to the ground, covering his face with his arms, bracing for the impact. Surely this explosion will send a crushing wave of water roaring up the shores. Surely shrapnel will fall on them like screaming rains, rending them to pieces. Surely they’ll dissolve in a wave of hot fire that will set the whole of the countryside alight.

  But nothing comes.

  He waits. Then he lowers his arms, raises his head, and looks.

  His eyes are still adjusting, so the dimly lit world bursts with faint blue-green bubbles. Once this passes he sees the bay is covered with thick, curling smoke. But he can’t see a single mast or burning hull in any of it.

  The wind picks up. The smoke curls faster, then withdraws like a curtain.

  He slowly stands.

  The bay is empty. No, not just empty – it’s calm and placid, as it has been nearly every night this week. Not a lick of flotsam or jetsam bobs upon its shores, and the figure of Voortya has vanished with it.

  ‘Gone,’ he says. ‘They’re all gone.’

  He is still too stunned to react when all of the technicians begin cheering.

  *

  Sakthi tries to run faster, but his body is rebelling against him now. He’s been racing about for nearly four hours, moving at breakneck speeds since Biswal first mentioned this mad night was happening, and now his feet ache and his knees creak and some of his lower vertebrae are complaining terribly. Yet he knows his fellow soldiers must be as exhausted as he is as they sprint over the rocks to where they saw the Divinity, their torches bobbing up and down in the dark, so he pushes himself a little harder, raising the guttering red flare in his hands and crying, ‘To me, to me! Hurry, my boys and girls, hurry!’

  It’s all so impossible. He’s thinking the same thing everyone else is: did they really see the Divinity of war tonight? And did she really strike down her own army, wiping them out in a single blow? Or did something . . . else happen tonight?

  Sergeant Burdar flings out a finger. ‘There, Captain! Over there!’

  There, on the farthest point, the shape of a single person sitting on the cliffs.

  Captain Sakthi sprints toward them, crying, ‘Don’t shoot, damn you, don’t shoot a damn thing unless you have to! Don’t you damned well fire a shot, my boys and girls!’

  They drop back, allowing him to be first on the scene. He’s not sure what he’s expecting: perhaps they’ll find the sword of Voortya still buried in the side of the cliffs up to the hilt. Or perhaps they’ll find some unearthly, Divine wound in reality, like they have in Bulikov. Or perhaps the cliffs will be sloughing away entirely, unable to support the madness of this evening.

  But as his soldiers encircle the people on the cliffs, he finds it is nothing so strange, nothing so surreal. Captain Sakthi is a veteran of combat, so the sight is not unfamiliar: a young soldier, lying on the ground, pale and still with a wound in his side; and there next to him curled over double is a woman, sobbing hysterically, as if it were she, not the soldier, who was mortally wounded.

  She says the same words over and over again: ‘No more, no more. Please, please, no more.’

  17. Defiant love

  People often ask me what I see when I look at the world. My answer is simple, and true.

  Possibilities. I see possibilities.

  – LETTER FROM VALLAICHA THINADESHI, 1649

  Mulaghesh stares at the ceiling of the jail cell.

  Everything hurts. Her head, her left arm, her right arm, her knees, both ankles, though one a little more than the other. Even her left hand hurts, her missing hand – a curious, ghostly ache, though perhaps that’s because she still doesn’t have her prosthesis back. Yet none of it’s a real hurt, somehow. It’s all far away, muted, as if it’s happening to someone on the other side of the world.

  It takes her a second to hear the sound of the footsteps. That’s unusual: ever since Major Hukkeri had them throw her in here they’ve mostly left her alone, except for bringing her food or taking out her latrine. They treat her, in many ways, like a bomb that’s about to go off, and she can’t quite blame them. So who’s brave enough to get near her now?

  She watches as the visitor comes to the door of her cell, and though it’s dark she can tell by the scintillating wall of medals and ribbons on their chest that this is a person of consequence. In fact, there’s only one person she knows of who could have ever accrued that many commendations.

  She lifts her head a little. ‘Noor?’

  General Adhi Noor leans forward so that a blade of light falls across his face. It’s him, though he looks about a thousand years older than when she last saw him.

  He smiles. ‘Hello, Turyin. Mind if I come in?’
/>
  ‘Do I have a choice, sir?’

  ‘You do if you’d like to.’

  She nods and stands to attention. He unlocks the door and steps in. ‘There’s no need for that. You look like you’ve had a rough time of it. I’d not put you through any more.’ He sits down on the cot at the other side of the cell. ‘Why don’t you take a seat.’

  She does as he asks. She thinks for a moment. ‘Sir, what are you doing here?’

  He smiles again, but there’s a bitter touch to it. ‘When Biswal messaged the Ministry about Zhurgut’s attack on the city, that put a lot of things in motion. I happened to be in Taalvashtan at the time. The prime minister recommended I jump on a boat and get here as soon as I could. It was only on the way that she . . . apprised me of your operation here. It sounds like a damn tricky one.’ He gives her a piercing glance. ‘And from what everyone has said you’ve either caused quite a bit of commotion or you’ve walked right into a mess of it.’

  Mulaghesh is silent. He looks her over, and she knows the look: she herself has given it to soldiers under her command many times.

  He takes off his hat and sets it in his lap. ‘Why don’t you tell me what happened, Turyin?’ he says quietly.

  She hesitates. It seems so much easier to just let it all be walled up inside of her, to pack it away and keep it in the dark, away from her waking life. But before she knows it, she begins to talk.

  She tells him everything. She describes it in the only language available to her: the dry, clinical, officious vocabulary of an officer making a report. And he listens throughout, hardly moving.

  When she finishes he’s silent for a while. Then he says quietly, ‘That’s some story.’

  She swallows. ‘It’s the truth, sir.’

  ‘I know it is. I believe you.’

  ‘You . . . You do?’

  ‘Yes. I have never known you to lie, Turyin. I’ve never known you to stretch the truth one jot – even when I really would have preferred you to. And maybe you forget that I was with you just days after the Battle of Bulikov. I know what this country is like just as much as you do.’

  ‘I wasn’t doubting you, sir. It’s just that . . . that General Biswal . . .’

  Noor purses his lips and nods. ‘Yes. Biswal. I’ve been in communication with Major Hukkeri and one officer who has, in my opinion, thoroughly distinguished himself, a Captain Sakthi. Their assessments of Biswal’s actions don’t quite enter into the realm of the fantastic like yours do, but . . . they’re close enough. It appears Biswal told numerous officers numerous different stories about what was happening here, anything to get his men to support his mad endeavour to start a new war. That’s reason enough to doubt him. And it is my personal opinion that his command here, while brief, has been nothing short of a catastrophe.’

  ‘That doesn’t acquit a soldier of killing a superior officer, sir.’

  ‘No. No, it doesn’t. But being that we did discover fragments of these swords you describe in Biswal’s rooms, I am tempted to believe you had reasons for your actions.’

  ‘Fragments, sir?’

  ‘Yes. Both the swords and the statues that SDC so carefully hoarded have all more or less disintegrated. If you’re right – if these miracles persisted only because the will of the dead insisted they did so, as a way to be remembered – then it seems that power is gone. The thinadeskite no longer registers any extraordinary properties at all. It’s simply dust.’ General Noor rotates the hat in his hands, fingering the brim. ‘If the swords – damn, I hate discussing this odd stuff – if these swords drew that fleet to these shores, and if Biswal was passively willing to allow them to do so, for whatever reason, then it is an extraordinarily damning piece of evidence. That you managed to defuse the situation – however you managed to do it – is remarkable.’ He glances at her. ‘I’ll probably regret this – I hate asking about anything miraculous – but how did you do it? You just threw the sword at them?’

  She shakes her head. ‘The sword was . . . it was like a symbol, sir, an idea made real, or maybe many ideas made real. It was a symbol of their agreement – they’d be soldiers for Voortya, and she would give them eternal life and their final war. It was a matter of just . . . rewriting the agreement.’

  ‘How so?’

  There’s a glint of steel in her eye. ‘They didn’t qualify as soldiers in my opinion, sir.’

  ‘And as such . . . you were no longer obligated to allow them their war,’ says Noor. ‘Ah. It seems simple now, but . . . Well, actually, no, it doesn’t seem simple. I hardly understand a bit of it.’ He sighs. ‘I admire the prime minister, but I don’t much enjoy having to parse through all of her miraculous nonsense. But I’m glad she put you here. She’s foresighted, I’ll give you that.’

  ‘I didn’t do it alone, sir. CTO Harkvaldsson was an enormous asset, and . . . and . . .’

  ‘Yes.’ Noor’s expression darkens. ‘The dauvkind.’ He is silent for a great while. ‘Did he really kill those soldiers?’

  Mulaghesh nods.

  ‘If he was your friend . . . If he helped you . . . well, why didn’t you just lie? Why did you tell me that?’

  ‘Lying about how a soldier died, sir,’ says Mulaghesh, ‘is a damned cowardly thing to do. It would dishonour them. Even if it hurts me to admit what happened, I have to tell the truth. He . . . He did it in a blind rage. They’d just killed his daughter . . .’ She trails off.

  ‘And you know that won’t matter,’ says Noor. ‘Even if he is the dauvkind. We cannot let such a thing pass. When we find him, we will have to hold him accountable for his actions, no matter who he is.’

  ‘When we find him, sir?’

  ‘That’s right, I suppose you wouldn’t know. The dauvkind has not been found anywhere since the night of the attempted invasion. He’s a Ministry-trained operative. Those sorts can be hard to find.’ Noor clears his throat. ‘He has, however, left a letter behind.’

  ‘A letter?’

  ‘Yes. He confesses that the entire plan about the yard of statues – hiding the Divine here amongst the harbour works – was his idea. His daughter had nothing to do with it, he says. He claims it was an act of patriotism, anything to support his country, and he takes full responsibility for his actions – though that’s not quite true, what with him having fled and all.’ He looks at Mulaghesh. ‘Is this true? Was this his idea?’

  Mulaghesh rubs her aching left arm. ‘Possibly. I don’t know.’

  Noor looks her over again, carefully.

  ‘I do know that the statues had little to do with the situation in Voortyashtan,’ says Mulaghesh. ‘Their presence was wholly coincidence – everything that happened here was a consequence of the actions of Rada Smolisk and Lalith Biswal. That is the truth.’

  ‘And why did you never try to contact me? Why did you never reach out to the military council?’

  ‘The idea of the prime minister running an unofficial operation, investigating the Divine . . .’ Mulaghesh shrugs. ‘What sort of reaction would that have provoked? Even if we had discovered a true threat?’

  Noor nods, sighing. ‘That is probably true. There are some who already think this whole thing was a hoax concocted by the prime minister. I suppose denial is a much more comfortable bed to lie in than the truth.’

  ‘And what’s to become of me, sir? Will I face a trial?’

  ‘A trial?’ he says, surprised. ‘No, not a trial. Not yet, at least. There’ll be a hearing, and likely an inquiry – but I expect they will mostly find your actions commendable, Mulaghesh. There were thousands of witnesses to what you did last night, even if they don’t quite understand what they saw. There are dozens of soldiers here who can testify to General Biswal’s erratic actions before the invasion.’

  Mulaghesh feels herself trembling. ‘But . . . But Pandey, and . . .’

  His expression softens. ‘Yes, the poor sergeant major. You explained to me that was an accident. And we did find part of his sword in your false hand. That is proof enough to me.’


  ‘But . . . But someone has to . . . to hold me accountable, sir.’

  ‘For what?’

  She almost says, ‘For everything,’ because before this only once in her life has she ever felt responsible for so many ills in this world, so many wounds and so many deaths.

  General Noor looks at her for a long, long time. ‘We need to get you home, Mulaghesh. You’ve been out here too long, out on the front lines. Both in body and in mind.’ He stands and pushes the door of the cell ajar. Then he turns and says, ‘I’m going to leave this open, General Mulaghesh. You come out when you’re ready. When you think you deserve it. And you do deserve it, Turyin.’

  She waits until she knows he’s out of earshot to finally begin to weep again. It takes her more than an hour to summon the strength to walk out.

  *

  The next day Mulaghesh walks the cliffs in the morning air, revelling in the sunlight. A front has blown in out of the south, pushing the clouds away and bringing warm air with it. Noor has given her a new uniform and has allowed her time to clean herself up and seek first aid, and all of this makes Voortyashtan feel like a different world to her.

  She wanders the copses and woods atop the cliffs, walking north of the fortress and the city. It takes only a few minutes to lose her tails – two of them, both plainclothes Saypuri officers, neither of them very good. Then she turns toward the coast.

  She finds it almost immediately: the hidden place where the tiny, terrifying stairs wander down to the shore. She remembers sitting on the cliffs and watching Pandey rowing out to sea, and the girl in the boat who met him.

  Mulaghesh climbs down the stairs. It would normally terrify her, but it doesn’t anymore. Having been death itself for a little bit, she’s no longer much afraid of the idea.

  She pauses when she’s almost at the bottom. She calls out, ‘Sigrud? I’m coming down! Don’t . . . Don’t fucking kill me or anything!’

  A silence.

  Then, quietly, ‘Okay.’

  She climbs down the rest of the way and finds him hiding in a cut-in up under a shallow roof of stone. He looks like shit: he’s starved, filthy, and he’s set his own broken arm, albeit poorly.