City of Blades (25 page)

Sigrud stares at her blankly. “Faster? How would they make light…faster?”

“Hells, I don't know. It's some engineering shit. I told them they were sending the wrong person, but they squeezed my plums, so to speak.”

He shakes his head, staring around at the statues and the form of SDC peeking just over the walls. “Look at this world they shoved us into.” He looks up at a bone-white arch. “Maybe they should leave us in here, with this graveyard of relics.”

“Hey, it might not all be new. I saw something last night….Something that's probably only familiar to Shara, you, and m—”

Before she can speak further the iron door swings back open. They both look up to see Signe walk through.

Signe sees them and stops in her tracks. Then she gives a savage little nod, as though to say,
As I expected, all along.
She resumes walking toward them. “Well,” she says. “Isn't this a delight.”

Why is it that, despite us being decades older than her,
thinks Mulaghesh,
I feel like we're two children caught causing mischief?
She stands and says, “Evening, CTO Harkvaldsson. Lovely night, isn't it?”

“I will presume it was
you
that broke into the fuel yard checkbox, stole a truck, and vaulted over the walls.”

“Is it really stealing if you never take it off the lot?”

“I could have you shot, you know.”

Sigrud stands. “Well, n—”

“Try it,” says Mulaghesh. “Then try explaining
where
I was shot. Looking around me it seems like you're in a much more vulnerable position than I am, CTO Harkvaldsson.”

“As a Saypuri, I would imagine you'd be quite concerned about keeping Divine artifacts like this closely watched.”

“True, and as a Saypuri, I think it was damn shitty of you not to tell us you had these. Though I can understand you wouldn't want us taking your trump card. Then what would you play against the tribes?”

Signe's brow creases, wondering how Mulaghesh understood her intent.

“I was hiding over there,” Mulaghesh says, gesturing with the cigarillo. “I heard everything.”

Signe turns bright pink. “How dare you! That…That…” She looks to her father. “Aren't you going to say
anything
?”

Sigrud shrugs, bewildered. “What do you wish me to say?”

“Something authoritative and helpful, to start! How ridiculous it is that you must ask
me
what to say when this woman has breached
our
personal privacy!”

“This isn't some family secret,” says Mulaghesh. “Or a company trick of the trade. All this shit is a national security threat, CTO Harkvaldsson.”

“They're just statues,” says Signe indignantly. “We've tested them for any trace of the Divine and found none. If they registered as Divine I would have alerted the fortress immediately.”

“Right, if they registered using the tests you
procured
from Thinadeshi,” says Mulaghesh. “Do you want me to go sniffing around up there for your source?”

Signe pales a little at that. “This has nothing to do with Sumitra Choudhry.”

“Are you so sure? Are you hiding any other secrets from me now, Signe? Or is this the only one? Because a fine way to search your operation top to bottom would be to tug on Biswal's coat about this and have him take the harbor apart out of sheer paranoia.”

Signe opens her mouth, aghast, then looks at her father. “This…This woman is putting our nation at risk. Everything will fall apart if the harbor project isn't finished. Are you going to idly stand by?”

“You are a cunning creature, Signe,” says Sigrud. “Smart enough to know when you're backed into a corner. If you have something to tell her, tell her.”

Signe sighs, exasperated. “I have told you
everything
I know about Choudhry. I have always been aboveboard on that subject!”

“Look me in the eye,” says Mulaghesh, stepping closer, “and tell me that.”

Signe's glacial eyes burn brightly. “I promise. I
promise,
General.”

Mulaghesh holds her gaze for a moment, then nods. “All right. I believe you. For now.”

“And…And the statues…Will you, ah…”

“Tattle? Maybe. I haven't made up my mind yet. I have fatter lambs to cook at the moment, and doing something like that would just complicate things.”

“I suppose I'll have to accept that for the time being. If we are all done threatening one another, can I
please
escort my father to meet with Biswal? And where is your hat?”

Sigrud shrugs. “The wind took it.”

“Oh, well. We'll find you a replacement. Come on. Let's go.”

The three of them begin to exit the yard. Sigrud coughs and mutters about how after this he'll be happy to return to the headquarters for a night's rest.

“Your rooms are already prepared for you,” says Signe curtly. “You will have the lighthouse suite.”

“Oh,” he says.

“It's the nicest suite in the building,” she says. Mulaghesh isn't sure how, but Signe manages to pack a lot of animosity into this statement.

“I do not need that,” says Sigrud. “I have slept in far worse pla—”

“I know you have,” she says. “That's not the point. The point is that you are the
dauvkind,
and everyone here will expect you to be treated as such. If I stuck you in one of the laborers' quarters they would think I was being disrespectful.”

“Then…I will tell them not to think these things!” says Sigrud, bristling. “I will tell them to mind their own business!”

“And you can't do that, either! Then it will look as if you're trying to cover for me. You aren't just a nobody anymore! People expect things from you!”

“You sound like your mother,” says Sigrud.

“If by that you mean I sound
intelligent,
then yes, I do, and I will take it as a compli—”

Mulaghesh stops listening. She hasn't been to this part of the yard yet, so she hasn't seen the massive, fifteen-foot statue that rests up against the iron wall. The very sight makes her stop where she stands and sends a shard of ice shooting into her heart.

She knows it immediately. Of course she does. Did she not see a much larger version of that carven figure just last night, rising from the sea to place her giant hand upon the cliffs? Weren't every one of the ghastly illustrations on that plate mail burned into Mulaghesh's memory, a solid wall of unimaginable violence?

“Voortya,” whispers Mulaghesh.

She stares at the statue. It's so pale the light almost seems to filter through it, like it was made from the purest of snows. The statue stands on a plinth, but set before it is a wide bowl, almost like a claw-footed bathtub. Carved into the bottom of the plinth are many titles:

She wonders how anyone could ever come to love and worship such a thing. But then she realizes:
Because they won
. It's as Biswal once said to her, during the gray, savage days of the Yellow March, outside Dzermir: “War is a hell beyond anything the Continentals and their gods could ever dream of. It behooves us to act accordingly. Those who accept it for what it is will be the victor.”

And the Voortyashtanis, perhaps, were all too happy to accept it for what it was. They embraced it, made a nation out of it, a whole culture birthed out of the willingness to inflict the unimaginable horrors of war. And, having done so, they won, over and over again. They survived the Divine Wars and went on to conquer nearly every piece of territory in the world.

Of course they loved her. No matter how cruel or indifferent, she helped them win.

Mulaghesh wanders forward, staring into that cold, still face. She remembers hearing that Voortya never spoke, not to the other Divinities, nor to her followers.
But she wouldn't need to, would she? Just look into that face, and you'll understand all you need….

She notices something moving before the statue. It's a tremor in the air, like a heat haze, like there's a fire on the ground but she can't see it. She squints at the disturbance, trying to track its source.

But
was
there a fire on the ground once? The mud below the tremor still bears charred sticks and a smattering of gray ashes, as if someone once camped here.

Mulaghesh's brain starts whirring.
Just like in the thinadeskite tunnels. Did Sumitra Choudhry come here to perform her miracle, too?

She walks over, eager to see if there's any sign of burned rosemary or dried frog eggs.

But as she rushes over, things…change.

Mulaghesh stops and looks up into the face of Voortya.

The world goes still.

There is someone in the statue. It's the strangest of sensations, but it's undeniable: there is a mind there, an agency, watching.

“There's someone in there,” she whispers.

“What?” says Signe's voice, faraway.

She stares deeper into the empty, vacant gaze. “There's someone behind those eyes. There's someone…looking
back
.”

The statue of Voortya seems to lean forward to her. And then she sees the sea.

Dark waters churn under the light of the yellow moon. She plunges down into the sea, down, down, through the rippling depths and the glimmering spears of moonlight, the swirls of bubbles and the flick of distant fish.

The light changes below her, as if there is a second moon and a second sky at the bottom of the sea, and this moon is not yellow but white, white, the purest white.

She bursts through dark waters, rises up into this second sky, and sees…

An island resting on the horizon, surrounded by mists. Strange peaks cut through the clouds gathered about it, like the growths of coral.

There are voices in the night:
Mother, Mother. Why did you leave us?

The island speeds up to her. Beaches white as bone, delicate as mother-of-pearl, and rising from those strange sands is a mass of enormous structures, massive towers that have the look of chitin and claw. Some of the buildings, she sees, are not buildings at all, but
statues,
bigger than the biggest skyscraper in Ghaladesh, so vast she can hardly see their tops….

Mother. We loved you. We love you. Please, give us what you promised us.

Mulaghesh floats through the white city. The cold white moon fills the dark sky above her. She thinks:
Am I really here? Have I been brought here?
She finds she cannot say. She simply drifts through this strange, bloodless world of bulging structures that rise to become curling, delicate towers, a world of massive, silent giants concealed by the clouds.

Yet then she realizes she is not alone.

The streets and beaches ahead are filled with people….But not normal people. She needs only glance at the hundreds of points on their shoulders and backs to see what they really are.

Thousands and thousands of Voortyashtani sentinels stand perfectly still in the moonlight, shoulder to shoulder in the streets and the city squares and on the distant beaches. Mulaghesh nearly screams, terrified, certain that these monstrous creatures will turn and tear her to pieces. But they do not. Instead they watch the horizon, their thorned hands resting on the pommels of their massive swords, staring at something high up above them.

Please, Mother,
they whisper.
Please, speak to us.

Mulaghesh drifts among these malformed warriors, staring at their skeletal masks and their hideous armor, half antlers and half seashell. Then she slowly follows their gaze.

They are staring at a tall, white tower at the center of the city. At the very peak of the tower is a balcony, and though she knows that in waking life her eyes would never be this clear, she can see someone up there, pacing back and forth.

Mother,
they say.
Come to us.

Then one of the massive statues ahead of her…shifts. Just the barest of movements, the tiniest twitch, yet she knows she saw it. The statue is turned away from her, but she recognizes this figure, gleaming in the moonlight—didn't she pour all of her carousel into that very thing no more than two nights ago?

Voortya,
she thinks.

Beautiful and terrible and resplendent, cruelty incarnate, Voortya stands up straight in the mist. To see such a massive figure move so silently fills Mulaghesh's heart with pure terror.

Then the goddess slowly turns, twisting her head around as if she heard someone mention her name.

No, no,
thinks Mulaghesh.
No, please, no…

The dark, blank eyes turn to face her.

Mother,
whisper the sentinels.
Mother, Mother…

Then there's a voice just over Mulaghesh's shoulder: “Are you
supposed
to be here?”

She turns to see something huge standing over her, a towering creature of chrome and metal. Before she can open her mouth to scream she's suddenly plunging into the ocean again.

Up, up, up. Back through the swirling dark waters, rocketing up to the fluttering light of the yellow moon.

She bursts through, and the world spins around her.

“Turyin?” says Sigrud's voice. “Turyin!”

She feels cold mud on the back of her neck and realizes that the back of her head hurts. She draws breath into her lungs and is suddenly racked with coughs.

“General Mulaghesh?” says Signe's voice. “Are…Are you all right?”

She opens her eyes and sees, to her horror, pale white statues standing over her…but they're the ones from the harbor yard, not the massive, terrifying things she glimpsed in the other place.