City of Blades (29 page)

“You said she went mad. So perhaps once she was
not
mad. Perhaps she did this when she was still a good agent.”

“I wouldn't know what to look for, though. I don't know the first thing about Old Bulikov rules.”

“And I cannot go with you. It would be rather difficult to explain away my absence here and my presence there. Even though I would much rather be doing
that
than
this
.”

“You'd rather be digging around in the affairs of a madwoman than work here with your daughter?”

Sigrud grumbles to himself. “When you say it like that, I do not sound very reasonable at all.” He sighs. “I wish I did not have to do this. I was never a good controller, never a good case officer. I was always the man down in the muck, not the one waiting at home. That was Shara's game.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I am saying that you are an operative in need of a case officer,” says Sigrud. “You are all alone up here, and maybe this work is so sensitive that Shara could not bring anyone on board….But, you suffer for the lack of one. And I do not exactly see anyone else around who could do the job.”

“You don't work for Saypur anymore, you know.”

“If what you say is right, then everything happening in Voortyashtan is under threat. Including the harbor, the one thing currently sustaining my whole country's economy. Frankly, I wish Shara had brought me on sooner—but she likely did not know what you would find here.”

“So what now?”

He looks at the clock. “So now, I suggest you get comfortable. And put the liquor down.”

“Why?”

“Because you are going to have to memorize a lot of tradecraft before morning, if you want to do this right.”

“So it was
not
Choudhry's body they found, ma'am?” asks Nadar the next morning as they walk through the fortress.

“No, it wasn't,” says Mulaghesh. “I don't know whose body it was, but it wasn't hers.” She wipes a bead of sweat from her brow and tries not to shiver. She hiked up here rather than be chauffeured, and now her perspiration grows frigid in the cold air of the fortress, like she's being wrapped in bedsheets pulled from an icy lake.

“Fucking shtanis,” says Nadar, shaking her head.

“Shtanis?”

“They're mocking us, ma'am. They
must
be. A Saypuri corpse, butchered and put on display just beyond where they blew up the mines? They're showing us how close they can get to us, General. I've increased patrols, but as yet we've spotted nothing. They're talented in moving unseen in this terrain.” Nadar shakes out her keys and begins opening the door to Choudhry's rooms.

“Have you…considered any alternatives?” asks Mulaghesh, uncertain how to phrase this.

“Alternatives, ma'am?”

“Yes. I had been considering that it was Sumitra Choudhry herself who was involved in the murders, Captain,” says Mulaghesh.

“Choudhry?” says Nadar, startled. “Why, General?”

“These murders…They're like some kind of old Divine ritual.” The door swings open. Both of them stare in at the graffiti-covered room. “And everything here suggests Choudhry was neck-deep in the Divine. To her misfortune.”

Mulaghesh walks into the room, watching Nadar over her shoulder. She can't tell Nadar everything, but she needs someone in command here to start thinking in the right direction. If she can get Biswal or Nadar to consider it, then perhaps they can call in more Ministry reinforcements, who might be able to find something solid—something verifiably Divine.

But Nadar's face has gone cold and closed. “It seems unlikely that a Ministry operative could be capable of all that, ma'am.”

“You don't know Ministry operatives, Captain.”

“And, to be fair, you didn't know Choudhry, General,” says Nadar. “Whereas I did.”

“What do you mean?”

Nadar hesitates.

“Permission to speak freely, General.”

“Granted.”

“Choudhry was, like many out of Ghaladesh, a somewhat ineffectual officer.”

“Ineffectual.”

“Yes, General. Lots of titles, ma'am, lots of certifications, certainly. But no on-the-ground experience in a combat zone. Experience that we here in Voortyashtan have in excess, General.” She meets Mulaghesh's eyes very briefly before looking away. “Experience not known in Ghaladesh.”

Mulaghesh steps closer. “You wouldn't be doubting
my
combat experience, would you, Captain?” she asks sharply.

“No, ma'am.”

“Do you disagree that what we see on these walls are the markings of a madwoman?”

“No, ma'am.”

“Do you disagree that the timeline for these murders and the theft of the explosives overlaps with Choudhry's presence here, and disappearance?”

Nadar's face twitches. “No, ma'am. But—”

“But what?”

“But…I've been at Fort Thinadeshi for six years now, before the Battle of Bulikov, General. And though Bulikov alerted us to threats of the Divine, here in Voortyashtan we've only ever seen one threat. The one that's just beyond our walls.”

“You need to remain mindful of threats beyond the insurgents and the tribes, Captain,” says Mulaghesh. “Otherwise you blind yourself.”

“I have seen our soldiers killed in the wilderness, ma'am,” says Nadar softly. “I've held them in my arms as they died. I've seen the trains sent back to Ahanashtan, loaded up with coffins. I've seen these things time and time again, General. With all due respect, I personally do not believe myself to be blind at all.”

Nadar leaves Mulaghesh alone while she conducts her inspection. Mulaghesh furiously rubs her arm, so angry that it's difficult to focus.
Well, at least I know where Nadar stands. Leaving only Lalith as an option.

She shakes herself and begins to scan the walls of the room, her eyes tracing over the black scrawls and splashes of paint.

Look for things so simple,
Sigrud told her,
that they seem to have no meaning in themselves.

She asked,
What in the hells does
that
mean?

It will not be a curious picture, or a carving in the wall that seems to communicate
something,
he said.
No riddles or codes, in other words. It will be an ordinary thing that simply does not belong. A stripe of chalk or paint that looks like a painter's error. Something stuck in the walls, like a staple or a pin, or a nick in the walls like someone banged them while moving furniture. Or a slash in a carpet that looks like someone damaged it.

She looks over the images on the walls, trying not to be disturbed by them. Thousands of swords, stuck in the earth. An arrow piercing the heart of a wave. A face she now knows to be the cold, regal visage of Voortya herself gives her pause—Choudhry did an impressively good job of capturing the Divinity's likeness.

Perhaps she painted over it,
thinks Mulaghesh.
Whatever it was. Perhaps her signal's no longer here at all.

Her eye falls on the window in the far wall. It's long and thin, the barest slit of glass. Mulaghesh recognizes the intent of the design immediately, built to allow in light and air and nothing else.

Yet in the corner of the window frame, almost tucked out of view, is a tiny white dot.

She steps closer. It's a thumbtack, she sees, pushed deep into the wall.

Mulaghesh feels the window, testing the frame for any weaknesses or hollows. She finds none, but it does have a clasp that allows you to open it. With a squeak, she jimmies the window open, wincing at the blast of cold air, and feels the outside of the window.

There's something there, just barely: a piece of string, dangling down. She grabs it and begins to pull it in. It's long, nearly four feet.

Of course,
thinks Mulaghesh.
If you're paranoid about room searches, put whatever it is you want to hide outside your room….

But when she finishes pulling the string all the way in, she's disappointed: at its end is nothing but a small hook, like a clasp from a woman's necklace. Something hung here once, clearly, but it's gone now: maybe she moved it, or maybe it fell.

Tied to the string just above the hook, however, is another white thumbtack.

She remembers what Sigrud said:
Ministry officers are trained to leave behind caches. Dead drops. If they disappear or get killed, they want to tell whoever comes next what they were doing.

Mulaghesh asked,
So she wouldn't have hidden anything away in the mines or something crazy like that?

Not if she was following SOP. She will have hidden something in a place accessible to you. And she will tell you what to look for.

Mulaghesh holds the white thumbtack up to the light and begins to understand the message:
I moved it. To find it, look for this.

“So search all of Fort Thinadeshi,” says Mulaghesh. “For one white thumbtack.” She bows her head. “Fuck.”

Mulaghesh wanders the innards of Fort Thinadeshi. She can't help but fight the feeling that she's stepped back in time. The walls are bulky, thick constructions, an architectural design that was abandoned long ago, as it was forced to create alternatingly huge or tiny rooms. She's never sure what she'll find on the other side of any given door: perhaps some dusky, yawning chasm of a room, or a tiny hallway full of cramped offices, like a honeycomb carved in stone. The hallways swim with shadows, for much of Fort Thinadeshi still lacks gas or electric lighting and is forced to use candles and literal torches. All around her are thuds, slams, laughs, and shouts, echoing through the misshapen chambers riddling this vast, crumbling relic.

It's hardly any different from the ruins in the wilderness,
thinks Mulaghesh. It suddenly seems unusual that Choudhry was the only one who went mad here.

But more troubling than the atmosphere of the fortress is the amount of firearms and ammunition she sees in motion. The soldiers here are preparing for something. She doesn't want to think the word “mobilization” and all that it implies, but she can't help it.

What is Biswal planning to do in Voortyashtan?

What she hates most, perhaps, is the feeling of distance. She is not truly stationed or in command here, no, and it's true that no one bothers her or even looks twice as she wanders the winding hallways; but with every step Mulaghesh feels like a thief or a liar, sneaking through the shadows and silently watching these boys and girls, most of them hardly more than children.

I am one of you,
she wishes to say to them.
I am a soldier just as you. All that has happened to me has not made me any different from you.
But beyond a few salutes, she exchanges little with the rank and file.

Mulaghesh is roving through the medical wing when she nearly abandons her search. She can't imagine a more futile task than this, combing through this ocean of dark stone for a single white dot.

She remembers something Sigrud told her during their hours-long briefing:
Assume she knows you. Assume she believed you would know who she was and what she had been doing when you came to look for her. If she has something to hide, she would hide it in a place you know she has been.

But Mulaghesh doesn't know a damn thing about Choudhry besides what she's read. All she has are the few communications and requests she sent back to, to…

“To Ghaladesh,” thinks Mulaghesh suddenly. She stops a passing private and asks, “Soldier—what's the quickest way to your communications department?”

The comms desk has the feeling of an ill-kept library, bookshelf after bookshelf of multicolored files. Mulaghesh searches the shelves for the sign of a white thumbtack, yet finds nothing. Dispirited, she's about to ask the young private at the front desk if she perhaps saw Choudhry do something here, months and months ago, when she notices something.

She looks at the front of the desk. Right at the bottom, just above the stone floor, is a white thumbtack pressed deep into the wood.

Mulaghesh stares at the tack. Then she looks up at the young private, who's watching her anxiously.

“Can I…help you, General?” asks the private.

“Uh, maybe.” She wonders what message the tack is trying to convey. Perhaps Choudhry put it here so that Mulaghesh or whoever would stand in this very spot and speak to the soldier at the front desk. “What can you tell me about your operations here, Private?”

“Is there anything specific you'd like to know, General?”

“I…suppose I'm looking for backups or copies of all communications sent out from this station, Private. Specifically sent back to Ghaladesh.”

“Well, each communication that goes out has to be copied and placed into storage, ma'am. If the communication isn't received, we have to have some record of what was sent so we can resend it.”

“How long do you keep records of the communications?”

“We keep records for up to three years, ma'am, in case of an incident,” says the private. “But only those sent or received within the year are readily available.” She nods at the bookshelves. “The rest are in deep storage.”

“Can you show me the log?”

“Certainly, ma'am. What time period would you be looking for?”

She gives her six weeks on either side of Choudhry's disappearance. This produces a considerable pile of paper, which Mulaghesh promptly sits down and starts poring through.

Two hours later Mulaghesh is still digging through the logs of communications and telegrams. They're all categorized by date, then by the last name of the officer who issued the communication. Choudhry's name is nowhere to be found except for the handful of communications she sent requesting files, which Mulaghesh has already scanned for code, to no avail.