City of Blades (31 page)

Captain Nadar opens her mouth, furious. Before she can speak, Biswal leaps in. “That's enough, Captain. I will stop you there before you say something insubordinate. You are dismissed.”

Nadar looks back and forth between the two of them before giving a ferocious salute, turning on her heel, and marching back to the fortress.

Biswal nods to Pandey and says, “You too, Sergeant Major.”

“Yes, sir.” Pandey salutes and sprints through the trees after Nadar.

Biswal looks at Mulaghesh with the air of a man who has heard his quota of bullshit for today and is all too unwilling to hear any more. “You, Turyin, are riling up the natives. I wouldn't mind so much if I didn't have to live with them.”

“Your captain might be an excellent officer, Biswal, but she's still biased and single-minded. How long has she been rattling her saber in your ear, begging you to go after the shtanis?”

“She's not the only one,” says Biswal. “It's the opinion of many of my advisers that we cannot be diplomatic with the insurgents.”

Mulaghesh nods at the scarred stone behind them. “But you can't look at that and tell me that isn't the product of something Divine.”

A pause.

“You think…You think this all has something to do with the Divine?” Biswal looks at her side-eyed, as if waiting for the punchline. “That the Divine is still possible here, in Voortya's backyard, the
one
Divinity we're
sure
is dead?”

Mulaghesh can't tell him the truth, she knows that. But if she can get him to request backup from the Ministry, there's a chance she could get more resources behind her investigation. “I think someone
thinks
they're doing something Divine. Ritually mutilated corpses, with thinadeskite sitting next to them—and now we find a tunnel to the thinadeskite mines, in the shadow of that bizarre totem there. Whoever made this tunnel, I think, did
not
want the mines to collapse. They had free access to the thinadeskite—for unknown purposes, sure, but there's plenty of unknowns when it comes to the Divine. Maybe this stuff was considered miraculous to them once. And even though now we know it's no longer miraculous—you've tested it, after all—maybe they're just choosing to act like it is, going through the motions. But I can't get your captain to consider anything besides the insurgents.”

Biswal sighs deeply. He shuts his eyes, and she sees there's something starved to his face now, as if all his worries have scored away layers of his flesh. Then he squats and sits on the ground, groaning as his lower vertebrae rebel. “Come on. Let's take a seat.”

“Um. Okay.” Mulaghesh sits beside him.

He reaches into his pocket and takes out a flask. “I think I might have actually funded some piracy, buying this,” he says. “Rice wine.”

“What brand?”

“Cloud Story.”

Mulaghesh whistles. “Shit. I only ever drank that twice, and both times it was my birthday.”

“Who gave it to you?”

“Same person each time. Me.”

He hands her the flask. The rice wine is like milky gold, and it makes her head thrum pleasantly. “Better than I remember.”

“It's your palate. You're too used to the shit food and shit drink we get up here. It could be boat fuel and it'd still taste like a prized vintage.” He sighs again and looks at her. “Nadar is not alone in mistrusting the shtanis. Other officers have lost friends and comrades here. We're in a war, Turyin. Maybe the first of many, as the Continent grows stronger. Ghaladesh might not want to admit it. The prime minister might not want to admit it. But the shtanis are fine with doing so. And someone in command must have the courage to admit it as well.”

“What do you mean?”

“We've seen some movements from the insurgents. Watching us, trying to find weaknesses. They keep withdrawing whenever we respond.” He sighs. “But you don't think that this”—he nods to the tunnel—“and the murders have anything to do with the insurgents?”

“Maybe not nothing. But not as much as Nadar wishes.”

“I must be insane. But I'm willing to let you keep following this lead, wherever it goes. You've found out a lot of things no one else has, Turyin. I just hope you don't find something that brings ruin down on our heads.”

“Me, too.”

Biswal looks down at the bottle of wine. “I wonder who they'll replace me with. When I catch my own bullet here.”

“If you keep getting melancholy, Lalith, I'll have to take that bottle away.”

“I'm not joking, Turyin. They boxed up my predecessor quick as a flash and replaced him—him and a dozen other officers here. It's like the world just forgot them.” His eyes have a curious light to them, one Mulaghesh has only seen once here, when Biswal danced around the topic of the Summer of Black Rivers. “The least they can do is remember us. Remember those who took on the sins of our nation to keep it safe. Not all of us get a Battle of Bulikov, Turyin—a battle our people acknowledge and glorify. We're not all so lucky as you. The rest of us are like the cartridge of a bullet, cast away once used. And we are asked to silently bear that burden. Which we, as patriots, do gladly.” Then he stands, turns, and walks back to the fortress.

What is a blade but a conduit of death?

What is a life but a conduit of death?

—EXCERPT FROM “OF THE GREAT MOTHER VOORTYA ATOP THE TEETH OF THE WORLD,” CA. 556

M
ulaghesh burns with anxiety as she walks back into SDC, but no one looks twice at her while she walks through the halls and up the stairs to her room. She opens the door and begins fumbling with her pockets, reaching for the letter, when she spots the washroom door inching open over her shoulder.

She's not sure how she moves so fast, but suddenly her carousel is in her hand, pointed at the washroom door. Sigrud slowly sticks his head out of the bathroom and cocks an eyebrow at the pistol. “You seem…nervous. Was it a success?”

“That depends on your idea of success,” says Mulaghesh, sighing with relief. “Fuck, Sigrud. I almost shot you! Why don't you knock or, I don't know, start the evening
outside
of my room.”

“Because then my daughter will force me into some other duty: shaking hands, listening to workers.”

“I thought you wanted to get closer to her.”

“I do. She brings me to the people I need to see, then dumps me there, walks away as they begin talking. It is…impolite. But enough of that. You found something of Choudhry's?”

“A message. In code.” She slides the paper out of her pocket. Sigrud walks forward—she notes that he seems to move silently, even though he's nearly twice her size—takes it, and moves to the desk in the corner.

“I have laid out the materials we will need,” he says, sitting. “Lots of paper. Lots of pen and ink.”

“Nice to see you've set up shop. Shara gave me a codex of all the various encryption metho—”

“That will not be necessary.” Sigrud sits, pulls out a pen, and unfolds Choudhry's message. “They made me memorize so many codes in my day….This I could do in my sleep. And that is a complaint, not a boast.”

He looks over the codes, then begins making small marks on the paper with a pencil, underlining a stray H or I or 3 or an M. He moves with a quiet, thoughtless grace, as if proofreading a letter.

“That's not the only thing I found up there.” She groans as she takes off her coat, her back popping and crackling unpleasantly. “Whoever it is we're hunting drilled a damned hole right down to the thinadeskite mines.”

Sigrud's brow wrinkles ever so slightly as he mutters numbers to himself. “Mm? What?”

“Someone made a second mine entrance, basically. A little one. Looks like the kind of thing people would carve to escape a prison camp. Biswal and Nadar are convinced the Voortyashtani insurgents used it to bomb the mines, but…”

“But you are still convinced it was a Divinity, or something Divine.”

“Yeah. There's an ulterior use for thinadeskite besides conducting electricity, or you can have the head off my fucking shoulders.”

He purses his lips, continues writing. “Anything on Choudhry? Besides this?”

“I'm no longer so sure she was mad. Or that she's behind this, even. She worked her ass off to get this message to me, or someone from the Ministry. That'll depend on what it says, though…which, we're making progress on? Right?”

“Progress, yes. It's a code used for trade delegates in Ahanashtan. Probably the least likely code to be known here. Which is why she used it, to be sure.”

“I don't like this. I prefer my madwomen to be absolutely fucking stark mad, thank you very much. This takes thinking.”

“There is rice whisky in the washroom,” says Sigrud, “if you would like some.”

“Mm? What? You hid booze in my room?”

“I have booze hidden all over the place. Dead drop training has its uses beyond espionage.”

Mulaghesh finds the jug of whisky—cleverly squirreled away under the sink—and sits and drinks as Sigrud decrypts the message. He shakes his head sometimes, as if what he's writing confuses him, but keeps going. Then, with something like a cringe on his face, he puts his pen down.

“Finished?” says Mulaghesh.

“I…do not know.”

“How can you not know if you're finished?”

“Because I am not at all sure what I translated. Perhaps it is in code again, but…If so, it is one I do not know. Come and see.”

Mulaghesh stands and looks over his shoulder, reading:

Listen, listen, little priests

Coming now the bright white shores and all the flock there weeping

Orphans, the disused and forgotten, the chaff of many wars, like snow upon an endless plain

Listen, listen

I've spent too much time there. Put too much of myself through. My mind, my thoughts, some part of me, it's unraveling, and I can't keep the threads straight. I can feel myself losing myself and I don't know what that means

No, I do. I know what it means.

I did not kill enough. One confirmed kill, one measly little murder, not enough, not enough to go there. It only accepts the warriors, you see, those whose hands have spilled oceans of blood, lakes of blood

I am trying, I am so sorry

The ore was strange, so peculiar, so odd, and something was amiss. When I neared it, when I sat in their labs and studied it for hours, I dreamed of things, of awful moments of my own past

the pistol barrel trembling as I raised it, her face dumb with surprise, the jolt as the bolt tip pierced my body and then the crack of my weapon in my hand

So I watched the mines. I did not know why. Something was wrong and I had nothing else to watch. I watched and watched and watched.

Saw a lantern. Then gone. Then a lone figure creeping across the hills, to the trees, to the ancient place. Then gone.

gone

I found the secret entrance, the tunnel. I waited to catch them when they exited. I tried to, at least. Fought them. But they struck me, hard, in the head. Lucky hit, lucky

I almost died

I think I almost died then

did I die

how could one even tell

I could go into the tunnels now but I could find no sign of who it was or what they were doing there, so I tried the ritual, the last one that I thought might work. I had sensed it almost working before, almost almost almost, like a key in a lock, all the tumblers almost falling into place

I could sense it wanted to. I just needed to try it in the right place

The mines

I saw them there, the lost army

They're still there, across the deeps, down in the dark

with Her

someone must stop it, stop what's coming

There is a man I have learned of, an ancient man who knows the ways of this place from long ago

They say he is a man but others say he is not a man but an idea that wears the image of a man

But perhaps

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps he knows the songs of Voortya's opposite, the songs of sacrifice

He knows the rituals never written, never recorded, he knows the secret ways in and out of this world and the next world

He knows the way things were

The flow of life to death and death to life

Memory, old and withered, waiting upon the isle

I must find him

I must find him and find the ways across, so I can end them all, kill them all, stop what's coming before it starts

Remember

Remember me, remember this

Remember that I tried

Sigrud and Mulaghesh are silent while they reflect on this. The room suddenly feels quite small and dark, the fire in the fireplace a low glimmering that gives off barely any light.

“Um,” says Mulaghesh. “Okay. So. Let's try and extract whatever tangibles we can from this.”

“Good luck,” says Sigrud, standing. He walks to the fireplace and taps his pipe out onto the coals.

Mulaghesh holds up an index finger. “Okay. Um. One—it was
not
Choudhry who made the tunnel to the thinadeskite mines. Someone else made it, and Choudhry got the jump on them, but they got away. That would be how she received the head wound I've been hearing about, and it's how she got into the mines to perform the Window to the White Shores. Unfortunately, odds are that whoever made the tunnel stopped using it the second they were found out, so I don't think I can pull off another stakeout, like Choudhry did.”

“What if they left something in the mines to go back for?”

“Then it's crushed flat as a half-drekel coin under all that rock.”

“Oh. Good point.”

“Second.” Mulaghesh sticks out another finger. “It sounds like Choudhry
isn't
the person behind all this. She was hot on the heels of whoever it was, and maybe that's how she came to find out about the murders—though she doesn't mention the murders at all here.”

“If her message is true, yes. That is the case.”

“Yeah, and let's just assume it's true for now. Because it also suggests that Choudhry left Voortyashtan to go…somewhere. To see someone, some old Voortyashtani who might know rituals and rites even the locals would have never heard of—and likely ones that even Shara wouldn't know of.”

“Could it even be possible for someone to live that long?” says Sigrud. “The Blink took place almost ninety years ago.”

“Eighty-six, to be exact. The Blink and the Plague wiped out tons of people, but not all of them. Perhaps some survived, had children, passed along secrets. But she also makes him sound strange…an idea wearing the image of a man? What does
that
mean?”

They sit in silence, each hoping the other will suggest something.

“What we don't know,” says Sigrud, “we don't know.”

“True enough. Moving on. Third.” Mulaghesh sticks out her ring finger. “It sounds like Choudhry experienced the same visions I did down in the thinadeskite mines, visions of the most violent moments of her own past, only she saw it in the thinadeskite labs. She mentions shooting someone with a pistol”—she reaches across her desk and flips through Choudhry's file—“and she did receive a distinguished service award for an ‘altercation.' You know what that means.”