City of Miracles

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  Remember what he took from you. Remember what you’ve lost.

  An old survival tactic, for Sigrud: to forge a compass from your sorrow, and let it lead you ahead.

  He kneels, groaning, picks up Khadse, and throws him over his shoulder. He staggers up the stairs, then winds down through the bowels of the warehouse, the air alight with the smell of coal and blood. At one point he steps through a spreading pool of blood from some corpse lying in the darkness, someone he can barely remember killing now. He makes sure to tread through a pile of coke dust to keep his footprints from being too bloody.

  He exits the warehouse and carries Khadse’s unconscious body to his stolen auto, a junky, rambling thing whose headlights keep flickering. He opens the trunk and carelessly tosses Khadse in. The man moans when he falls on the tire iron at the bottom.

  Sigrud shuts the trunk, then pauses as he climbs into the auto. He scans the wide concrete lot, listening, thinking. He’s not sure why, but he can’t help but feel someone’s just been here.

  He climbs in and starts the auto. The headlights strobe and flicker as he pulls away. He drives off in a different direction from where he came, just to be sure. As he does, the headlights slash over the reeds down by the canal.

  Sigrud stomps on the brakes. The auto screeches to a halt.

  He sits in the driver’s seat, squinting through the windshield, before slowly climbing back out. He leaves the auto running, the flickering headlights shooting over his shoulder. He walks toward the canal. The concrete crumbles to an end, replaced by muddy grass that slopes down to the thick reeds by the water. Sigrud cocks his head, examining them.

  A large patch of the reeds are bent. He looks down and sees footprints in the muddy grass. Recent ones, and quite small—though not small enough to be a child’s. Perhaps an adolescent’s.

  Someone was watching me, he thinks.

  He looks out at the canal. He suspects they’re still there, crouched in the reeds. If they wanted to attack, now would be the time—he’s winded and Khadse’s out cold. It’d be easy to take a shot from the dark. But whoever they are, they don’t make a move.

  Sigrud grunts. When he walks back to his auto, he decides to stick with his original plan—getting Khadse to his safe house—only he’ll make a few alterations to the site, just in case there are any surprises.

  A very good thing, he thinks as he opens the door to the auto, that I brought more explosives.

  Change is a slow flower to bloom. Most of us will not see its full radiance. We plant it not for ourselves, but for future generations.

  But it is worth tending to. Oh, it is so terribly worth tending to.

  —LETTER FROM FORMER PRIME MINISTER ASHARA KOMAYD TO UPPER HOUSE MINORITY LEADER TURYIN MULAGHESH, 1732

  Sigrud can tell when Khadse awakes. The man’s breathing fluctuates, very slightly. A minute later he swallows, snorts.

  Sigrud, sitting on the filthy floor, finishes stitching up the tremendous slash Khadse put in his arm. He sets the needle and thread back on the rickety wooden table, then grins at Khadse. “Good morning,” he says.

  Khadse moans. Sigrud can’t blame him. He has the man stripped to the waist and hanging from a meat hook in the ceiling, and he beat Khadse so thoroughly that the man’s face swelled up grotesquely, his cheeks and brow bulging, his lip split open, and his chin dark with blood.

  Khadse snuffles for a bit. Then he does what Sigrud expected: he starts screaming. Loud. He howls and howls, screaming for help, screaming for someone to come and save him, that he’s been locked up in here by a madman, and so on, and so on….Sigrud grimaces at the sound, wincing as Khadse sucks in breath to scream louder, until the screams finally subside.

  Silence. Nothing.

  Khadse glares at him, breathing hard. “It was worth a shot.”

  “I suppose,” says Sigrud. “You knew I would put you somewhere far from prying eyes. And ears.”

  “It was still worth a shot.”

  “If you say so.”

  Khadse glances around. They’re in a long, thin room, almost as dark and decrepit as the coal warehouse. A track of hooks hangs from the ceiling, and the concrete walls and floor bear dark stains of old blood. Sigrud’s hung oil lamps from a few of the hooks in the room, casting a dull orange light over everything.

  “Slaughterhouse, eh?” Khadse snorts, coughs, and spits out a mouthful of blood. “Cute. So I’m still on the waterfront. Probably in the same neighborhood as the warehouse….Maybe someone could come calling.”

  “Maybe,” says Sigrud. Though he’s already prepared the site against any intruders. He holds up Khadse’s coat. “What is this?”

  “A coat,” says Khadse.

  Sigrud gives him a flat stare.

  “How the hells should I know?” says Khadse. “I didn’t know it could stop bullets. If I had known that, I would’ve had a lot more fun.”

  Sigrud rips the lining out of Khadse’s coat. Inside is something remarkable. It looks like bands of black sewn into the fabric, and though the human mind and eyes insist this is impossible, they’re different shades of black. Sigrud looks at it closely, and the longer he looks at it the more he believes that the bands of black are writing, tiny snarls of intricate designs.

  “Huh,” says Khadse. “I didn’t know that was in there.”

  “This is a miracle, Khadse,” says Sigrud. “You have been wearing a miraculous item. Do you know how rare that is? There are almost none of these anymore, beyond Olvos’s. Or there should be none anymore.”

  Khadse doesn’t react.

  “But you knew that, didn’t you,” says Sigrud. “You knew it was miraculous.”

  Nothing.

  “You knew something. Where did you get this?”

  Khadse’s face goes strangely closed. Sigrud can tell he’s trying to think of a way to bargain for his life. “I’ll tell you that,” says Khadse slowly. “And then some. I have information you will find valuable.”

  “I know. I found this on your person.” Sigrud holds up the black envelope. “A list, it seems, on very curious paper. In code. Probably what this whole evening was about—yes?”

  Khadse narrows his eyes. “You have the message, maybe, sure. But I have the code.”

  “Your life for the code?”

  He nods.

  “Not a bad trade. But you were out a very long time, Khadse, and I had time enough to work at it. I guessed it was the same code as you used in your telegrams—the Bulikovian partisan code—and found I was right.”

  Khadse’s jaw flexes, but he says nothing.

  Sigrud opens the letter, and says aloud: “Bodwina Vost, Andel Dusan, Georg Bedrich, Malwina Gogacz, Leos Rehor, and”—Sigrud glances at Khadse—“Tatyana Komayd. Shara’s daughter.”

  Khadse’s growing pale now. His brow is wet with sweat as he tries to think.

  “Names. What is this, Khadse? Who are these people?”

  “How should I know?” said Khadse. “I only heard them just now. That’s how information exchanges work—one usually hands off information the other guy doesn’t know.”

  “All Continental names. Are these your next targets? Are these the next people you were to hunt down?”

  “I’ll tell you everything,” says Khadse. “If you let me go.”

  Sigrud lets the silence linger on for a long while.

  “Why did you kill Shara?” he asks softly.

  “You’re not going to like the answer.”

  A deadly stillness falls over Sigrud. “Tell me. Now.”

  Khadse snorts. “Same damned reason most people do things. Because I got paid to. Paid a lot. More than I’d ever been paid in the whole of my life.”

  “By who?”

  Khadse is silent.

  “I do not want to torture you, Khadse,” says Sigrud. “Well. That is not quite true. I do. But I don’t have time for such games. Yet I will make time if I must.”

  “We were both trained to withstand torture,” growls Khadse.

  “Tha
t’s true. But I spent seven years in Slondheim. And there they taught me many things about pain, things the hoods in the Ministry could never dream of. If you will not tell me, why…I could teach you what I have learned.”

  Khadse shudders. “I always hated you,” he says. “You and Komayd, dallying about on the Continent as if it were a fucking university trip. You never really served Saypur, never really valued honor, the job. You just did what you liked and played at being historians.”

  “The name,” Sigrud says, standing. “Now, Khadse.”

  “I can’t give what I don’t have!” he snarls. “The lunatic bastard went to extreme lengths not to meet me, and I him!”

  “Lunatic?” asks Sigrud. “A lunatic gave you a miraculous coat?”

  “He’s got to be,” says Khadse. “He thinks the walls have eyes, thinks the world’s out to get him, and he’s willing to pay a damned fortune for my services! More than the Ministry ever thought them worth, anyways.”

  “What were your services, Khadse, besides Shara?”

  “The…The first time he hired me to find a boy. A Continental boy, living in the city. That’s all. No murder, no tradecraft, no nothing. Just wanted me to hunt the little bastard down. Though it wasn’t easy. All he gave me was a name. But old Khadse got the job done. I found him, and that was that. He must have liked how I worked, because he kept coming back to me.”

  “Who was this boy?”

  “Some damned Continental name or another. Gregorov, I think. Sulky teenager. Adopted, apparently. Nothing special about him, I thought.”

  “What happened to him after you located him?”

  “Oh, that….Well, that’s trickier. I don’t quite know. The boy vanished, apparently. But I know little Gregorov’s parents met an untimely end. Just before his disappearance. Auto accident, it seems. Plowed them over in the street. And then suddenly no one knew where little Gregorov had gotten to. It was about then, Harkvaldsson, that I decided that this new employer of mine was not one to fuck about with.”

  “What then? What did he have you do next?”

  “Many, many nasty things,” says Khadse. “Which all came to an end when Komayd moved into the Golden. That put a scare in him. Or he acted like it did, I don’t know.”

  “Then he sent you out against Shara,” says Sigrud quietly.

  “Yeah. Maybe he got tired of her. Or maybe he got something out of her, stole it from her operation. That list in your damn hand, perhaps.”

  Sigrud glances at the piece of black paper. He remembers the line from the message to Shara: This city has always been a trap. Now he has our lists of possible recruits. We have to act immediately.

  Khadse’s controller steals a list of possible recruits from Shara, thinks Sigrud, then tells Khadse to target all of them…But why is Tatyana on this list?

  He thinks for a long time. “And your controller,” he says. “That is who gave you this coat.”

  “For the Komayd job, yeah. And the shoes.”

  “The shoes?” Sigrud looks down at the pile of Khadse’s clothing on the floor. He picks up one shoe, turns it over in his hands. There doesn’t seem to be anything odd about it. Then he picks up his black knife, wedges it into the sole of the shoe, and pries off the heel. Underneath, nailed into the very sole, is a thin piece of tin, and engraved in the tin is a very curious glyph of some kind, complicated and…shifting, perhaps. It’s a little hard for his eye to make sense of it.

  “Huh,” says Khadse. “I didn’t know that was there either.”

  Sigrud holds the piece of tin up to the light. “I know this….I’ve seen this before, when we were tracking black marketers outside of Jukoshtan….This is one of Olvos’s miracles. A blinding light in the snow, or something. It prevents people from following you, throws obstacles into their way, keeps them from seeing you properly.”

  “Then how did you find me?”

  “I didn’t track you. I knew where you would be. You came to me. These things follow strict rules.” Sigrud thinks back, remembering the miracles at the doors of the Golden, on the streets outside….He knows from their fight tonight that Khadse’s coat acts as protection. But what if Khadse’s coat could protect against more than knives and bullets? What if Khadse’s employer had given him the coat so that he could slip past all of Shara’s wards and defenses and place a bomb as close to her as possible?

  But that’s the least of his questions right now.

  “Why is Komayd’s own daughter on this list?” asks Sigrud. “Why does your employer wish you to locate Tatyana Komayd?”

  “That’s above my pay grade,” says Khadse. “Maybe you should ask Komayd’s people. She was doing the same thing.”

  “Same what?”

  “Finding children. That damn charity she had, the orphanage thing or whatever?” He cackles. “It was a load of shit. Had to be. She was finding recruits. Putting together networks. Training Continentals.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a private army. And maybe little Tatyana was going to be her colonel. Who knows?”

  “Except your employer wanted to get to these people first.”

  “Again. Above my pay grade.”

  Sigrud is silent for a long time. “Have you ever met your controller, Khadse?”

  “I told you, no.”

  “Ever talk to him, perhaps on a telephone?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you make contact?”

  “I receive telegrams indicating where contact will be made. Then I go to that location, doing exactly what the controller says, and once I’m there I…” He shuts his eyes. “I perform a ritual.”

  Khadse then describes a miracle Sigrud’s never heard of before: a hole of perfect darkness, awaiting Khadse’s blood, and something sleeping at the bottom—something that releases a letter to him.

  Sigrud looks at the letter in his hand. “This letter…was belched up from a miracle?”

  “Yes. Maybe. Whatever. You and Komayd always knew a sight more about the Divine than we ever did.”

  “And you have no idea who put this…this darkness there, or placed the letter there for you to find.”

  “No. I don’t think it works like that. I think…All the times I’ve done it, it’s like the hole connects to somewhere, someplace. Only it’s like the place is under everything, or behind everything…I don’t know how to say it. And I’m not fucking sure I want to know.”

  “How odd it is,” Sigrud says softly, “that you, a man who despises the Continent so much, are willing to use Continental tricks to kill a Saypuri.”

  Khadse shrugs. “Like I said—he pays.” He spits out a mouthful of something bloody and reeking. “Maybe my controller is a nutter, sure. Maybe he’s some Continental hood who got his hands on a bunch of relics. But that’s how it is. It’s the game we’ve played since we were young pups, Harkvaldsson. The powers that be play their war games. And we pawns and grunts, we struggle among the trenches to stay alive. If things had gone but a bit differently, it could be you chained up here, and me with the knife.”

  Sigrud considers that. He finds he agrees.

  He turns and carefully stows the list of names away in his pack. Then he pries off the other tin plate from Khadse’s shoe, takes them both and Khadse’s coat, and stows them away as well.

  “Robbing me, eh?” says Khadse. He spits again. Something tinkles to the floor, possibly a tooth. “I don’t blame you. But now we come to it, don’t we? Now you decide how to end me. How to usher old Rahul Khadse off this mortal plane. You bastard.”

  “Not yet.” Sigrud looks at him. “You know more about your controller than you’re saying, Khadse.”

  “Oh, you want to go after him?” says Khadse.

  Sigrud says nothing.

  Khadse cackles. “Oh, really. Really. Take your best shot! He’ll grind you into pieces, big man!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean he’s not the sort to be trifled with. Me, I just have a name. Along
with the rumor that whoever says this name…Well. They don’t stick around.”

  “Your employer kills them? Just for saying his name?”

  “Hells if I know. No one knows what happens to them. But they don’t come back from wherever they go.”

  Sigrud cocks an eyebrow. “What you are describing,” he says, “sounds like a story created to scare children.”

  “And I just put my bloodied hand in a hole in reality!” says Khadse, laughing. “And you just shot me and saw the bullets fall to the ground! I don’t know what to believe anymore, but I believe that it’s wise to be careful.” He grins madly. “I’ll tell you the damned name if you want, Dreyling. I’ll do it gladly. And it’ll be the end of you.”

  Sigrud shakes his head. “I have never heard of any miracle or Divine creature that could hear its own name being spoken from across the world. Nothing short of a true Divinity could do that—and unless you’re about to tell me Olvos is your controller, it means you are quite wrong.”

  “I guess you’ll find out.” Khadse’s smile fades. “And after I tell you the name,” he says, “it’s the end of old Khadse. Isn’t it.”

  “You would have done the same to me.”

  “Yes. That’s so.” He looks at Sigrud, his eyes burning. “How are you going to do it?”

  “If it were twenty years ago, I would have disemboweled you. Left you here with your intestines dangling out. It would have taken hours. For what you did to Shara.”

  “But today?”

  “Today…I am old,” says Sigrud, sighing. “I know I do not quite look it. But we are both old men, Khadse, and this is a young person’s game. I’ve no time for such things anymore.”

  “True enough.” He laughs weakly. “I thought I was going to get out. Retire. But these things don’t let you run away quite so easy, do they.”

  “No. They do not.”

  “At least it’s you. You and not one of these stupid young bastards. You didn’t just get lucky. You earned it.” Khadse stares off into space for a moment. Then he looks at Sigrud and says, “Nokov.”

  “What?”

  “His name,” says Khadse, breathing hard as if each syllable pains him, “is Nokov.”