Yet there’s something off about her eyes: they’re pale and queerly colorless, as if her eyes were the color of miscolored porcelain—not quite gray, not quite blue, not quite green. He feels like her eyes were created to see something…else.
“Did you say his name?” says the woman. “Did you say it out loud? What is wrong with you? Did you want to get everyone killed?”
Sigrud raises a hand like a child trying to answer a question at school. “I feel I must say here,” he says, glancing at the cattle before him, “that I do not really understand what is going on.”
“I’ll say you don’t! Did you kill the assassin? Khadse?”
“Yes?”
“Why?”
“Because he killed Shara Komayd,” says Sigrud. “And I could not abide that.”
The woman gives a long, slow sigh, as if this was the answer she expected but didn’t want to hear. “Well. Damn it.”
“Why?”
“Because that,” she says, “was the same reason I was looking for him.”
“What’s going on? Who are you? Where are we?”
“The same place. The slaughterhouse. Just in a slightly earlier time, before they added onto it, so there was daylight nearby. I can get you out of here—maybe—but w—”
“Wait a minute,” says Sigrud. “Wait. Are you saying we’re in the past?”
“Something very akin to it, yes,” says the girl. “Far enough into it so that the past’s daylight can filter through to the present. He’s most powerful where shadows are, and though this makes him strong, it has its limitations as well. Where light is, he isn’t.”
Sigrud tries to understand this. Then he pales, and asks a question he never expected to say in his life.
“Are you a Divinity?” he says quietly.
The woman laughs ruefully. “Me? No. Him, well…He’s trying his hardest. You don’t know a damn thing, do you? Don’t you know there’s a war going on? Now we have to—aagh!”
She falls to her knees, her face twisted in pain. Sigrud looks up and sees a trembling at the walls of the slaughterhouse, and then the world seems to contract inward….
Darkness floods in, until finally it’s like they’re not in a slaughterhouse, but rather inside a tiny bubble of light floating in a sea of shadow. Inside this bubble is a piece of the slaughterhouse—Sigrud is reminded of looking at something through a telescope, allowing in only a tiny circle of an image but excluding everything else.
“What’s happening?” asks Sigrud.
“I’m losing, is what’s happening,” growls the woman. “Part of us is still in the slaughterhouse, in the present, with him. He can beat on the walls of the little bubble of the past I’ve built. And he’s breaking them open.” She blows a strand of hair out of her face and sets her jaw. “Do you want to get out of here?”
“Yes.”
“Then follow me. Closely. You slip out of the bubble, you’re gone.”
“To what?”
“To him. Into the night. Outside of this bubble is the present. Which is where he is. And you don’t want to be out there with him.”
She begins to walk away, stepping through the cattle. As she does, the bubble moves with her, slipping through the darkness, as if she’s projecting it around herself. Sigrud, startled, hops to it and stays close.
“I’ve been watching Khadse for days, even weeks,” says the girl, shaking her head. “And then you come here and shoot up the place….”
“What do you know about Khadse and Shara?”
She glances at him. “Oh, like I trust you. The one bellowing his name out loud.”
“Do you mean N—”
“Don’t! Do you want to invite him in? In here, with us?”
Sigrud begins to understand. “No.”
“Good! Keep your mouth shut before you cock up anything else.”
They turn the corner and see two stairways down. One is lit with gaslight, the other is dark. “Let’s hope this one leads us out,” she mutters as they approach the lit hallway.
A man in a bloodstained apron walks up out of the lit hallway and passes them without a word. Sigrud stares at him, bewildered. He saw these doorways not more than an hour ago, and both were almost collapsing. “Are we…Are we really in the past?”
“Somewhat. Pieces of it, parts of it. They won’t see us. The past doesn’t change, it’s hard and durable. Makes it easy to move across, walking from second to second like a frog jumping across lily pads. Do you notice?”
“Notice what?”
“The bridging between the seconds?”
“No?”
“Then I’m doing a good job. Let’s just hope it holds long enough for us to get out….”
They begin down the stairs. Then the borders of the bubble tremble again, and the young woman cries out and stumbles like she’s been stabbed.
Sigrud kneels to help her up. “Again?”
“I…I can’t keep this up,” she gasps. “I thought I could, but he’s stronger than me now. I put myself at risk, saving you. He’s killed so many of us, and now he might have me….”
Sigrud doesn’t understand much of what’s going on, but he’s starting to understand the crude dream logic of what the girl is suggesting. “So…You mean to lead us down through a past version of the slaughterhouse…and then once we are outside, in the light, return us to the present?”
The girl cries out again in pain, fingers to her temples. “Yes!” she cries. “Are you slow?”
“But you won’t make it that far,” says Sigrud.
She shakes her head, tears leaking out of her eyes. “I don’t think so.”
Sigrud looks down at the radio transmitter hanging from his belt. “I had an exit strategy in place, in case the building was stormed…but it will do little good here.” He does some quick thinking.
What tools could possibly be of use against that thing? What tools do we even have?
Then he has an idea.
“Can you at least get us to the first floor?” he asks. “Maybe close to the entrance?”
“Maybe. Possibly.”
“All right. Second question…” He rummages around in his pack and pulls out the pieces of engraved tin from Khadse’s shoes. “Do you know what these are?”
Her eyes widen. “These…These are the miracles the assassin was wearing, weren’t they? They kept me from seeing him properly, from following his movements. Sunlight on Mountain Snows…”
Sigrud snaps his fingers. “That’s the name. I couldn’t remember. Here. Put these into your shoes. Fast. Hurry.”
“Bu—”
“Now.”
She sits on the steps and does so, cringing and wincing as if hearing a painful noise in her ears.
“Good,” says Sigrud. “Now. Third question. Whatever it is that, uh, you are—can you be harmed by an explosion?”
She stares at him. “What?”
“I will take that,” he says, “as a yes.”
By the time they get to the bottom of the stairs it’s become so bad the girl can barely walk. Sigrud has to nearly carry her. “This is bad,” she says, woozy. “I’m not sure if I’ll even be able to run away.”
“You’re going to have to,” says Sigrud. “Just get us close to the door. Then we light the matches, and then you let the bubble fall—put us back in the present, I mean…”
“Yes, yes! I understand that!”
“Good. Then, after that, you move.”
They limp through the lower warrens of the slaughterhouse, some kind of packing and loading area, where trucks and carts once arrived and departed. The border of the bubble quivers and rattles, as if someone on the outside is beating on it, and each time the girl moans a little more.
“Who are you?” asks Sigrud. “Are you a friend of Shara’s? Of Komayd?”
The girl is silent.
“Are you…M? From Shara’s letter?”
She laughs morosely. “Aren’t you a clever one. Listen, killer—you are a tiny fish in a
very big pond. Odds are if you survive today—which I think unlikely, frankly—then you’ll just be caught next week, or next month, or maybe tomorrow night. And when he catches you, he’ll pull out every secret you’ve got hidden away in your guts. I don’t intend for any of my own to be in there.”
“And if I do survive?”
“If you survive, and I see you again…Maybe I’ll reconsider.” She eyes him suspiciously. “Maybe.”
They’re near the entrance to the slaughterhouse now. Sigrud gently sets her down. Their little bubble of the past is shaking quite hard now, like gates splintering before a battering ram. “Hurry,” she whispers. “Please hurry…”
Sigrud reaches into his pack and pulls out a box of matches and Khadse’s coat. Thank the seas, he thinks, that I still smoke. He stuffs his arms into Khadse’s coat, which barely fits, but that’s the least of his problems. Then, moving carefully and smoothly, he lights one match. He hands it to the girl, then makes a bundle of half of the remaining matches and hands them to her as well. Then he strikes another match and picks up the other half of the remaining matches, so they’re both holding a lit match in one hand and a bundle of unlit matches in the other.
He looks the young woman over: she’s breathing hard, both in pain and in terror.
“Ready?” asks Sigrud.
“Yes,” she says.
“Then do it.”
She shuts her eyes. At the same time, they both hold their lit matches to the unlit bundles. The matches flare bright, sending shafts of light shooting into the darkness.
The bubble of past around them trembles. Shakes.
Dissolves.
Darkness comes spilling in, roaring and cheeping, the wild, strange sounds of the forest at night….
But it comes to a halt just around them, held at bay by the flickering matches in their hands. It’s so dark it’s difficult to tell that they’re still in the slaughterhouse, but Sigrud can see the dawn light filtering through the cracks in one of the bay doors in the distance.
The girl nods at Sigrud and slowly begins to move toward the door, the flame flickering in her fingers.
Then the high, cold voice whispers in his ear, quivering with rage: “Where is she? She’s here, isn’t she?”
Sigrud suppresses a smile. So the miracles in Khadse’s shoes are working, he thinks. He can’t properly see her….
“You are working with them,” says the voice. “I knew it. I knew it. Your little light won’t last long, you know. And then I’ll have you.”
“I’ll tell you everything,” says Sigrud. “Right now.”
A pause. Sigrud can see the girl has almost made it to the door.
“Tell me what?” says the voice.
“About Komayd. The ones on her list. I know where they are.”
This is, of course, fabulous bullshit. But the voice in the shadows seems to be considering it.
The voice purrs, “If you have something to say, say it.”
“I worked with Komayd,” says Sigrud. He makes sure to talk as slowly as possible. “I worked with her for a long, long time. Even if she didn’t know it, I worked for her and waited for her—right up until her death.”
A soft clinking and clanking as the girl slides the door open.
Then the voice speaks again, this time next to Sigrud’s other ear. “And?” it says, suspicious.
“And she was a careful person,” says Sigrud. He watches as the flame crawls down the matchsticks. “But even the most careful person makes mistakes. As you know.”
Sigrud watches as the girl slips away to safety. She doesn’t look back.
“Once we were in a safe house, doing an interrogation,” says Sigrud. “But it was interrupted. Our enemies stormed in, you see, and almost took us prisoner. And from then on, I insisted on taking precautions in case it happened again. She hated it. But it was a very simple system.”
Sigrud takes a breath.
He picks up the radio transmitter, holds it up, and says, “It looks like this.”
He drops the matches, pulls the coat up over his head with his left hand, and presses the button.
Then there’s a bang.
Sigrud does not really hear it. He hears maybe the first .0001 second of the bang. Because then he’s slammed to the ground so hard he briefly blacks out.
Light. Heat. Noise. And smoke.
He comes to, gasping and blinking, fire dancing all around him, and dimly realizes he’s not in any pain. The coat is still over his head, and his back and skull—which should have struck the floor at a lethal speed—have no pain at all. The coat must have stopped him from striking the floor, but, much like someone’s head snapping around in an auto accident, it didn’t slow his brain down any.
He shakes himself, dazed, and sits up. The incendiary mines have done a good bit of damage: the shadows have been rent to shreds by a thousand little flames flickering all throughout the slaughterhouse. He looks for his assailant—this Nokov—but can’t see anything.
Except…
In the far corner of the slaughterhouse bays is a form, a shadow cast on the wall, though there’s no one to cast it. The shadow looks like the person, whoever they are, is bent over, hands on their knees, as if recovering from a stunning blow. Then the shadow shifts, and turns to look at him…
He sees eyes in the shadow, cold and glimmering like distant stars.
“Look what you did!” shouts the voice, outraged and bewildered. “Look what you did!”
Sigrud stands and sprints for the doorway out, though he reels slightly like a drunk. As he runs he sees that his handiwork is not quite what it used to be: only two of the three incendiary mines he planted down here have gone off. He must have botched the third charge, which was the largest. Odds are that the receiver for the third charge was damaged in the explosion, but as he runs he covers as much of his body as he can with Khadse’s coat and clicks the transmitter over and over again, hoping it could sputter to life.
He sees the shadows roiling, swarming, swirling behind him, thousands of little pools joining together to snatch him up before he can reach the daylight outside.
Sigrud is twenty feet from the door, then ten. He can see the Luzhkov River just beyond, rippling in the sunlight.
“No!” cries the high, cold voice behind him. “No, no!”
Sigrud’s thumb makes one last frantic beat on the transmitter button: clickclickclickclickclick.
Then there’s a light on the walls, hot and orange, coming from somewhere behind him. A burst of searing heat washes over him.
The next thing he knows, Sigrud is shot through the doorway like a bullet from a gun.
Time seems to slow down. Sigrud slowly tilts ass over head over the surface of the Luzhkov, which allows him to see his handiwork: a bright ball of flame shooting out of the entrance of the slaughterhouse, licking at the waters like the tongue of a dragon.
Sigrud looks down—or, as he’s upside down, up—at the water surface hurtling at him.
This, he thinks, is not what I wanted.
He tries to pull the coat around him, but then…
Impact.
The world goes dark and all his senses are reduced to a tinny eeeeeeeeeeee in his ears. When he comes to he’s instantly aware that he’s underwater, that bubbles are streaming from his nose and mouth and, actually, there’s quite a bit of water in his throat.
Do not panic. Do not panic….
He begins thrashing, kicking, throwing himself up at the shimmering light above him, red and wicked orange. He bursts through the surface of the water, coughing and gasping, and is so relieved he nearly sinks back underneath again. He claws himself back up, his arms and legs working to tread water, and swims over to the far shore.
Finally he feels soft mud under his boots, and he hauls himself up the riverbank, gasping with exhaustion. There’s a tremendous crack behind him, and he turns just in time to see the slaughterhouse begin to collapse.
He frowns. He had intended just to make a
lot of flash and heat, not bring the whole building down. I really do need to brush up on my explosives skills.
He watches the building collapse. He wonders if that thing—Nokov—died in the fire, perhaps trapped in it. He doubts it. He saw a Divinity take a few dozen artillery shells to the face in Bulikov eighteen years ago, and it didn’t even get a nosebleed.
But was it—he?—a Divinity? He sticks his pinky in his ear, trying to free a bubble of water. And what was the woman? What exactly have I stumbled into?
He remembers what the young Continental woman said: Don’t you know there’s a war going on?
He looks down at himself. Khadse’s coat has been torn apart—not by any outside force, but apparently from Sigrud’s very large arms pinwheeling and thrashing about in a coat about five sizes too small for him. Sighing, he pulls the shreds of it off of him. He would have dearly liked to keep such a device, but he reflects that it’s probably unwise to trust a miracle, especially one you’ve never seen before.
He stands and begins to limp away. Now to find his way back to his apartment and his cache of money and papers. And then to get the ever-living hells out of Ahanashtan.
And from there, on to Ghaladesh, he thinks, to keep Tatyana out of the hands of whatever that thing was.
Though he will need a local resource. But he has an excellent one in mind. One whose home address is a matter of public record.
Let’s just hope, he thinks as he trudges over to the road, she doesn’t shoot me on sight.
Sometimes people ask me about Vo. It’s very forward of them to do so, I find, but the press gets more and more forward these days. Any more forward and they’ll tip over onto their faces—or so I hope, perhaps.
I think the same thing I’ve always thought: that the status quo is lethally reflexive.
People don’t change. Nations don’t change. They get changed. Reluctantly. And not without a fight.
—LETTER FROM FORMER PRIME MINISTER ASHARA KOMAYD TO UPPER HOUSE MINORITY LEADER TURYIN MULAGHESH, 1732
Captain First Class Kavitha Mishra walks across the empty lots, hands in the pockets of her greatcoat. The wreckage of the slaughterhouse beyond is still steaming, ribbons of vapor unfurling from its depths. The Ahanashtani police have the area cordoned off, and she notes all the officers look very serious, frowning and shaking their heads, their cheeks and noses bright red under those tall, crested helmets. A couple of them have the glitter of gold about their shoulders—lieutenants, maybe, or perhaps a captain or two. A very serious affair, indeed.
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