City of Miracles

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “Hm,” says Sigrud softly.

  He tries to focus on the task at hand. But as impossible as it might be, part of him insists he glimpsed someone in the mirror for one second, someone who was not him: a Saypuri woman, with hard, dark features and amber-gold eyes.

  He walks forward and looks closely at the little mirror. All it shows is the empty entrance hall and his own scarred face. Frowning, he retreats to the dining area.

  This area is quite empty, but not totally empty: there’s a small table in this room, along with four small chairs. He can see a bit of food stuck to the side of the table, perhaps a smudge of jam. It must have been used within the past few months, possibly.

  He goes to the servants’ stairwells and creeps down.

  This portion of the house, below the mansion, is shorn of all grandiose displays of wealth and power. It’s white wood, scuffed stairs, and creaky wooden doors. He knows it’s intended to house the servants, so its spaces will be much smaller, much more cramped, and much more hidden.

  In other words, he thinks, much more to Shara’s liking.

  He comes to the bottom step and pulls out his waterproof torch. He flicks it on, keeping its light trained on the floor. He opens the door to the servants’ quarters and shines the light in.

  Inside is a long hallway, but unlike all the others, this one is not empty: it’s lined with bookshelves, tall and towering, each piled high with thick, ancient tomes. He walks down the hallway, shining his light about, and sees that each of the servants’ rooms—small, with a single door—is also filled with bookcases, not to mention countless overstuffed chairs and small side tables, each covered in old tea doilies.

  He walks over to one table and picks up the doily sitting there. It’s old, limp, stained, something that really should have been washed and changed, but the person who lived here clearly never had the time.

  He holds it to his face, and smells it. The powerful scents of tea fill his nose, sirlang and pochot and jasmine.

  Tears well up in his eyes. “Hello, Shara,” he whispers.

  Just a little under five hundred miles north, across the South Seas in the dark basement of a small but well-guarded house in Ahanashtan, Captain First Class Kavitha Mishra drums her fingers and grimaces.

  Hm, she thinks. This is bad.

  She looks at the mirrors before her. There are sixty-one in total, all of varying sizes and widths, all hanging from the moldering brick walls here in the basement. It’s quite dark in the basement, with one tiny candle burning; yet despite this lack of light, sixty of the mirrors are reflecting things that they really should not be reflecting.

  Most of the mirrors show nothing but darkness. Others show meeting rooms, doorways, hallways, bedrooms, garages, and one reflects the eye of a telescope, which appears to be pointed at an apartment balcony across a city street. The mirror sits so close to the telescope that she can look right through it and see the magnified windows beyond.

  None of this should be possible, of course. There is no conceivable, logical explanation as to why, for example, one mirror appears to be reflecting a forest lane, when there is no forest lane anywhere close to the mirror’s face. What it should be reflecting is Kavitha Mishra, sitting before a small burning candle at the desk, frowning and wondering what to do. But it doesn’t.

  She knows how these particular mirrors work. It’s a miracle, of course, one she herself has performed dozens of times.

  But she’s never had this happen before.

  Did he see me? she thinks. Did I turn it off fast enough? Does he know?

  Mishra sighs softly and sits back. It took the better part of three years for her to get the mirrors situated in the right places throughout the Continent and Saypur: by, say, placing a small, tiny mirror in the desk drawer in a meeting room in Parliament, for example, or hanging a small mirror on the trunk of a tree outside a military barracks, or slipping a narrow mirror behind a painting on the wall of a major financial trading firm. Mishra doesn’t have a lot of close allies alongside her in the Ministry, but she had enough for this. And knowing what everyone of importance is doing or thinking at any given moment can make a handful of people far more effective than an entire army.

  Though they had to be very careful with where they put the mirrors, since, after all, it’s a two-way connection: just as she can see and hear the things happening on the distant mirrors, the people on the other end could see and hear her in the basement. As such, many of the mirrors act solely as listening devices, hidden away in dark places near important action.

  She remembers what the controller said when he first tasked her with this duty: Vinya Komayd used this miracle all the time, when she was in the Ministry. They all did, they were all hypocrites, preaching fear of the Divine while also using it. But this particular one, the Frost of Bolshoni, allowed her to gain control of all of the Ministry, and much of the Saypuri government, peering out of windowpanes and mirrors far away, watching and listening…And her niece, of course, almost certainly did the same….

  The thought troubled her deeply at the time. Though she knows the controller is now far more powerful than Vinya or Shara Komayd ever were.

  Mishra waits a moment longer. Then she grimaces. No more fretting about it. I’ve got to tell him.

  She stands and walks into one of the three broom closets at the far end of the basement. Usually she or whichever other contractor is on duty will use these rooms as a fallback: if one mirror displays a lot of activity—a loud meeting, a fight, people enthusiastically making love—they’ll take the mirror off the wall and sit with it in one of the dark, soundproof closets, so the noises it’s making won’t filter through to any of the other sixty mirrors. But she won’t be using it for such, not today.

  She opens the door, steps inside. Total darkness embraces her.

  Then she takes a breath, and says one word.

  “Nokov.”

  There’s a pause, and then from somewhere in the closet there’s the sound of a soft shuffling, like something creeping through nearby weeds.

  A high, cold voice wafts through the darkness: “Mishra.”

  He chooses not to physically manifest before her. This is increasingly normal now: she senses that, as he grows in power, he also becomes more and more abstract, and harder to comprehend. But understanding it doesn’t make it any less uncanny.

  She clears her throat and tries to focus. She definitely tries to ignore the low groans coming from somewhere out in the darkness, like trees weighed down with ice. “I have a report for you, sir.”

  “Ah.” The voice is right beside her now. “Excellent. Thank you.”

  “I’ve observed an…unwelcome visitor to the Komayd household in Ghaladesh. His appearance matches the man you encountered here in Ahanashtan, at the slaughterhouse.”

  A long pause.

  “Does it.”

  “Yes. Tall. Dreyling. He appears to have infiltrated without the awareness of the Ministry officers stationed there. He was, ah, wet—which makes me think he approached through the stream running by the house.”

  A long, long silence. There is a strange, curious rumbling in the darkness, like the sound of a wild boar growling in the undergrowth.

  She shivers. Whenever she talks to him like this she can’t help but get the feeling like she’s alone in a deep, ancient forest on a moonless night….

  “What…what orders would you have, sir?” asks Mishra.

  “Do you have assets in Ghaladesh?” asks the voice, cold and fierce.

  “Yes. I can reach out to them with the Frost of Bolshoni. I’ve become somewhat adept at it.” Being as I have to do it about thirty to sixty times a day, thinks Mishra, to maintain the mirrors.

  “Can they respond quickly?”

  “Quite quickly, sir.”

  “How many? Ten? Twenty?”

  “I think I have twelve ready contacts, sir.”

  “Good. Mobilize all of them.”

  “Um. All of them?”

  “Yes. An
d do they have access to the trunk full of soil?” says the voice. “The one we sent along?”

  “Yes, sir, they do, but…Are you saying you wish to personally approach this man?”

  “Yes, if I can,” says the voice. “I have questions for him—if he survives that long. He’s in Saypur, which makes it difficult for me….Even though I have grown since my last encounter with him, I still cannot extend my influence far beyond the Continent. But he knew Komayd. And one of the others interrupted my time with him. He is valuable, I’m sure of it. We must treat him with the utmost precaution. Tell them to use the trunk to prepare all entrances and exits to the Komayd estate.”

  “Certainly, sir. Shall I keep watch on him through the mirror?”

  “Yes. And if he tries to leave, stall him if you can.”

  “Yes, sir.” As Nokov seems so interested, she opts not to tell him that she might have been seen in the mirror. We’ll just cross that bridge if we come to it. “And…for the assets and contractors you wish to mobilize…”

  “Yes?”

  “They will expect payment, sir.”

  “Oh. Right. Yes.” The voice pauses, as if he’d forgotten about this inconvenience. “How much? And to which bank accounts or locations?”

  She gives him the amounts and the accounts.

  “One moment,” says the voice.

  There’s a pause. The flicker of faint, white stars up above, pinpricks of luminescence that somehow fail to illuminate anything.

  Then the voice is back. “It is done,” he says. “As you said. I have also provided you with a sum, in case you need to deal with any…irregularities.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll proceed shortly. And, ah, one last thing?”

  “Yes?”

  “The Ministry officers there at the Komayd estate?”

  “Yes?”

  “What should we do with them?”

  “Oh.” A pause. “Well. I don’t see another option but to kill them.”

  Mishra winces. “I see. Yes, sir.”

  “I mean, do you? Do you see another option?”

  “I…No. I don’t think so, sir. Not if this man is that valuable.”

  “Yes.” A pause. “Mishra…”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Do you still believe our actions are for the good? That what we are accomplishing here is necessary?”

  From his tone, she understands he is not interrogating her: this is a genuine question, as if he’d like to hear her thoughts. “I believe I do, sir.”

  “The Divinities failed,” he says. “Now Saypur has failed. You know that. It is just a long, grand cycle of suffering. Someone must end it. I shall take up that task, if no one else will. I never thought it’d be easy. It will test me. And it will test you. Do you see?”

  “I see. I think I see, sir.”

  “Good. That is good.”

  Then silence. It’s difficult to tell, as it always is with him, when he’s really gone.

  She opens the door to leave. Light floods in. She’s alone in the tiny room. Except now there are three items on the floor at her feet, items that definitely weren’t there before.

  One item is a large burlap sack full of silver drekels—probably a thousand of them or so. The other two items are solid gold bars, about ten pounds each, at least.

  She sighs. She appreciates the payments he gives her, being as it’s a fortune every single time—she just wishes he paid her in ways that were easier to hand in at the bank.

  Sigrud is very accustomed to moving through the homes and spaces of other people. He’s operated beyond the normal boundaries of law and property for so long that the idea of ownership has faded and blurred for him. If he can grab anything, or break into anywhere, then it’s difficult for him to imagine a real reason not to do so.

  Yet he feels a powerful violation here, here in the living quarters of his friend.

  Her books, worn but cared-for. A half-finished painting she’d made of a pair of hands—Tatyana’s?—peeling an apple with a knife. Stacks of letters to friends and confidants, none in code, not that they needed it: these are all innocent inquiries and missives, letters of “how are you” and “doing fine, thanks” and “oh my goodness she’s gotten so big.”

  And then there are the pictures. Sigrud leans close to one, staring at the woman—and the child—trapped behind the glass, arms thrown about each other as they laugh, unable to bear the ridiculousness of posing for a picture….

  By the seas, he thinks, is that old woman really you, Shara?

  He stares at her lined skin, her graying hair—prematurely white, surely. The effects of office. Her eyes are still the same, though, large and dark, magnified behind her bulky spectacles. He imagines that, though he hadn’t seen her in a decade and a half, she still looked at the world the same way.

  But he looks closer at the girl next to her.

  It’s a very curious thing. Tatyana, maybe six in this photo, is obviously adopted: the pale white skin and brown hair, cut in a short, modern bob, make that very clear. Her nose is a little sharp and pointed in a way he finds strangely familiar, yet he can’t place it. But the way she stands, the dresses she wears—all of it is so much like Shara that it’s disorienting to him. It’s as if this little girl wished so much to be like her adopted mother that she took on all of her physical mannerisms.

  And the love in their eyes…That is very real. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Shara make such a face in his life.

  I should not have come here, he thinks, ashamed. This place is theirs….I should have let it sleep.

  He keeps walking, moving silently from room to room.

  A half-empty bottle of plum wine. A handful of rings soaking in a cup of cleaner. A bundle of yarn and crochet needles, unused—a hobby picked up but never pursued. Fragments of a life interrupted.

  He pauses at Shara’s room. It feels deeply dishonest to do so, but he steps inside. He looks at the books on the desk, and notes one in particular, very worn and stained: Collected Essays Upon the Divine, by Dr. Efrem Pangyui.

  Sigrud thinks, then picks up the book and holds it. Then, operating off of a hunch, he holds the book above the table, spine facing down, and lets it fall.

  The spine of the book clunks into the table, and the covers fall open. For a moment the pages hang in the air, unsure where to fall, but then they part…

  And the book falls open to a well-annotated page, one that Shara must have looked at a lot, slowly breaking the bindings. Sigrud smirks, pleased to see this trick actually work—he wasn’t at all convinced it would—and reads:

  …perhaps dozens of Divine offspring, if not hundreds, or thousands. And each offspring was naturally granted with a domain of reality that was affected by the domains of their Divine parents. For example, Lisha, the daughter of Olvos and Jukov, was a spirit of all fruiting trees, thus making her a creature of hope, like her mother—for who has more hope and anticipation than a farmer awaiting a crop?—and a creature of wildness and excess, like her father, as fruit ferments into wine.

  There was one Divine offspring, however, whose domain is unclear, and was particularly dreaded and feared in the Continental texts, so much so that the Divinities defaulted to a common tactic of theirs: they edited history and memory, preventing all mention of this offspring from persisting to this day. We do not even know the being’s name or its parentage.

  But we do know some things. One is that the offspring’s domain was apparently so vast that it somehow threatened the original six Divinities themselves. There have been numerous ideas about exactly what this offspring’s domain could have been—the sun, death, perhaps motion itself—but we have no real way of confirming this.

  Regardless, the original six Divinities, fearing disruption, took an unusual action: they mutilated the child horribly, crippling it. Exactly what they did is also unclear—vivisection and amputation are both mentioned—but as with all things Divine, one cannot be sure if this is metaphorical or literal. But this mutilation, whateve
r it was, weakened the offspring terribly, and prevented it from threatening reality ever again.

  As with many of the Divine children, we are forced to conclude that the Kaj either successfully slaughtered this being during the Continental holocaust, or perhaps the being perished during the Blink. But I note that we are forced to conclude this solely because we have not witnessed any evidence of its existence as of today. We know little about the original Divinities, but we know even less of their children, who were often too unimportant to record, except perhaps for this one child, who was too important to put to paper.

  Sigrud stands in Shara’s room, thunderstruck.

  It all begins to make a terrible sense to him.

  “Holy hells,” he whispers. He slowly sits down on the bed.

  The two beings he encountered in the slaughterhouse must not have been true Divinities, but children of Divinities. This would be why the Continental girl had such queer control over the past, and the other, the thing in the shadows, had such control over darkness: they each had their specific domains, which would naturally come with boundaries and strictures.

  But how could they have survived? He supposes that, since they are very much like a Divinity, then the only way to kill them would be with the Kaj’s black lead—the last piece of which was held by Shara. Yet what she’s done with it he has no idea.

  He scratches the stubble on his chin as he thinks. So this Divine child, this Nokov, was fighting a war. Perhaps one against Shara, or one Shara had waded into. But a war over what? And why target Continental adolescents? Why send Khadse out to track down children and teenagers?

  He slowly leans forward, elbows on his knees.

  Unless, of course—the Continental children he targeted were not really just children.

  He remembers the girl from the slaughterhouse, desperately gasping: He’s killed so many of us, and now he might have me….

  The gods are dead, thinks Sigrud. And when a ruler dies, what happens? The children fight over the kingdom, eliminating competition. It’s all so startlingly clear now. Perhaps some of these Divine children hid themselves away, pretending to be average, to be normal, to be mortal. But if you wish to rule your parents’ territory, you must be thorough. Every scrap of your family must be eradicated except for you.