City of Miracles

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  He glances back at the page and reads one line that’s been repeatedly underlined: There was one Divine offspring, however, whose domain is unclear, and was particularly dreaded and feared in the Continental texts….

  He remembers the scraping and shifting sounds in the shadows, the cold voice whispering in his ear: What I can do will make murder feel like a wondrous blessing….

  He shudders. I must find Tatyana, he thinks.

  Though now he worries about her too. If some of these children were just pretending to be normal, then…

  No, he thinks. It could not be. I saw her as a child, as a little girl. She was hardly more than a toddler. Surely she has aged and grown like any other mortal?

  He walks down to Tatyana’s end of the quarters. He expected something strange, something curious, but he finds it is…very average. A bed. Some books, all more or less intended for children or young people. Lots of books and papers about economics, which is a little odd—but not that odd, he supposes. It does not look like the bedroom of a child of the Divinities, in other words.

  He shakes his head. You’re going mad with paranoia. Focus on finding her before worrying about such foolishness.

  He walks farther down the hallway and comes to the kitchen. It has a gas oven—a rare luxury—and a small, modest table. A drying rack, still full of dishes. Bottles of plum and very potent apple liquor. He peers into the trash can by the far wall. Not much inside: a few napkins, a cracked jar.

  Sitting on the counter above the trash can is a folded-up newspaper. He glances at it, and sees it’s old—very old, nearly two years.

  Which means Shara kept it…but why?

  He picks it up. The paper’s folded back so that whoever was holding it was reading one page, the financial section, and it looks as if they were paying attention to one article in particular. He reads it carefully, wondering if it could have mattered to Shara.

  Then his eye falls across one name that sounds familiar, something about land purchases outside the walls of Bulikov:

  …however, the deal has been consistently blocked by Ivanya Restroyka, the largest shareholder of the trust company, who refuses to break up any of the parcels for sale, though she has refused to comment on exactly why. Despite having the reputation of being a recluse, Restroyka has consistently been an active and forceful figure in Bulikovian real estate—regardless of whether that real estate lies inside or outside the city’s walls.

  Sigrud cocks his head, thinking.

  Restroyka…He knows that name. Doesn’t he? He massages his forehead as he thinks. The Ministry trained him for this, trained him to learn how to compartmentalize and then access his memories when needed….

  And then it comes to him.

  Smoke, wine, a fire. A party. Years ago, in Bulikov, before the Battle. Shara had been there, as had Mulaghesh—the first time he’d ever met her. And the man who had been throwing the party…

  “Vohannes Votrov,” Sigrud says quietly.

  Speaking the name aloud summons up his face: a handsome Continental man, with curly, brown-red hair and a closely cropped red beard. His jaw is strong, his smile bright, and his blue eyes have an equal measure of confidence and wildness to them.

  Sigrud takes a breath as the memories come flooding back to him. Votrov had been Shara’s ex-lover, a Continental construction magnate who’d died during the Battle of Bulikov. Sigrud had not been there to see him die, but Shara had, and the trauma had been terrible for her. The man had given everything for his city, for his nation, for the future he wished to build. Sigrud knows that sacrifice wore off on Shara, catalyzing her to return to Ghaladesh and try to genuinely change things.

  Which she had. Though they killed her for it. Much as the Divinities had Votrov.

  But Votrov had been engaged before the Battle, to a woman. A girl, really, barely in her twenties. A pretty young Continental thing who wore entirely too much makeup. He remembers meeting her at the party, how she laughed in delight at the sight of him, thinking him—a crude, glowering Dreyling—to be a tremendous amusement.

  “Ivanya Restroyka,” he says quietly.

  He keeps reading the article. To his surprise, he finds that Restroyka is now one of the richest people in the world. If she inherited all of Votrov’s money, thinks Sigrud, then she is probably the richest Continental alive by leaps and bounds.

  Why would Shara keep a two-year-old article about Restroyka?

  He remembers Shara’s message: She is with the one woman who has ever shared my love.

  The sight of Vohannes’s face swims up in his memories again.

  You were Shara’s only love, he thinks, at least as far as I know. And what other woman shared you…

  “Could Tatyana Komayd,” he says aloud, “be hiding with your ex-fiancée?”

  Sigrud paces back down the hallway, checking each room. He finds nothing more, no sign of a struggle or hidden secrets. Just two women living their lives, hidden from society.

  He thinks about Restroyka as he paces from room to room. She’s surely not a girl anymore; she must be in her forties or fifties by now. The more he considers it, the more he’s sure he’s right: if Shara was so intent on building up the Continent’s economy during her time in office, who else would she speak to but the Continent’s foremost millionaire? One with whom she had a personal connection, to boot? And perhaps they became allies, thinks Sigrud, walking toward the stairs. Allies close enough that, if Shara needed to hide her daughter, she felt she could reach out, and ask…

  It’s all still theoretical. But it’s also all he has.

  “Time to get the hells out of here,” he says, starting up the stairs and switching off his torch.

  He comes to the dining area, trots down the hall, and heads toward the glass doors leading to the back patio, and the stream beyond.

  He places a hand on the doorknob. Then he hears a voice behind him: “You’re not leaving so soon, are you?”

  He leaps to the side, whirls, and pulls out his knife, readying himself for an attack…though now that he looks, there’s no one in the entry hall with him.

  A burst of laughter. A voice says: “My, my, you’re quite high-strung, aren’t you? You know what you need? A vacation.”

  Sigrud cocks his head. Then he stands and stalks over to the mirror hanging on the wall.

  As he approaches, a face comes into view: a middle-aged Saypuri woman with curiously amber eyes. She smiles at him, an expression that’s a mixture of pity and mockery.

  He looks at the mirror. The Frost of Bolshoni, he thinks. The very miracle Shara and Vinya used so often…

  “You know what this is, don’t you?” says the woman. Her Saypuri accent is guttural, unrefined, from some rural area like Tohmay. She wears a thick coat and scarf. “You’ve seen this before.”

  He steps forward, putting his face right up to the mirror, peering in at her room.

  “Are you so taken with me?” she says, smirking. “If so, you’re terribly forward, sir.”

  He ignores her, craning his head up and looking inside the reflection, taking in the desk beneath the mirror…and the walls on either side, which are also covered in mirrors. His eye widens: the mirrors are all depicting things happening throughout Saypur and the Continent, places like the prime minister’s mansion and the Bulikovian Chamber for the City Fathers.

  They’ve been performing the Frost on a level I’ve never seen before, he thinks. A window in every important room in Saypur, or the Continent…

  The woman is startled by this—she obviously didn’t expect him to take advantage of the two-way connection—and pulls the mirror off the wall. “Now, now,” she says. “Let’s not get nosy.” He watches, feeling slightly nauseous, as the view pivots wildly. She walks with the mirror to a darkened room.

  He can glimpse the ceiling as she does so—he notes the oak, the limestone, the blooming patches of mold.

  “I know you, don’t I?” says the woman. “Yes…I saw you in Voortyashtan, ages ago. You’re the
dauvkind, aren’t you? You’re the gutless Dreyling son of a bitch who killed those soldiers.” She laughs again, but there’s a touch of anger to it. “I usually enjoy my work, but I’ll enjoy seeing you dead a little more than usua—”

  “Ahanashtan,” he says.

  “Mm? What’s that?”

  “You’re in Ahanashtan,” he says.

  “Oh? And what makes you so sure?”

  “The limestone,” says Sigrud. “And the red oak. Both common there. And your scarf. Still quite warm in Saypur. And you’re not Ministry, are you.”

  She smirks. “What makes you say that?”

  “Because if you were,” says Sigrud, “you’d have signaled to your operators working outside, and I would be dead.”

  “Oh, that’s a good point. But you’re still dead.”

  Sigrud looks at the windows. No movement. He gives the woman a cocked eyebrow.

  “You can’t run from him,” she says. “He’s everywhere. He’s in everything. Wherever there’s darkness, wherever light doesn’t reach…That’s where he is.”

  “Then why isn’t he here?” asks Sigrud. “The shadows are thick. Where is your master’s whisper?”

  Then he hears it: the distant, throaty boom of what he’s sure is a scatter-gun.

  Sigrud looks toward the front door, concerned.

  The woman laughs. “There,” she says. “That’s where it is!”

  Sigrud thinks rapidly. Ministry operators don’t use scatter-guns. There’s another deep boom. It’s from the north, he thinks, toward the estate gates. So whoever’s out there isn’t Ministry….So who are they shooting at?

  The woman grins at him. “See?” she says. “I told you you were dead.”

  Sigrud smashes the mirror with one fist. Then he runs back to the glass doors before the patio. He crouches, peering out, and then he hears it: the harsh pop-pop of small-arms fire, south of the estate.

  “They’re all around me, aren’t they?” he says. “She was stalling me.”

  He rubs his chin, wondering what in the hells to do. She must have seen him enter the mansion, then alerted a team to his location. How many, he says, I don’t know…But enough to take on four or five Ministry operatives placed all around the estate walls. And all he has is a waterproof torch and a knife.

  He looks around the room, which is totally empty, trying to think of ways he could use the windows, the doors, the drapes, the lamps…

  He stares at one gold sconce. The gas lamps.

  He thinks about it. It’s an idea, certainly, but…

  Just once, he thinks, I would like to think of a solution that does not involve me nearly blowing myself up.

  He runs downstairs. Not much time now. The estate is big, so it’ll take time for his assailants to cross to the main house, but he probably has only a handful of minutes.

  He sprints down the servants’ quarters to Shara’s kitchen. He grabs the bottles of plum and apple liquor, about ten of them, and tosses them into the oven. Then he shuts the oven and turns the dial up to high. He hears the little gas jets inside flick on and hiss.

  This is a stupid idea, he thinks. But he doesn’t stop.

  He sprints through the servants’ quarters, turning all the gas lamps up as high as they go but not lighting them. Instead they just keep hissing, filling the hallway with a reeking stench, the air trembling as the fumes keep pouring in.

  They’ll have the doors watched, he thinks. And the windows. So how to get outside?

  He runs upstairs and turns on all the gas lamps in the entry hall. Then, remembering the layout of the estate—It’s got a second floor, he remembers, with wooden walls—he runs down the main hallway, finds a grand, twisting staircase up, and runs upstairs.

  He runs east, away from the servants’ quarters, sprinting past grand bedrooms and salons, all empty. He pauses at one room and creeps over to the window. He braces himself, then peeks out.

  He can see the long gravel driveway stretching north to the gates. There are figures walking down the lawn toward the house in a broad formation, sweeping the grounds.

  He narrows his eye, trying to see how they’re armed, when there’s a sudden crack! noise.

  The glass just above his head explodes. Something cracks into the wooden wall behind him. Sigrud, startled, jumps away, then covers his head as more bullets come cracking through the window, chewing up the frame and the far wall.

  Sigrud crawls toward the door, then rolls into the hallway, breathing hard. Okay, he thinks. So. They are pretty good.

  But that should draw them into the house. They’ll think he’s cornered upstairs now.

  He keeps running east down the hall, though now he makes sure to stay clear of the windows. He slaps his head, trying to remember how close the stream came to the house. When he comes to the far bedroom he drops to all fours and crawls across the floor until he’s clear of the window.

  He stands when he gets to the bedroom wall, tapping it as he walks its length, listening. There was a tree out there, he thinks. Out there somewhere close…At least, I’m pretty sure there was a tree, and the stream beside it. If he’s wrong, then this will go quite spectacularly bad.

  Finally he knocks on the wall and hears a hollow thump. He nods—sweat pours off his nose with the motion—and he pulls out his knife. Then he begins stabbing at the wood and plaster in a messy line, a drunken, perforated seam. He almost laughs with relief when he sees moonlight shining through the holes.

  A crash from downstairs. The chatter of gunfire. Clearing the room, he thinks. Just in case I was hiding behind the door.

  Once he’s stabbed a wide, messy circle in the wall, he sheathes his knife, steps back, takes a deep breath, and runs at it.

  He lowers his shoulder, pushes forward, and…

  Crunch.

  The wall falls away like a trapdoor. The next thing he knows he’s tumbling through the night air, then through leaves. Then he’s stopped sharply by a tree branch, which crashes into his left side very, very painfully. He almost cries out, but he keeps his senses. He’s dangling in the air, exposed to everyone, and he needs to get to the stream below.

  They must have heard the sound, he thinks. They had to have. Hurry. Hurry…

  Groaning with pain, Sigrud drops from branch to branch, trying to descend in a controlled plummet. His side complains each time—probably a cracked rib, but there’s no time for that. He can hear someone shouting on the west side of the grounds, and then gunfire, and something hot and angry parts the air above him…

  He hits the ground and rolls.

  Run. Run.

  He sprints for the stream and dives into it. As he dives he sees there was someone guarding it—They must have known I came from the stream, he thinks as he falls—and watches out of the side of his eye as they raise a rifling…

  He plunges deep down into the stream, trying to hug the walls. Soft pops from above. Bullets zip through the moonlit waters, leaving tiny, delicate chains of bubbles.

  Sigrud curls into a ball and tries to stuff himself up under a tree root. His side is screaming and his lungs are bursting, as he didn’t take nearly as deep a breath as he should have.

  More bullets zip through the waters, curving down in strangely graceful motions. Sigrud waits.

  Did my trap work? he thinks. Did it fizzle out or will i—

  Then the world above goes bright.

  Everything seems to shake. The tree above groans, twists, sags, and Sigrud suddenly wonders if it was wise to take shelter under the root of a tree directly beside a building he was intending to blow up.

  He shoves himself out, swimming away. The water fills with silt and soil. The explosion, impossibly, keeps going on, a never-ending roar and a bright orange light filtering through the cloudy water. The surface above sizzles as flaming detritus patters across the stream.

  I need air, he thinks, growing faint. Only I hope there is air up there for me to breathe….

  He waits. And waits. And waits.

  Fina
lly the roar seems to subside, and he swims up to the surface and hauls himself to the shore.

  The world is bright and broiling. He draws a deep, gasping breath, and his ribs painfully creak with the inhalation. His breath catches and he starts coughing, which only hurts him worse.

  He blinks and looks behind him. The house is a raging inferno. Steam is suddenly pouring off of his arms and legs as the heat boils the moisture out of his clothing.

  Sigrud glances around with watering eyes and sees a smoking human form lying about fifteen feet from the stream. He staggers over to it—it’s a woman, very dead—and pulls the rifling from her hands. He hopes it’s still in working condition.

  He looks around at the wreckage but can’t see anyone. Better to find out now, he thinks, rather than later. He confirms the rifling’s loaded, figures that the sound of the fire is loud enough to muffle any gunshot, and points the rifling at the water and pulls the trigger.

  The rifling jumps in his hands and discharges neatly and cleanly. He reloads, sinks low, and looks back down the river, toward the wall. Most of the gardens are on fire and some of the smaller trees have collapsed into the water, so he doubts if he can go out the way he came in. He hugs the estate wall and makes his way north toward the front gates, where he knows the mercenaries likely wiped out the Ministry operatives—hopefully leaving the way clear.

  Once he’s a little north of the house he stoops beside a hedge—which is flaming like a torch—and surveys his work. If it were any other structure, any other place, he’d take a professional pleasure in its utter destruction; but this was Shara’s ancestral home, the place where she raised her child.

  He watches as the western roof collapses with a crunch. “I am sorry, Shara,” he whispers.

  He approaches the gate, one half of which hangs open. He can see the Ministry auto beyond, riddled with bullet holes, three human forms slumped over in the seats. The ground around the gate is curiously dark—it’s like someone laid mulch while the mercenaries approached—but besides that he can’t see anyone.