City of Miracles

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  Ivanya cringes. “Taty, dear…”

  “You know I can!” she says.

  “I taught you to shoot, yes,” says Sigrud. “Some. But I also taught you when to shoot. Knowing when to avoid a fight is just as important as knowing how to fight.”

  “But I can help you!” says Taty desperately. She walks close and looks up into his face. “Please. Please!”

  He looks down, impassive. “No, Taty.”

  “But it’s not fair!”

  “Not fair? Not fair that you will not be risking life and limb in this ordeal?”

  “These…These people took Mother away!” she says, furious. “I am…I am owed the chance!”

  “Owed?” Sigrud asks quietly. “You are saying it would be just to spill their blood? It would be equitable? As if being repaid a debt?”

  Taty stares about the room as she tries to find the words. “I…I…”

  “I have heard many of Shara’s words come tumbling from your lips, Tatyana Komayd,” says Sigrud. “But those are not hers. Shara Komayd would neither say nor think such a thing.”

  Taty, fuming, falls silent. Then she takes a breath, swallows, and says, “They deserve it. They do. I wish Mother had jailed them…or executed them! Imagine all the heartache she could have saved with but the deaths of a few.” She shakes her head. “Perhaps the only way to truly clean a slate,” she says furiously, “is with blood.” Then she turns and walks out the cabin door, slamming it behind her.

  Sigrud walks over to the toilet shaft, examining his pocket watch. “It’s been sixteen minutes since the last cable tower. Four more to go, thereabouts.”

  Ivanya takes a shuddering breath. “Oh my gods. Oh my gods…”

  Sigrud puts his watch away. He doesn’t wish to say so, but Taty’s words rattled him. To hear such raw fury pouring out of the girl is disturbing to him. “Let me go first. Then you get situated. You have one advantage: any explosives that come your way will be coming straight along the cable from the car behind us. Nothing from the sides. Keep the scatter-gun trained down the cable, and shoot anything you see coming. If I fall…” He grimaces, knowing this plan is far less likely to work. “If I fall, tell the crew you saw an explosion or something in the tram car behind us. They’ll stop this one and investigate—hopefully.”

  “And if I can’t convince them to stop…?”

  “Then our enemies will bomb the tram. And you and everyone else will die.”

  She pales. “Don’t fall. Yes, because I want you to be safe, but—please, don’t fall.”

  He straddles the shaft. “I will keep that in mind.” He looks at her. “Whatever happens, someone must get to the Solda Bridge. You must be there to meet Malwina. She can help you, help Taty, help everyone. But someone must be there. Understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “Good.” He drops down into the dark.

  Sigrud crouches before the open hatch. It’s hard to tell how fast the car is going: the snow erases any sense of perspective, and the cable runs by so quickly it’s like staring into the surface of a streaming river.

  He checks his pocket watch. The next tower should be coming up in a handful of minutes. He crouches in the open hatch, knees bent, arms open.

  The tram car shudders, quakes. They’re climbing up now, he can feel it.

  He wonders how long he’ll have. How quickly will the cable tower go by? Ten seconds? Less?

  He can feel the tram car ascending farther. The tower should be coming soon. Very soon, he thinks, very, very soon…

  Then he sees it. The massive frame of steel slides by underneath him, with an extremely, extremely narrow platform running around its edge.

  Sigrud hesitates. Then he jumps out.

  The second he does, he realizes he hesitated too long.

  The tower’s already gone. Slipped by far faster than he ever expected. There’s nothing but the cable below.

  He falls. Time stretches on for those five feet down to the cable, each second a millennium.

  The cable.

  His right arm flies out and loops around the cable, like he’s putting the massive metal cord in a headlock. He hits it hard and twists around awkwardly, straining his right shoulder, and he growls with pain. The cable is shaking furiously as the tram car churns away behind him, and he feels his right arm slipping, sliding out from on top of the cable, threatening to send him tumbling down. Sigrud struggles, then manages to link his left hand to his right, locking himself to the frozen cable, which vibrates and thrums wildly as the tram car departs.

  The tram car disappears into the snow behind him, its bone-shaking rattle slowly fading. His legs swing freely below, dangling above a swirling white sea of snow. There’s nothing but the wind and the ice now. He grits his teeth, holding tight, but then the cable begins to vibrate again.

  Because the next car is now coming, he thinks, and it will very gladly crush you.

  Sigrud sets his jaw, then twists around until his body’s underneath the frozen cable. Then he crunches his stomach, lifting his waist up so that he can put his legs around the cable as well, like someone sliding down a pole—only this pole is horizontal, covered in ice, and hanging several hundred feet above the snowy Tarsils. It’s also sloping down, away from the tower, which doesn’t make going up it any easier.

  He begins to inch his way back toward the tower, which now seems very far away. His gloves and clothing keep sticking to the ice, so he has to rip them away each time.

  The thrumming in the cable grows harder. Soon he can hear the tram car just beyond.

  He looks up along the cable, seeing the world upside down. The tower is just ten feet away. The next section of cabling is sloping away from it, but through the swirling snowflakes he can see faint lights climbing its thin, dark form: the lights of the Saypuri woman’s car.

  Hurry. Hurry.

  He inches up the cable. The tower’s now almost within reach. It’s much skinnier than it looked from the tram car, some kind of engineering feat he would have never imagined. No wonder it seemed to come and go in an instant.

  He climbs up to the very edge of the tower. Then he twists himself around until he’s sitting on top of the cable. He sits up, riding it like one would a horse—he wobbles a bit, which makes his heart skip a beat—and gauges how to get onto the ledge and then onto the staircase on the western side without losing his grip or getting smashed by the oncoming tram car.

  The lights are brighter now. The tram car is very close.

  Just do it.

  He falls forward. His fingers find the front rim of the ledge and his grip holds, leaving him dangling off the side of the tower. He knows he can’t go up this side of the platform, as he’d be crushed by the oncoming tram. He’ll need to inch around, to the platform on the western side of the tower. Which won’t be easy, as the tower is just as icy as the cable.

  He looks down. There are crisscrossing supports about ten feet below him, but they don’t look like anything he could stand on. He grimaces, reaches out with his left hand, and begins slowly making his way along the edge of the tower to the corner, one handspan at a time.

  He comes to the corner and grabs the corner strut. The staircase is only ten feet away now. He hauls himself up until he can lift his feet up to the side edge.

  Finally, he thinks, relieved to be able to stand on something. Especially because the tram is less than a hundred feet away by now, and approaching fast.

  He tries to push up with his legs, but finds he gravely underestimated how icy the ledge is: the soles of his boots slip and his feet go flying out from underneath him, sending him shooting back down the tower.

  He shouts and hugs to the corner strut of the tower platform as he falls. The steel edge of the strut bites into his left bicep, and his feet fruitlessly try to find purchase on the slippery metal. Once again, he’s suspended over a precipitous drop, clinging to an icy piece of metal; but this time the tram car is much, much closer.

  His eye widens as the car climbs u
p the cables toward him. He knows he won’t be able to get onto the platform in time. He’s out of the car’s way, so he won’t be crushed, but it will fly by him, leaving him alone up here on the tower, and be free to move closer to Ivanya and the other passengers.

  The tram car slows just a bit as it mounts the last few feet of cabling to the tower. The whole tower is vibrating like the string of a vasha as the giant machine draws closer. He can see its wheels churning, see exhaust pouring out of its undercarriage…

  And there, on the underside of the machine, the rungs of a metal ladder—one probably used by service crews to scale the hull.

  A huge clank as the tram car finishes mounting the tower. It’s close enough that he can see ice clinging to the metal rungs.

  This time, he thinks, do not hesitate.

  With another huge clank, the tram car shoots forward, and begins to climb down the next segment of cabling.

  Sigrud lifts himself up and shoves off the tower, hand outstretched.

  His right fingers catch the rung of the ladder, and he’s jerked forward like a fish caught on a hook.

  The next thing he knows, Sigrud is hurtling through the snow, feet swinging wildly below him. His right armpit and shoulder are bright with pain—it feels like the damn thing nearly tore his arm out of its socket. But he holds fast, clinging one-handed to the metal rung on the bottom of the tram car.

  Another tram car flies through the snow on the other set of cables, going south to Ahanashtan. He sees children staring out the glass viewing dome at the top. They spot him, this strange man dangling from the bottom of the moving car. One of the boys points, and Sigrud can see him say: Wow!

  This, he thinks, is not what I wanted.

  Growling, he fights gravity and the wind and the cold, and lifts his left hand up until he can grasp the next rung. He grabs it, his grip holds, and he hauls himself up. When he’s four rungs up he can finally use his feet—which he applies very carefully to the ladder, mindful of what just happened on the tower.

  He doesn’t slip. He takes a breath, shuts his eyes, and revels in the solid feel of the tram car, something hard and durable to hold on to.

  Alive, he thinks to himself. You’re alive.

  He scales the hull of the tram car. At the top there’s the large apparatus with the car’s upper wheel set on it, which runs along the upper cable. Below that is a glass viewing dome, which sits on the top of the car—and beside that, a very small hatch. He thinks the hatch is far enough away from the cockpit—where the assailants will likely be stationed, he imagines—that if he opens the hatch, perhaps they won’t notice the sound, or the change in pressure, or the sudden influx of cold air.

  Which he knows is a stretch. So he readies one of his pistols.

  He maneuvers himself up to the hatch, lying flat against the hull of the tram car. The glass dome is beside him, its blue glass warped with layers of ice. He can see the viewing area below. It seems empty, which comforts him. He wasn’t sure if the Saypuri woman had commandeered her own tram car or just boarded a full one, but it seems now like it was the former, which means no innocents would be caught in the crossfire: anything moving in there will be an enemy.

  He rubs snow out of his eye, blinks, and examines the lock on the hatch. It’s complicated—very complicated. If he’s lucky, he’ll be able to—

  He stops. There’s motion out of the corner of his eye.

  He looks down through the glass dome on top of the tram car.

  A young Saypuri man in a dark coat is strolling through the viewing area, smoking, a rifling in his hands.

  There’s nowhere to hide on the side of the car, so Sigrud flattens himself to the hull of the tram car and tries to crawl back down the ladder.

  It’s too late. The Saypuri guard—Ministry, certainly—sees him through the glass. The guard’s mouth drops open; his cigarette, still smoking, clings to his lip for one second, then falls. Sigrud can faintly hear the man saying, “What the fuck?”

  Then the guard raises his rifling and the glass dome explodes.

  Sigrud shuts his eye and turns his head away as the glass goes whirling around him. He feels something hot and hard strike his chest, and thinks, That’s it. I’m done for. But though there’s pain, there’s not much of it, which is curious.

  Sigrud hears shouts, gunshots, and the clanging of metal. He opens his eye just in time to see the hull right in front of his face suddenly poke outward, as if it were a sheet of rubber and someone on the other side just jabbed it with their finger.

  He sits back from the hull and looks down. The hull is riddled with such dents, and right where his chest was pressed are two of them, pointing outward: places where the bullets almost punched through the hull, but not quite. They must have jabbed his sternum, but it’s far better than being shot.

  Lucky, thinks Sigrud. Damned lucky.

  The guard is still firing, shredding the frame around the viewing dome. Sigrud raises his pistol, listening as the guard says, “Bastard! Bastard!”

  Sigrud waits. Two more shots. Three. Then a pause.

  Reloading.

  Sigrud pops up over the frame of the dome, raises his pistol, and points it at the guard kneeling in the viewing area, fumbling with his gun.

  The guard looks up.

  Sigrud fires once, a sharp pop.

  A small, neat hole appears over the guard’s left eye, and he slumps over.

  Sigrud cocks his head, listening to see if there are any other opponents directly below the shattered glass dome. He hears someone shouting a question from inside the tram car—“Chandra? What’s going on?”—but it’s not close. Grunting, he lifts himself up and slips through the broken dome, landing quietly on the seat of a leather chair.

  He looks around. The viewing area is on the upper level of the tram car, a small rest area with chairs and tables and a tiny bar. There are two short stairways to his immediate left and right that lead down to the next level.

  He hears footsteps sprinting down the level below. Two sets, one on either side of the car. Then they stop—taking up defensive positions, surely. If he were to so much as stick his head around the corner at the bottom of either set of stairs, they’d shred him.

  He’s lost the element of surprise—which is bad. He looks around himself, wondering what to do. His eye falls on the dead young man at his feet.

  Sigrud pulls off his gloves, as it’s much easier to work firearms with bare hands. He crouches, tugs the man’s coat off, then takes off his own knit cap and pulls it down over the dead man’s face.

  He frowns at his work. Just different enough to be alarming. I hope.

  He lifts the corpse over his shoulder, then pauses, listening—no movement, not yet, unless they’ve moving very carefully.

  He turns, shifts the corpse in his grasp, and hurls the dead young man down the stairs on his right. It lands on the floor with a loud thump.

  The instant the body crosses the threshold at the bottom of the stairs, someone down the aisle from it opens fire. The corpse’s chest bursts open, then its arms and legs.

  Sigrud doesn’t stay to watch further: he stalks down the stairs on his left and ducks his head around the corner.

  Compartments and berths line the left wall of the tram car. The doors are open. Crouched in one door, just ten feet down the aisle, is a Saypuri man in black clothing, pistol in his hand, brow furrowed as he peeks across the middle aisle to try to see what his comrade on the right side of the car is firing at. He’s not, however, looking down the aisle at the left-hand stairway.

  Sigrud pulls out his knife. I do hope, he thinks, that the tram doesn’t sway….

  He pivots out around the corner and, in one smooth motion, flicks the knife forward. He’s in luck: the blade hurtles toward the Saypuri man and finds a home on the right side of his neck, just below his jaw. The man chokes and tumbles backward, firing one wild shot into the ceiling as he falls.

  A voice from the right side of the car, a man’s: “Azad?”

/>   Sigrud crouches low and creeps into the aisle. There are leather chairs in rows in the center of the tram car, and through them he can see a form huddled in the door of the middle compartment. He could get a better angle if he went farther down the aisle, but it’d draw attention.

  He looks at the leather chairs separating them. Built for comfort, he thinks. But not for combat.

  He points the pistol through the leather chairs and opens fire, five quick shots. The bullets punch through the leather and thin wood easily, raining on the doorway of the compartment. The huddled form collapses, but Sigrud doesn’t pause to look: he dashes forward, still staying low, and takes cover in the first compartment.

  There’s no movement, no sound. He creeps out and across the tram car to the body lying in the doorway. Another young Saypuri man, gunshot wounds in his face and belly.

  Sigrud reloads, glancing around for any sign of movement. Then he stalks back across the aisle to the compartment with the other dead Saypuri man, the one with Sigrud’s knife still lodged in his throat. The carpet is soaked in blood. It squishes wetly under the soles of his boots.

  He kneels, pulls the knife out. A weak burst of blood flows forth from the wound. Not the way a living person bleeds, he knows.

  As he wipes off the knife, the tram car jerks underneath him. He blinks as he regains his balance. Then he realizes what’s going on.

  They’re speeding up, he thinks. They’re going to try and bomb the car.

  He leaps out of the berth and runs down the aisle to the crew quarters. The door is closed. He peers through the glass window in the door. It’s dark inside but he can see the faint outline of the cockpit door on the other side of the quarters. He’s got to get to the cockpit, got to stop them from mining the aero car ahead, got to at least slow them down or—

  There’s movement in the window. Someone shifting, rising up from a crouch. Sigrud sees the gleam of a gun in their hands.

  He throws himself to the floor among the seats. Then the world fills up with gunfire.

  Bullets chew through the doorway like it’s made of straw. The wood is shredded, pulped, pulverized into toothpicks. As he covers his head he identifies the sound as a high-caliber, fully automatic weapon, which means it’s very rare, very expensive, and very, very dangerous.