City of Miracles

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  The city, unsurprisingly, is in complete uproar. Flashbacks of the Battle, no doubt, thinks Ivanya as they trot through the remains of a street market, its tents and booths overturned, the cobblestones covered in smashed potatoes and shards of porcelain. The city is lit with a queer gray light as the rising walls block out all hint of the dawn. The atmosphere feels so close and thick it nearly chokes the air from her lungs. Someone has turned on a few of the streetlights, but they don’t do much to fight back the pervading darkness.

  “You and I,” says Ivanya to Shara as they help her over a curb, “are going to have a chat once we’re done here.”

  “Oh, are we,” says Shara.

  “Oh, yes,” says Ivanya, panting. “I fund all your war games for years, and you don’t even tell me what you’re up to? And now you’ve cheated death? And I’m carrying you all the way across Bulikov?”

  Shara groans, cringes, and pales a little. “I can guarantee, Ivanya…I have not cheated death.”

  “Well then, how in hells am I carrying you right now?”

  Shara swallows and takes a shallow breath. “Think of it,” she says, “like a loan I’ve had taken out against it. Which is being paid back with great interest.”

  Ivanya shakes her head. “I fucking hate this Divine nonsense.”

  “I sympathize heartily,” says Shara.

  They turn the corner. The black staircase is only a few blocks ahead. It’s enormous, jutting at least a hundred feet out from the walls.

  “We need a plan of attack,” says Malwina quietly.

  “We’ll have to think of one,” says Ivanya, “once we know what we’re attacking.”

  Shara looks up, and Ivanya does the same. The giant black cylinder is still rising above them, curling around and around at the top. It’s several times taller than the tallest skyscraper Ivanya’s ever seen, and she swears she can see wisps of cloud near the top, like it’s about to breach the bottom of the overcast skies.

  “There he is,” says Shara. She points up.

  Ivanya squints. It takes a while for her to see what she’s pointing at, but then she spots it: a dark figure quietly walking up the stairs curling around the interior of the walls, its movements slow and ceremonial, like a monarch approaching their throne. He looks like he’s nearly a quarter of a mile up by now—which means that the black figure must be very, very, very big.

  “Why doesn’t he just fly up and do it?” asks Ivanya. “I mean—he’s basically a god now, right?”

  “This is heady stuff he’s getting into,” says Malwina. “He’s got to form a connection point with the skies themselves. This is a vast, symbolic act, overlaid on the countless miracles, dead or living, that still function behind the firmaments above.”

  “If you say so,” says Ivanya. “How are you going to get up there?”

  “Using that,” says Malwina. She points to the bottom of the stairs. “The gates of Bulikov used to have towers on either side of them, before the Blink. The towers were Divinely made, so they were incredibly, incredibly tall. They had a chamber inside them that could zip you up to the top in a split second, faster than any elevator in Ghaladesh.”

  “How could that help?” asks Taty.

  “Because it’s in the past,” says Malwina, glaring at her.

  “What?” says Ivanya.

  “Malwina is the Divine spirit of the past,” says Shara. She coughs, her face twisted in pain. “She knows many things that have happened, if not all of them. And she can access the past, and utilize things there to our advantage.”

  “Which I can do now,” says Malwina.

  “So…you take your war party into the past,” says Taty, “put them in that tower, zip them up to the top, then bring everyone back to the present—hopefully on top of the stairs. Is that it?”

  “Yes,” says Malwina. She looks reluctantly impressed with Taty’s deductions. “If I’m in luck, we might actually wind up in front of him, blocking his path.” She looks toward the gates, and her eyes seem to shimmer a little, like they’re filling up with smoke. “Yes, I think so…I can see what the tower was like. It was about halfway up the walls—or at least as tall as the walls are now.”

  “That must have been some tower,” says Ivanya.

  “It was,” says Malwina. They start moving ahead again. “But the problem is that I have to get my people to the base of the stairs, where the tower existed in the past.”

  Ivanya pants as she and Taty haul Shara around an overturned sausage stand. “And what’s the problem with that?”

  They come to a wall alongside a street corner. Malwina holds up a hand, peers around the corner, and quickly draws back. “The problem is,” she whispers, “as I thought, that the base of the stairs is guarded.”

  “Guarded?” says Ivanya. “Guarded by who?”

  Malwina opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. It’s not that she can’t talk—she is talking, her lips moving, but all the sound is gone.

  Ivanya frowns. Now that she notices it, the sound seems to be gone from…everywhere. As if the whole city has gone silent.

  Ivanya turns to Shara. She tries to say, “What’s going on now?” but the words make no sound.

  Nothing makes sound. Not the wind or the screaming people or the automobiles hurtling in panic down the street.

  Nor the huge black spear that comes plunging through the stone wall behind them.

  The spear punches right through the chest of one of the older Divine children, who goes as limp as a rag doll, blood pouring from his mouth. Ivanya blinks in shock as the warmth patters her face and side. The spear passes right behind her head, so close she can see its oily, shifting surface.

  She screams. She can see Taty screaming next to her, but there’s no sound. Everyone turns and begins to run in all directions, with Malwina and her Divine children falling back down the street.

  The spear slides back through the wall. The corpse of the Divine child silently falls to the ground. Something huge and dark steps around the corner.

  It is…feminine, somewhat. Seven feet tall, black as coal, with long, distorted limbs and a totally featureless face. It carries a black spear in one hand, which drips with the blood of its victim. And as they scatter, the thing lifts its head, and appears to scream….

  There is no noise. Just a pulsing silence. Yet in that silence is a message:

 

  The next thing she knows, Ivanya’s in motion. She’s reaching over her back, pulling the scatter-gun from over her shoulder, and lifting it up. Time seems both stupendously slow—slow enough for her to think, Am I really doing this?—and stupendously fast, so fast she can’t stop herself.

  All the years spent training in the ranges come back to her in an instant. She opens fire at the creature, falling back. The shots seem to stun it and irritate it, but little else than that.

  “Shit,” she snarls, though she can’t hear the word. She can see Shara and Taty cowering just to the creature’s right, and realizes it could spear them in a second if it but wished.

  Without even comprehending what she’s doing, Ivanya runs forward, right in front of the creature, trying to draw it away from the corner and across the main road. The creature gives chase, picking its way across the streets like a stork among the reeds, its long, delicate spear slashing through the air.

  As she reloads and runs, Ivanya understands right away that she is not up to this task. Despite all her paranoia, despite all her training, all her worrying and preparations, she is still little more than a farmer with a firearm. She’s shot a few foxes and wolves in her day, but she’s never done anything like this.

  She darts among a parking lot of autos, screaming in silent terror as the creature tears through the vehicles behind her, thinking, Why did I ever come back to Bulikov? Why did I ever, ever come back to Bulikov?

  She turns right, trying to cut around the creature. Yet then the black thing lifts up an auto and
overturns it, blocking her exit and trapping her in the middle of the street.

  Ivanya whirls, raises the scatter-gun, and unloads it into the creature, but it’s clear it’s hopeless. The thing raises its spear, preparing to run Ivanya through…

  Which is when something very strange happens to the black walls at the end of the street.

  Something bursts through—an old, rattling auto, with what appears to be a shining flame atop its canopy. And below it, behind the windshield, is Sigrud’s face.

  When Sigrud’s auto finally makes it through the black walls, he’s struck by how different the city now feels: the black tower blocks out the dawn, so the light within has a queer, flimsy quality to it, like an evening storm threatening to turn into a tornado.

  Then he notices his right shoulder hurts, a strange ache just like he had in the aero-tram, when the point of the seneschal’s spear penetrated his skin.

  Then he sees why: the seneschal is in front of him, right now. And unless he’s mistaken, it looks like it’s about to spear Ivanya like a snail on a platter.

  I do not really know what’s going on, he thinks. He stomps the gas pedal and buckles his safety belt. But I hope I live to find out.

  The seneschal turns to look at him, surprised. Sigrud points the auto at its knees.

  Then the world leaps, and he’s hurtling into the steering wheel of his auto, and glass is flying around him. He catches sight of the seneschal tumbling backward, smashing into a lamppost, but he’s snapped around too fast to really see.

  Finally, things stop moving. The world seems to have reorganized itself: the auto is now lying on its passenger side, Flame is gone from his hand, and his chest aches like he took a fierce punch to the solar plexus. Sigrud blinks, coughs, unbuckles himself, and kicks the driver’s-side door open. He tumbles out to see the seneschal lying sideways in the street, slowly gathering itself.

  Ivanya sprints over to him and helps drag him away from the scene. “What in hells!” she says. “What in all the hells! Did you plan that?”

  “No,” says Sigrud. “What is happening?”

  “The end of the world,” says Ivanya. “As far as I understand i—”

  All sound fades before she can finish her sentence. Sigrud shoves her aside just as the black spear comes hurtling down, effortlessly piercing the road where she stood. The black seneschal leaps over them, pulls the spear out, and turns to face Sigrud, twirling its weapon like a baton.

  Sigrud rolls over, then stands, Flame leaping to his hand. He grins at the seneschal. “Hello again,” he says, though the words make no sound.

  The seneschal shudders in rage and slashes the spear out at him. Sigrud dodges it and flicks the sword up at the shaft, batting it away. The sword doesn’t destroy the spear, as he hoped it would, but it does seem to have an outsized impact on it, striking it with a force several times greater than he intended, almost knocking the spear from the seneschal’s grasp.

  He looks at the faint, golden blade in his hand. So it still has some bite left, he thinks.

  The seneschal looks surprised by this, but quickly recovers, whirling around and sending its spear shooting at Sigrud’s right shoulder with a strange speed, as if the point is magnetically attracted to him. Sigrud just barely dodges the attack, bats the spear aside again, and darts inward, into the seneschal’s stance, where he flicks the blade up.

  The creature tries to move back, but the blade slashes its right forearm. The silence shudders and quakes, and he knows the thing is screaming in pain. It falls back as Sigrud advances—but he sees that the thing’s arm is healing right before his eyes, the black wound fusing shut. Whatever damage Flame can do to the seneschal, it doesn’t seem to last.

  This is bad, thinks Sigrud.

  Yet the seneschal is learning, and it doesn’t want to be hit again. It assumes a defensive stance, crouched low with its spear point extended a few feet from its body, preventing Sigrud from getting close. He feints left, right, back and forth, but the seneschal isn’t buying it: it wants him to gamble and try something stupid, at which point it’ll run him through. They’re stuck in a stalemate there in the street, two combatants crouched low, shuffling back and forth.

  Ivanya runs around behind the seneschal, waving her hands to get Sigrud’s attention. She’s shouting something, though he can’t hear her. He focuses, trying to read her lips, then understands:

  Get it close to the auto.

  The seneschal takes advantage of the distraction and strikes at him again. He falls backward, barely evading its thrust, then rises and swings Flame—a miss, not even close. The seneschal leaps back and resumes a defensive stance.

  Sigrud glances at his auto, which is still lying on its side. He slowly begins to strafe around the seneschal, positioning himself so he can back it up toward the overturned vehicle.

  He takes a risk, flicks his blade at its spear. It deftly dodges the attack and nearly guts him, but he leaps out of the way and brings his sword down hard on the shaft of the spear. The seneschal roars silently in frustration and backs up. Sigrud feints forward once, then again, until the thing’s back is mere feet from the auto….

  Sigrud drops to the ground.

  The seneschal pauses, confused.

  Then Ivanya—who has been hunched down across the street with a rifling trained on the auto’s exposed petrol tank this entire time—finally pulls the trigger.

  There’s a blast of wild heat. The silent spell vanishes just as a loud whump batters Sigrud’s ears. The seneschal is blown sideways into a shop front, its writhing black form smashing through the wood and glass.

  The heat scalds Sigrud’s feet and legs, which were closest to the car. He sits up and sees his pants are on fire, and dumbly swats at them. Then someone grabs him by the underarms. He looks up to see Ivanya straining to lift him up.

  “Come on, dumbass!” she shouts. “Run!”

  He flips over and staggers to his feet. He looks over his shoulder as they run away and sees the seneschal stirring in the blown-in shop front.

  It isn’t dead, he thinks. Not by a long shot.

  Once they’re around a corner—where, he notes, the bloody body of a young boy lies with a hole through its chest—Sigrud hears the screaming. He wonders who else is under attack when he realizes it’s the entire city: the citizens of Bulikov are screaming in naked terror of what’s going on around them, and Sigrud can’t really blame them.

  Someone stands and waves a hand from a building front ahead. They sprint over to find Taty crouched in the doorway. “In here!” she whispers.

  They run inside. On the first floor, Shara, Malwina, and some young people Sigrud doesn’t recognize are all crouched below the windows, out of sight.

  Sigrud lets out a long breath. “Okay,” he says. “Thank goodness. You are all alive.”

  “All? Not all,” says Malwina grimly. “Only a fraction of us. I take it your meeting with Olvos didn’t work out?”

  “I am not quite sure,” says Sigrud. “She told me many things. But it’s…it’s true what she said, then? The children? Are they…”

  “I don’t know what she told you,” says Malwina. “But…yes. We’re all that’s left.”

  “I…I did not think she was lying,” he says, shocked. “But to hear it’s true…She would not help, and she spoke in riddles. She seemed to suggest we would still have some way to triumph, though.” He looks out the window at the walls of the black tower that surround the city. “But…I am not sure exactly what the battle is.”

  Malwina looks at Shara and sighs. “Do you want to try and explain this, or should I?”

  “Let Shara do it,” says Sigrud. “She knows how to explain things to me.”

  Shara coughs. “We have to get Malwina’s team to the gates,” she says, gesturing to the children behind her, “or where the gates used to be. That thing, the seneschal, is guarding the area. We need to penetrate the enemy’s position, eliminate it, or draw it away. Then it’s in Malwina’s hands.”

&n
bsp; “I see,” says Sigrud, nodding. “Then it is very simple.”

  “What!” says Malwina. “You didn’t say anything about Nokov killing the skies, or the tower, or the world ending, or anything else!”

  “That is because I do not give a shit about that,” says Sigrud. “And we don’t have time for it anyway. Not with that tower getting taller and taller by the second. So—what to do?”

  “Bullets didn’t seem to work on it,” says Shara. “Not from what I saw.”

  “No,” says Ivanya, “but Sigrud’s sword sure seems to make a dent in it.”

  Taty looks at him, bewildered. “Sword? What sword?”

  Sigrud sheepishly reaches into the air and produces Flame, which lights up the room with its golden luminescence.

  “How did you learn to do that?” says Taty, bug-eyed.

  “Never mind that,” says Sigrud. He looks at Malwina. “The sword isn’t as strong as it was, is it? But can it kill the seneschal?”

  Malwina grimaces. “It’d have to be a lethal blow. To the heart, to the head. Nothing else will do it. Lop off a limb and it’ll hurt it, sure, but it’ll just grow back.”

  Sigrud scratches his chin. He dearly wishes he had his pipe with him, but he seems to have lost it somewhere. “And she does not like me at all…Since I’m the one who originally killed her and everything…” He looks at Taty. “I taught you how to shoot.”

  “What?” says Taty, startled.

  “I taught you how to shoot,” he says. “And back aboard the aero-tram, you wished to fight. Now is that time. Do you think you can?”

  “Sigrud…” says Shara. “She is my daughter, after all. Are you sure that you should b—”

  “With all due respect, Shara,” says Sigrud firmly, “I did not ask you.”

  Shara blinks. Then she sits back and looks at her daughter with a slightly shocked expression, as if to say—Well. Never mind, then.

  “Can you shoot now,” Sigrud asks Taty, “as I taught you?”