City of Blades

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “But how were they still alive? How did they still exist? They were Divine, right? How could they exist without Voortya?”

  “Because Voortya had made a pact with them,” says Thinadeshi wearily. “It was an agreement: they would make themselves into weapons, be her warriors and go to war for her, and she would give them eternal life. And this contract was so binding that it had to be executed—even if Voortya wasn’t there! Her death did not, to use the terminology, render anything null and void! The dead were still supposed to get their afterlife. They were still supposed to reside with Voortya in the City of Blades. And one day, they were still supposed to return to where their swords lay in the mortal world and begin the last war, the final war that would consume all of creation. This is what was promised them, and the dead, in essence, intend to see that the bargain is fulfilled. If it was only one or two departed souls, their power might be negligible—but there are millions here with me in the City of Blades. With their strength pooled they’re able to make sure reality holds up its part of the bargain. They are insisting that they be remembered, and any Divine construction created to remember them is therefore forced to persist.” Suddenly she looks terribly, terribly weary. “But they needed Voortya herself in order for the agreement to be executed. Some part of her had to reside with them in the City of Blades. Or someone quite similar, I should say.”

  Mulaghesh slowly realizes what she means. “You?” she asks, horrified. “They wanted you to stand in for Voortya?”

  Thinadeshi smiles weakly. “They needed the Maiden of Steel, Queen of Grief, Empress of Graves, She Who Clove the Earth in Twain, Devourer of Children. Am I not all these things, to some extent? I devoted my life to the railroads, to reconstruction, so I am the Maiden of Steel. I’ve torn apart mountains to build them, so I am She Who Clove the Earth in Twain. Hundreds of laborers died fulfilling my dangerous dream, so I am the Empress of Graves. And…my own children perished in my endeavors. My family suffered unspeakably for everything I wrought. So I am also Queen of Grief, and Devourer of Children. Perhaps it was my punishment to become this thing. Perhaps I deserve this. Whatever the case, they needed someone who matched their idea of Voortya—and I came close enough to count. There was a vacuum, and I merely filled it.”

  “But why did you consent?”

  “Because when they spoke to me,” says Thinadeshi, “when they reached out to me and begged me to take up the mantle of their mother, I understood that their true hope was that I would allow them their last war. Their final great battle, the one they’d been promised for centuries. And I could not allow that. I could not allow them to make war upon my country, not after it had just been freed.

  “So I climbed down to them. And as I did, the world…changed. The skies grew dark. The stars changed—they became older, stranger. And the farther I climbed down the broken cliff to them, the more the world shifted and churned until I was walking down a white staircase, and then I was in a grand, white courtyard with many passageways and staircases up—and the voices asked me to climb up, up, and I did. I climbed and I climbed until I came to the top of the tower, and there was the great, awful red throne, and beside it…Beside it was this.”

  Thinadeshi closes her eyes once more, and concentrates. She reaches out with her right hand, appearing to sift through the empty air before her. Then her fingers clench around something, and she pulls out…

  Suddenly there is a sword in her hand, or rather a sword hilt, as the blade is but a faint flicker of golden light. Mulaghesh can’t tell exactly where it came from: it feels as if it’s always been in her hand, but Thinadeshi simply chose to make it visible now.

  The hilt and handle are strange to Mulaghesh’s eyes: at first it appears to be made of some dark, viscous black material, like volcanic glass. But then the light shifts, and the hilt isn’t dark stone, but a severed hand. Its blackened fingers clutch the bottom of the formless blade, its thumb and forefinger crooked in such a manner that Mulaghesh knows it was not made by any artist.

  The more she looks at the sword the more she perceives many things in it, even sensations: the sound of steel on steel, the sight of distant flames, the rumble of horses’ hooves. The sword flickers back and forth between being made of stone and fire and steel and lightning before, finally, becoming a human hand once more. And as she looks she knows that this is no mere sculpture: the hand is real, sacrificed by a man long ago to his Divinity, and through the sacrifice of his son she became exceedingly powerful, and this sacrifice was memorialized on stones and books and pieces of armor, the hand clutching the blade, the sacrifice paired with assault.

  “The sword of Voortya,” says Thinadeshi quietly. “It is with me always now. Just like the sentinels and their own weapons, it is a part of me. It whispers to me, telling me I am Voortya, telling me what I must do, playing with my thoughts. It is damnably hard to resist sometimes. For long stretches, I think I am Voortya, sometimes.”

  “That sounds dangerous,” says Mulaghesh.

  “You’ve no idea. I think it is not the true thing, or at least not as it was: like the City of Blades, like everything Divine, it is but a shadow of its former self. But that is still more dangerous and more powerful than any device any mortal has ever wielded. One day I will be rid of it. Perhaps soon.” Thinadeshi sits back as if the effort of producing the weapon exhausted her. “When I took up the sword of Voortya, in the eyes of the dead, it was as if I was her. And because she’d granted them power, they then bestowed it upon me. I was given limited abilities, both within this ghostly realm and beyond. And one of those powers was to enter the land of the living, and destroy. Which I did.

  “I crossed over, and I attacked the cliffs with all the power that was granted to me. I brought down the tomb, I pummeled the earth, I hacked at it again and again with the sword of Voortya. The effort exhausted me—in retrospect, it nearly killed me, for I had done something only a Divinity should be able to do—but I did it.”

  “Why?”

  “They wished to return to where their swords lay—but what if there were no swords? What could they do then? The blades act as beacons, you see, tying the land of the dead to the land of the living. By destroying them I cut the strings and set this island adrift, existing in a half-real state. I was marooned here with them, dressed up as their dead god, but at least the world was safe. At least my people were safe. At least my children could finally go on to live happy, safe lives.”

  “How have you stayed alive all this time?” asks Mulaghesh. “I don’t see any food or water around here.”

  “I’ve wondered that myself,” says Thinadeshi. “But I never get hungry here, or thirsty. My suspicion is that this place is some kind of a limbo, really. When Voortya died, it stopped being completely real…and when I destroyed the swords, and destroyed the last final link to mortal life with them, it became even less real than that. Time doesn’t work here, or if it does, it doesn’t work the way it should.”

  Thinadeshi is silent for a long, long time. She draws a rattling breath. “But then,” she croaks. “But then, but then, but then…I felt it. I felt it out there in the land of the living. Somehow we were being pulled back. Someone had found the tomb, or what was left of it. Someone had found the swords. And they began meddling i—”

  Mulaghesh sits upright, every muscle in her body clenched to the point of straining. “Son of a bitch! Son of a damned bitch!”

  Thinadeshi draws away from her, alarmed. “What? What is it? What’s wrong with you?”

  “It’s the thinadeskite!” cries Mulaghesh.

  “The what?”

  “The thinadeskite! It’s not some naturally occurring ore! It’s what’s left of their damned swords!”

  ***

  “Thina…deskite?” asks Thinadeshi. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s this ore,” says Mulaghesh. “Or that’s what they thought it was, discovered outside of Fort Thin…” She pauses as she realizes nearly everything she’s about to reference has been named for
the ill-looking person sitting before her. “Never mind. But they thought it was this natural resource with some unusual properties, so they started digging it up. But it wasn’t natural at all; it was what was left of the swords after you obliterated the tomb, pulverized it beyond recognition! That must have been why Choudhry was so interested in the geomorphological history of the cliffs: she could tell that something was wrong! She must have noticed some sign of the damage you did, and known that it couldn’t possibly have been some natural effect!”

  Thinadeshi looks at her side-eyed. “I won’t pretend to know anything about a lick of what you’re saying here, but do go on.”

  Mulaghesh scratches her scalp, excited and anxious. “And that must be why the ore never tested as Divine! Because it isn’t the will of a Divinity that makes it work—it’s the will of the dead! If you’re right, and anything that memorializes the dead is forced to persist, then that would explain everything—why the man atop the Tooth was still alive, why the ‘tribute’ statues they hauled up from the bottom of the sea are still around, and why any miracle relating to the dead still functions! And that’s why I had flashbacks down in the mine’s tunnels—I was literally walking through a sea of souls and memories.”

  “I will assume you are talking about the mine I destroyed,” says Thinadeshi.

  Mulaghesh stops. “Oh. That’s right. That was you, after all.”

  “Yes,” says Thinadeshi, nettled. “This was the incident in which you shot me, if you remember.”

  “Which was pretty damned justified, if I might say so! From my end you looked a damn sight like the real thing!”

  “Of course I did!” snaps Thinadeshi. “When one wields even a shadow of a Divinity’s power, that power tends to follow decorum and clothe one correctly!”

  “What, it even makes you a hundred sizes bigger?”

  “It’s all a play of images and perception, a warping of the world! Miracles are apparently very formal things, I’ll have you know!” She winces as Mulaghesh tends to her shoulder. “But they do not make one invulnerable.”

  “How was it that no one else saw you?”

  “Because I did not wish them to,” says Thinadeshi. “I tapped the sword’s strength to veil myself from the land of the living. But…when I climbed the cliff, the sword bucked, like a dowsing rod sensing water. Something was wrong. Perhaps it sensed you—maybe it sensed some quality in you it found familiar, or even desirable. Why hide one’s self from a kindred spirit?”

  Mulaghesh is silent as she considers the awful implications of this. Finally she asks, “How did you know about the mine?”

  “Because someone opened a window into it,” says Thinadeshi. “I felt someone trying to open many entryways into this place. I didn’t know that was one of the things I could do—sensing such a thing—but apparently I can. They tried it over and over again. I went to investigate, fearing someone could, I don’t know, incite or awaken all the souls here. Then I came across a gap hanging in the air, a mirror or window into…somewhere else. A tunnel of some kind, and in that tunnel were some grubby little men. They did not see me, and I listened to them talking, digging down in the dirt and hauling up all the fragments of the very things I’d hoped I’d destroyed long ago. I thought that this might be the reason the City of Blades was being pulled back, reconnecting with the land of the living. So I did what was necessary.”

  “And you destroyed it,” says Mulaghesh. She doesn’t bother telling Thinadeshi that she killed three soldiers in the process of doing so. What good would that do?

  “But it didn’t work,” says Thinadeshi miserably. “I can still feel us growing closer and closer. It made me so weak, to do it, but it accomplished nothing. The dead remember more and more of what was promised to them. Something has happened in Voortyashtan, and it acts like a faint light to a blind man, and they are following it, feeling their way back to the land of the living, and what they are owed. What were you people doing with that mine, anyway?”

  Mulaghesh summarizes what little she understands about the wide-ranging qualities of thinadeskite. Thinadeshi is absolutely horrified. “And they named it after me?” she says. “They named this hellish material after the person who tried to annihilate it?”

  “Well, they didn’t know that,” says Mulaghesh. “You’re well thought of, and they thought it could be world-changing….They said it would revolutionize nearly anything electrical.”

  “Of course it would!” says Thinadeshi angrily. “If it can store a soul and all of its memories for hundreds of years, then a few photons are no issue at all! Every atom of those things is packed with the fury of millions of people denied what they felt was their due. I’ve no doubt that’s expressing itself in all manner of horrible ways!”

  “But they’re not doing anything special with it,” says Mulaghesh. “They’re just making wire and other electrical material out of it. And if you’re telling me that destroying the mine didn’t stop anything…then it must have been something else that started this whole thing.”

  “Then what?” says Thinadeshi. “What else could possibly be waking the dead?”

  Mulaghesh thinks back to that afternoon on the clifftops: tripping over the tunnel, finding Choudhry’s letter describing a mysterious person infiltrating the thinadeskite mines…

  “What if…What if it’s not just messing around with the ore that does it? You said yourself that the dead wouldn’t accept just anyone as Voortya, they needed someone that was…I don’t know, the right shape. The right clothes.”

  “Yes?”

  “So the right shape for the thinadeski—”

  “Please stop calling it that.”

  “All right! The right shape for the ore…would be a sword.” She looks at Thinadeshi. “Would it be possible for someone to forge new swords out of the ore?”

  “I…I suppose,” says Thinadeshi. “But how would one know how to do it? How would one even know what to make? I made sure no examples of Voortyashtani swords remained in the living world.”

  “No, you just destroyed that one tomb,” says Mulaghesh. “Special saints got tombs of their own. Ones that I guess contained only their swords. We found one in the Teeth of the World, one that didn’t have a sword in it. Unless someone had already been there and taken it—”

  “—so they could use it as an original,” says Thinadeshi, “and use it to make copies. But they would need to have extensive smithing knowledge for that to work.”

  Mulaghesh cocks her head, thinking. Then time seems to slow down for her.

  She remembers walking into a house, noting how cold it was…but then as she left, turning around and seeing a thick tumble of smoke from the chimney.

  A voice in her head: Have you ever heard of Saint Petrenko?

  And then the words of the Watcher: It was Petrenko who developed the method that the old ones first used to make their swords.

  “I think I know who it is,” says Mulaghesh softly. “But damned if I know why.” She looks at Thinadeshi. “Can you leave with me? Do you have enough strength for that?”

  Thinadeshi laughs hollowly. “If I leave, they leave.” She nods out the window. “I’m the only thing keeping them back. Even as you’re talking to me now, I’m fighting a war here.” She taps the side of her head. “It’s killing me. Destroying the mine weakened me terribly. But I have to keep fighting them, telling them not yet, not yet….So I can’t go, General. More so, I won’t.”

  Mulaghesh and Thinadeshi exchange a silent moment then: the two women look at each other, each hard-eyed and determined, and Mulaghesh understands right away that to try to convince Thinadeshi to leave her post would be a waste of time. Her mind’s made up, and Mulaghesh can respect that.

  “How much time do you have?” asks Mulaghesh.

  Thinadeshi looks relieved they’re moving on. “Not much. The closer we get to the land of the living, the more the sentinels awake. It’s getting harder and harder.”

  “I would propose that I go back to Voortyas
htan, find the swords, and destroy them,” says Mulaghesh. “But what happens if you die before I do that?”

  “Then they invade,” says Thinadeshi. “And you die.”

  “Shit,” says Mulaghesh. She rubs her mouth, frustrated. “So there’s no Plan B? No backup option?”

  Thinadeshi is quiet. Then she slowly looks at the sword in her hand. “There is…one option.” She holds it out to Mulaghesh, her face grim. “You can take this.”

  “What? Me take the sword of Voortya? What the hells are you talking about? Won’t that kill you?”

  “I’m already being killed,” says Thinadeshi. “This strange device won’t keep me alive much longer. And it will take some time for its powers to depart from me: in essence, it will take time for this place to realize I’ve dropped the act. Probably no longer than the time I have with the sword. You can take it, in case you fail.”

  “And what in the hells am I supposed to do with it?”

  “It’s a token,” says Thinadeshi, “a symbol. It can be unlocked, unfolded, interpreted to be many things. You can do many deeds with it if you use it the right way, if you think about it the right way. Voortya was the goddess of warfare, General. And you of all people should know that war is an art requiring decorum and formality. It feverishly adheres to rules and traditions—and that can be used against it. Take it!”

  Mulaghesh reaches out hesitantly, then takes the black, severed hand from Thinadeshi’s grasp. Instantly the faint sword blade vanishes, and Mulaghesh is left holding a heavy black sword handle with a rather curious crossguard, and nothing more: there is no suggestion of fingers or flesh in it, no flash of lightning, no lick of flame. It is just a thing, not a Divine conceit made solid.

  “That all sounds like a bunch of variations on ‘I don’t know’ to me,” says Mulaghesh.

  “It responds to different people in different ways,” says Thinadeshi. “And the dead still believe me to be Voortya. Once I am gone, it will awaken to you—but I am not sure how. And I would prefer we not have to depend on that at all.”