—WRITS OF SAINT ZHURGUT, 731
Vallaicha Thinadeshi struggles to breathe. She thought this would be easy; she thought Mulaghesh would destroy the swords and they would all simply begin to drift once more….But rather than drifting, rather than shifting back into the shadows of reality, she feels them all becoming more real, more themselves, more awake.
And as they do, they grow aware that she is not who they thought she was.
This bleeding, terrified woman is not the Empress of Graves. This is not the Divinity of death and warfare. Why is she here? Why were they listening to her? So they continue to reject her.
The process is agonizing. They reject her like flesh slowly pushing out a thorn. She wasn’t aware she had become a part of them in so many ways, and for them to abandon her, force her away, is like losing a limb she never knew she had.
She finally accepts what’s happened: the strange general has been defeated. She has failed. The swords still persist; they still draw the dead close. And now that Thinadeshi no longer has the sword of Voortya, she’s powerless against them.
She’s dying now. She can feel it. She can feel herself fade, feel the City of Blades itself push down on her, crushing her mind, removing a person who never should have been here in the first place.
She can still hear the sentinels’ thoughts echoing over the beaches: Mother…Mother, we are coming…We are coming for you…And then she feels them begin to leave, departing for the land of the living.
“No,” she whimpers. “Please, no…”
It’s all too much. She shifts sideways and falls over, unable to support herself. She listens to them pleading for their mother. Their voices intermingle in her head, and suddenly she remembers a day long ago, back in Saypur with her children, when they all held hands and ran down the hillside together, laughing with glee, and some of them tumbled and rolled all the way down….
These are her last thoughts: the hot summer sun; the soft embrace of the grass; the tinkle of children’s laughter; and the warm, eager grasp of a tiny hand.
***
Sigrud normally feels at home in the shadows. To be unseen and occupy the dark interstitial parts of the world is second nature to him. But as he squats in the shadows of the trees outside of Rada Smolisk’s house, he can’t bring himself to feel comfortable.
None of this is right. None of this is what he expected.
He watches as the Saypuri soldiers file out of the house, carrying what appear to be sword racks and then finally two bodies. One of them is Mulaghesh, her hands bound behind her back, with one soldier holding her feet and another holding her by the armpits. Probably alive, he thinks. No one binds the hands of a dead person. But she’s also a deep, dark red color, which is…unusual.
The second body is on a stretcher, covered up. The only thing that he can see is that the person is very short, and, from the drip of blood from the side of the stretcher, probably very dead.
He frowns as they load up and drive away. What happened here? Why would Mulaghesh go to the polis governor’s office? What could she have discovered in the afterlife to send her here and ask him to come here as well?
And where is his daughter?
Biswal exits the house. He’s listening as an officer briefs him on something. Biswal is nodding, though he looks displeased, but not furious: he’s being told of something they can deal with, manage, tolerate, not desired by any means but not of chief concern. The lieutenant keeps pointing to a place in the trees just beyond the house, a thick spot of bracken. Biswal looks at it with flat, cold eyes and nods. He says something short—It is what it is, perhaps—and then climbs into an auto, which speeds off up the road.
There are only a handful of soldiers left in the area. Sigrud waits for them to disperse, then sneaks through the trees.
There’s a guard at the door of the polis governor’s office, so he won’t bother to try to get inside. But he creeps his way toward the spot of bracken, wondering what could have caused such consternation….
He’s ten feet away when he smells it. Blood—a lot of it.
He looks at the area from the shelter of a tree. He can’t fully investigate in these circumstances, but he can see where the bracken’s been crushed, like someone fell back into it.
And he smells something…familiar. The scent of cigarettes. An unusual kind, aromatic and exotic. The exact sort, Sigrud reflects, that his daughter smokes nearly constantly.
Sigrud looks uphill, in the direction of Fort Thinadeshi, and thinks.
***
Mulaghesh wakes and immediately regrets it. Her brain feels like one giant bruise. She groans and lifts her left hand to touch her brow, and remembers only too late that her hand is made of metal. It clunks into her face, causing her injury to flare up furiously. She moans pitifully and shakes her head. The back of her scalp grinds on a stone floor.
She frowns and opens her eyes. She’s in a jail cell, lit with an electric light. There’s only one place in Voortyashtan she knows of that has electricity….
It all comes back to her like a dream.
The swords.
“Hey!” she says. “Hey, somebody!”
Silence.
She forces herself to sit up. It feels like something in her head is sloshing around uncomfortably, a dense fluid that might break through her skull’s fragile walls. She feels her brow—with the correct hand this time—and finds her face is crusty with blood. Biswal must have nearly cracked her head open.
There’s not much to see through the bars of her cell door: there’s just a blank stone wall on the other side, dark and molded, with a fluttering electric light above it. Mulaghesh stands—this takes a lot longer than she expected—walks to the door, and leans on it.
She checks her pockets. Her holster is gone, of course, as is the rest of her gear. So is the sword of Voortya, she realizes. It could be very bad if someone threw that away, not knowing what it is.
She puts as much of her face as she can through the bars and looks down the hallway. There are just more cells to her left, but to her right about twenty yards down is a private in a dark red beret standing at attention, hands behind her back. She’s too far away for Mulaghesh to see her name, but she can see the chevrons on her uniform, so she knows her rank. The door beside her is thick iron with a small glass window in its center. This must be an old part of the fortress, because none of the doors or bars look at all modern to Mulaghesh.
“Hey,” says Mulaghesh. Her voice hasn’t been used in some time, so she has to clear her throat. “Hey, Private! Listen. Listen, I’ve…Damn, my head hurts…I’ve got to speak to Biswal! I’ve got to! I don’t know what he thinks is going on, but he’s wrong, he’s…he’s wrong!”
The private is completely still. She barely blinks.
“Listen,” says Mulaghesh. “It sounds crazy, Private, but…But we’re about to be under attack. Another Divine attack is about to happen! I swear it’s true, and we’ve got to act now! I wouldn’t believe it, either, but…”
The private slowly blinks again, staring into space.
Mulaghesh summons up all of her air and bellows, “Damn it all, Private! I might be in a jail cell but I am still your superior officer, so you had damned well better hop to an order when it’s given to you! A critical threat is imminent and it is both my duty and yours to respond!”
Nothing. It’s as if the woman’s deaf.
“Ah, hells,” says Mulaghesh. “You’re not going to listen to me no matter what I say, are you?”
The private blinks again.
“Well, shit,” says Mulaghesh, and she sits down on the ground and tries to think.
***
Captain Sakthi sits in the large conference room of Fort Thinadeshi, trying to stay awake. They’ve been riding nearly all day and all night, so it’s a struggle just to sit upright, let alone remain conscious. He glances around at Major Hukkeri and the other senior officers and can tell right away that they feel the same. They’re already briefed on the new
Dreyling threat. What could General Biswal’s meeting possibly be about that could be so important?
The door opens and Biswal walks in, hands thoughtfully clasped behind his back. There is a strange pride and energy to him: his back is a little too straight, his stride a little too jaunty. It’s hard to tell if he’s pleased or furious.
He takes the podium and turns to his officers. “Thank you for being here with me tonight,” he says quietly. “I know the past days have not been easy on you. We do not have much time, so I will cut to the point. We have recently discovered a long-running plot by the Dreylings to conceal Divine Voortyashtani artifacts collected from the ocean floor. My suspicion is that they did so because they feared that we would shut down the harbor project to prevent any unknown side effects. However, their duplicity has had grave effects—for, due to their actions, we are about to witness another Divine attack on our way of life. And it is our duty to defend these shores.”
The room is dead silent.
“General Mulaghesh, I have discovered, was part of the Dreylings’ conspiracy,” says Biswal. “She and CTO Harkvaldsson plotted to assassinate Polis Governor Rada Smolisk, who had deduced their crime. I am grieved now to tell you that General Mulaghesh succeeded in this. And, as there is no honor among thieves or traitors, she also murdered CTO Harkvaldsson in order to cover up her actions. We have apprehended the general, and now have her in holding in the prison.
“Justice will be done. But first, we must fight. The traitorous general confessed that the Divine attack would be coming in by sea, an invasion of Voortyashtan itself. We now have the upper hand, my proud officers of Saypur. We are aware of the attack before it comes. And if we fight, and fight nobly, we will be the victors—and we will be heroes the likes of which will never be forgotten. And all the foolishness our nation has become involved in here on the Continent, all the waste and the stupidity, all of that will end after tonight.”
Sakthi glances around at the other officers. Some stare at the general in naked horror, others in teary-eyed admiration.
“Now, go,” says Biswal. “Go and man the walls, prepare our defenses, and ready your troops. By morning, we will be legends.”
***
Seventy miles south of the city of Voortyashtan, the cargo ship Heggelund makes its final leg of the trip to the newborn harbor. Captain Skjelstad has made this trip several times in his career, shipping raw goods back and forth between Voortyashtan and Ahanashtan, but this is the largest shipment he’s piloted yet: ten thousand tons of Ahanashtani cement, to be used in the overhaul of the Solda River. By his calculations the Heggelund is set to arrive before 0200, just in time for SDC to begin its work.
At least, that’s what his calculations say. But tonight, something…is not right. As he stands in the bridge, consulting his countless nautical maps and timetables, he tries to prove that the impossible has not happened, even though all of his metrics and equipment says it most definitely has.
He checks the maps again.
Then he checks the barometer and the speed gauges and the fuel supply.
He pushes his hat back and scratches his head. “What in all the hells…”
They’re consuming fuel at an incredibly high rate, but they shouldn’t be—they should be on the Great Western Current, the oceanic current that not only keeps Voortyashtan’s bay warm, but also moves along the coast at a great speed, making it an excellent channel for shipping, meaning they’d use less fuel.
But they aren’t. Over the past two hours they’ve used an absurd amount of fuel, and have been going well under speed.
In fact, given the measurements he’s looking at, it’s almost as if the Great Western Current has completely vanished, or at the very least is in a considerable state of disruption.
His first mate runs in, breathless. “I checked again, sir—six knots.”
“All right?” says Skjelstad, suspicious. “Then why are we going so damnably slow?”
“You didn’t let me finish, sir,” says his first mate. “Six knots south-southeast.”
“Six knots south?” says Skjelstad, boggled. “That can’t be! I…I mean, it simply shitting can’t! They call it the damned Great Western because it runs west, you know!”
“I know, sir,” says the first mate. “I don’t know how it’s possible. But it…it seems like it is. It’s like…”
“Like what?” says Skjelstad.
“Like it’s…been diverted, sir.”
“Diverted?”
“Yes, sir. Blocked, sir. The whole of the Great Western. Like it’s hitting something.”
“Hitting what?” says Skjelstad, furious.
“I’ve checked the horizon, sir, but I haven’t seen an—”
The first mate’s answer is never heard, for at that moment the ship is shook from prow to stern as if they’ve just plowed into another vessel. Captain Skjelstad and his first mate are knocked off their feet and sent rolling over the floor of the bridge. Skjelstad can feel the ship moving under him, tipping to one side at a speed that should never, ever be achievable on even the roughest of waters. It’s like they’ve run ashore—but there is no shore around here, of course, out in the middle of the seas.
The juddering and rocking doesn’t stop, but it slows enough for Skjelstad to clamber over to the window and lift himself up to see.
At first glance it appears that the Heggelund has plowed into a white shard sticking out of the sea, one protruding about a hundred feet above the water line. “An iceberg?” he wonders aloud. “This far south?”
But as he watches, the shard is growing: it’s like some giant aquatic spear being shoved up through the surface of the ocean, rising into the air at an astonishing speed.
“What in all the worlds,” whispers his first mate.
As Skjelstad watches the shard he realizes that it is actually some kind of white tower, for a bit farther down on the far side he sees, impossibly, a window and balcony. As it rises the tower also widens, grating up against the port bow of the Heggelund with a roaring screech and doing enough damage that the ship will soon be unsailable. Skjelstad is initially terrified that the tower will saw right into the hull and the deck, but then a great bubble of water rises up and shoves the Heggelund back, just as the rest of the towers—and there are more, Skjelstad sees, many more—penetrate the waters around them.
“What in all the hells is that?” cries the first mate.
The ship groans, moans, bangs, and clangs, miserably protesting this turn of events.
“I am guessing,” Skjelstad shouts, “that that is what was blocking the Great Western!”
Then there’s a discomfiting crunch and the entire ship is shoved up. This blow is far more violent than when they struck the tower, so much so that Skjelstad and his mate fly up into the air high enough that they nearly strike the ceiling. Then they slam back down, Skjelstad cracking his head so hard he briefly passes out.
When the world obligingly congeals back into a comprehensible series of sights and sounds, Skjelstad blinks and sees his first mate is staring out the window, pale-faced. “Uh, Captain…You’ll want to take a look at this.”
Captain Skjelstad, groaning, slowly rises to his feet. Then he looks out the window and stares.
An island has appeared in the center of the ocean. Its beaches are bone white, and in its center is an ivory-colored citadel large enough to be a small city, with a tall ivory tower in its middle. The ocean is rushing back from it, the waters drawing back like curtains from a stage, and as they withdraw he sees things standing on the white shores….
Thousands upon thousands of…men? People? Are they people? To Skjelstad’s eyes they look more like monsters, swaying amalgamations of horns and teeth, with enormous blades in their hands, staring out at the moonlit sea….And there in the waters are thousands upon thousands of long, thin ships with pale, silvery sails. They glow very faintly, like a massive school of gigantic jellyfish, manifested here on the ocean waves as if they’ve always been here.
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It’s a fleet, he sees. A war fleet, the biggest of its kind he’s ever seen.
“Where did it come from, sir?” says his first mate. “Surely all this wasn’t sitting on the bottom of the sea?”
The monstrous figures begin to wade into the sea, moving to board their spectral vessels and rigging them up to disembark.
Well, most of the figures do. Some of them are turning to face the Heggelund.
There is a quiet, low sound, like many voices exhaling at once: a sustained om.
The figures on the beach all move, and it appears as if a flock of birds rises up from them, only the birds are glittery and strange….
No, thinks Skjelstad as the shapes hurtle toward him. Not birds. Swords.
Then there is a crash and everything goes dark.
***
“Peace,” says a voice, “is but the absence of war.”
Mulaghesh jumps, sniffs, and realizes she’s passed out sitting up against the wall of the jail cell. She looks around. The lights in the prison ward are dim and low, casting coffee-stain luminescence over the grim, dark walls. A figure stands on the other side of the bars of her cell, lost in the shadows of the doorway. She can catch only a glimpse of a craggy forehead and the suggestion of thick, broad shoulders.
“Lalith?” she says groggily.
“The shtanis believe that,” he says. Biswal’s voice is low and husky. “Here in this polis they preached that for hundreds of years. I read it. ‘War and conflict form the sea through which nation-states swim,’ or so Saint Petrenko said. ‘Some who have had the fortune to find clear, calm waters believe otherwise. They have forgotten that war is momentum. War is natural. And war makes one strong.’ ”
“Lalith…What the hells are you doing? Why did you kill Rada? Did you listen to anything I said?”
“I did,” says Biswal quietly. “I listened. I believe you.”
“And the swords? Did you destroy them?”
He shakes his head. The dull light catches a strange gleam in his eye. Mulaghesh is reminded of a ferocious animal watching sulkily from the shadows of its pen. “I’ve had them moved up to the fortress for protection.”
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