The Divine Cities Trilogy: City of Stairs, City of Blades, and City of Miracles, With an Excerpt From Foundryside

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  Signe’s office lies deep in the recesses of SDC headquarters, which comes as a surprise to Mulaghesh. Someone as high-powered and valuable as Signe Harkvaldsson should surely have an office on the top floor with huge windows. Yet her office is almost in the basement, and resembles a loading dock converted into a loft.

  But the room is obscured by what looks like, to Mulaghesh’s eye, racks and racks of clothing, each one labeled with numbered tags, starting at 1.0000 and going up to…well, the biggest number she sees is 17.1382. As she passes one rack Mulaghesh cranes her head to get a look at it, and she sees that they’re not clothes but blueprints, thousands and thousands of plans of things that, from what she sees, never got built.

  Signe leads them to a large table in the center, an austere block of white stone that’s covered in yet more blueprints. At the table’s center are square stone cups filled with a variety of drafting materials: pens, pencils, rulers, abacuses, set squares, magnifying glasses, and several types of compasses. Next to these are three ashtrays, all quite full. Signe tsks as she approaches. “I’ll have to remind my assistant to dump these out.”

  She makes them wait as she rolls up the blueprints and files them away. “Don’t touch anything!” she warns as she paces away through the racks.

  Sigrud stares around himself in awe. “My daughter,” he says slowly, “lives here?”

  “I don’t see a bed,” says Mulaghesh. “But yeah, I get that impression.”

  Signe returns with a large, colorful map fluttering in her hands like a flag. “Here we are,” she says. She lays the map out. It’s a map of the coastline, including the flow of the oceanic currents, though there have been some alterations to where the Solda passes Voortyashtan: dozens of little red blocks are clustered together in a manner that reminds Mulaghesh of a child’s strategy game, like Batlan.

  “What am I looking for here?” says Mulaghesh.

  “This is an SDC map of all the coastlines and currents of the region. But what we’re looking for…” Then she says, “Ah!” and points to a flicker in the thousands of tiny blue lines a few dozen miles southwest of Voortyashtan. “There.”

  Mulaghesh peers at where she’s pointing. “There’s nothing there.”

  “I know,” says Signe. “But that’s where it is.”

  “The Isle of Memory?”

  “Yes. It’s real. That’s where it lies.”

  “Then why isn’t it on the map?”

  “Because I removed it.”

  Mulaghesh and Sigrud slowly turn to look at her.

  “Some places aren’t worth going to,” says Signe quietly. “Some places deserve to be forgotten. And that’s one of them.”

  “What is it?” asks Sigrud. “What is there?”

  “It is part of a chain of small islands,” she says. “The last, and the largest. It was a place where the highlanders conducted a…a rite of passage for adolescents. They’d take children down out of the mountains, along the river, and to the shore, where boats would be waiting. Then we’d sail southwest, along the coast, through the islands, until we found it.” Her face is grim and haunted. “They called it the Tooth. At its top was a ruin—an ancient old place made of metal and knives. It was rumored a man lived in it, an old man who remembered everything—a man of memory, in other words—but I thought it was just a story, a myth. We saw no man, and no one seemed to expect us to. I thought at the time that it was a place that once had been Divine and held some specific purpose that was lost—but the highlanders, being traditional, kept coming back, kept fulfilling their oath. Those islands…they are a very strange place.”

  “What did they do there?” asks Sigrud. “The highlanders?”

  Signe purses her lips and takes out a cigarette. “Bad things.”

  Mulaghesh clears her throat. “So that’s where Choudhry went, yes? Then how exactly am I going to get to this Tooth? I don’t know how to sail, and I sure as hells can’t swim that far.”

  “You don’t need to know how to sail,” says Signe, lighting yet another cigarette. “Because I do.”

  * * *

  —

  Björck trudges up the muddy pathway to the SDC lighthouse, the seawall tapering off to his left. Someday soon, they say, this will all be paved over and landscaped, a place worthy of being an international embassy, the world’s first impression of SDC’s accomplishments as they begin to sail up the Solda. But for now, it is—like everything in Voortyashtan, in Björck’s opinion—soaking wet and covered with gritty mud.

  He hears a shout behind him and awkwardly turns, the heavy pine box slipping down his arm. He frowns when he sees who’s running up.

  “Ach, Oskarsson,” he says to himself, dismayed. “Of all the filthy dogs who had to catch me now…”

  “Björck!” says the young Dreyling, trotting up. “What in the hells are you doing up here? Why aren’t you at the gate?”

  He glowers at Jakob Oskarsson, fifteen years his junior and yet several positions his superior. Björck is keenly aware of the rumors that Oskarsson is the son of one of the Dreyling city leaders who helped drive out piracy, and thus was instrumental to the formation of the United Dreyling States; but Björck is also keenly aware of the other rumors suggesting Oskarsson’s father was in league with the pirates, and only backstabbed them when he saw the writing on the wall. Whatever the cause, Jakob Oskarsson’s father was powerful enough to get his son into a good place at SDC, despite Oskarsson having no experience in construction or seafaring, and certainly no personal virtues of his own.

  “Delivery for the general,” says Björck gruffly. Then he adds, “Sir.”

  “Delivery?” says Oskarsson. He bites at a fingernail. “How peculiar. Did you check it?”

  “Of course I checked it, sir. It is a sword, just a sword.”

  “A sword?” says Oskarsson, agog. “Who is sending the general a sword?”

  “It comes from the fortress.” Björck shrugs. “I know better than to question that.”

  Oskarsson leans back on his heels and scratches his chin, thinking. “A special sword then, from the fortress, for the general…You know, Björck, perhaps I should be the one to deliver this to the general. It would be more befitting of someone of my rank, yes?”

  Björck chooses to fix his gaze on a light pole four feet to Oskarsson’s right, fearing that if he were to look at this impudent creature’s face he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from breaking it. “As you wish, sir.” He hands it over. “She did say not to touch it.”

  “Who did?”

  “The messenger. That is what she said to me. Do not touch the contents.”

  Oskarsson thinks about this, then shrugs, laughs, and places the box on the seawall. “Let me at least see what kind of sword this is.” He opens it up and, like Björck, gasps at its beauty. “My word…What a creation of a thing this is.”

  “Yes,” says Björck dourly.

  “Yet who could possibly wield it? It must almost be too heavy to lift.”

  Oskarsson stares down into the mirrored blade, transfixed. Then something changes in his eyes, and Björck realizes what he’s thinking.

  “She…She did say not to touch it, sir,” says Björck.

  “And this woman, is she deputy security chief? Or better? Is she the CEO of SDC?”

  “N-no, sir.”

  “And if the deputy security chief wishes to place security first, and hold the sword just to see if it is dangerous, is that a bad thing?”

  Björck can tell that security is the farthest thing from Oskarsson’s mind: he wishes to hold this thing, to feel its heft and power. “I…I—”

  “No,” says Oskarsson. “No it is not. At least, it is not if any sensible guard does not wish to be placed on suspension without pay, at least.”

  Björck knows that Oskarsson does not make idle threats when it comes to suspension. He shuts his mouth
and looks away as Oskarsson laughs. “Always so serious, Björck. That is your problem.” He reaches for the sword. “So serious that no one can ever stand to be around y—”

  He stops short when his hand touches the sword. Then he just stands there, apparently frozen.

  “Uh. Sir?”

  Oskarsson stares straight ahead, mouth open, face blank.

  “Oskarsson? Sir? Are you all right?”

  He does not respond. His throat makes a few low clicks.

  “Should I fetch a medic, sir?”

  Björck shivers then, not from fear but because it is suddenly bitterly, bitterly cold, as if an icy wind just happened to snake down the shore and through his sleeves. He glances at the sword and pauses, staring at its blade.

  Just a few moments ago the blade was facing Oskarsson’s face, the young man’s arrogant eyes reflected back at him. But now it’s different. Now the face in the sword is not human at all.

  It is like a mask, perhaps made of metal, wrought in the image of a crude, skeletal face, eyes small and far apart, the nose a tiny slit. Strange, monstrous-looking horns and tusks blossom from the back of the mask, like some kind of depraved substitution for hair.

  Björck looks at Oskarsson’s face. It is still the same face, though his gaze is dead and lifeless. Yet the sword now shows this other, distorted creature standing in his place.

  All intelligence slowly dies in Oskarsson’s face. A slow exhale escapes from his lips in a hiss. Then the hiss catches voice and becomes a low, loud humming noise—a sustained om that grows and grows. The buzzing, moaning sound does not seem to get louder, but instead seems to burrow within Björck’s ears and even his body, resonating with his feet, arms, bones, then with the very brick of the seawall road, an endless moan that far exceeds the capacity of any human lung.

  “Sir,” says Björck. “What is wrong with you? What is wrong with you?”

  Oskarsson lifts his head to stare at the sky. A waterfall of blood erupts from his eyes and nose and mouth, pouring out of his face to run down his body. Björck watches in horror as the blood twists around Oskarsson’s shoulders, congealing and blackening, turning a rainbow of strange and monstrous colors, almost seeming to harden. It is as if this rain of gore has its own mind and it is cocooning him, remaking him into…something.

  Björck shrieks in terror. Perhaps it is out of instinct—or perhaps it is due to his own long-suppressed feelings about Oskarsson himself—but Björck darts forward and shoves Oskarsson, sending the man toppling backward, over the seawall and into the dark waters, still clutching the immensely heavy sword.

  There’s a quiet sploosh. Björck looks at his hands, which are covered in dark blood. Then, screaming, he sprints for the nearest guard.

  * * *

  —

  “Hold on,” says Mulaghesh.

  “Yes,” says Sigrud, bristling. “Hold on.”

  Signe holds her hands up with the air of a schoolteacher asking for silence. “I have already considered your objections. You,” she says to Mulaghesh, “don’t want me around because you don’t trust me. However, I am likely the person who knows the coastline the best, as I’ve been staring at maps of it for what feels like most of my life. And I’m the one who’s been there. And you,” she says to Sigrud, “don’t want me to do it because you think it’s dangerous. You would prefer to do it yourself, because you are used to being in danger, and in fact you prefer to do this sort of dashing skullduggery rather than do what you need to be doing, which is staying here and inspiring the one thousand Dreylings working night and day to keep their national economy afloat. However, having seen morale hugely increase since your arrival, I will not allow it to now fall. Your place is here, with the people who are working for you. In the grand scheme of things, I am”—she grits her teeth, and seems to have to dig the final words out of some nasty part of herself—“less important than you.”

  “Aren’t you basically running the harbor?” asks Mulaghesh.

  “Somewhat,” she says. “After a few final large obstructions are cleared, we have multiple strategic plans for mopping up, ones that I designed months ago. I can afford to be missing for a few days, or I can soon.”

  Sigrud shakes his head. “I do not like this,” he says. “I do not like this plan one bit.”

  Signe rolls her eyes. “You forget I have been to some of the most difficult parts of Voortyashtan. I was raised in them.”

  “And I have no desire to see you go back to them!”

  “If the general here is correct—and I am reluctantly forced to admit that she, at least, believes it to be true—then everything I’ve worked for is in peril,” says Signe. “Everything I’ve spent my life preparing could be destroyed!”

  “Your life?” says Sigrud. “You think five years is a life? Five years is no time at all, it is a blink of an eye!”

  “Five years for me,” says Signe, “but we are talking billions of drekels hanging in the balance here—fortunes for decades to come!”

  “Do you think only in money? Is that what you’ve become?

  “Money?” says Signe, furious. “Money? You think I’m here to make money? No, Father dear, what I’m here to do is put you both out of a job!”

  Sigrud and Mulaghesh glance at one another.

  “Huh?” says Mulaghesh.

  “People like you,” says Signe. “You think the world’s decided in fortresses, atop battlements, from far behind razor wire and fences. It’s not, not anymore. The world’s decided in countinghouses. We don’t listen to the march of boots; we listen to type machines and calculation machines pounding out revenues and budgets. This is how civilization progresses—one innovation at the right time, changing the very way the world changes. It just needs one big push to start the momentum. Thinadeshi herself knew that. She tried. And we are left to take up her work.”

  Sigrud shakes his head. “I…I do not doubt you. And I do not doubt what you are doing. I commend you for it.”

  “Then what?”

  “I just…I just wish you to know that there is more to life than this. There is more to life than these…these great tasks we set for ourselves.”

  Signe slowly grinds out the cigarette in the ashtray. “You misjudge me.”

  “I don’t think I do.”

  “You do not know me. If you wanted to, you would.”

  “If I could have broken down those prison walls, I—”

  “I know you were on the Continent for almost a decade!” shouts Signe. “I know you were free for years, running about with Komayd, doing her dirty work! You could have come home at any time if you wanted to, you could have known us if you wanted to, but you didn’t! You just left us up here, in this…this hell!”

  “I did not wish to expose you to what I was!” he says. “The…the things I saw in prison…the things I did, the things they did to me…Your lives were better off without me.”

  “Until Komayd said it was time for you to run home,” says Signe. She laughs bitterly. “Here is the truth of it, Father. You are a brave man when you have a knife in your hand. But when faced with another person who truly needs you, I think you are a cowa—”

  She stops as they hear the sirens sounding in the harbor, a low, rising wail.

  “What in hells is that?” says Mulaghesh.

  Signe looks to the windows. “The alert siren,” she says. “Something’s wrong. We…We must be under attack!”

  * * *

  —

  Signe, Sigrud, and Mulaghesh all sprint up toward the first floor of the SDC building, only to find Signe’s chief of security Lem sprinting in the opposite direction. “There you are,” he says, gasping. “We had some…some kind of attack happen.”

  “Where?” demands Signe. “What happened?”

  “It’s out front. Just in front of the lighthouse, in fact. Should we notify the fortress?”
>
  Signe looks to Mulaghesh, who nods once.

  “Yes,” says Signe. “Better safe than sorry. Now show me.”

  As they walk, Lem summarizes the events. “…Deputy Chief Oskarsson stopped him just outside to inspect the package, and found it was some kind of…sword.”

  “Sword?” says Mulaghesh.

  “Yes. A ceremonial sword of some kind.” He looks at her sidelong. “I take it you don’t know about this?”

  Mulaghesh grimly shakes her head.

  Lem shoves the door open for them as they run outside. “That’s not good.”

  “So what?” says Signe. “Someone tried to give Mulaghesh a sword? Exactly how did this constitute an attack serious enough to sound the alarm?”

  “Well…Because then this happened.”

  He gestures ahead to the seawall road, where two SDC trucks sit idling in the road. Beside them stands a crowd of armed Dreylings looking at something on the ground. When they see Lem and Signe they part and stand back.

  Something dark and thick lies in puddles on the road. Sigrud sniffs the air. “Blood,” he says softly.

  “Yes,” Lem says, leading them over.

  “Was someone injured?” asks Mulaghesh.

  “That’s…much less clear, ma’am,” says Lem. He points to a group of guards huddled on the other side of the road, then gestures to them. They escort over a tall, jittery Dreyling. The man’s face is pale as snow, and his breath has the sour smell of vomit to it.

  “Björck,” says Signe to the pale Dreyling. “What happened?”

  He shakes his head. “Jakob…I mean, Deputy Chief Oskarsson…He opened the box, and he touched the sword, and then he just…changed.”

  As they listen to his story, Mulaghesh and Sigrud exchange a glance. Mulaghesh cocks an eyebrow—Divine?

  Sigrud nods once. Almost certainly.

  Björck shakes his head. “The sound he made was so horrible…I panicked. I pushed him. He fell over the wall, into the waters. But the sword did something to him. Before I pushed him, when I looked at his reflection in the blade, he…it wasn’t him anymore, it was something else. Something else standing in his place.”