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

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  He listened to this coldly, for he assumed she thought of him as little more than a tool in her armory. And if that does not work, he said, and if they lock you up or cut you down?

  Then a rare gleam of passion flared in her eyes. If that happens…Then, Sigrud, I want you to walk away. I want you to run away from all of this, run away from this life and go live your own. Go find your family if you can, go start all over again if you wish, but just…Go. You’ve paid enough, you’ve done enough. Forget about me and just go.

  This surprised him. They had spent so much time together, two lonely people waging a solitary, lonely war, and he assumed she never thought about a life beyond tradecraft—especially for him, her grim enforcer, the one down in the weeds with a knife clutched in his teeth. Yet she was not content to let him go on being her thug.

  She cared for you even then, he thinks, standing still in the darkness. She wanted you to be something better.

  He looks down at his hands. Rough and scarred and filthy. Most of those scars came not from lumber work, but from nasty, brutal battles in the dark.

  He thinks of Shara. His daughter. His family. All of them lost, all of them separated or dead.

  He stares at his scarred hands. What an ugly thing I am, he thinks. Why did I ever believe I could wreak anything but ugliness in this world? Why did I ever think that those near me would meet anything but pain and death?

  He stands alone in the forest, then looks up at the pale moon above.

  What else is there to be? What else is there to do?

  He bows his head, and knows what is left.

  * * *

  —

  The fawn is easily tracked, easily caught, easily killed with a single bolt from his bolt-shot. Sigrud was not sure his hunting skills would hold up, but these deer are truly wild creatures up here in the Tarsils, unaware of men or their tricks and traps.

  He carries it over his shoulder to the hilltop. He will not eat this creature, for to eat it would be to make use of it. The point of this ritual—one he has not performed himself in over forty years—is desecration and violation, the creation of a terrible wrong.

  In the dawning light Sigrud strips to the waist. Then he carefully beheads the fawn, disembowels it, and props its carcass upright so that it appears to be pleading to the sky, begging the heavens for…something. Perhaps mercy, perhaps vengeance. His hands are strong and ruthless, breaking open the delicate bones, tearing the tendons, the ligaments. He places the fawn’s organs in a pile before its open body cavity with its tiny, beautiful heart on the top.

  Then he places twigs and sticks around the organs and body. He lights the kindling with a match and watches as flames slowly crawl across the bloodstained earth around the grotesque scene, the heat scorching the bloody hide of the once-beautiful, fragile creature.

  He thinks back to when he last did this, when his father was murdered. The Oath of Ashes. Do they even know such a thing in the Dreyling Shores anymore? Or am I such a relic of the cruel, ancient days that only I remember?

  The flames begin to die as the sun dawns. The remnants of the fawn are black, twisted fragments. Sigrud leans forward and pierces the moist, hot soil with his fingertips. He takes a clump of the earth there, soaked with blood and hot with cinder, and smears it on his face, on his chest, on his shoulders and arms.

  A desecration has been done, he thinks. And I am touched by it.

  Then he reaches into what’s left of the pile of organs and plucks out the charred remains of the fawn’s heart. He holds it in his hands, brushing off the ash. It queerly reminds him of the feeling of a child’s hand in his palm.

  Weeping, he takes a bite of the fawn’s heart.

  And I shall do more desecrations yet, he thinks. Until justice is done, or I am spent.

  Of the six original Continental Divinities, only four ever bore children—Taalhavras, the Divinity of order and knowledge; Jukov, the Divinity of merriment; Olvos, the Divinity of hope; and Ahanas, the Divinity of fecundity. Despite this limited number, they had quite the constant mess of interactions and relationships, producing dozens if not hundreds of Divine offspring: Divine sprites, spirits, and beings that peppered the whole of the Continent. These offspring were produced in a manner that mortals cannot truly understand—the genders of the Divine parents did not particularly matter, nor did inbreeding seem to have an effect—but we must consider them, for all intents and purposes, to be the children of the Divine.

  One of the favorite questions historians toy with in modern times is exactly what happened to all of those offspring. Did they vanish when the Kaj invaded the Continent and killed the Divinities? Divine creatures—beings created by a singular Divinity, much as a Divinity would create a miracle—definitely did not survive the death of their creator. But some Divine children seemed to survive the deaths of their parents, though those who were found were promptly executed.

  Did they have some Divine agency of their own, like miniature versions of their parents? Did the Kaj succeed in executing them all? Or did they find some way to hide themselves? We are not sure. But if they persist within this world, they have not announced themselves yet.

  —DR. EFREM PANGYUI, “ON THE LIVES OF THE DIVINE”

  The boy’s feet pound on the pavement, his breath burning in his lungs. He ducks under an awning, swings around a lamppost, skids across a cobblestoned street. An old woman carrying her groceries glares at him as he sprints past a display of apples. A shopkeep cries, “Watch it!” But the boy ignores them, paying mind only to the next turn, the next street ahead, his face dripping sweat as the sun beats down on him.

  Faster and faster, as fast as he can go. He’s got to lose him, got to.

  And he should be losing him: the streets of the city of Bulikov are so tangled and labyrinthine that one could get lost just walking home. Yet so far it’s proven shockingly difficult to lose this particular pursuer.

  A turn, a turn again. Then down the stairs, across the vacant lots, and down another side street…

  The boy stops, gasping, and staggers into the mouth of an alley. He waits, breathing hard, and pokes his head around the corner.

  Nothing. The street is empty.

  Perhaps he’s lost him. Perhaps he’s really gone.

  “Finally,” he says.

  Then the light…shifts. Twists. Changes.

  The shadows begin to twirl at his feet.

  “Oh, no,” whispers the boy.

  He looks up to see an odd sight, but it’s one that he was expecting, even dreading: the clear summer skies directly above him are flooding with darkness, as if evening is being injected into the atmosphere, hues of indigo and dark purple and black swirling amidst the pale blue. He watches, wide-eyed, as the darkness curls around the face of the sun, choking it out and painting over it until it’s as if the sun had never been there at all.

  There are stars in the new darkness, which hangs directly above him: cold, distant, glimmering white stars. The boy knows if he waits longer the skies above him will turn pitch-black, and those glinting stars will be the only luminescence remaining.

  The boy turns and sprints down the alley. The skies above him clear up as if he were directly under a thundercloud: the sun returns, and the bright blue sky is visible once more.

  But too close, thinks the boy. Much too close, much too close…

  He’s getting desperate. He knows he has to use one of his tricks. He doesn’t like trying this while running, but he doesn’t have a choice….

  He shuts his eyes, envisioning the city around him, seeking them out.

  It takes him a while to spot them—he’s not near one of the entertainment districts, so there are very few theaters or restaurants or bars around here—but then he sees one burst into being somewhat close to him, a tangle of something bright and silvery and quivering, quaking merrily amidst all the gloom and sobriety of the
city in day.

  He reaches out to it. Grasps it.

  Becomes it.

  The world shifts around him.

  He hears the final line in his mind: “…and the shepherdess, of course, says, ‘Well, it ain’t look too much like his father, neither!’ ”

  Suddenly the boy’s ears are inundated with a glorious, wonderful, happy sound: the sound of men laughing, cackling, real tears-in-your-eyes laughing, absolutely bent-double laughing, and the boy is there with them, giggling merrily.

  He has to force himself to remember what’s going on. He opens his eyes and sees he’s in a fish shanty down by the Solda River, surrounded by filthy fishermen all sipping from bottles of plum wine. None of them have noticed the sudden appearance of this young, pale Continental boy, who has, it seems, popped out of thin air. They act as if he’s always been in the crowd with them. One of the drunken fishermen even offers him a sip of wine, which the boy, still snickering, politely refuses.

  It’s far too early in the day for such celebration. But he’s grateful for it. Wine creates merriment, merriment creates laughter, and laughter gives him…

  The boy looks out the window of the fish shanty. He’s about three miles away from the alley where he was.

  He sighs, relieved. “…a way out,” he says.

  But then his brow crinkles. Is it his imagination, or is the sky darkening above him? Just above the fish shanty?

  And are those stars shining so coldly and cleanly up above?

  He stares as the sky above him floods with solid darkness, like blood leaking through a bandage.

  The boy thinks desperately. Another trick, another turn. He doesn’t have a choice.

  He shuts his eyes, and searches.

  Another tangle of silvery joy. This one isn’t quite so thick, quite so bawdy, but it should still…

  The world shifts around him.

  …work.

  He hears a voice: “Where is Mischa? Where is…Mischa!”

  Giggles fill the air. He opens his eyes and sees he’s in a small apartment. A curly-haired infant is lying on a sofa, laughing hysterically as his mother hides behind the sofa’s back and pops out, crying, “Where is my Mischa? Where could my darling boy have gone? Could he be—here?”

  Another explosion of delighted squeals. Neither seems to have noticed the boy’s sudden appearance, but perhaps it’s because they’re too involved in their game. The child’s laughter is infectious: the mother begins laughing, which makes the infant laugh even harder.

  Remember where you are. Remember what’s going on.

  The boy walks to the windows of the apartment. He’s about seven miles from the fish shanty, he guesses. He can still feel that other tangle of laughter out there, the fishermen sharing their bawdy jokes, and he can tell the distance between them. It should be far enough. No one can move that fast that far. And how could his pursuer even know where he’s go—

  He freezes.

  The shadows on the street outside begin to shift. Darkness floods the skies, as if night itself is manifesting right above him.

  “No!” he says. “No, it can’t be!”

  The mother and infant laugh hysterically behind him. He can feel the joy in her, feel the pain in her stomach from laughing too hard, all her senses flooded over with merriment.

  He wants to stay here. This is what he is, what he does, what he loves. But he has to move on yet again.

  Farther this time, he thinks. Go and keep going.

  He shuts his eyes. Finds the next laughter, the next bright spark of joy.

  The world shifts.

  He’s in a house on the outskirts of Bulikov. A man sits on the kitchen floor with a giant pot of pasta spilled all across the tiles, the yellow sauce bright against the white surfaces. His face is red with laughter, and his wife stands at the doorway, howling in amusement.

  “I told you it was too heavy!” she says, gasping for air. “I told you it was!”

  The boy laughs too, the laughter tasting of shameful glee. Then he shuts his eyes and searches again.

  The world shifts.

  He’s in a dormitory room beside the university. A young woman sits on the bed, nude and convulsing with laughter. Were you to glance at her it’d be difficult to see what’s so funny—until you saw the young man’s head buried between her thighs, the rest of his body concealed by blankets.

  The boy cackles with her. Her laughter is like sunlight and flower petals raining down in his mind. But he knows he must move on.

  He shuts his eyes. Reaches out.

  The world shifts.

  A ball game in an alley, with one young man lying on the ground, clutching his crotch and gasping after a pitch went awry. The other children laugh uproariously, unable to contain themselves, while the young man says, “It’s not funny….It’s really not funny!” but this makes them laugh all the harder.

  He smirks. This laughter has a crueler edge to it, the taste of copper and blood. But he knows he must move on.

  He shuts his eyes. Searches.

  Again, things shift.

  He’s in a courtyard. An elderly man and woman sit in wooden wheelchairs in the sun, their legs covered with blankets. They chuckle weakly as they remember some ancient story from days long, long gone.

  “She really told me that!” says the woman. “ ‘Hotter than a stiff cock,’ that’s what she said, right in front of everyone. I swear it!”

  “I know, I know!” the man says, wheezing but smiling. “But who could ever believe it?”

  Laughter of wistful incredulity, basking in the joy of two lives well lived. His heart sings to hear it, to taste it in his mouth. But he must move on.

  I am laughter, he says, shutting his eyes. I am wherever there is glee. So he can never catch me….

  He reaches out. Another tangle, this one sloppy and drunken and warped, the silvery laughter of someone well sotted.

  Any port in a storm, thinks the boy, and he grasps it, pulling himself to it.

  The world shifts…

  He opens his eyes. He expected to be in a bar or someone’s room, but…this appears to be a basement. A dingy basement with one table and one chair.

  In the chair is a cackling Saypuri man, but it’s clear he’s not laughing of his own volition: his eyes have a glazed look to them, and there’s a smear of drool on his chin. Despite this, he has the look of a soldier to him, as does the Saypuri woman standing over his shoulder, who’s holding an empty syringe. They both wear headcloths, for one, which is common to the military, but they’re also trim, muscular creatures, people who have made weapons out of their bodies, especially the woman: there’s something to her hard, dark face and amber-gold eyes that suggests a history of command and lethality to her.

  The boy stares at them. But then the woman with the syringe does something very strange: she looks right at the boy, her expression somewhat apologetic. This should be impossible—when the boy shifts he becomes laughter incarnate, the spirit of merriment, invisible to mortal eyes—yet the Saypuri woman just smiles at him with a touch of regret and says, “Hello there.”

  “Wh-what?” says the boy.

  “He figured that if he kept you jumping you’d come here eventually,” says the woman. “Just had to keep someone laughing long enough.”

  The boy then senses something riddling the clothing of the two people, forces and designs and structures woven into the fabric.

  The boy blinks. The two soldiers are wearing protective miracles, Divine miracles—but they’re of a type he’s never seen before. So who could have made them?

  The Saypuri woman looks at something behind the boy. “Ah. Well. Here we are, then.”

  The boy turns around.

  Behind him is a wall of darkness—not just shadow but the night itself, a wall of vast, endless black shot through with coldly glitt
ering stars….

  A voice echoes out of the darkness, a voice as cold as the light of those stars. “WHERE ARE THE OTHERS?”

  The boy screams.

  * * *

  —

  A rattle, a roar, and the train emerges from the tunnel.

  Sigrud wakes. It takes longer than it ought for him to remember where he is, what’s happening. He rubs at his eye and glances around at the other passengers on the train, all relaxed or bored. They ignore him, thinking him to be another shiftless Dreyling dockworker, dressed in his blue peacoat and knit cap.

  What an odd thing it is, he thinks, to don civilization again as if it were an old jacket, lying unused for years at the back of a closet. Perhaps civilization never truly suited Sigrud, but he must feign it now, after so many years in the wilderness. And after what happened in Voortyashtan, over thirteen years ago now, he is still very much a wanted man. As someone who once worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, one thing he knows full well is that the Ministry does not forget.

  Nor should they. He remembers that moment as a blur of shadows and screams—he’d been raving mad with grief and fury after the murder of his daughter—but fragments of what happened in Fort Thinadeshi still sear bright and hot in his mind.

  Grabbing a soldier’s sword, using it to cleave off the man’s arm below the elbow. Ripping a bayoneted rifling away from another and thrusting it deep into her abdomen.

  I didn’t even know their names, he thinks, huddled low. I still don’t even know their names.

  The train rushes on.

  Back when Sigrud worked as an operative on the Continent, it would have taken two to three weeks to travel from the outskirts of Bulikov to Ahanashtan. Today it seems you can simply buy a ticket, go to a train station, and all the world will shift around you until you find yourself where you wish to be in but a handful of days.

  He focuses on his goal. Ahanashtan, he thinks, remembering what he read in the papers. The Golden Hotel.

  And then what? he wonders. What will he do there?