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

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “Well, you’ve certainly aged well,” spits Khadse, grasping his bleeding hand. “I’d hoped the world had the good sense to shit your rotten Dreyling self into oblivion.” He leans closer to the pistol on the floor.

  “No,” says Sigrud. He raises his right hand, which is holding a pistol. “And drop the knife.”

  Khadse, still growling with fury and pain, complies. “Taking me alive? Taking me in for killing your filthy whore Komayd? Is that it?”

  Sigrud’s face is impassive, indifferent. Khadse had always hated that about him back during their Ministry days.

  He tosses a pair of handcuffs at Khadse’s feet. “Put those on.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Sigrud sighs with an air of bored politeness, as if waiting for someone to make a play in a game of cards.

  “Fine,” mutters Khadse. He crouches and, groaning as he does so, clips the handcuffs over his bleeding hands.

  “Walk,” says Sigrud. “Down the stairs. And I know you, Khadse. One move and I shoot.”

  “Yes, but not to kill,” says Khadse, laughing savagely. “If you wanted me dead, you would have done so.”

  Sigrud says nothing.

  “Your conversational skills,” says Khadse, turning to the stairs, “have not improved.”

  Khadse walks down the stairs, thinking rapidly. He watches over his shoulder as Sigrud pauses to pick up his knife, pistol still trained on Khadse’s back.

  “You’re not here on real Ministry work, are you, Harkvaldsson?” asks Khadse.

  Sigrud is silent.

  “If you were,” says Khadse, “you’d be here with a team. A whole army. But you’re not, are you? You’re all on your lonesome.”

  Still silence.

  “And you want to get me out of here,” says Khadse, “to some secondary location, because you know the rest of my crew will come here to look for me.”

  Still silence. Khadse surveys the terrain ahead, the shifting shadows, uneven stairs, the concrete pillars.

  “Are your skills still top-notch, Harkvaldsson?” says Khadse. “You’ve been out of circulation for what, ten years? My, my. How many traces did you leave behind? Someone will find me or you, surely…”

  “If they have not found you,” says Sigrud, “after killing Shara—then odds are they won’t have networks wide enough to find me.”

  “Are you so sure it’s the networks?” asks Khadse softly. “Are you so sure you aren’t wading into the affairs of much, much bigger players than the Ministry?”

  Khadse can feel it: the faintest flicker of uncertainty in Sigrud’s bearing as he considers the implications of this.

  In that one split second Khadse jumps forward, plants his feet on a concrete pillar, and shoves himself backward, hard.

  He wasn’t sure it’d be far enough—Sigrud was wise enough to keep his distance—but he just barely makes it, the top of his head crashing into Sigrud’s belly. The pistol goes off just above Khadse’s head, the harsh snap deafening him, but Khadse’s already scrambling forward, pulling out his hidden knife from the sheath at his leg.

  But Sigrud is faster: he raises the pistol, and fires.

  Khadse cries out. He feels an immense warmth bloom in his right shoulder. He tries to gauge the damage done, grabbing awkwardly at his arm with his chained hands.

  Yet there’s no blood. Then he notices that—strangely—there’s no pain, nor any shock. And as someone who’s been shot before, Khadse knows he should be feeling these things.

  Khadse and Sigrud both look at his right shoulder.

  To their utter confusion, the bullet is hovering in the air about a half inch from the surface of Khadse’s coat, just above where he’s clutching his bicep. It’s rotating very slightly, like a record in a phonograph, a slow, dreamy rotation.

  Then, as if suddenly aware of their gaze, the bullet drops to the ground with a soft clink.

  “What the fuck,” says Khadse, bewildered and elated.

  Sigrud fires again. Khadse flinches.

  Again, a heat in his chest. Again, the bullet hangs in the air just before the surface of his coat—this time right above Khadse’s heart—before falling away.

  Khadse and Sigrud stare at each other, unsure exactly how to handle this development.

  So that’s what this coat does, thinks Khadse. Why didn’t the bastard tell me that?

  He grins at Sigrud and springs, stabbing forward with the knife.

  Sigrud leaps back and avoids the blade, but he’s too slow: Khadse manages to catch the pistol with his handcuffs’ chain and rip it out of his grasp. Then Khadse’s on him, slashing in, down, up. Sigrud ducks one stab, then another, then he rolls away and pulls out his own knife. Khadse, cackling, feints to the left, then the right. Sigrud draws back, unsure what other miraculous items Khadse has on his person.

  “Bit off more than you can chew, eh?” says Khadse, laughing.

  The two men circle each other, trying to determine which one will give ground first. Khadse jukes forward, then springs wide and almost slices open Sigrud’s shoulder. Sigrud ducks, thrusts his blade up and around—a clever move, one Khadse wasn’t expecting—but the point of his black knife bounces harmlessly off the back of Khadse’s coat, as if the fabric were made of thick rubber.

  Khadse rolls forward, laughing, delighted with this turn of events. He presses his full advantage, slashing in, down, to the side.

  Sigrud makes an unwise play, trying to strike Khadse’s head—the only exposed area he can attack anymore—but Khadse ducks away and rakes his blade across Sigrud’s arm, slashing it open. Sigrud roars in pain, falls back, and sprints down the hallway.

  Khadse, laughing, follows. He had no idea he’d been so empowered with such protections. If he’d known this damned coat made him indestructible, he’d have killed Komayd’s guards and gutted the woman with his bare hands.

  Sigrud’s faster than he expected, fast for a big man, running ahead into the warrens of the old warehouse. Sigrud turns down a set of narrow stairs, and Khadse speeds up, trying to keep pace, intent on putting his knife into the big Dreyling’s neck one way or another.

  As he crosses the last step he feels something strange at his ankle. A resistance, somewhat, as if he caught his pant leg on something…

  His eyes widen. A tripwire?

  Then a crash, a tremendous bang, and everything goes white.

  The next thing Khadse knows he’s lying on the stairs, groaning. There’s a ringing in his ears, even louder than when the pistol went off next to his head. The world is white and bursting with black bubbles, and he can hardly think or move.

  A flash-bang. That bastard led me right into it….

  He can feel things, though, reverberations in the wooden stairs below him. He can feel a door open nearby, feel footsteps coming toward him. He tries to stab forward with the knife, but he’s so stunned he merely stumbles forward.

  Then there’s pain. A lot of it. Pain in his hands, forcing him to let go of the knife. A snap as someone stomps on his ankle, making him howl, though he can barely hear his own voice. Then he feels big hands grasp him, undo his handcuffs, and rip his coat off of him.

  There’s a voice in his ear, hot and full of rage: “Like you said, I need you alive.”

  Khadse is hauled to his feet, his broken ankle screaming. He feels himself being dangled above the ground, and is suddenly aware of how much larger Sigrud is than him, how much stronger. Khadse’s vision begins to coalesce, the bursting white bubbles fading, and he can see now: he can see Sigrud’s face just before his own, his weathered, scarred features twisted in pitiless glee.

  “How happy I am,” says Sigrud, pulling a fist back, “to finally get my hands on you.”

  * * *

  —

  After he’s done with him, Sigrud wipes sweat from his brow and leans up against the wall, still ga
sping for air. This was his first real combat in over a decade. He remembers it being a lot easier than this.

  His gaze trails over Khadse’s split lip and broken nose. Broken ankle and slashed-open hand.

  This man killed Shara, he tells himself. This man killed dozens of people just to kill Shara.

  And yet—why doesn’t he feel better about what he’s done? Why isn’t he enjoying this more?

  Remember what he took from you. Remember what you’ve lost.

  An old survival tactic, for Sigrud: to forge a compass from your sorrow, and let it lead you ahead.

  He kneels, groaning, picks up Khadse, and throws him over his shoulder. He staggers up the stairs, then winds down through the bowels of the warehouse, the air alight with the smell of coal and blood. At one point he steps through a spreading pool of blood from some corpse lying in the darkness, someone he can barely remember killing now. He makes sure to tread through a pile of coke dust to keep his footprints from being too bloody.

  He exits the warehouse and carries Khadse’s unconscious body to his stolen auto, a junky, rambling thing whose headlights keep flickering. He opens the trunk and carelessly tosses Khadse in. The man moans when he falls on the tire iron at the bottom.

  Sigrud shuts the trunk, then pauses as he climbs into the auto. He scans the wide concrete lot, listening, thinking. He’s not sure why, but he can’t help but feel someone’s just been here.

  He climbs in and starts the auto. The headlights strobe and flicker as he pulls away. He drives off in a different direction from where he came, just to be sure. As he does, the headlights slash over the reeds down by the canal.

  Sigrud stomps on the brakes. The auto screeches to a halt.

  He sits in the driver’s seat, squinting through the windshield, before slowly climbing back out. He leaves the auto running, the flickering headlights shooting over his shoulder. He walks toward the canal. The concrete crumbles to an end, replaced by muddy grass that slopes down to the thick reeds by the water. Sigrud cocks his head, examining them.

  A large patch of the reeds are bent. He looks down and sees footprints in the muddy grass. Recent ones, and quite small—though not small enough to be a child’s. Perhaps an adolescent’s.

  Someone was watching me, he thinks.

  He looks out at the canal. He suspects they’re still there, crouched in the reeds. If they wanted to attack, now would be the time—he’s winded and Khadse’s out cold. It’d be easy to take a shot from the dark. But whoever they are, they don’t make a move.

  Sigrud grunts. When he walks back to his auto, he decides to stick with his original plan—getting Khadse to his safe house—only he’ll make a few alterations to the site, just in case there are any surprises.

  A very good thing, he thinks as he opens the door to the auto, that I brought more explosives.

  Change is a slow flower to bloom. Most of us will not see its full radiance. We plant it not for ourselves, but for future generations.

  But it is worth tending to. Oh, it is so terribly worth tending to.

  —LETTER FROM FORMER PRIME MINISTER ASHARA KOMAYD TO UPPER HOUSE MINORITY LEADER TURYIN MULAGHESH, 1732

  Sigrud can tell when Khadse awakes. The man’s breathing fluctuates, very slightly. A minute later he swallows, snorts.

  Sigrud, sitting on the filthy floor, finishes stitching up the tremendous slash Khadse put in his arm. He sets the needle and thread back on the rickety wooden table, then grins at Khadse. “Good morning,” he says.

  Khadse moans. Sigrud can’t blame him. He has the man stripped to the waist and hanging from a meat hook in the ceiling, and he beat Khadse so thoroughly that the man’s face swelled up grotesquely, his cheeks and brow bulging, his lip split open, and his chin dark with blood.

  Khadse snuffles for a bit. Then he does what Sigrud expected: he starts screaming. Loud. He howls and howls, screaming for help, screaming for someone to come and save him, that he’s been locked up in here by a madman, and so on, and so on….Sigrud grimaces at the sound, wincing as Khadse sucks in breath to scream louder, until the screams finally subside.

  Silence. Nothing.

  Khadse glares at him, breathing hard. “It was worth a shot.”

  “I suppose,” says Sigrud. “You knew I would put you somewhere far from prying eyes. And ears.”

  “It was still worth a shot.”

  “If you say so.”

  Khadse glances around. They’re in a long, thin room, almost as dark and decrepit as the coal warehouse. A track of hooks hangs from the ceiling, and the concrete walls and floor bear dark stains of old blood. Sigrud’s hung oil lamps from a few of the hooks in the room, casting a dull orange light over everything.

  “Slaughterhouse, eh?” Khadse snorts, coughs, and spits out a mouthful of blood. “Cute. So I’m still on the waterfront. Probably in the same neighborhood as the warehouse….Maybe someone could come calling.”

  “Maybe,” says Sigrud. Though he’s already prepared the site against any intruders. He holds up Khadse’s coat. “What is this?”

  “A coat,” says Khadse.

  Sigrud gives him a flat stare.

  “How the hells should I know?” says Khadse. “I didn’t know it could stop bullets. If I had known that, I would’ve had a lot more fun.”

  Sigrud rips the lining out of Khadse’s coat. Inside is something remarkable. It looks like bands of black sewn into the fabric, and though the human mind and eyes insist this is impossible, they’re different shades of black. Sigrud looks at it closely, and the longer he looks at it the more he believes that the bands of black are writing, tiny snarls of intricate designs.

  “Huh,” says Khadse. “I didn’t know that was in there.”

  “This is a miracle, Khadse,” says Sigrud. “You have been wearing a miraculous item. Do you know how rare that is? There are almost none of these anymore, beyond Olvos’s. Or there should be none anymore.”

  Khadse doesn’t react.

  “But you knew that, didn’t you,” says Sigrud. “You knew it was miraculous.”

  Nothing.

  “You knew something. Where did you get this?”

  Khadse’s face goes strangely closed. Sigrud can tell he’s trying to think of a way to bargain for his life. “I’ll tell you that,” says Khadse slowly. “And then some. I have information you will find valuable.”

  “I know. I found this on your person.” Sigrud holds up the black envelope. “A list, it seems, on very curious paper. In code. Probably what this whole evening was about—yes?”

  Khadse narrows his eyes. “You have the message, maybe, sure. But I have the code.”

  “Your life for the code?”

  He nods.

  “Not a bad trade. But you were out a very long time, Khadse, and I had time enough to work at it. I guessed it was the same code as you used in your telegrams—the Bulikovian partisan code—and found I was right.”

  Khadse’s jaw flexes, but he says nothing.

  Sigrud opens the letter, and says aloud: “Bodwina Vost, Andel Dusan, Georg Bedrich, Malwina Gogacz, Leos Rehor, and”—Sigrud glances at Khadse—“Tatyana Komayd. Shara’s daughter.”

  Khadse’s growing pale now. His brow is wet with sweat as he tries to think.

  “Names. What is this, Khadse? Who are these people?”

  “How should I know?” said Khadse. “I only heard them just now. That’s how information exchanges work—one usually hands off information the other guy doesn’t know.”

  “All Continental names. Are these your next targets? Are these the next people you were to hunt down?”

  “I’ll tell you everything,” says Khadse. “If you let me go.”

  Sigrud lets the silence linger on for a long while.

  “Why did you kill Shara?” he asks softly.

  “You’re not going to like th
e answer.”

  A deadly stillness falls over Sigrud. “Tell me. Now.”

  Khadse snorts. “Same damned reason most people do things. Because I got paid to. Paid a lot. More than I’d ever been paid in the whole of my life.”

  “By who?”

  Khadse is silent.

  “I do not want to torture you, Khadse,” says Sigrud. “Well. That is not quite true. I do. But I don’t have time for such games. Yet I will make time if I must.”

  “We were both trained to withstand torture,” growls Khadse.

  “That’s true. But I spent seven years in Slondheim. And there they taught me many things about pain, things the hoods in the Ministry could never dream of. If you will not tell me, why…I could teach you what I have learned.”

  Khadse shudders. “I always hated you,” he says. “You and Komayd, dallying about on the Continent as if it were a fucking university trip. You never really served Saypur, never really valued honor, the job. You just did what you liked and played at being historians.”

  “The name,” Sigrud says, standing. “Now, Khadse.”

  “I can’t give what I don’t have!” he snarls. “The lunatic bastard went to extreme lengths not to meet me, and I him!”

  “Lunatic?” asks Sigrud. “A lunatic gave you a miraculous coat?”

  “He’s got to be,” says Khadse. “He thinks the walls have eyes, thinks the world’s out to get him, and he’s willing to pay a damned fortune for my services! More than the Ministry ever thought them worth, anyways.”

  “What were your services, Khadse, besides Shara?”

  “The…The first time he hired me to find a boy. A Continental boy, living in the city. That’s all. No murder, no tradecraft, no nothing. Just wanted me to hunt the little bastard down. Though it wasn’t easy. All he gave me was a name. But old Khadse got the job done. I found him, and that was that. He must have liked how I worked, because he kept coming back to me.”

  “Who was this boy?”

  “Some damned Continental name or another. Gregorov, I think. Sulky teenager. Adopted, apparently. Nothing special about him, I thought.”