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

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  Then he sees it.

  Something penetrates the penumbra of darkness, only a dozen meters away now. But it’s…impossible.

  There at the edge of the light is a shadow, a shadow surely cast by two legs, walking toward him. But he cannot see anyone casting the shadow. There is the light from the lamp, and the shadow of a human figure walking toward him—but no actual human to project this shadow.

  “What in all hells,” says Sigrud.

  The footsteps stop. The shadow of the human figure stops advancing as well.

  Silence.

  Then a man’s voice, high and cold and brittle. It doesn’t seem to come from any one place—not from the shadow of the person before him, nor from the wall of darkness beyond—but rather it seems to be coming from all the shadows in the room, as if they were all vibrating at once, creating this…voice.

  The voice says: “He’s dead.”

  Sigrud glances over his shoulder at Khadse’s corpse. He says, “Uh.”

  “I know this one,” says the voice. More footsteps. The second lamp dies, and the shadow advances across the floor, swirling as the invisible person—whoever or whatever he is—walks around the final remaining lamp. “Khadse, wasn’t it? He was a good one.” The footsteps stop, and the shadow hangs on the floor in a position suggesting that the invisible person is standing directly before Khadse’s body. The voice says softly, “He did as he was told. He didn’t ask questions. I hate when they ask questions….I always feel obliged to answer them.”

  A long silence. Sigrud wonders if he should attack, or dive away, or…what. But one thing he suddenly, fiercely believes is that he should not leave the light. He’s not sure why, but he feels that if he crosses that border of shadow—which suddenly seems so firm, so very hard—then he’s not coming back out.

  “I had wished to do it myself,” says the voice with a faint tone of regret. “Not wise to have a man walking around with so many secrets in him. But oh, well….”

  More footsteps. The shadow of the human figure rotates as he circles around the lamp. The shadow falls across Khadse’s corpse….

  And then it’s gone. It’s as if the man’s passing shadow wiped Khadse’s being from existence, like a rag wiping away a spot on a windowpane.

  Sigrud glances around at the tiny island of illumination at his feet, cast by the one remaining oil lamp. Do not leave the light.

  The next thing he knows, the shadow of the figure is gone, blinking out.

  Sigrud grasps the radio transmitter at his belt with his free hand—part of the preparations he’d put together in case someone tried to ambush him. It wouldn’t do any good here, so far from the entrance, he thinks. He puts the idea aside, wondering what to do.

  Then Sigrud feels it: a sudden attention, as if all the darkness in the room is turning to look at him and examine him.

  There is a low, awful groaning in the darkness, like the sound of tall trees slowly shifting in the wind. His left hand suddenly aches, aches horribly, as if the scar there were made of molten lead.

  From what sounds like a distant corner, the voice whispers, “And who are you?”

  Sigrud lowers the pistol. He’s not quite sure what to do in such a situation—being addressed by a wall of shadow is not something he was trained for—but questions, well, those he knows how to handle.

  He instinctively resorts to the cover story that corresponds with the Papers of Transportation in his pocket. “Jenssen,” he says.

  There’s a silence.

  The voice says, puzzled, “Jenssen?”

  “Yes.”

  “And…what are you doing here, Mr. Jenssen?”

  “Looking for work,” says Sigrud determinedly. “In Ahanashtan.”

  A much, much longer silence. Then a rhythmic tapping from his right, like the twitching of a snake’s tail. And slowly, slowly, he thinks he can see light in the darkness….Tiny pinpricks of cold light, like terribly distant stars.

  “I am not sure what this means,” says the voice softly. “You are either stupid, or you are lying, which is still quite stupid.” Then, closer to him: “But you called me. You did, or he did, or both of you did.”

  Sigrud looks down. The circle of light is slowly contracting. Sigrud is reminded of a water rat being suffocated by a python.

  The voice whispers, “Are you working for them? Are you one of theirs? Tell me.”

  Sigrud doesn’t know whom the voice is referencing, but he says, “No. I am alone.”

  “Why did you kill Khadse?”

  “Because…Because he killed a friend of mine.”

  “Hmm…But it should have been quite hard, shouldn’t it? I arrayed him in protections, in defenses.” A brief, soft burst of cheeping, like crickets in a vast forest. Sigrud wonders—Where am I? Am I still even in the warehouse? Yet he sees the oil lamp still hangs above him.

  The voice continues: “You should not have been able to follow him, should not have been able to wound him. And yet I sense the protections I gave him are in your bag…”

  The circle of light contracts a little more. Sigrud’s one eye widens as he realizes what the voice is saying. Is this…this thing, he thinks, Khadse’s employer? Could this thing be…Nokov?

  “And I smell about you,” says the voice in the darkness, “my own writing, my own list, passed through my own channels. A letter. My letter.”

  Sigrud swallows.

  “You are lying to me,” says the voice. “I don’t believe you could have killed Khadse without some help. Their help.”

  “I did it alone.”

  “So you say. Yet I don’t believe you.”

  A long silence. Sigrud feels something shifting out there in the shadows, a dry rustling, a hushed shuddering.

  “Do you know who I am?” whispers the voice. The border of shadow is just inches from Sigrud’s toes now. He stands up very straight and tall, trying his hardest not to allow an elbow or knee to enter that veil of shadow. “Do you know what I can do to you?” says the voice. “You killed Khadse, certainly—but what I can do will make murder feel like a wondrous blessing.”

  A sigh beside him. The scrape and scratch of something being dragged across the concrete floor. His hand hurts so much he can’t stop making a fist.

  “Wandering forever in darkest night,” whispers the voice, now on his other side. “A vast, black plain, underneath distant stars…You’d walk and walk and walk, walking for so long, until you’d forget what your own face looked like, your own being. And only when this had happened—when you’d forgotten your own name, the very idea of yourself—would I breach your isolation, and ask you questions.”

  Something hisses before him. A chuckling sound—certainly not a sound made by a human throat—comes from behind him.

  “And you,” whispers the voice, “sobbing, would tell me.”

  The shadow inches closer. Sigrud feels like he’s standing in a tiny tube of light.

  A murmur in his ear, as if the thing in the darkness is just beside him. “Do you wish me to do this to you?”

  “No.”

  “Then tell me if…”

  The border of shadow trembles. Sigrud waits for the first blow to fall.

  Then the voice makes a noise of peculiar discomfort: “Unh.”

  Sigrud cocks an eyebrow. “Unh?”

  The circle of light at his feet expands, as if whoever—or whatever—is out there is losing their grasp on it. The voice says, “Who is…Who is doing that?” It sounds as if the speaker is suffering a terrible migraine.

  Sigrud glances around. “Doing…what?”

  The circle of light keeps expanding. And then he hears the cows.

  * * *

  —

  The world shifts, changes, contorts.

  Sigrud opens his eye all the way in total surprise.

  He’s not
sure when things changed—last he knew, mere seconds ago he was in the darkness, being threatened by that…whatever it was. But he’s sure they definitely have changed.

  Because right now Sigrud is standing in a concrete hallway, staring at a giant herd of cows, all milling around and mooing in mild discontent. Bright white sunlight is pouring over his shoulder. He looks behind him and sees what appears to be a wooden gate to a livestock yard. Obviously at some point the gate will open, and the cattle will be herded out, but for now the cattle are all stuffed together into the hallway, and they vocally don’t appreciate it.

  Sigrud, personally, does not appreciate not understanding what in the hells is going on. It feels strange to say it, but the last time he felt at all sure of his reality was when he cut Khadse’s throat. Now everything’s gone…soft.

  A woman’s voice: “Hey!”

  Sigrud turns back around. A young woman is dodging through the cattle to get to him. He finds he recognizes her: short, pale, and Continental with a strangely upturned nose….

  “You,” says Sigrud faintly. “I know you….”

  The young Continental woman dances her way past the last few cows. “What in the fuck is wrong with you?” she demands.

  Sigrud has no idea how to respond. He stares at this young woman, just five and a half feet tall, with a tremendous mane of black hair and a taut, pugnacious mouth, as if some acerbic comment is swilling around on her tongue.

  Yet there’s something off about her eyes: they’re pale and queerly colorless, as if her eyes were the color of miscolored porcelain—not quite gray, not quite blue, not quite green. He feels like her eyes were created to see something…else.

  “Did you say his name?” says the woman. “Did you say it out loud? What is wrong with you? Did you want to get everyone killed?”

  Sigrud raises a hand like a child trying to answer a question at school. “I feel I must say here,” he says, glancing at the cattle before him, “that I do not really understand what is going on.”

  “I’ll say you don’t! Did you kill the assassin? Khadse?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why?”

  “Because he killed Shara Komayd,” says Sigrud. “And I could not abide that.”

  The woman gives a long, slow sigh, as if this was the answer she expected but didn’t want to hear. “Well. Damn it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that,” she says, “was the same reason I was looking for him.”

  “What’s going on? Who are you? Where are we?”

  “The same place. The slaughterhouse. Just in a slightly earlier time, before they added onto it, so there was daylight nearby. I can get you out of here—maybe—but w—”

  “Wait a minute,” says Sigrud. “Wait. Are you saying we’re in the past?”

  “Something very akin to it, yes,” says the girl. “Far enough into it so that the past’s daylight can filter through to the present. He’s most powerful where shadows are, and though this makes him strong, it has its limitations as well. Where light is, he isn’t.”

  Sigrud tries to understand this. Then he pales, and asks a question he never expected to say in his life.

  “Are you a Divinity?” he says quietly.

  The woman laughs ruefully. “Me? No. Him, well…He’s trying his hardest. You don’t know a damn thing, do you? Don’t you know there’s a war going on? Now we have to—aagh!”

  She falls to her knees, her face twisted in pain. Sigrud looks up and sees a trembling at the walls of the slaughterhouse, and then the world seems to contract inward….

  Darkness floods in, until finally it’s like they’re not in a slaughterhouse, but rather inside a tiny bubble of light floating in a sea of shadow. Inside this bubble is a piece of the slaughterhouse—Sigrud is reminded of looking at something through a telescope, allowing in only a tiny circle of an image but excluding everything else.

  “What’s happening?” asks Sigrud.

  “I’m losing, is what’s happening,” growls the woman. “Part of us is still in the slaughterhouse, in the present, with him. He can beat on the walls of the little bubble of the past I’ve built. And he’s breaking them open.” She blows a strand of hair out of her face and sets her jaw. “Do you want to get out of here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then follow me. Closely. You slip out of the bubble, you’re gone.”

  “To what?”

  “To him. Into the night. Outside of this bubble is the present. Which is where he is. And you don’t want to be out there with him.”

  She begins to walk away, stepping through the cattle. As she does, the bubble moves with her, slipping through the darkness, as if she’s projecting it around herself. Sigrud, startled, hops to it and stays close.

  “I’ve been watching Khadse for days, even weeks,” says the girl, shaking her head. “And then you come here and shoot up the place….”

  “What do you know about Khadse and Shara?”

  She glances at him. “Oh, like I trust you. The one bellowing his name out loud.”

  “Do you mean N—”

  “Don’t! Do you want to invite him in? In here, with us?”

  Sigrud begins to understand. “No.”

  “Good! Keep your mouth shut before you cock up anything else.”

  They turn the corner and see two stairways down. One is lit with gaslight, the other is dark. “Let’s hope this one leads us out,” she mutters as they approach the lit hallway.

  A man in a bloodstained apron walks up out of the lit hallway and passes them without a word. Sigrud stares at him, bewildered. He saw these doorways not more than an hour ago, and both were almost collapsing. “Are we…Are we really in the past?”

  “Somewhat. Pieces of it, parts of it. They won’t see us. The past doesn’t change, it’s hard and durable. Makes it easy to move across, walking from second to second like a frog jumping across lily pads. Do you notice?”

  “Notice what?”

  “The bridging between the seconds?”

  “No?”

  “Then I’m doing a good job. Let’s just hope it holds long enough for us to get out….”

  They begin down the stairs. Then the borders of the bubble tremble again, and the young woman cries out and stumbles like she’s been stabbed.

  Sigrud kneels to help her up. “Again?”

  “I…I can’t keep this up,” she gasps. “I thought I could, but he’s stronger than me now. I put myself at risk, saving you. He’s killed so many of us, and now he might have me….”

  Sigrud doesn’t understand much of what’s going on, but he’s starting to understand the crude dream logic of what the girl is suggesting. “So…You mean to lead us down through a past version of the slaughterhouse…and then once we are outside, in the light, return us to the present?”

  The girl cries out again in pain, fingers to her temples. “Yes!” she cries. “Are you slow?”

  “But you won’t make it that far,” says Sigrud.

  She shakes her head, tears leaking out of her eyes. “I don’t think so.”

  Sigrud looks down at the radio transmitter hanging from his belt. “I had an exit strategy in place, in case the building was stormed…but it will do little good here.” He does some quick thinking.

  What tools could possibly be of use against that thing? What tools do we even have?

  Then he has an idea.

  “Can you at least get us to the first floor?” he asks. “Maybe close to the entrance?”

  “Maybe. Possibly.”

  “All right. Second question…” He rummages around in his pack and pulls out the pieces of engraved tin from Khadse’s shoes. “Do you know what these are?”

  Her eyes widen. “These…These are the miracles the assassin was wearing, weren’t they? They kept me from seeing him properly, from following
his movements. Sunlight on Mountain Snows…”

  Sigrud snaps his fingers. “That’s the name. I couldn’t remember. Here. Put these into your shoes. Fast. Hurry.”

  “Bu—”

  “Now.”

  She sits on the steps and does so, cringing and wincing as if hearing a painful noise in her ears.

  “Good,” says Sigrud. “Now. Third question. Whatever it is that, uh, you are—can you be harmed by an explosion?”

  She stares at him. “What?”

  “I will take that,” he says, “as a yes.”

  * * *

  —

  By the time they get to the bottom of the stairs it’s become so bad the girl can barely walk. Sigrud has to nearly carry her. “This is bad,” she says, woozy. “I’m not sure if I’ll even be able to run away.”

  “You’re going to have to,” says Sigrud. “Just get us close to the door. Then we light the matches, and then you let the bubble fall—put us back in the present, I mean…”

  “Yes, yes! I understand that!”

  “Good. Then, after that, you move.”

  They limp through the lower warrens of the slaughterhouse, some kind of packing and loading area, where trucks and carts once arrived and departed. The border of the bubble quivers and rattles, as if someone on the outside is beating on it, and each time the girl moans a little more.

  “Who are you?” asks Sigrud. “Are you a friend of Shara’s? Of Komayd?”

  The girl is silent.

  “Are you…M? From Shara’s letter?”

  She laughs morosely. “Aren’t you a clever one. Listen, killer—you are a tiny fish in a very big pond. Odds are if you survive today—which I think unlikely, frankly—then you’ll just be caught next week, or next month, or maybe tomorrow night. And when he catches you, he’ll pull out every secret you’ve got hidden away in your guts. I don’t intend for any of my own to be in there.”

  “And if I do survive?”

  “If you survive, and I see you again…Maybe I’ll reconsider.” She eyes him suspiciously. “Maybe.”

  They’re near the entrance to the slaughterhouse now. Sigrud gently sets her down. Their little bubble of the past is shaking quite hard now, like gates splintering before a battering ram. “Hurry,” she whispers. “Please hurry…”