As he approaches, a face comes into view: a middle-aged Saypuri woman with curiously amber eyes. She smiles at him, an expression that’s a mixture of pity and mockery.
He looks at the mirror. The Frost of Bolshoni, he thinks. The very miracle Shara and Vinya used so often…
“You know what this is, don’t you?” says the woman. Her Saypuri accent is guttural, unrefined, from some rural area like Tohmay. She wears a thick coat and scarf. “You’ve seen this before.”
He steps forward, putting his face right up to the mirror, peering in at her room.
“Are you so taken with me?” she says, smirking. “If so, you’re terribly forward, sir.”
He ignores her, craning his head up and looking inside the reflection, taking in the desk beneath the mirror…and the walls on either side, which are also covered in mirrors. His eye widens: the mirrors are all depicting things happening throughout Saypur and the Continent, places like the prime minister’s mansion and the Bulikovian Chamber for the City Fathers.
They’ve been performing the Frost on a level I’ve never seen before, he thinks. A window in every important room in Saypur, or the Continent…
The woman is startled by this—she obviously didn’t expect him to take advantage of the two-way connection—and pulls the mirror off the wall. “Now, now,” she says. “Let’s not get nosy.” He watches, feeling slightly nauseous, as the view pivots wildly. She walks with the mirror to a darkened room.
He can glimpse the ceiling as she does so—he notes the oak, the limestone, the blooming patches of mold.
“I know you, don’t I?” says the woman. “Yes…I saw you in Voortyashtan, ages ago. You’re the dauvkind, aren’t you? You’re the gutless Dreyling son of a bitch who killed those soldiers.” She laughs again, but there’s a touch of anger to it. “I usually enjoy my work, but I’ll enjoy seeing you dead a little more than usua—”
“Ahanashtan,” he says.
“Mm? What’s that?”
“You’re in Ahanashtan,” he says.
“Oh? And what makes you so sure?”
“The limestone,” says Sigrud. “And the red oak. Both common there. And your scarf. Still quite warm in Saypur. And you’re not Ministry, are you.”
She smirks. “What makes you say that?”
“Because if you were,” says Sigrud, “you’d have signaled to your operators working outside, and I would be dead.”
“Oh, that’s a good point. But you’re still dead.”
Sigrud looks at the windows. No movement. He gives the woman a cocked eyebrow.
“You can’t run from him,” she says. “He’s everywhere. He’s in everything. Wherever there’s darkness, wherever light doesn’t reach…That’s where he is.”
“Then why isn’t he here?” asks Sigrud. “The shadows are thick. Where is your master’s whisper?”
Then he hears it: the distant, throaty boom of what he’s sure is a scatter-gun.
Sigrud looks toward the front door, concerned.
The woman laughs. “There,” she says. “That’s where it is!”
Sigrud thinks rapidly. Ministry operators don’t use scatter-guns. There’s another deep boom. It’s from the north, he thinks, toward the estate gates. So whoever’s out there isn’t Ministry….So who are they shooting at?
The woman grins at him. “See?” she says. “I told you you were dead.”
Sigrud smashes the mirror with one fist. Then he runs back to the glass doors before the patio. He crouches, peering out, and then he hears it: the harsh pop-pop of small-arms fire, south of the estate.
“They’re all around me, aren’t they?” he says. “She was stalling me.”
He rubs his chin, wondering what in the hells to do. She must have seen him enter the mansion, then alerted a team to his location. How many, he says, I don’t know…But enough to take on four or five Ministry operatives placed all around the estate walls. And all he has is a waterproof torch and a knife.
He looks around the room, which is totally empty, trying to think of ways he could use the windows, the doors, the drapes, the lamps…
He stares at one gold sconce. The gas lamps.
He thinks about it. It’s an idea, certainly, but…
Just once, he thinks, I would like to think of a solution that does not involve me nearly blowing myself up.
He runs downstairs. Not much time now. The estate is big, so it’ll take time for his assailants to cross to the main house, but he probably has only a handful of minutes.
He sprints down the servants’ quarters to Shara’s kitchen. He grabs the bottles of plum and apple liquor, about ten of them, and tosses them into the oven. Then he shuts the oven and turns the dial up to high. He hears the little gas jets inside flick on and hiss.
This is a stupid idea, he thinks. But he doesn’t stop.
He sprints through the servants’ quarters, turning all the gas lamps up as high as they go but not lighting them. Instead they just keep hissing, filling the hallway with a reeking stench, the air trembling as the fumes keep pouring in.
They’ll have the doors watched, he thinks. And the windows. So how to get outside?
He runs upstairs and turns on all the gas lamps in the entry hall. Then, remembering the layout of the estate—It’s got a second floor, he remembers, with wooden walls—he runs down the main hallway, finds a grand, twisting staircase up, and runs upstairs.
He runs east, away from the servants’ quarters, sprinting past grand bedrooms and salons, all empty. He pauses at one room and creeps over to the window. He braces himself, then peeks out.
He can see the long gravel driveway stretching north to the gates. There are figures walking down the lawn toward the house in a broad formation, sweeping the grounds.
He narrows his eye, trying to see how they’re armed, when there’s a sudden crack! noise.
The glass just above his head explodes. Something cracks into the wooden wall behind him. Sigrud, startled, jumps away, then covers his head as more bullets come cracking through the window, chewing up the frame and the far wall.
Sigrud crawls toward the door, then rolls into the hallway, breathing hard. Okay, he thinks. So. They are pretty good.
But that should draw them into the house. They’ll think he’s cornered upstairs now.
He keeps running east down the hall, though now he makes sure to stay clear of the windows. He slaps his head, trying to remember how close the stream came to the house. When he comes to the far bedroom he drops to all fours and crawls across the floor until he’s clear of the window.
He stands when he gets to the bedroom wall, tapping it as he walks its length, listening. There was a tree out there, he thinks. Out there somewhere close…At least, I’m pretty sure there was a tree, and the stream beside it. If he’s wrong, then this will go quite spectacularly bad.
Finally he knocks on the wall and hears a hollow thump. He nods—sweat pours off his nose with the motion—and he pulls out his knife. Then he begins stabbing at the wood and plaster in a messy line, a drunken, perforated seam. He almost laughs with relief when he sees moonlight shining through the holes.
A crash from downstairs. The chatter of gunfire. Clearing the room, he thinks. Just in case I was hiding behind the door.
Once he’s stabbed a wide, messy circle in the wall, he sheathes his knife, steps back, takes a deep breath, and runs at it.
He lowers his shoulder, pushes forward, and…
Crunch.
The wall falls away like a trapdoor. The next thing he knows he’s tumbling through the night air, then through leaves. Then he’s stopped sharply by a tree branch, which crashes into his left side very, very painfully. He almost cries out, but he keeps his senses. He’s dangling in the air, exposed to everyone, and he needs to get to the stream below.
They must have heard the sound, h
e thinks. They had to have. Hurry. Hurry…
Groaning with pain, Sigrud drops from branch to branch, trying to descend in a controlled plummet. His side complains each time—probably a cracked rib, but there’s no time for that. He can hear someone shouting on the west side of the grounds, and then gunfire, and something hot and angry parts the air above him…
He hits the ground and rolls.
Run. Run.
He sprints for the stream and dives into it. As he dives he sees there was someone guarding it—They must have known I came from the stream, he thinks as he falls—and watches out of the side of his eye as they raise a rifling…
He plunges deep down into the stream, trying to hug the walls. Soft pops from above. Bullets zip through the moonlit waters, leaving tiny, delicate chains of bubbles.
Sigrud curls into a ball and tries to stuff himself up under a tree root. His side is screaming and his lungs are bursting, as he didn’t take nearly as deep a breath as he should have.
More bullets zip through the waters, curving down in strangely graceful motions. Sigrud waits.
Did my trap work? he thinks. Did it fizzle out or will i—
Then the world above goes bright.
Everything seems to shake. The tree above groans, twists, sags, and Sigrud suddenly wonders if it was wise to take shelter under the root of a tree directly beside a building he was intending to blow up.
He shoves himself out, swimming away. The water fills with silt and soil. The explosion, impossibly, keeps going on, a never-ending roar and a bright orange light filtering through the cloudy water. The surface above sizzles as flaming detritus patters across the stream.
I need air, he thinks, growing faint. Only I hope there is air up there for me to breathe….
He waits. And waits. And waits.
Finally the roar seems to subside, and he swims up to the surface and hauls himself to the shore.
The world is bright and broiling. He draws a deep, gasping breath, and his ribs painfully creak with the inhalation. His breath catches and he starts coughing, which only hurts him worse.
He blinks and looks behind him. The house is a raging inferno. Steam is suddenly pouring off of his arms and legs as the heat boils the moisture out of his clothing.
Sigrud glances around with watering eyes and sees a smoking human form lying about fifteen feet from the stream. He staggers over to it—it’s a woman, very dead—and pulls the rifling from her hands. He hopes it’s still in working condition.
He looks around at the wreckage but can’t see anyone. Better to find out now, he thinks, rather than later. He confirms the rifling’s loaded, figures that the sound of the fire is loud enough to muffle any gunshot, and points the rifling at the water and pulls the trigger.
The rifling jumps in his hands and discharges neatly and cleanly. He reloads, sinks low, and looks back down the river, toward the wall. Most of the gardens are on fire and some of the smaller trees have collapsed into the water, so he doubts if he can go out the way he came in. He hugs the estate wall and makes his way north toward the front gates, where he knows the mercenaries likely wiped out the Ministry operatives—hopefully leaving the way clear.
Once he’s a little north of the house he stoops beside a hedge—which is flaming like a torch—and surveys his work. If it were any other structure, any other place, he’d take a professional pleasure in its utter destruction; but this was Shara’s ancestral home, the place where she raised her child.
He watches as the western roof collapses with a crunch. “I am sorry, Shara,” he whispers.
He approaches the gate, one half of which hangs open. He can see the Ministry auto beyond, riddled with bullet holes, three human forms slumped over in the seats. The ground around the gate is curiously dark—it’s like someone laid mulch while the mercenaries approached—but besides that he can’t see anyone.
He stoops down beside a large stone and sets the rifling’s sights on the gate. Then he lets out a loud groan and calls out, using a rough approximation of a Saypuri accent: “Are you there? We’re hurt! He’s dead, but we’re hurt!”
Nothing.
Sigrud cries, “Please! Please!”
Still nothing for a bit.
Then a man’s head pokes around the corner.
Sigrud puts his finger on the trigger and fires. There’s a spray of blood and the man falls to the ground.
He waits for a good five minutes, not moving a muscle. There’s silence except for the roaring fire behind him. Then he stands, sweeps to the left, crossing before the half-open gate and scanning the drive out front for any movement.
He knows he’ll be vulnerable as he exits, if there’s anyone left out there—which he doubts, but you can never be sure. Slip through the gate, he thinks, take cover next to the guard’s corpse, and watch for any other assailants.
He creeps up, walking along the wall toward the open gate. He keeps his rifling trained on the husk of an auto, which is where he’d be hunkered down if it were him out there.
He creeps forward, taking one step, then another, then another…Then finally he wheels out, rifling ready—only to find the driveway empty, the scene totally still. Just corpses in the auto, and nothing else.
But then he realizes something. The intense blaze from the burning home has been so consistent he’s almost stopped noticing it for the past ten minutes. Yet now as he crosses the gate, the heat fades behind him, the stupefying, broiling warmth abruptly dwindling as if a giant had come along and blown out the fire much as one would a candle flame.
Sigrud pauses. He stays close to the gate. Then he looks behind him.
The fire is gone. No, more than that—the house is gone. The landscape of the estate has faded into darkness behind him, like a cloud passed before the moon and darkened out all light above.
No, it’s even more than that: the world simply stops thirty feet south of where he stands.
Sigrud whirls around, wondering what in hells is going on now, and tries to seek shelter against the wall—but the wall isn’t there. There’s nothing around him but darkness—except for the gates, bizarrely enough. The gates appear to hang on nothing, big rib cages of iron dangling in the air, one half in an open position, the other half closed. There’s nothing beyond them. Just a wall of black.
Then the closed half of the gate opens, its hinges whining softly, as if pushed from behind.
Sigrud whips the rifling up. He keeps it trained on the entryway, unsure what to look for.
Then he sees them. Eyes in the darkness. Eyes like those of a cat, just barely caught by the light. Or perhaps they’re like tiny, distant white stars….
He fires. He fires the rifling at the eyes once, twice, three times, four, five….Then he stops, conscious of his ammunition.
He waits.
The eyes blink, very slowly. Then they begin to advance, one step at a time.
And as they approach they seem to pass some kind of barrier, and a face appears around the eyes: a young man’s face, pale and starved, with ink-black hair and a skinny neck. At first it seems like the young man’s head is hanging in the air just as the iron gates are, but then Sigrud sees that he’s wearing what appear to be black robes, which ripple despite the lack of any wind. And as the young man approaches, Sigrud begins hearing many strange things….
Chirrups and distant rustlings and a curious, arrhythmic tap-tapping. Small stones falling down a slope; the shiver of leaves; the groan of trees; the slow drip of water. Sigrud suppresses a shiver as he hears them: they make him feel like he’s alone in the woods at night, listening to countless invisible watchers circling him.
A thought strikes him as he realizes this.
Circling me…
He looks down. The gates are not quite the only thing persisting in this vast darkness: there’s a wide patch of earth at his feet, the mulch he saw earlier.
“Continental soil,” says the young man, and his high, cold voice is instantly familiar to Sigrud. “It helps me assert myself across the South Seas, you see.”
Sigrud looks at him. “Nokov.”
The young man smiles slightly and nods. “Few would dare to say that word aloud. Were I not here already with you…”
Sigrud smiles back. Then he starts shooting again.
* * *
—
There are only two rounds left in the rifling. They don’t seem to do anything to Nokov: it’s like Sigrud’s firing blanks, or like the bullets vanish the instant they leave the barrel.
Sigrud looks at the empty rifling, grimaces, and hurls it at Nokov. The rifling passes right through him like he’s made of smoke.
Nokov blinks, slightly perturbed. “That was not really necessary.”
Sigrud ignores him, pulls out his knife with his right hand, and lunges at Nokov, slashing and stabbing at the boy. Nokov frowns—again, an expression of the slightest inconvenience—and seems to flicker away each time, evaporating before the blade even comes close to him.
Despite this, Sigrud doesn’t give up. He’s killed Divine creatures with this blade before, so he’s determined to at least try again. Panting and wincing as his ribs creak, he dives at Nokov over and over again.
Finally Nokov sighs. “Enough,” he says.
A frail, white hand flicks out. His knuckles graze Sigrud’s cheek….
It’s like he’s been hit by a stack of bricks plummeting out of the sky. Sigrud crashes to the muddy soil below him, his damaged side shrieking in pain. His knife falls from his grasp and all the air is driven from his body. He tries to roll over but he doesn’t even have the strength for it.
“This is my place,” says Nokov calmly. “You can’t harm me here. You can’t escape from me here. I can do whatever I’d like to you.”
Nokov stoops and grasps Sigrud under his jaw. Though Nokov appears to be a young man just barely out of adolescence, he lifts all two hundred and seventy pounds of Sigrud like he’s no more than a child’s stuffed animal. He slaps at Nokov’s wrist with his right hand, but his fingers pass right through as if the boy’s limb isn’t even there. His ribs on his left side yammer and yowl as he’s lifted up, and he’s forced to keep his left arm awkwardly pinned to his torso, which twists him and makes him gag in Nokov’s grasp.
The Divine Cities Trilogy: City of Stairs, City of Blades, and City of Miracles, With an Excerpt From Foundryside Page 116