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

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  They sit in silence for a moment, watching the waves churn and roil under the overcast skies.

  “He got the worst of it,” says Malwina. “Our…enemy. I don’t like him. I hate him. But he had worse luck than we did.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “At first, the same thing that happened to all of us who are awake now,” she says. “An accident. A family, tragically lost. A child awoken. But then he…did something unwise. When he was in yet another orphanage, he did…shadow tricks. Someone noticed. And word got through to the Ministry. And then on to old Vinya Komayd.”

  “How did she trap him?”

  She shrugs. “She was a brilliant old bitch. She must have duped him somehow. She came to him, maybe threatened to do to him what the Kaj had done to everyone else. He was still traumatized, having just lost his adopted parents. He probably didn’t know which way was up. She put him on a boat, drove him far out here where he’s away from the land that powers him, from those that believe in him, shape and influence him—and that made him weak.”

  “Then she put Kolkan’s sigil atop him,” says Sigrud. “And that made him still weaker.”

  “Yes. And then she interrogated and tortured him. Day and night. Hit him with lights. He hates those, being what he is.”

  “And when Shara killed Kolkan, and Jukov…That’s when this happened, isn’t it?” He waves at the Salim. “That’s when what was trapped here escaped. Because the protections faded.”

  “Yes. Kolkan’s sigil, which had suppressed the power of the night for so long…When Kolkan died, the sigil lost all meaning, all influence, just like everything else Kolkan had made. And the boy trapped here was free to go. Though he is not a boy any longer.”

  “Why?” asks Sigrud. “Why do this to him? Why meddle in such things?”

  Malwina looks at him, smirking. “Ah, sir. What is the one thing Saypur fears more than anything?”

  “The Divine, of course.”

  “Yes. Against which the Saypuris have no defense. Back then the Kaj’s black lead was still lost, remember. And what’s the only thing anyone had any historical record of that could stop a god?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing, I thought. Except…another god?” He looks at her, astonished. “Wait. You are saying Vinya Komayd wanted to make her own god?”

  “Rules of warfare,” says Malwina grimly. “Always escalate. If your opponent has a weapon or technology beyond you, do everything you can to develop one of your own.”

  “But…But how could that have worked?”

  “Well, she wasn’t sure, but she was game to try. She had a child Divinity on her hands. Maybe she wanted to torture him, break his mind, reprogram him. And she was willing to break a lot of rules to do more research. Anything that might give her a clue as to how to remake him.” Malwina glances sideways at Sigrud. “And she’d look anywhere for ideas. Open up any door, any crypt, any warehouse, no matter how old or cursed or unmentionable it was….”

  Sigrud sits in silence for a while. Then his mouth opens. “Wait…Are you trying to tell me that…that that was the true reason Vinya Komayd sent Efrem Pangyui to Bulikov so many years ago? To try to find a way to take that child and make him into a god of Saypur?”

  “I think so, yes,” says Malwina. “Wouldn’t you? She wanted to find out more about the origins of the Divinities. She told the world it was a mission of understanding, a way for these two nations to bridge the gap. Then she told the Ministry and those in power that Pangyui’s mission was a secret, preventative measure, meant to keep another god from developing. But she really just wanted to know how the Divinities worked. Like a science student trying to open up a monkey. Maybe Pangyui would find some musty old tome that would tell her how to take that boy apart.” Malwina grins cruelly. “But then Efrem discovers the wrong secret. He finds out something nasty about Vinya Komayd’s family. She has him murdered to keep his mouth shut. This makes little Shara Komayd go to Bulikov and start sniffing around….And you know the rest.”

  “Shara discovers that Jukov and Kolkan are still alive,” says Sigrud. “She kills them in the Battle of Bulikov. She learns a secret that can depose Vinya. And by killing Kolkan, she accidentally frees the boy trapped here.”

  “You ever wonder why Vinya Komayd gave up power so easy?” asks Malwina. “Maybe Shara did a good job of threatening her, sure. Or maybe Vinya got a report that the SS Salim had been torn apart from the inside out, and whatever was being held there had not only killed a couple hundred soldiers with his bare hands, but he’s now free to walk the world. Maybe Vinya knew that something extremely powerful now had a damned good reason to kill her very nastily. And maybe she didn’t want to stay so public anymore. Maybe that’s why she went into hiding. And then, in 1722…he catches up to her.”

  He sits up. “Are you really telling me that N—”

  She whirls on him, terrified.

  Sigrud freezes, slaps himself in the face, and holds his hands up. “Sorry, sorry. I was not thinking.”

  Malwina lets out a sigh. “Okay…Just…Just watch it, all right?”

  “All right. You are saying that this boy killed Vinya Komayd?”

  “I am.”

  “How? She died in Saypur! Naturally too. I thought the boy had no power on foreign soil. He had to have someone spread Continental soil on the ground in Ghaladesh in order to manifest and attack me.”

  She looks at him quizzically. “Wait. What? When did this happen?”

  “I will tell you later. Just…Vinya. How did he do it?”

  “Well…He is night, you know? All shadows are one to him. In his mind, they all interconnect.” She draws a line in the sand with her finger, then makes three other lines, forming a box. “And where do people like to keep their wealth? Why, in cupboards. In closets. In drawers. Big, thick ones. In the dark, in other words. Places where he can access it.”

  “So…he just paid people? He stole money and contracted out the work?”

  “He has the entire Continent’s fortunes at his disposal. All of them. You were in the intelligence game. Sometimes that’s all it takes, right?”

  “Everyone has their price, I suppose….”

  “After decades of war, the Continent is awash with old spies,” says Malwina. “Old murderers, old contractors, old crooks. Like you. Pay a dozen of them a boatload of someone else’s money and tell them you want Vinya Komayd dead, just make it look all natural-like so no one gets suspicious. One of them is bound to succeed, given the odds. I’m surprised it took as long as it did.”

  “Then years later, Shara catches wind of Operation Rebirth and finds out about this ship. She goes hunting for the Divine children, then found you and recruited you. Is that right? You and she worked against the night, in this war?”

  “War?” says Malwina. “You think Shara was leading us in the war? No. No, no. She was protecting us. She just wanted to keep us safe, not send us to war against him.” She bows her head. “She was our mother, in a way. Our last mother. But now she’s gone. And now there’s a war.”

  “How many of you are there?”

  She hugs her knees to her chest and rests her chin on their tops. Then she says in a very small voice, “Far less than there used to be.”

  “Where are the survivors?”

  She shakes her head, as if she cannot or will not speak of such things, and stands and walks back along the beach.

  * * *

  —

  They trudge back toward the Salim. It’s getting late, and fog is creeping up the island’s banks. Malwina walks with her hands stuffed in her pockets and her chin pulled low in the green scarf around her neck. Sigrud is reminded of an old man reviewing all his grudges and failures on a long evening walk.

  “The Continent has seen decades of death,” Sigrud says. “Decades of warfare and slaughter. It’s getting rarer, sure, but…Bulikov,
and Voortyashtan…Thousands of people died.”

  “Yes.”

  “So dozens are awake,” he says. “Dozens of Divine children remember, after violence robbed them of their parents, making them re-experience this trauma.”

  She turns on him, eyes blazing with fury. “Maybe. However many there were, there are a lot less now. He’s killing us, you see. Brutally. Horribly. He eats us up, like a shark swimming in the depths of the sea. He has to make us remember that we’re Divine first, otherwise he gains nothing, but that’s not hard for him to do. Kill a family, wait for the child to remember, then pounce. He devours us, takes us into the depths of the night, into himself, where we can’t ever escape. And then we’re gone. Forever. The only thing that can kill the Divine is the Divine, Sigrud. And he’s gotten very good at it. Each time he gets a little stronger and a little better. Whatever power we have over reality, he takes it and adds it to his own.”

  “That’s why he does this? Just to grow stronger?”

  “What’s better than being a Divinity?” says Malwina. “Being the only Divinity. Without a check against your power, you could do…anything. Anything at all. Bend the world around your finger, or make it disappear with but a thought. He began as the first night—but gods change. If he succeeds, and grows strong enough, then he will be the last night. And all of reality will be a plaything to him.”

  “That…” Sigrud pauses. “Actually, that makes sense. The second time I saw him he said that he wished to kill a god. That all that he did was but a means to that one end.”

  “Like, a true Divinity?” she says. “So, since there’s only one left…He must mean Olvos.”

  “That was my conclusion as well.”

  “How the hells could he do that? None of the rest of us could even find Olvos, and we tried damned hard to do it! She’s walled herself off from the world. She could crush him if she wanted to!”

  “I’m not sure why. But I read something in Shara’s home…” He walks ahead, stopping her, so she has to face him. “There was once a Divine child that even the Divinities themselves feared, for its domain was too large and too vast. Big enough to challenge even them. So they mutilated this child, crippled it. I think the boy was this child. And this might be why he hates Olvos especially. She must have been one of the ones that did this to him.”

  Malwina shakes her head. “I’ve never heard that story. It sounds like bullshit to me.”

  “Shara never mentioned it?”

  “Never. And I’ve been awake enough that I remember a lot of the old days. I don’t remember that story from them either.”

  “You remember the Divine days?”

  She nods, eyes hard and thin.

  “What were they like?”

  She smiles humorlessly. “Better than this.”

  “Who from those old days have survived so far?”

  “Very few.” She spits into the dune grasses. “Listen, Mr. Sigrud, there are some things I can’t talk to you about. Not because I won’t, but because I can’t. I am miraculously prevented from doing so. I can’t say those certain things unless I’m in a certain place—and we are not in that place now. It’s a safety protocol, you see. It’s the only way to be sure, with him out there.”

  “Would Shara’s operations be one such thing?”

  Malwina is silent.

  “The number of Divine children, as well?”

  Still silence.

  “And the place where you are hiding all these children away—that too?”

  She looks away, off into the seas.

  “One last thing,” says Sigrud. “Do you know of Tatyana Komayd?”

  “What, Shara’s daughter? Yeah, I know about her. Who doesn’t? Why?”

  “Do you think that…that she could be one such Divine child?”

  She stares at Sigrud, bug-eyed. “What! No! Shara and I worked our asses off to track down the others; she would have told me if she had one right under her nose!”

  “Have you ever seen Tatyana Komayd?” he asks.

  “No. Why?”

  “I was just with her. You and she…Well. I find you look very alike.”

  Malwina laughs. “You’re out of your depth,” she says. “I know my siblings. I know who they are, what they are, what they look like. She isn’t one of them.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m positive,” she says. “Besides, if she was a Divine child, wouldn’t she have awoken and remembered who she was after her mother died?”

  “I suppose,” says Sigrud. “But that might have been why Rahul Khadse chose to kill Shara in such a public fashion. Rather than cutting her throat, he did something splashy, something that would be noticed.”

  “So?”

  “So, since the boy thought Tatyana was Divine, such a public murder would have been a good way to make sure the news got to her, and that it would be as devastating and traumatic as possible. Enough to break the miracle holding back her memories.”

  “What makes you think the boy thought Tatyana was Divine?” asks Malwina.

  “Well, he told me so.”

  She gapes at him. “W-What! When? Do you just have chats with him over tea?”

  Sigrud relates what happened to him at Shara’s estate. As he talks, Malwina’s mouth opens in horror.

  “So, wait,” she says. She holds up her hands. “You…You fell into his domain?”

  “I suppose so? He did not exactly give me a tour.”

  “But…Even I can’t go there. That’s the place where he is, a place that is him. Do you understand?”

  “Not at all.”

  She looks him over, her face twisted in suspicion and no small amount of revulsion. “How did you survive? How did you live?”

  “I almost didn’t,” says Sigrud. “I very nearly died. It was like a fever….”

  “Like a fever!” she says, incredulous. “You should have died instantaneously, not gotten the sniffles! You are a damned odd bird, sir. I don’t like it. You resist what I do to the past, you manage to injure our enemy, and then you survive a trip through his damned domain. Have you done anything else strange?”

  Sigrud remembers Urav, coiling and whipping through the dark waters of the Solda—how the beast swallowed him, yet could not consume him, not truly. He thinks of his own face—queerly unaged after all these years.

  “Yes,” he says quietly.

  “Anything I need to be worried about?”

  He thinks for a long time. “I don’t know.”

  She looks at him hard. “I want you to know—I’ll kill you if I have to. I know you were close to Komayd, but if you threaten what we’re doing here, I—”

  “I understand,” says Sigrud. “And I hope it will not be so.”

  Malwina rubs her lips with one knuckle, a nervous tic. “You said you have Komayd’s daughter?”

  “Yes. In Dhorenave, with Ivanya Restroyka.”

  She gasps. “She’s still there? I thought you would have had the mind to move her by now! Our enemy can bypass all of our defenses, it’s unbelievable he hasn’t gotten to her already!”

  “Move her where?” asks Sigrud. “I knew nothing about what was going on. Where is a safe place for us?”

  “Bulikov,” says Malwina instantly. “Get her to Bulikov. As quickly as you can. If you think our enemy’s looking for her, that’s where you need to take her. That’s where we’re strongest. I wish you’d come here a few days ago; we could have taken care of you quickly then….But you didn’t. So you have to get there within a week. Do you hear me?”

  “Why a week?”

  “Our movements are carefully controlled. It’s like a high-security bank vault: it doesn’t open when you want it to, it opens on a schedule. That way no one can manipulate it.”

  “What is this it?”

  She shakes her head. “I
can’t tell you that. I can’t tell you what it is unless I’m in it. And the only way you can get in it is if you’re there at the right time.”

  “But…it will take me a week alone to sail back,” says Sigrud.

  “Shit,” she says. “You’re sure?”

  “At least that, if the weather is forgiving.”

  “Damn it all. Then you can’t get there in time. How in the hells are we going to get around this?” She grunts. “Here. Let me think real quick.”

  She steps back and looks away. Her eyes appear to grow faintly silver, as if a dense fog is rubbing itself along their backsides, inside her skull. It’s an incredibly disturbing sight. “When did you leave Dhorenave?” she asks.

  “Nine days ago.” He cringes. “What are you…doing?”

  “Looking at the past. So that would be…Ah. Huh. All right.” She blinks and the fog drains from her eyes. She takes a deep breath with the air of someone about to try to jump over a wide gorge. “Okay. I am about to try something, ah—how should I put this?—completely crazy.”

  “All…right?”

  “You survived me sending you back, what, two or three hours?” she says. “You kept all your memories. That should be wildly impossible. I mean, it’s an offense to me, personally, that you can do that.”

  “I apologize.”

  “Shut up,” says Malwina. “But…I mean, if you can do it with a two-hour jump, then…why not a nine-day one?”

  Sigrud frowns for a moment, then stares at her when he realizes what she’s intending. “You mean to…to send me back through time?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Basically.”

  “To before I ever left to come here?”

  “Yes.”

  “But then…will what just happened now…will that have happened?”

  She seesaws a hand in the air. “Ehh. Kind of. It gets squishy. We’re basically manipulating a loophole in the rules here, one that only affects your time. I can see how it all adds up, and I’ll retain these memories, but explaining it to you…I mean, it’s not like you’ve understood anything else I’ve said when I’ve talked about this, right? The main thing here is that there’s a previous instance where we can receive you in Bulikov—but it’ll be four days ago, meaning five days from when I send you back. Five days to get to Bulikov—do you hear me?”