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

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  She likes it. She likes seeing him afraid and weak. After what he did to Tavaan and the other children, this sight is maybe the one last thing she could enjoy.

  “He deserves it, doesn’t he?” she says quietly.

  “Yes,” says Alvos. “He took away my mother. He took away the love of your life. And all because he was angry and frightened. He deserves it. And we deserved none of this pain. No one in this world has deserved any of the pain that it has brought them. No one.”

  Malwina turns to look at Alvos’s outstretched hand. She is silent for a long while. Then she says softly, “I never liked being me much, anyway.”

  She takes her hand.

  * * *

  —

  Several hundred feet above Bulikov, Nokov is very aware that something is very wrong.

  For one thing, he can’t move. But it’s more than that.

  He’s powerful enough to understand that something has gone wrong with time. He keeps reliving the same split second over and over and over again, a piece of time so small that it’s almost insignificant. To the outside observer—if someone could resist these effects, that is—he would appear frozen.

  But he’s not. Nokov is powerful enough to know that—and he should be powerful enough to overcome what’s happening. He really should. Yet for some reason he can’t resist.

  I am the strongest Divinity to have ever lived, he says in vain. What is wrong? What is happening?

  And then he begins to move.

  He is pulled upward, up toward the far edge of the tower, where someone, he sees, is now walking down the stairs.

  It’s a woman. Tall and noble, bloodless and alien-looking, arrayed in…

  Moments. Seconds. Bands of fate, streams of time. From her arms hang all the tides and all the storms of all the seas, and all the dawns and sunsets; from her back there hangs a cape of all the births and all the deaths, both those that have come and those that have yet to be; and about her waist is a skirt composed of all the frantic desires that time would not pass by, the wish that all these moments, however beautiful or brutal, would persist, and linger, and continue. And at the bottom of this skirt is a broad, black hem, cutting all these wishes short.

  The woman turns to face him, and he understands she is pulling him to her.

  A familiar sensation floods Nokov’s mind: the old terror of being trapped by a very dangerous and very pitiless woman.

  He wants to say, “Who are you?” but the words will not escape his lips.

  Yet the woman responds as if she heard him. “You know me, Nokov,” she says. “You know me, son of darkness, son of night.”

  When she speaks, it’s as if he knew what she was going to say, as if she had already said it.

  “I don’t,” he tries to say. “I don’t know.”

  She pulls him closer. Her eyes are filled with dying stars.

  “You do,” she says. “I am the sea in which the night swims. I am the country in which all other Divinities frolic and play their little games. All things you do, all things you have been, they have all happened in my shadow. I am time, Nokov. I am every dawn and every dusk. And so your will and wish means nothing to me.”

  She pulls him yet closer. Her eyes are now filled with graves and forest fires and babies born bereft of breath.

  “But I am also the woman whose mother you slaughtered,” she whispers. “I am the woman whose love you devoured. You stole everything from me. You stole my brothers and sisters from me.”

  “I…I had to!” Nokov tries to say. “I had to! It wasn’t right, it wasn’t right what they did to me!”

  “But the thing I most despise about you,” says the woman, “was that you made me the thing I am now. I was happy being mortal. I was happy being in love. I was happy being small. But you have forced my hand, and made me shed all the things I love like a snake shedding its skin.”

  She draws him closer. In her eyes are all the seconds that have passed in between the stars, the limitless stretches of time that unspool in the vast abysses of the world.

  “No one saved me!” Nokov tries to scream. “No one helped me! I was alone, I was alone!”

  “I will relieve you of your burden,” says the woman. He’s now so close she can whisper into his ear. “All things end, Nokov. I have seen it. I have seen the end of everything.”

  She extends a single finger to his face.

  Nokov tries to writhe and scream and sob, but he cannot.

  “And yours,” she says, “hides behind the next second…”

  Her finger grows closer.

  “…like an insect below a stone.”

  She brushes his cheek.

  Instantly, Nokov vanishes.

  Sempros, goddess of time, stands alone upon the stairs.

  She looks around. If she wanted to she could bat away all the miracles Nokov left behind him: the walls, the stairs, the dead seneschal and its spear below. But she doesn’t.

  Because it doesn’t matter. She’s going to shut it all down.

  She closes her eyes and begins.

  * * *

  —

  In one sense, Sempros still stands upon the stairs. But in another, she expands and grows and slips behind reality, ascending it like a vast bird, until she finds the sea of moments upon which all things float, a near-limitless ocean of things that have happened, things that are happening, and things that are waiting to happen.

  Sempros stands upon the sea of time, her pale feet firm upon the gentle waves.

  She crouches. The seconds are tiny, but her eyes are sharp. She can see them all.

  She reaches out and brushes one with her finger. It unspools, unscrolls, and there is a tiny, wordless cry—a cry of pain, a cry of sorrow, a cry as this second suddenly simply never was.

  She looks up at all the other seconds. And then she starts her work.

  * * *

  —

  On the stairs above Bulikov, Sempros clenches her fists and walks across the air to float above the city—a city that both brought and lived through indescribable pain, a gorgeous capital founded upon slavery and misery, a city plunged into holocaust and bloodshed in a half-second.

  Time is frozen below her. It’s frozen everywhere, in all things. Yet she still wants them to hear her, to hear her sorrow, to hear her grievances.

  Sempros cries out, “I have been in this world since before its birth! And I will be here after it fades from this reality! And I say to you now, now at the end of all things, that this world is unjust! That it was born in chaos and inequality and pain, and every second after was shaped by that pain! And I say no more! I will not allow it to continue any longer! I will not allow this injustice anymore! I shall wipe it clean! I shall wipe it clean, wipe it away, and relieve you from this punishment that none of us deserve!”

  The world stands still below her. Bulikov stands frozen, as does Ahanashtan, and Voortyashtan, and far across the seas, even Ghaladesh. Every molecule, every atom, every speck of light and dust, all of it stands in attention as Sempros begins her terrible work, dissolving the supports upon which reality stands, dissolving reality itself. The world is her frozen audience to her first, last, and greatest act.

  * * *

  —

  Except.

  Except, except, except.

  In the streets of Bulikov, a single hand trembles.

  The hand is bruised and bloody. Its fingernails are cracked, its knuckles raw. And on its palm is a lurid scar.

  Two scales, waiting to weigh and judge.

  Sigrud je Harkvaldsson takes a rattling, painful breath.

  In his ears he hears the seas. They beckon to him, asking him to walk away from the shores of his life, and be swept away. But for some reason he just…He just…

  I told her I would stay.

  His eyelid flutters. The spear is a lu
mp of ice in his shoulder.

  I told her I would remind her of who she was.

  His left hand, still trembling, slowly rises.

  Shall I fail her as well?

  He opens his eye, focuses, and stares at his left palm and the gleaming scar upon its flesh.

  The words of Olvos echo in his ears: You defy time…

  Sigrud takes another breath. His ribs scream in pain at the effort, but he does so anyway, filling every available part of his body with air. Then he exhales, and in doing so says a single, whispered word:

  “Tatyana.”

  Sigrud grabs the spear with his left hand and begins to pull. Then he plants his feet on the ground and leans forward, pushing away from the wall.

  The agony is unlike anything he has ever known. He can feel the queer metal grinding against him, against some tendon or bone inside his body. He can feel the flow of his breath quake and shiver with each effort.

  But he keeps pushing. Until…

  With a crack, the spear is free.

  He nearly falls forward into the street, which would be disastrous, but despite the agony thrumming through his body he manages to stay upright. The spear is still lodged in him, huge and heavy, putting downward pressure on his wound.

  He stands there in the street, whimpering, quaking, the spear in his breast, his left hand gripping its shaft. His right arm, he knows, is useless. So this will not be easy.

  He takes a breath. Then he begins to pull the spear up.

  The torment is indescribable. He can feel every ripple in the shaft of the spear, every bend and buckle in its dark surface. He feels it twitch and shift, grinding his bones and tissues and muscles throughout his body.

  He screams, long and loud, a ragged scream he didn’t know he was capable of. But he keeps pulling, sliding inch after inch of the spear shaft out of his shoulder. He feels the weight of the spear change and shift, feels it bobbing as he pulls the tip close.

  He shivers, swallows, and pulls harder, until…

  His eyes streaming tears, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson slides the black blade of the spear out of his right breast. Then he collapses to the ground, vomiting blood, his right arm growing both cold and warm at once as blood leaves his body and floods out of his wound.

  He lies there on the street, coughing, his breath crackling and bubbling.

  He hears waves. He hears the ocean. And he catches the distant, salty fragrance of the sea….

  He blinks lazily. Lying here on the ground, he can see the figure above him: a woman glowing bright white like a firework, floating in the air before the stairs along the tower wall.

  His body is shuddering. Everything feels very cold now.

  Then the building on his right vanishes.

  Sigrud, trembling and faint, lifts his head to look. It’s not just that the building is gone: where it stood is now a black hole in…well, not space, but everything. It’s difficult for his mind, as fatigued as it is, to make sense of this sight.

  He slowly understands. It is not just that the building is gone. It’s that it never was. Its time in this existence has been erased.

  He looks to his left and sees Ivanya disappear as well. More and more buildings disappear behind her.

  Sigrud looks up at the bright white figure, then eyes the stairs leading up to her.

  It’s a long way. He lifts his left hand and stares at his palm. Will you keep me alive until then? Shall I persist?

  The scar says nothing, as it always has.

  Sigrud shuts his eyes. He feels colder and colder. His arms won’t stop shaking.

  I who have waited so long in the halls of death. He looks up. Yet now, of all times, I wish only for a few seconds more.

  He summons his strength, shifts his weight, and rolls over onto his face. He coughs madly, his wound bright and hot with each convulsion. Blood leaks out of his mouth and nose. His left hand flails until he manages to press it flat against the street. Then he slowly, slowly pushes himself up until he’s on his knees.

  He grasps the black spear. Then he places its butt against the street and, grunting in misery, leans against it until he lifts himself to his feet.

  He leans against the spear like a drunk against a lamppost, gasping and panting. His lungs beg for oxygen, but only one of them seems to be working properly.

  Sigrud takes a step forward. His foot holds fast.

  He chokes, spits out a mouthful of blood, and takes a breath.

  Slowly, slowly, using the big spear as a crutch, Sigrud hobbles to the foot of the giant black staircase, and begins to climb.

  Each inch is a struggle, every step a war. His breath is shallow and ragged. Each time he hauls himself up one step, he’s convinced he won’t be able to do so for the next.

  Yet he does. Leaving a trail of blood behind him, Sigrud climbs the endless staircase, lifting one foot after another.

  And as he does so, he begins to see things.

  The first is his father, sitting atop the stairs ahead, nonchalantly chewing a piece of bread and cheese, young and fresh and clear-faced—far younger than Sigrud is now. His clever eyes are bright with joy, and he looks at Sigrud and smiles. “If you want a bite of what I’m eating,” he says, “you’ll have to stand and walk to me. Come on! No crawling!”

  Sigrud walks on past his father, staggering up the stairs. He’s sure he’s hallucinating, that this is a sign of his brain failing—yet then he realizes what this was.

  My first steps, he thinks. How is it possible for me to remember this? How young was I?

  Sigrud keeps climbing.

  At the next twist of stairs, things shift, and change—and he sees Slondheim, dark and dingy and miserable, and the face of his chief tormentor, Jarvun, leering at him from rusted bars, his teeth brown as old coffee. “You’re a plum, ain’t you?” the man says, cackling. “A plum, I say. Soft, soft. Just as I likes them.”

  Sigrud staggers on. The vision fades.

  More stairs. More and more.

  Things grow soft and strange around him again—another vision.

  This one of the burned hillside where his house once sat, where he lived with Hild and raised his children. He sees, of all things, himself, young and clean and slender, kneeling in the ashy mud and weeping, holding a handful of charred bones. This younger Sigrud tips forward until his forehead touches the black, sodden earth, and he howls, a cry of unspeakable grief.

  He knows what this young man believes—that his family is dead and slaughtered, and he is too late to do anything about it. He doesn’t know that his family has been secreted away. Doesn’t know that his suicidal wrath will win him nothing but woe, and set himself upon the path that the elder Sigrud walks now, wounded and bleeding as he climbs the stairs.

  Sigrud walks past this younger version of himself and continues up the stairs.

  She’s doing something to the past, isn’t she? he realizes. Unwinding it. Destroying it. And with each stroke, the past quakes like wheat before the scythe.

  He glances to his left, out over the edge of the stairs. He’s far up now, farther than he would have ever imagined he could make it, approaching where the tips of the taller buildings would be—but many of them are gone. Much of the world below is gone, wiped away by the Divine machinations occurring above.

  He looks up at the glittering figure above him. He’s not even halfway there yet.

  Can I make it?

  Another step.

  Can I?

  Sigrud keeps climbing.

  Things flicker and change, and he sees another vision.

  Himself, asleep with Hild on some leisurely morning, his hand thoughtlessly strewn across her naked belly. He watches her sleeping, pushes one strand of hair from her face, and gently kisses her temple.

  He and Shara, setting up an antennae atop a rail yard in Ahanashtan. She, young, la
ughing, delighted in their exploits. He, grim, silent, cruel.

  He and his daughter Carin, seated on the floor of his old house, she cradling a cloth doll in her arms. He listens as she explains the doll’s complicated, heroic origins in tones of tremendous gravity.

  His father, older, graver, sadder, seated at a long table. “The high-minded rhetoric men will use,” he says, “to justify the basest of their instincts…”

  Then he sees himself, in Fort Thinadeshi in Voortyashtan, sobbing and screaming as he grabs a terrified Saypuri soldier, hurls them against a wall, and plunges his knife into their neck. Blood fans out and splashes his face, his chest, his arm. Then he drops the dying soldier and charges down the hall.

  As Sigrud staggers through this memory, his eye lingers on the dying soldier. This one a young man not yet twenty-five.

  How many years did I take from people that night? he thinks. How many years have I stolen from others throughout my life?

  He sees Olvos, standing by the fire, pointing at him and saying, “This was born in blood. It always was. It was born in conquest, born in power, born in righteous vengeance. And that is how it means to end. This is a cycle, repeating itself over and over again, just as your life repeats itself over and over again. We must break that cycle. We must. Or else we doom future generations to follow in our footsteps.”

  Sigrud walks on and on, his blood sprinkling the stairs. The ground grows smaller below him. His body is cold, faint, distant.

  I have lived as a wounded animal, he thinks, seeking to inflict my pain on the world.

  He grips the spear tight in his left hand as he hobbles up the stairs.

  I thought my pain was a power of its own, he thinks. What awful foolishness this was.

  More stairs, more and more.

  Will I let the same thing happen to Taty? Will I let her make my mistakes all over again, before my very eyes?

  Then he sees it.

  Himself, not yet seventeen. And in his arms, an infant child.

  Young, tiny, perfect, frowning in discomfort.

  This younger Sigrud lowers his head to the infant’s ear, and whispers: “Signe. That’s your name. Signe. But I wonder—who will you be?”