* * *
—
In Jukoshtan, a man who can sing songs that send listeners into a delirious, joyous daze travels through the outskirts of the city, sending audiences into rapturous, joyful trances—for a fee, of course. It won’t be until just after he’s gone that people begin to notice the sharp uptick in teenage pregnancies—pregnancies originating in sex that the girls cannot remember, and certainly didn’t consent to.
Within days, a bounty will be put on the musician’s head. But this will do little to stem the outrage, the shame, or the grief over the eventual suicides.
* * *
—
In Bulikov, a woman opens a sidewalk business: she sits in a chair beside a nondescript door, and over the door hangs a sign reading, ANYWHERE—FIFTY DREKELS. Curious people ask exactly what this means, and she simply says, “Anywhere. I can take you anywhere.” They soon find out she’s right: for fifty drekels, the woman will open the door on a desert island, the top of a mountain, or someone’s mansion.
By evening the queue for her business stretches all the way through Bulikov.
By morning a railroad company puts a price on her head. But any would-be assassins will find it’s very difficult to catch a woman who can open doors to anywhere.
More and more. More and more miracles.
More and more changes, more and more and more.
* * *
—
In Tohmay, in Saypur, there is talk and mutterings of a militia, or even an army. Some of these talents, it’s clear, are more aggressive and harmful than others. “Round them up,” one belligerent minister says, “start drilling them, and prepare for what’s coming. It’s going to be war now, got to be, war between us and whoever gets their troops ready first. If men can do anything, anything in the world, they’ll do war first, and we’d be fools not to strike hard and fast.”
In Ghaladesh, Minister Turyin Mulaghesh ignores these mutterings of war, and instead stays awake for four straight days, barking orders, answering messages, and planning with her own personal cabinet. “They may be miraculous,” she says to her employees, “but they are still citizens, and we will treat them justly.” She notices one skeptical glance, and snaps, “This changes nothing. They will still act like people, for better or for worse. And we shall be there to watch them.” Her employees and representatives salute her and scurry to work, making phone calls, running off to police stations.
On the dawn of the fifth day she stares out her office window at the Ghaladeshi skyscape, chewing an unlit cigarillo. They haven’t figured out a name for her yet, not who she is or what department she’s running, but she has to admit—it feels damned nice to be back in charge.
* * *
—
And on the outskirts of Ghaladesh, a curious procession is taking place: Saypuris slowly gather at the Saypuri National Memorial Grounds, where the remains of Saypur’s most honored heroes are interred. The dozens of people wind through the paths until they come to the Komayd section, where one monument is still fresh and new—a recent addition.
The Saypuris stare at the memorial to Ashara Komayd, the benevolent but defamed prime minister who suffered in silence, died tragically, and yet was somehow resurrected to fight for her nation one last time.
They place candles and flowers at the foot of her monument, solemn and silent. In a few years they will begin calling her a name that will grow in popularity until it becomes the common way to speak of Komayd; and though they could not possibly have known it, the name they will choose is curiously fitting for her last days.
They will call her Mother of the Future.
* * *
—
Sigrud awakes and smells the cold winds drifting through the cabin. “Are we in Voortyashtan?” he croaks.
Ivanya, tending to his bandages, looks taken aback. “We’re quite close. How did you guess?”
“Take me on deck when we pass through,” he says. “Once we’re free and through.”
“That’s not happening, my dear. You can’t sit up, let alone stand and walk upstairs.”
“I will do it,” says Sigrud grimly. “I welcome your help, if you can give it. But if not, I will still do it.”
Ivanya and Taty exchange a glance, but remain silent.
Their shifty captain has to do some quick talking and perhaps even quicker bribing to get them through the port of Voortyashtan, but after a few tense moments, the dingy old yacht continues on. Ivanya, grimacing and reluctant, helps Sigrud sit up in his bed. The pain is tremendous. The world spins about him, and he feels nauseous. He sweats and quakes, and is not at all sure he can get his legs to do what he needs them to do.
Yet he succeeds. With Ivanya and Taty’s help, he comes to the deck, stands underneath the dark night skies, and looks east as they leave Voortyashtan behind.
He smells the cold north breezes and the salty air. How long has it been, he thinks, since the winds of this place have passed through my lungs?
The shore is alight with construction, with industry, with life and commerce and movement. It is no longer the miserable, brutal hovel he remembers, not the crude, lethal place it once was. It is a place people travel miles to come to, not one they avoid.
“My daughter did that,” says Sigrud weakly, nodding at the lights on the shore. “She did that. She made all that happen.”
The two women support and embrace him as he watches as Voortyashtan fades into the distance.
“She did that,” he whispers, as if wishing that the world would hear, and notice. “And I am very proud of her.”
It won’t last forever, he knows. Not even that will last forever.
But it will last a while.
* * *
—
Sigrud awakes to the sound of clinking pots and pans, someone humming cheerfully, and the smell of smoke.
Where am I?
He opens his eyes and sees a gray stone ceiling above him. He smells pine in the distance, and he can hear something—the hush of waves, not far away.
It takes him a long, long while to remember. He’s in the Dreyling Shores, he realizes, back in the homeland he left so, so many years before. It was hard for him to follow, to understand everything that happened when he was feverish aboard the boat….
“You’ve got that confused look again,” says a voice from the door.
He looks over and sees Taty standing there, smiling uncertainly at him.
“Do I?” he says. His voice is terribly hoarse.
“Yes. Are you going to ask me where we are again? Ask me where the boat is? What day it is?”
“I don’t know what day it is,” he says. “But I remember—we are in the Dreyling Shores. Yes?”
“Yes. In the house your…ah, your wife got for us.”
He frowns. This memory is a little hazier for him. He remembers Ivanya going ashore somewhere, coming back with news of some kind—apparently the two of them must have arranged it all. A memory of this house calcifies in his mind—spacious, even palatial, and secluded in the hills. A safe place for three refugees to hide while the world sorts itself out. “Where is Ivanya?” he asks.
“She’s cooking. She’s very enthusiastic about it. But not yet, ah, very good at it.”
“Yes. I remember the broths she makes for me now….” He pulls a face. “It is very taxing, trying to be polite about them.”
Taty sits beside him on the bed and smiles. “You’re getting better, though. You remember more. You must be stronger. Aren’t you?”
Sigrud smiles weakly at her. “I remember this now.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. Now is when you come in and tell me what you’ve seen in the woods outside.”
Taty laughs. “I do! Very good. And this time I won’t tell you the same story again and again. I’ll tell you something new.” She tells him
about her explorations in the forest, in the hills, along the shore, and especially about her new acquaintances. “There’re all kinds of kids from the village down the road,” she says, excited. “They come to the shore every day and fish, and they showed me a cave, Sigrud, a real cave!”
Sigrud smiles as he watches her. I forget so easily, he thinks, that she is still but a child.
“I would like to see that,” he says.
“What, a cave?”
“No. To see you on the shore.” He thinks about it. “I will do that tomorrow, I think. Yes. I will come with you tomorrow.”
She looks at him, uncertain. “Are…Are you sure about that?”
“You said I was getting better.”
“But…Can you really get out of bed?”
“I have never been surer of anything. Find me a cane, and you and I will stroll together tomorrow.” He smiles. “I’ll be here in the morning, waiting for you. Do not let me down.”
* * *
—
Taty grips his arm as Sigrud, wheezing and wobbling, limps down the garden path to the forest edge. “Auntie is going to skin me alive for this,” she says. “She’s absolutely going to skin me alive.”
“Let her skin me instead,” he says. “I will be easier to catch.” He coughs, swallows, sniffs, and focuses on his next step.
“Are you sure you want to do this? Really?”
“I grew up with the sea. It is my right. And it is my right to see my friend enjoy it. Do not deny an old man his wishes. That is rudeness.”
Taty helps him slowly, slowly mount the hill before the shore, each step taking nearly a minute at times.
“Are you sure you can make it?” Taty asks.
“I have climbed higher heights,” he says. “After all. You were there.”
“I wasn’t paying much attention then.”
“Nor was I, really.”
They continue up the hillside.
“Did I do the right thing, Sigrud?” asks Taty suddenly, troubled. “In the tower, when I was someone…else. I worry about it. I could have, I could have…”
He remembers Shara saying: Few have any choice in how they live. Few have the power to decide their own realities. Even if we win—will that change?
“You did something few could have ever done, Taty,” says Sigrud. “You walked away from power, and gave people choices where they’d never had any before.”
“But now what will they do with them?”
“I think,” says Sigrud, “that they will be people. As they have always been. For better or worse.”
His cane sinks deep into the earth, it’s so rich and moist. The air is cold and splendid. The trees tower above them.
“I used to cut these things down, you know,” he says, gesturing at them. “A foolish way to make a living, isn’t it?”
“We’re almost there,” says Taty. “Almost.”
“I know. I can hear it.”
They crest the small hill, and Sigrud sees.
The sea is the same. The sea is always the same, as is the wandering, white shore before it. His heart is glad to see this, yet also saddened.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” says Taty, awed.
“Yes, it is,” he says. “Perhaps the most beautiful thing. But it could be more beautiful yet.”
“What do you mean?”
He waves at the shore. “Go and play. That is just what this scene needs.”
“Are you sure?”
Sigrud, grunting and wheezing, slowly sits to lean against the tree, facing out to sea. “I will be here for a while. Go on. Do not waste your seconds on me.”
“They aren’t a waste, Sigrud,” she says reproachfully.
He smiles at her. “I know. Go.”
“You won’t be cold?”
“I won’t be cold. Go and have fun.”
“All right. I’ll be back soon! I promise!” She lightly steps down the stones to the shore. He watches as she races along the waves to be met by three children he doesn’t recognize. By their gestures and demeanors, though, they seem to be very familiar with one another.
“A social butterfly, then,” he says, sniffing. Good. She needs more people in her life.
* * *
—
Sigrud leans against the tree. The forest rings with the distant sound of birdsong and the echo of the waves. It’s late morning now, the sun reaching the spot in the sky where its beams no longer pierce the pines at that striking angle, but it is still a gorgeous day.
A peaceful day. One bereft of threat or danger.
I did it, Shara, he thinks, gazing out to sea. We did it.
He looks up at the tree above him. A piece of time itself, calcified and slowly accrued, stretching toward the bright blue skies on this beautiful day.
He reaches to the side and feels its rough bark, its roots digging down deep into the soil.
And what have you seen, I wonder? What have you seen? And what will you see yet?
He tries to imagine it. Tries to imagine the world that’s passed, and the world yet to come. The one he had some small hand in making.
He looks down. A girl is walking up the shore to him. The sun is bright, reflecting off the waves behind her, and it’s hard for him to see, but he thinks her hair is blond. And is she wearing glasses?
A woman’s voice in his ear, perhaps Shara’s, whispering, “Can you believe it?”
Sigrud closes his eye.
* * *
—
Tatyana Komayd dances up the hill, shimmering with delight. “Seal babies!” she cries. “There are seal babies up the coast, Sigrud! I saw them!”
She climbs up to the top of the hill and looks around, trying to remember where she left him. Then she sees him, his broad form leaning against the biggest tree, one hand on his cane and the other touching the trunk, a curiously wistful touch, as if touching an old lover.
“They were tiny!” she says, running through the trees to him. “They were tiny and perfect and they were playing and I just couldn’t believe it! Are seals common here, Sigrud?”
He does not answer.
She walks over to stand before him. “Sigrud?”
Silence.
She peers closer at him, then her eyes widen.
She covers her mouth.
“Oh,” she says, in a soft, crushed voice.
The waves crash and crackle on the shores below.
She stares at him for a long time, hands on her mouth, tears silently running down her cheeks, the sound of birdsong in her ears. Then she sniffs and nods.
“All right,” she says. “All right.”
She sits beside him. Then she takes his hand in her own, fingers woven tight in his, and she watches the waves in the evening light.
Many thanks to my agent, Cameron McClure, and my editor, Julian Pavia, who both helped me keep the ship aright during this (somewhat accidental) journey.
Many thanks as well to my parents, my family, and to Ashlee, who helps me work every day as if we live in the early times of a great nation. The future is indeed a bloom worth tending to.
ROBERT JACKSON BENNETT is the author, most recently, of the Divine Cities trilogy, which was a 2018 Hugo Awards finalist in the Best Series category. The first book in the series, City of Stairs, was also a finalist for the World Fantasy and Locus Awards, and the second, City of Blades, was a finalist for the World Fantasy, Locus, and British Fantasy Awards. His previous novels, which include American Elsewhere and Mr. Shivers, have received the Edgar Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Phillip K. Dick Citation of Excellence. He lives in Austin with his family.
1
As Sancia Grado lay facedown in the mud, stuffed underneath the wooden deck next to the old stone wall, she reflected that this evening was not going at all as sh
e had wanted.
It had started out decently. She’d used her forged identifications to make it onto the Michiel property, and that had gone swimmingly—the guards at the first gates had barely glanced at her.
Then she’d come to the drainage tunnel, and that had gone…less swimmingly. It had worked, she supposed—the drainage tunnel had allowed her to slink below all the interior gates and walls and get close to the Michiel foundry—but her informants had neglected to mention the tunnel’s abundance of centipedes, mud adders, and shit, of both the human and equine variety.
Sancia hadn’t liked it, but she could handle it. That had not been her first time crawling through human waste.
But the problem with crawling through a river of sewage is that, naturally, you tend to gain a powerful odor. Sancia had tried to stay downwind from the security posts as she crept through the foundry yards. But just when she reached the north gate, some distant guard had cried out, “Oh my God, what is that smell?” and then, to her alarm, dutifully gone looking for the source.
She’d avoided being spotted, but she’d been forced to flee into a dead-end foundry passageway and hide under the crumbling wooden deck, which had likely once been a guard post. But the problem with this hiding place, she’d quickly realized, was it gave her no means of escape: there was nothing in the walled foundry passageway besides the deck, Sancia, and the guard.
Sancia stared at the guard’s muddy boots as he paced by the deck, sniffing. She waited until he walked past her, then poked her head out.
He was a big man, wearing a shiny steel cap and a leather cuirass embossed with the loggotipo of the Michiel Body Corporate—the candle flame set in the window—along with leather pauldrons and bracers. Most troublingly, he had a rapier sheathed at his side.
Sancia narrowed her eyes at the rapier. She thought she could hear a whispering in her mind as he walked away, a distant chanting. She’d assumed the blade was scrived, but that faint whispering confirmed it—and she knew a scrived blade could cut her in half with almost no effort at all.
The Divine Cities Trilogy: City of Stairs, City of Blades, and City of Miracles, With an Excerpt From Foundryside Page 152