City of Blades (Divine Cities #2)

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  ‘He said he was Voortya’s blade. I think he meant it both metaphorically and literally. His heart and soul and mind are bound up in that metal.’

  She takes off her coat, walks to the sword, and – pausing as she realises this might kill her, as it was likely intended to – picks the sword up with it, making sure not one piece of metal touches her skin. To her relief, nothing happens, but the sword is terrifically, burningly cold. She sees the blade is cracked, the barest hairline running from its base to its point.

  She begins dragging the sword back toward the locomotive. ‘Come on. Help me get this big fucking thing up in the train. But don’t touch your skin to it. Use your coat or something.’

  The two of them lift the sword up into the locomotive door. It takes Sigrud a minute to find the right position, as he’s favouring his left side.

  ‘Broken rib?’ asks Mulaghesh.

  He nods. ‘Not a bad one, though.’

  ‘There are good broken ribs?’

  ‘Sometimes. Also a sprained shoulder, I think. I was lucky. Pull harder on your end.’

  Once they get it in the locomotive they stand before the firebox, and then – with Mulaghesh muttering, ‘Ah-one, ah-two, and ah-three’ – they hurl the giant sword inside.

  Instantly the sword’s om begins to sputter, scream, rise and fall, like a radio frequency oscillating wildly. They watch through the hatch as the cracks in the sword’s blade grow, like thin ice under too much pressure, until it finally dissolves, falling away to nothing but the hilt, which slowly begins to melt, like a wax candle set too close to the fireplace.

  ‘Not normal metal,’ says Sigrud.

  ‘No. Definitely not. I’ve got to hand it to your daughter. She got this fucking thing hot.’ She watches as the sword appears to disintegrate, dissolving not into bubbling metal but clumps of something soft and powdery, almost like graphite.

  She stares into the boiler, leaning in until it’s so hot that her skin can’t bear it anymore.

  ‘Holy shit,’ she says. ‘Holy shit! It’s . . . It’s damned thinadeskite, isn’t it!’

  ‘What?’ says Sigrud.

  ‘Thinadeskite!’ shouts Mulaghesh. ‘His fucking sword is made out of thinadeskite! That means that . . .’ She jumps out of the locomotive and runs to where Saint Zhurgut lay.

  But Zhurgut is gone. In his place is a young Dreyling man’s body, thickset and red-haired and very dead. His corpse, however, is maimed just as Zhurgut’s was, bisected at the waist.

  Sigrud walks to stand beside her. She sees him mouth the words, What happened to him?

  ‘That’s what happened in the countryside!’ shouts Mulaghesh. She’s no longer sure if she’s shouting because she’s deaf or because she’s excited. ‘At the farmhouses, at the charcoal kilns! There were the butchered bodies, but nearby, on the same property, was a man’s corpse, dead but uninjured! That’s what must have happened!’

  ‘I . . . do not understand,’ says Sigrud.

  ‘Listen – someone came to these families, gave them a present – a sword – then hid nearby and watched! Then, when the man of the house picked up the sword—’

  ‘He transformed into a sentinel,’ he says slowly. ‘And killed his own family, just as Zhurgut tried to kill all of us.’

  ‘Butchered them just as a sentinel would Saypuris,’ says Mulaghesh. ‘Because it was a sentinel! A man made of thorns, just as Gozha said!’

  ‘Wasn’t the thinadeskite found at only one of the murder scenes?’

  ‘Yeah, the one that didn’t go right,’ says Mulaghesh. ‘Back when they were sloppy, whoever they are. On this last one, at the farmhouse, they must’ve been smart enough to clean up after themselves.’

  ‘Then why did the sentinels stop?’ says Sigrud. ‘Why did they die? Why did they not keep killing?’

  ‘I don’t know! It must have failed somehow. The swords couldn’t keep them here, I guess, and their – hells, I don’t know, their hosts – died from the sheer stress of it. I said it seemed like the killer was testing something – maybe some swords work, and others don’t.’ She looks up at the devastation of Voortyashtan. ‘But it sure fucking worked tonight. They’ve figured out how to do this right.’

  ‘But where are they getting the swords from? How could they have persisted after Voortya died?’

  ‘I don’t know that, either. But . . . but thinadeskite must be what the Voortyashtanis made their swords out of! A special ore, just for them to use. We need to tell someone at the fo—’

  She looks up to see one of the cannons of Fort Thinadeshi slowly rotating to point at their very location.

  ‘Shit!’ she says. ‘I forgot!’ She sprints off toward the watchtower, which is now on fire around the PK-512.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Sigrud calls after her.

  ‘I’m keeping us from getting blown to pieces!’ she shouts over her shoulder.

  She runs up to the radio box, sits, and holds its receiver up to her head. ‘He’s down!’ she shouts. ‘Hold your fire, he’s down!’

  There’s a tinny voice on the other end, but she can’t hear it.

  ‘What?’ she says into it. ‘I’m nearly fucking deaf, speak up!’

  ‘Can you confirm, General?’ says the tinny voice, much louder. ‘Can you confirm that the threat is eliminated?’

  ‘Confirmed!’ shouts Mulaghesh back. ‘Confirmed! The threat is . . .’ She pauses as a piece of flaming timber falls to the ground near her. ‘Shit! Anyway, yeah, the threat is eliminated!’

  There’s static. She hears the voice say: ‘—econdary assault?’

  ‘What?’ says Mulaghesh.

  More static. Then: ‘—ssault in progr—’

  Then the static dies. Mulaghesh kicks the big metal box, but the receiver is silent. However gigantic the lead-acid battery in this thing is, it was never meant to last so long.

  She sits on the ground, fumbling for a cigarillo. She settles for a half-crushed one found in her inside coat pocket, but she can’t find her lighter.

  A pigeon alights on a nearby shop rooftop. It coos twice, then sits and watches her with one bemused eye, as if to say, What was that all about?

  *

  Lennart Björck has been hiding in a hole in the ground for nearly two agonising hours when he hears the crash. It’s an enormous, skull-rattling sound, loud enough to knock him down even while standing in a hole, and it makes him wonder if there’s some new Divine monstrosity now causing havoc in the city.

  He pokes his head up and sees a tremendous column of steam and dust pouring up near the train tracks . . . and just to the west, he can see the very tip of the number three locomotive pointing up past the top of a house, though it seems to be on its side, like a beached whale.

  ‘What in the hells . . . ?’ Björck climbs out and begins to run to the crash, wondering what could have caused this new headache. Yet as he runs by the test assembly yard he stops and slowly turns around.

  He saw something out of the corner of his eye – a flash of light.

  The door to the test assembly yard stands open – something that should normally never, ever happen – and someone is lying in the mud before it.

  Another victim of that monstrosity? It seems unlikely, as this body is in one piece.

  Björck slowly walks toward the test assembly yard. Then there’s another flash, illuminating the dark interior of the yard . . .

  Involuntarily, he shouts, ‘Hey!’

  A figure darts from the door of the yard and sprints up the street. Björck gives chase, but finds he’s unwilling to go too far into Voortyashtan, much of which is on fire or falling apart.

  He looks at the body lying in the mud. It’s one of the higher-ranking SDC guards . . . Karl, he thinks the man’s name was. A bolt is sticking out of his neck.

  Björck walks into the yard. He knows what’s in here, and knows not to turn on the light. Yet there’s an aroma in the air, a pungent, sulfurous smell he actually finds familiar – he smelled it once, long ago, when h
e went to a carnival in Jukoshtan with his then-sweetheart, and a man on the pier produced this strange device and said he could capture their images for them for only a few drekels.

  ‘A camera?’ says Björck aloud. He scratches his head.

  *

  After a while the watchtower, still ablaze, begins creaking in a very disturbing fashion. Mulaghesh imagines the PK-512 plummetting to the ground, all of its ammunition spilling into open flame, and decides to seek refuge in the locomotive. Walking, she finds, hurts tremendously. She can’t remember where she got all these injuries from.

  Sigrud is sitting on the edge of the locomotive door, smoking his pipe, arm held close to his body. ‘Is this victory?’ he asks.

  ‘Harbour’s still intact,’ she says, groaning as she sits beside him.

  ‘Harbour, yes. But . . .’ He gestures toward Voortyashtan with the bowl of his pipe. He doesn’t need to say anything more. It looks like some impossibly large piece of farming equipment has mown great swaths through the city’s crude architecture.

  ‘Where the hells are Biswal’s troops?’ asks Mulaghesh. ‘I thought they were sending a whole battalion.’

  ‘I don’t know. I thought that . . . Wait.’ He cocks his head. ‘Do you hear that?’

  ‘I can’t hear much, period. I should have worn ear protection, using that thing. What are you hearing?’

  ‘Gunfire. And . . . screaming.’

  ‘What? Where?’

  He points up the cliffs, at the passage to Fort Thinadeshi.

  ‘But that’s outside the city,’ says Mulaghesh. ‘What could be happening there?’

  The two stare up at the cliffs.

  Mulaghesh realises what the voice on the radio said: Secondary assault.

  ‘Come on,’ she says, and the two hop down and begin limping up the cliff paths to the first of the checkpoints.

  The city is like a ghost town, a nightmare cityscape, dark and ruined. The only sounds she hears are distant cries and moans and the constant wind. Just an hour ago it was a bustling if unsightly little town: now it is inconceivable that people once lived and worked here.

  ‘I smell gunpowder,’ says Sigrud suddenly. ‘And blood.’

  ‘Blood?’

  ‘Yes. Blood.’ He lifts his head, catching the wind. ‘Lots of it.’

  They run up to the first checkpoint and find it abandoned, though the door and side are riddled with bullet holes. Then when they rise up to the top of the first hill they stop, look out, and see.

  The hills are a cold, dark grey in the moonlight. Mulaghesh sees many still, dark forms lying where the road slashes through the countryside. Figures sprint back and forth atop the hills before the fortress. There is the sporadic flash of gunfire, like distant lightning, and screams – some bellowing orders, others in pain or fear.

  ‘No,’ whispers Mulaghesh. Suddenly she is running, running toward the group of soldiers she sees gathered ahead.

  ‘Stop!’ shouts Sigrud. ‘Stop, Turyin!’

  As she runs her mind takes in all the signs, reading the story written in the countryside: she can see where the Saypuri battalion was marching down the road; she sees where the first volley hit them from the east; she can see where the Saypuris – surprised, terrified – took cover among the dales just west of the road; and she can see where the enemy – whoever it was – took positions north of them, cutting them off from the fortress, leaving them to either stay where they were, retreat to the cliffs, or descend to Voortyashtan, and expose themselves to Saint Zhurgut’s hellish assault.

  A simple manoeuvre, really. But a very successful one.

  Someone shoves her from behind and falls on top of her. She can tell by the way the impact pains them that it’s Sigrud.

  ‘They will shoot you,’ he croaks.

  ‘Get off me!’

  He groans as she pushes against his bad side, but he doesn’t budge. ‘They will shoot you dead on sight.’

  ‘Let me go, let me go!’ she cries. ‘I need to help them, I need to—’

  ‘There is nothing to do. The enemy has fled. But the soldiers are wary. They will not take any more chances.’

  Mulaghesh relents and lies there on the ground, helpless and miserable. He’s right, of course: whatever happened here, there’s not much for her to do now. She despises feeling so useless.

  ‘Find me a body,’ she says.

  ‘What?’ asks Sigrud.

  ‘There’ll be an aid kit on one of the Saypuri soldiers. Yellow rubber thing, waterproof. Inside of that are some flares and a flare gun. Bring it here. You’re better at sneaking than I am.’

  ‘You ask much of an injured man.’ But he releases her and withdraws into the darkness. She sits up and stares around herself, mindful now that someone out in the shadows might take a shot at her. She recognises the movements of the shapes in the distance: infantry securing the perimeter, closing down points of entry and escape.

  Sigrud rises up out of the shadows, dragging something behind him. He drops it with a heavy thump. It reeks of sweat and coppery blood. She can see the outline of a cheek and a clutched fist in the darkness.

  ‘That doesn’t look like a flare gun,’ she says.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘I thought you would like to see for yourself.’

  He takes out a flare gun and hands it to her. She hesitates before pointing into the air and firing.

  The flare is bright and brilliant, a festive cherry red, and as its light flickers across the hillsides it touches upon the face of the young man lying on the ground: a Voortyashtani boy of about fifteen, his neck elegantly tattooed, a perfectly round entry point drilled just below his collarbone. Strapped to his chest is a Saypuri pistol. He had to adjust the holster considerably to allow for this slight, boyish frame, perhaps two or three years from truly being a man. Mulaghesh is still staring into his face when the Saypuri troops surround them.

  11. A just death

  Peace is but the absence of war. War and conflict form the sea through which nation-states swim.

  Some who have had the fortune to find clear, calm waters believe otherwise. They have forgotten that war is momentum.

  War is natural. And war makes one strong.

  – WRITS OF SAINT PETRENKO, 720

  She looks for Biswal in the fortress hospital, though the term feels out of place with what she sees: Fort Thinadeshi’s medical wings are dark, primitive, and dirty. Rickety cots and beds line the walls, almost all of them occupied.

  As she walks through the hospital she’s faintly aware of the bloodstains on the front of her fatigues, none of them hers – she and Sigrud assisted the medical corps as much as they could – and from the deep ache all along her right side she knows she needs to see a medic now. But mostly she hasn’t the mind for it: the sight of these young men and women trapped in their beds brings back memories of her hellish recuperation in Bulikov. Her arm aches just to think of it. She pities them.

  She stops a nurse and asks, ‘The general?’

  He points to the back of the hospital, to the morgue. Mulaghesh walks to the morgue doors, hesitates, and pushes them open.

  The room is larger than she expected. Tall cabinets line the walls, cold and blank. One of them is open, with a table on wheels half-rolled out of its dark, chilly depths.

  Lalith Biswal stands in front of the table, looking down on the body. The deceased soldier is short, her clothes dusty, her hands chalky and pale, the queer colours of the dead. The room is quite dim, but Mulaghesh can tell by the gleaming scar on the forehead that it was once Captain Kiran Nadar.

  Biswal looks over his shoulder, nods to Mulaghesh, then turns back to Nadar. Mulaghesh pauses, wondering how to be respectful, then walks to stand beside him.

  She was shot three times in the left side. She must have died quickly, as none of her clothes have been removed for operation. Her cheek bears a purple slash, the flesh around it dark. Mulaghesh guesses she fell, likely from her horse.

  ‘They targeted her specifically,’ says
Biswal quietly. ‘She was riding at the front of the line. Standard shtani behaviour, as of late. Kill the officers first.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I did tell you we were under surveillance. Shtanis in the hills, watching our movements. They saw us preparing to send a battalion down to the city. When the . . . that horror began his assault on the city, the passages in and out of Voortyashtan were flooded with civilians escaping the slaughter. Under this cover over seventy insurgents took positions east along the main passage. They ambushed us, pinned us down, inflicting heavy casualties. They retreated when we mounted a counterattack.’

  Mulaghesh bows her head, disgusted and furious. ‘We were trying to help them.’

  ‘Yes. We were trying to help the city. But they do not see it in those terms.’

  ‘It feels rude to ask, but . . . Sergeant Major Pandey . . .’

  ‘He’s alive, miraculously enough. He was at the front with Nadar, and survived the first volley. He sought shelter in a checkpoint and ably defended a group of civilians that were fleeing the horror in the city. A group that included CTO Harkvaldsson.’

  Once again, Signe and Pandey are thrown together. It’s all too coincidental for her tastes.

  Biswal looks at her. ‘What in the hells happened in that city, Turyin? What in hells was that thing that attacked us?’

  Mulaghesh decides that now’s the time to lay as many cards on the table as she can, to try to convince Biswal that something Divine is unfolding here in Voortyashtan. So she summarises her conclusions about Zhurgut and the sentinels and the murders, aware as she speaks that she sounds more and more outlandish: magic swords, possessed bodies, secret mines, ancient ore. She doesn’t say anything about the City of Blades and Voortya, feeling it would be a step too far in the current circumstances.

  Biswal is perfectly still as he listens. When she finishes he says, ‘Do you still believe the issues with the insurgents to be wholly separate from the murders and the interference with the mines – as well as the Divine horror that awoke in the harbour, I suppose?’

  ‘I . . . suspect so. I don’t think the insurgents were behind any of this. Their concerns are earthly – they’re fighting over land. Whoever is behind this is far more concerned with the spiritual.’