City of Blades (48 page)

“Yes. Of course. How else?”

Mulaghesh's heart feels like it's about to hammer its way out of her rib cage. “Wh-Who was this? Do you know?”

The Watcher looks down at her. “When they project themselves here, I see no face and hear no voice. I only see their thoughts and deeds. And that one was no warrior.” She looks down at Mulaghesh. “You belong here. I assent to your presence. You have killed many, and I sense in your heart, in your spirit, that you will yet kill more. Perhaps many more.” The Watcher draws a single bladed finger across her smooth stomach, creating a high-pitched squeal that sets Mulaghesh's teeth on edge. “May my mutterings do you well, little warrior. Go and perform your function, as I should do so now. Farewell.” The Watcher turns and begins striding back across the beaches, picking her way among the countless Voortyashtani sentinels.

“Wait!” cries Mulaghesh.

The Watcher halts, turning her head very slightly to look back at Mulaghesh.

“Where is Voortya?” she asks. “Where can I find the citadel?”

“The citadel?” asks the Watcher. “Oh. Why it's that way, of course. It always is—isn't it?” She stabs a finger in one direction, then resumes her journey, humming atonally to herself.

Mulaghesh heads in the direction the Watcher pointed. She can't even tell if she's going the right way or not: there's no real point of reference for her to use here. But the groups of sentinels grow thicker and larger.

She moves on, and on, and on. Maybe only one mile, maybe forty. She can't tell. Then it emerges from the swamp of white stone and immense structures, which appear to fall away like supplicants parting before their monarch.

The citadel seems to unfold or calcify in the very air, growing on the hill before her like coral forming deep underwater, a great, curving, castellated construction blooming in the moonlight. It is osseous, ivory, an alien amalgamation of bone and frills and strange, aquatic apertures, all building to one tall, slender tower in its center, a shard of white rising into the sky. And there at the tip—a window, perhaps?

Mulaghesh watches the window. Then the light from inside it blinks, blacking out from left to right, as if someone's pacing before it.

“So someone's home after all,” says Mulaghesh. “Goody.”

But the question remains—who?

She trots off toward the chaotic base of the structure, full of loops and arches and staggered columns. The sand under her feet turns to stone, or perhaps marble. Smooth, hard steps descend into the belly of the structure, then down into a long tunnel. Mulaghesh checks her surroundings before entering, critically aware she is a bright red splotch in this ivory-colored palace. But it seems to be deserted.

She isn't sure what she's looking for here. Choudhry couldn't help her, and the Watcher sure as hells couldn't. But there must be something in here, even if it is Voortya, or perhaps a shadow of Voortya. But what to do when she finds her?

She exits into what looks like a courtyard and finds she's in the center of a tangle of staircases. There are so many stairs up and down and some even to the side that they hurt her eyes. For a second she feels like she's back in Bulikov. More importantly, though, she doesn't see anyone
on
the staircases. Again, she's all alone here.

This isn't right,
she thinks. This is a damned palace, after all: Where are the servants, the staff? Who lives here? Who works here?

She screws up her mouth, picks the staircase that seems to go up the highest, and starts off.

Time seems soft here, so she isn't sure if she spends a few minutes or a few hours pacing up staircases, stalking from ivory-colored room to ivory-colored room, pausing before each doorway to check the corners. Her legs begin to ache and throb. She feels like she's climbed up a whole damned mountain.

Finally she comes to a window. It's tall and oblong, and lined with carvings that look very much like some kind of carapace growth. But she still stops and looks out, and sees…

“Holy hells,” says Mulaghesh.

The whole of the City of Blades lies below her, a forest of towers and statues, the streets tiny and insignificant at their feet. Yet in the streets and the alleys and along the canals are thousands upon thousands of sentinels, perhaps millions of them—more human beings, if they could even be called such, gathered in one place than she's ever witnessed before.

But she can also see the edge of the City of Blades from here, the pale white shores sinking into the dark seas. And on those seas she can see something…strange. The surface of the waters are dotted with shapes, long and thin and curiously formed, with one end covered in spears and points, and in their centers a tall, thick pole of some kind.

They're boats, she realizes. Voortyashtani longships, each with a weaponized prow for ramming other boats. Yet they seem somewhat ghostly and unreal, as if they're not quite there, or not quite there
yet:
they seem to flicker, as if they haven't made up their minds as to whether or not they exist.

As such, it's hard to count them. But she would guess the fleet would be larger than twenty thousand vessels. Enough to sink every Saypuri dreadnought five times over.

It's unimaginable. But she doesn't have to imagine it, because they're all right there, right in front of her.

“If those things set sail,” she says quietly, “we're doomed.”

She steels herself, grips her rifling harder, and turns to the nearest staircase up. Then she begins ascending again.

The spiral of stairs narrows, tighter and tighter. She's going up, in smaller and smaller loops. She thinks she's in the center tower now, finally.

About a hundred steps up she spots a tiny splash of color in this endless white place: a splotch of blood, right in the center of one of the stairs. It's crusted over, but she can tell it's fairly recent. She crouches and peers at it, then looks up the stairs.

Divinities don't bleed,
she thinks.
Not since the last time I checked.

She continues up the stairs. The droplets of blood increase. Mulaghesh is perversely reminded of a lover leaving a trail of rose blossoms to their bed.

Finally the stairs end at a large foyer—one that seems far too big for the narrow white tower she saw from the ground. Its ceiling is arched and is covered in what appear to be stone swords, all carved at strange angles, like stalactites dangling from the roof of a cave. Empty, dusty lanterns hang along the wall. She guesses they haven't seen use in years, maybe decades.

She walks in, mindful to move quietly. Then she sees the throne.

It's difficult for Mulaghesh's mind to determine exactly
how
big it is: sometimes it seems to be merely fifteen or twenty feet tall, but then the room will shift and warp, bending at the edges of her vision, and it will seem as if the throne is
hundreds
of feet tall, even
miles
tall—a giant, terrible construction that looms over her like a storm cloud. But no matter the size, its features remain the same: a bright red chair formed of teeth and tusks, all crushed or melted together, sticking out at strange angles. Wide arcs of horns and antlers sprout from the throne's back, curving to form something like a rib cage around the chair. Mulaghesh imagines Voortya taking her place in this terrible seat, her plate mail gleaming and her silent, still face staring out from the cage of antlers like a cold, dark heart.

She shivers. Then she notices something at the feet of the throne: a pair of shoes. Normal ones, women's shoes. They're of a very old fashion, small and brown, featuring a modest heel. She can't help but get the impression that their owner thoughtlessly kicked them off while taking her seat on the throne.

What in the hells?

She takes stock of the room. The door on the opposite side is far, far too large for a person, nearly four times as tall as the tallest man. Still not big enough for the Divinity she glimpsed on the cliffs, but couldn't a Divinity change their size at will? Couldn't they do more or less
anything
at will, really?

Mulaghesh looks down. The trail of blood leads across the receiving room and through the giant door to the chambers beyond.

She looks at it for a long time, thinking. Then she slowly stalks through the columns and through the door, rifling raised. The trail of blood droplets leads through a large door on the other side, then around the corner and down the hall.

She hears someone talking, or rather muttering. They're cursing, it sounds like. And there's a quiet clanking, too, as if they're wearing armor.

Mulaghesh puts her back to the wall and slowly creeps through the doorway, rifling trained on the space ahead.

She reflects that this is possibly an incredibly bad idea. The only thing she knows about anything Divine is to stay away from it, as far away from it as one possibly can. As this person (if it is a person) seems to be occupying Voortya's throne room, or private chambers, or
something
very personal to that Divinity, then all logic suggests she should back away now.

But she doesn't. Something is moving down the hallway. Mulaghesh abandons all protocol and puts her finger right on the trigger: she's willing to abandon trigger discipline in a situation like this.

She thins her eyes, watching. The person paces into view, then back out.

It's a woman, she sees, a
human
woman, or at least she appears to be. The first thing Mulaghesh notices is that she's both wounded and unarmed, clutching her left shoulder. Blood drips from her fingertips in a slow leak. But the second thing Mulaghesh sees is that she's dressed…well, like Voortya: she wears the ceremonial plate armor Mulaghesh glimpsed days ago on the cliffs outside of Fort Thinadeshi, covered with horrific images of conquest and sacrifice. It's just that this suit of armor is about one one-hundredth the size of that one, and there appears to be a bullet hole drilled into the left pauldron.

The woman is turned around so that Mulaghesh can't see her face. A tall window is on her opposite side, allowing the pale moonlight to pour in, making it even harder for Mulaghesh to see, but she can make out that the woman's hair is dark, as is her skin.

A Saypuri? How could that be?

What in all the fucking hells,
thinks Mulaghesh
, is going
on
in this mad place?

Whatever this woman's story is she's definitely no god, no Divinity, and certainly no sentinel. And she can bleed, which means Mulaghesh's rifling might be an actual threat.

The next time the woman paces into view, Mulaghesh barks, “Freeze. Hands where I can see them.”

The woman nearly jumps out of her skin. She cries out, as this jolt obviously hurts her shoulder.

“Hands where I can see them!” says Mulaghesh again. “And turn around!”

The woman stiffens, then slowly does so, rotating on the spot.

Mulaghesh's mouth opens, and she almost drops the rifling.

The woman's face is familiar, but of course it is: Hasn't Mulaghesh seen that visage in paintings and murals in schools and courtrooms and city halls, staring out with steely eyes on any number of estimable proceedings? Hasn't she seen this woman in countless history books, the face that emblematizes one of the most important periods in the history of Saypur? And, more recently, hasn't Mulaghesh seen this woman's face every single time she paged through Sumitra Choudhry's files?

“Holy hells,” says Mulaghesh. “Vallaicha…
Thinadeshi
?”

Thinadeshi glares back. It's unmistakably her: the high, aristocratic cheekbones, the sharp nose, the piercing eyes, the face of the woman who in so many ways built Saypur itself, and tamed much of the Continent.

Thinadeshi looks her up and down. “You!” she says angrily. “You're the one who
shot
me!”

The Divine world is largely incomprehensible to us, truly, a world of arbitrary and capricious miracles. But it did have rules, countless ones, all dictated by the Divinities—yet in many cases the Divinities could not break the rules they themselves had created.

What a Divinity said was true, was instantly, irrefutably true. In saying this they overwrote reality—including their own. In some ways the Divinities were slaves of themselves.

—DR. EFREM PANGYUI, “THE SUDDEN HEGEMONY”

W
ha…What?” says Mulaghesh. “
Shot
you?”

“Yes, by all damned things, shot me!” snarls Thinadeshi. Her voice and accent are unusual: Mulaghesh realizes she's speaking with a dialect and manner that hasn't been used in over fifty years. “I go out of my way and nearly kill myself trying to avoid
unspeakable
catastrophe, only to have some wild woman on a hilltop take out her little cannon and
shoot
me! Of all the madness! Of all the ridiculous nonsense! And what are you here for now? Are you here to finish the job? You're a committed assassin, I'll grant you that! What in damned creation could have happened in the Saypuri Isles to send someone like
you
after me?”

Mulaghesh feels dizzy. It's taking up a lot of her brainpower to accept the idea that not only is she standing here talking to one of the founding figures of Saypur, but this particular founding figure is yelling at her with a lot of vitriol. Eventually Mulaghesh's brain kicks in and she manages to process what Thinadeshi is saying:
Wild woman on a hilltop…Does she mean when the mines collapsed?

“But, uh, I didn't shoot you, ma'am,” says Mulaghesh. “If I'm understanding what you're describing, ma'am—and I'm not at all convinced that I am—I shot at Voortya. The, uh, Divinity.”

Thinadeshi's stare could punch a hole in the side of a battleship. She holds her arms out—well, one of them, at least, as her left isn't particularly mobile. “Do you not see how I am attired? Does it not look
familiar
to you? I can tell by your egregious accent that it is deeply unlikely that you have had much education, but is putting two and two together
so
far beyond your grasp?”

“Are you…Are you saying that
you're
Voortya? The Divinity?”

Thinadeshi sighs and rolls her eyes. “Oh, by all that is…
No
. I am saying that when I exercise the powers of this place, it projects an image tha
aaah!
” She trails off as she's racked with pain. Another dribble of blood comes leaking out from under her plate mail. “Damn you!” cries Thinadeshi. “Perhaps you've murdered me already! Am I poisoned?”

“Uh, I don't think so,” says Mulaghesh. She undoes the clasp on her rifling and sets it aside. “And listen, I don't understand a thing about what's going on, but I know how to treat a bullet wound. I've brought a med kit, and I can be decent enough with it, even one-handed.”

Thinadeshi frowns at her, suspicious. “You're quite sure you're
not
here to kill me?”

“No. I'm here to stop
that
from happening.” She points out the tower window to the sea of Voortyashtani sentinels beyond. “By any means necessary. I had no idea you were even here.”

Thinadeshi's face softens a bit at that. She swallows. Mulaghesh can tell she's quite weak. “W-Well. You've got quite a task ahead of you, now don't you.” Then her eyes dim and she begins to topple over. Mulaghesh darts forward and grabs her before she strikes the ground.

Twenty minutes later Mulaghesh has the left arm of Thinadeshi's armor pried off and has cut away her leather sleeve below. “It'll reappear within a few hours,” Thinadeshi mutters. “All my vestments return to me, over time. I've tried taking them off, trust me.” Mulaghesh ignores her. There's no bed in these chambers, just a giant marble chair about three times too big for a human being, so she has propped her up in that while she goes to work on her shoulder.

There were three opiate shots in her med kit, tiny little syringes not much bigger than your thumbnail, and Mulaghesh dosed Thinadeshi up with one. Thinadeshi hardly makes a peep as Mulaghesh digs in the wound with a pair of tweezers. Mulaghesh can feel the bullet lodged up against Thinadeshi's upper humerus, and it doesn't seem to have shattered or split any, which is good.
So maybe I won't have to go back,
she thinks,
and tell everyone this grand historical figure has died again, and this time
I
killed her
.

“Who are you?” asks Thinadeshi groggily. “What's your name? You never told me.”

Mulaghesh chews her lip as she delicately explores Thinadeshi's wound. “I'm Turyin Mulaghesh, General Fourth Class of the Saypuri Military.”

“Military? So the Saypuri Isles still exist as a nation? It's still solvent?” She sounds surprised, but then she would be: her stretch of history was incredibly rocky, with the global economy still in a nascent state.

“Yeah, but they dropped the ‘Isles' part a while ago,” says Mulaghesh. “Mostly because Saypur kept folding in regions that weren't islands. Or maybe they just wanted a cleaner-looking letterhead.”

“I see.”

Mulaghesh can feel her tense up, and knows what question she's about to ask.

“So,” says Thinadeshi. “What…year is it there?”

Mulaghesh glances at her. “Why?”

“Don't humor me, General. When I saw the men in the mines I could tell things were different. I've been gone far longer than I thought, haven't I?”

Men in the mines?
“Yeah. Yeah, I'd say so. Hold still.”

Then, faintly: “Tell me, and be honest…are my children dead?”

Mulaghesh pauses as she works. She can feel the bullet coming loose, but she still feels obligated to answer this question. “I know one of them is still in government. Padwal.”

“Padwal?” says Thinadeshi, sounding surprised. “In
government
?”

“Yeah. He's an MP.”

“A what?”

“A minister of Parliament.”

“Parliament…,” says Thinadeshi. “We've kept
that
? Did
no one
read my plans to select a proportionate amount of representatives from each region to vote on each issue?”

“Uh…I don't know, ma'am,” says Mulaghesh. “I'm a soldier, not a scholar.”

“It was a very thorough treatise, I thought,” says Thinadeshi, gritting her teeth as Mulaghesh wriggles the bullet. “What about Kristappa? And Rodmal? What about them?”

“I'm afraid I don't know, ma'am.”

“You don't know if they're alive?” she asks, heartbroken.

“No. I'm sorry. I don't.”

“But how old would they be today? If they are alive, I mean.”

Mulaghesh pauses, uncertain how to word this. “You've been gone over sixty years.”

Thinadeshi sits up. “Over
sixty
?”

“Um. Yeah. I think the exact number is sixty-four.”

“Sixty-four
years
?” She stares out the window, aghast. “Oh, my word…I…I suppose it's…it's fairly unlikely that they are alive, then.” Her voice is frail and crushed. “After all, Padwal was one of the youngest. What a curiously dispiriting thing it is, to outlive one's children. If this strange state could even be called living. And I didn't even get to know they died.”

Mulaghesh readjusts the tweezers. “Can you hold still? I'm about to get this thing out of you.”

“Ah…Ah! Please hurry!”

“I'm going!” says Mulaghesh. “I got it, I got it…” Then, finally, the chunk of metal comes loose, sliding out of the wound. “There.” She flicks it out the window without a thought, then applies bandages to the wound. “I'm going to need your help to stitch this up, though. I can't manage that one-handed. Think you can assist?”

Thinadeshi's face is wan. “You ask much of an old woman.”

“We can wait a bit and then try again.”

She sighs. “Oh, no. Don't bother. My shoulder is not the most important thing right now. And besides, I shall be gone quite soon, I imagine.”

There's an awkward pause.

“Huh?” says Mulaghesh. “This isn't a fatal wound by any means. Unless you've got a condition or something.”

“A condition…yes. I have exactly that.” She sighs again and shuts her eyes. “I won't perish from any wound to my body, my mortal self. They're killing me out there, don't you see? All those souls out there. They're pulling me apart.”

“What do you mean?”

“Here. Look. Help me take off my right glove.”

Mulaghesh does so. Then Thinadeshi holds her hand up to the window. “Watch.”

“Okay…” Mulaghesh crouches beside her, not sure what she's watching: Thinadeshi's hand is small, well-manicured, but otherwise unremarkable.

But then…

Mulaghesh sees it, very faintly: the outline of the window frame
through
Thinadeshi's hand, as if her flesh is very slightly translucent.

Mulaghesh says, “What in all the hells…?”

“You see it, then,” says Thinadeshi grimly. “My…I don't know, my
corporeal
essence is fading. I'm not supposed to be here, so this place is steadily asserting that I'm
not
here. No mortal was ever intended to shoulder the burdens of a Divinity.” She puts back on her glove. “I am being rejected, slowly but surely. But I've known I've been losing this battle for some time.”

Mulaghesh holds down the bandages on Thinadeshi's shoulder, which is still seeping blood. “Can I ask
how
you came to be here? Or, really…what's going on?”

“I suppose in the normal world everyone assumes I just disappeared.”

“That's about the cut of it.”

“But I didn't, obviously. I have chosen to remain here, in this place, since I left the world I knew.”