City of Blades (53 page)

The auto comes to a stop before the polis governor's house. Biswal steps out and discusses the situation with the sergeant who was first on site. Then he says, “I'm going in to talk to her. For now, we need to establish a perimeter. We're extremely close to the harbor, and the Dreylings are well-armed and highly disciplined. Be on alert.”

Raghavan watches as Biswal and his lieutenant enter the home. Then he takes a forward post, overlooking the cliff that leads down to the harbor.

It's difficult for Raghavan to come to terms with his disgust, his outrage. He looks back up at the polis governor's house. It's traitorous to think so, but he half hopes Biswal will shoot her. It'd be a terrible incident, but then the press might get involved, and they'd see how suspicious her conduct has been, and then perhaps they'd turn their gaze toward Ghaladesh, and the prime minister, and what she's asking of her soldiers.

Then he frowns. Something's wrong.

He can see Private Mahajan standing in the trees just before the house; but then Mahajan jumps as if startled, and starts to turn, but he hasn't lifted his gun.

Raghavan's mouth falls open as a figure rises out of the bracken. Someone tall with a sheen of gold on their head…Blond hair? A Dreyling?

And is that a rifling she has in her hand, using it as a support?

She lifts the rifling up…

Raghavan hears himself saying
stop
. He feels himself moving. It's as if he's out of his body, reacting completely by instinct, the stock of the rifling hitting his shoulder, the sights swinging to rest on the figure….

And suddenly all the experiences he's just had out in the highlands come rushing back to him. The children with bolt-shots shooting at them from ditches; the old woman he tried to help stand up trying to cut him with a tiny knife; returning from a patrol to find Private Mishra facedown in the road, a screaming teenage shtani girl stabbing him over and over again, and Raghavan pulled out his pistol and he…

Pop
.

The rifling leaps in his hands.

The figure falls to the ground among the bracken.

Raghavan blinks as he looks down the sights.

Did I do that?

Even from here he can see Private Mahajan's eyes widen in shock. Mahajan shouts, “No!
No!
Who fired?
Who fired!
”

Raghavan doesn't answer. He lowers his rifling and sprints up the hill to Mahajan. Other soldiers are streaming over as well.

Mahajan is stooped in the bracken, screaming, “
Who fired? Who the fuck was it who fired? We need a medic over here! We need a fucking medic over here!
”

“What happened?” says Raghavan as he nears. “Who was that?”

“She was surrendering!” shouts Mahajan. “I was talking to her! She was surrendering! Who the
fuck
was it who
fired,
damn you!”

Raghavan's stomach goes cold. “They…They had a gun….”

Mahajan looks at him. “Was it you? Was it you, Corporal? She was
surrendering,
damn it. She was
giving
me the gun, Corporal! Do you have any idea who you've shot? Do you have any idea what you've
done
?”

Raghavan looks over Mahajan's shoulder at the body on the ground.

His hand flies to his mouth.

“Oh, no,” he whispers. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no.”

Mulaghesh can hear boards splintering above her. Her knuckle around the pin on the grenade is white. Her heart is beating so fast her blood is a roar in her ears.

Just do it,
she thinks.
Just pull already! What are you waiting for? Don't think; just do it!

But her hand doesn't move.

“You don't have the courage for it, do you,” says Rada.

“Like hells I don't,” says Mulaghesh, sweating.

“Well, if you do…I always thought a Saypuri would kill me,” says Rada. “It only gives me a slight pleasure to know that you'll die with me.”

The faint voices of the sentinels are still echoing in her head:

“…brought the blade down and I grinned and laughed to feel the blood upon my face…”

“…charged forward and our feet ate up the earth and we howled to the sun above us and made it know fear…”

“…abandoned the children to run from us, but it did not matter, young or old they were our foes…”

“Damn you for making me choose to do this, Rada,” she says. “And damn my own soldiers for saving you in Bulikov, for doing their
job
.”

“They didn't save me,” she says softly. “I died in that building. I just didn't know it then.”

There's a tremendous smash from above. Then a rough shout—Biswal's voice—saying, “
Turyin? Turyin, are you down there?
”

“Get the hells out of here, Lalith!” she shouts. “Get away! I'm…I'm going to blow this whole damn house up!” Her hand begins trembling.

“
What? Turyin, don't be insane! I'm coming down!
”

“No! No, get the hells out of here! I mean it! I really do!” She shuts her eyes. Tears spill down her cheeks. “It's the only choice! You've got to get your troops out of here!”

“
Don't do anything! Just…just wait!
” The tumble of footsteps.

“No!” screams Mulaghesh. “No, don't come down! Get away, get away!”

He doesn't stop. She sees muddy boots, and then Biswal slowly descends the stairs, hands raised.

Even in her state his appearance shocks her: it's clear General Lalith Biswal has just returned from war. His uniform is covered in spattered mud and ash, and there's a splash of what Mulaghesh knows is blood on his right sleeve. His face is gray and haggard, and he looks years older than when she saw him last. She looks into his eyes, which are small and faded with fatigue, lost amidst pendulous bags. She isn't sure who's more haggard and disheartened: the old man on the steps who looks like he just lost a war, or the old woman by the forge with her finger in the ring of a grenade.

“You've got to run, Lalith,” she pleads. “You've got to
run
!”

Rada's large, dark eyes flick back and forth between the two of them.

“What are those voices?” says Biswal. He looks around the room, confused. “Who is talking, saying those things?”

“It doesn't matter, Lalith, just get out of here!”

Biswal shakes his head and begins walking forward. “No. I won't. I don't know why you're here, Turyin, or what's going on or why you think you need to do this. But I know Turyin Mulaghesh, and I know she wouldn't do something like this.”

“It's the only way!” she says. “These swords she's made…Lalith, they're waking up the Voortyashtani dead! The
sentinels,
Lalith! That's who's talking! They were promised an invasion, a war that would end the world, and now they're going to do it! I've got to destroy these swords, Lalith, I've got to!”

Biswal glances around at the swords. “I admit, this…is damned suspicious. But we can talk about this, Turyin. You can explain everything to me. Whatever you're trying to do, this isn't the way to do it.”

“I can't explain because there's
no time
! I have to destroy them and destroy them now!”

He keeps walking. “I have soldiers here with plenty of firepower. You
don't
need to destroy yourself in order to do it. If you explain all this to me then I'd be happy to do it for you.”

“Lalith…Please, you've got to
run
.”

“Put the grenade down, Turyin. Just put it down, nice and easy. There are four soldiers upstairs, and if you pull that pin you won't just kill me, you'll kill all of them, too.”

Mulaghesh shuts her eyes. “Damn it…”

“I know you won't. You'd never kill another soldier. Just drop the grenade. I'm here. This is all over now. Just tell me what's happening.”

Mulaghesh lets out a long, slow sigh. Her whole body is taut, trembling. Then—very, very slowly—her crooked finger works itself free of the ring.

There's a
thunk
as the grenade falls to the floor. Mulaghesh follows shortly after, collapsing to the ground. She sits on the floor with her head between her knees, taking in huge, gasping breaths.

Biswal walks over to her and extends a hand. “Your sidearm, too, Turyin.”

“What?” she says numbly.

“Your carousel. I'll need it to be sure.”

Without thinking, she unholsters the carousel and hands it over to Biswal. “Now,” he says. “What's this about these swords?”

“You hear them in your head? Those voices saying those terrible things?”

He nods, his face grim.

“They're sentinels,” says Mulaghesh. “The voices of sentinels. The sword and the warrior were one, and that's what ‘thinadeskite' is—the pulverized swords of sentinels, with traces of their souls still trapped inside. Rada here realized that by remaking the swords she could awaken the dead, lure them into invading and destroying creation, as they were promised so many years ago.”

Biswal stares at her, shocked. “That…That can't possibly be true. It's ridiculous! It can't
possibly
be true.” He looks at Rada. “Can it?”

Rada's face is serenely triumphant. “Yes,” she says. “It's true. And it's over. I've won. You just don't know it yet.”

“You…You truly believe this?” he asks her.

“I don't need to believe it,” says Rada. “It's reality. It's going to happen, and it's going to happen soon. A god manifested in Bulikov five years ago, General—but what's going to happen this evening will make
that
look like a minor skirmish.”

He looks back at Mulaghesh. There's a queer light in his eyes. “She…She wants to start another Battle of Bulikov?”

“No. Worse. It'll be a massive invasion.”

“By sentinels—like Zhurgut?”

“Thousands of them,” says Mulaghesh wearily. “More. They'll come by ship. Sailing across the sea from the City of Blades. That's how the stories go, and that's what they were promised.”

“You can't fight them,” says Rada. “None of you can. You saw what Zhurgut did to the city. They'll shred you like ribbons. Even your most advanced weaponry can't stop them.” She smiles beatifically. “I've freed them, you see. Trapped over there in their ruined city…I've let them out of the dark.”

Biswal is silent. Then, to Mulaghesh: “It'd be a war, then.”

“War on a level we've never seen,” says Mulaghesh. “We
have
to stop it. We have to.”

“It's too late,” says Rada. “It's happening. Somewhere out in the sea, two realities are converging. Soon the seas will be dark with longships, and then this entire era will be over.”

Biswal looks to Mulaghesh. “Be honest with me, Turyin. Speak to me as a soldier, as my equal. You really, truly believe what she's saying will come to pass?”

“I do,” she says. “I've been to the City of Blades; I've seen the army of waiting dead. That's why I'm stained red, Lalith, I…I know it doesn't make any sense, and I know it seems impossible, but it's the truth. It'll be battle and war on a scale we've never seen before.”

He holds her gaze for a long time, his eyes small and sad, the eyes of a man who has seen much death recently and expects to see more soon. “Battle and war,” he says to himself, “on a scale we've never seen before…” Then something hardens in his gaze, something cold and furious, and he says quietly, “I believe you.”

Then Biswal lifts the carousel, points it at Rada's face, and pulls the trigger.

The gunshot is deafeningly loud in this confined space. The bullet strikes the inside of Rada's right eye, just where the tear gland sits, and her right eye sinks in just slightly, giving her face a strangely fabricated look, as if she were a poorly made mannequin. The back of her head erupts, dark purple viscera spattering over the forge, sizzling furiously where it strikes the coals. Then Rada slumps over, a look of dull surprise forever frozen on her pale, round face.

Mulaghesh stares, shocked. Then she looks up into Biswal's face and sees a stony resolution there that she's glimpsed only once before, years and years ago outside the gates of Bulikov: the intent to see done what he feels should be done, and the expectation that the world will either comply or get out of the way.

“I'd been wondering how we could wake up Saypur,” he muses quietly. “And another Battle of Bulikov…That is something I would not wish to miss.”

“Lalith,” asks Mulaghesh. “What…What…”

“Lieutenant!” he calls out.

“What…what did you do, Lalith?” she asks faintly. “What are you doing?”

Biswal nonchalantly unloads the carousel, the rounds tinkling on the floor. There's the rumble of footsteps as someone sprints down the steps. Then Biswal flips the carousel around, grabbing it by its barrels, and swings it toward Mulaghesh….

The world goes bright with pain. Mulaghesh feels herself tumble sideways, the ceiling spinning above her.

A young Saypuri officer trots into the forge, though she slows when she sees Rada's corpse. “General Mulaghesh has just assassinated Polis Governor Rada Smolisk,” says Biswal calmly. “I have managed to subdue her. Please take her into custody.”

He walks out without glancing back at her. Mulaghesh tries to hold on to consciousness, but then everything goes dark.

I gave my child to this. I gave my child to Her.

I give myself to Her. Now, and forever.

To ask me to release my sword is to ask me to give up the one thing I have left.

—WRITS OF SAINT ZHURGUT, 731

V
allaicha Thinadeshi struggles to breathe. She thought this would be easy; she thought Mulaghesh would destroy the swords and they would all simply begin to drift once more….But rather than drifting, rather than shifting back into the shadows of reality, she feels them all becoming
more
real,
more
themselves,
more
awake.

And as they do, they grow aware that she is not who they thought she was.

This bleeding, terrified woman is not the Empress of Graves. This is not the Divinity of death and warfare. Why is she here? Why were they listening to her? So they continue to reject her.

The process is agonizing. They reject her like flesh slowly pushing out a thorn. She wasn't aware she had become a part of them in so many ways, and for them to abandon her, force her away, is like losing a limb she never knew she had.

She finally accepts what's happened: the strange general has been defeated. She has failed. The swords still persist; they still draw the dead close. And now that Thinadeshi no longer has the sword of Voortya, she's powerless against them.

She's dying now. She can feel it. She can feel herself fade, feel the City of Blades itself push down on her, crushing her mind, removing a person who never should have been here in the first place.

She can still hear the sentinels' thoughts echoing over the beaches:
Mother…Mother, we are coming…We are coming for you…
And then she feels them begin to leave, departing for the land of the living.

“No,” she whimpers. “Please, no…”

It's all too much. She shifts sideways and falls over, unable to support herself. She listens to them pleading for their mother. Their voices intermingle in her head, and suddenly she remembers a day long ago, back in Saypur with her children, when they all held hands and ran down the hillside together, laughing with glee, and some of them tumbled and rolled all the way down….

These are her last thoughts: the hot summer sun; the soft embrace of the grass; the tinkle of children's laughter; and the warm, eager grasp of a tiny hand.

Sigrud normally feels at home in the shadows. To be unseen and occupy the dark interstitial parts of the world is second nature to him. But as he squats in the shadows of the trees outside of Rada Smolisk's house, he can't bring himself to feel comfortable.

None of this is right. None of this is what he expected.

He watches as the Saypuri soldiers file out of the house, carrying what appear to be sword racks and then finally two bodies. One of them is Mulaghesh, her hands bound behind her back, with one soldier holding her feet and another holding her by the armpits.
Probably alive,
he thinks.
No one binds the hands of a dead person
. But she's also a deep, dark red color, which is…unusual.

The second body is on a stretcher, covered up. The only thing that he can see is that the person is very short, and, from the drip of blood from the side of the stretcher, probably very dead.

He frowns as they load up and drive away. What happened here? Why would Mulaghesh go to the polis governor's office? What could she have discovered in the afterlife to send her here and ask him to come here as well?

And where is his daughter?

Biswal exits the house. He's listening as an officer briefs him on something. Biswal is nodding, though he looks displeased, but not furious: he's being told of something they can deal with, manage, tolerate, not desired by any means but not of chief concern. The lieutenant keeps pointing to a place in the trees just beyond the house, a thick spot of bracken. Biswal looks at it with flat, cold eyes and nods. He says something short—
It is what it is,
perhaps—and then climbs into an auto, which speeds off up the road.

There are only a handful of soldiers left in the area. Sigrud waits for them to disperse, then sneaks through the trees.

There's a guard at the door of the polis governor's office, so he won't bother to try to get inside. But he creeps his way toward the spot of bracken, wondering what could have caused such consternation….

He's ten feet away when he smells it. Blood—a lot of it.

He looks at the area from the shelter of a tree. He can't fully investigate in these circumstances, but he can see where the bracken's been crushed, like someone fell back into it.

And he smells something…familiar. The scent of cigarettes. An unusual kind, aromatic and exotic. The exact sort, Sigrud reflects, that his daughter smokes nearly constantly.

Sigrud looks uphill, in the direction of Fort Thinadeshi, and thinks.

Mulaghesh wakes and immediately regrets it. Her brain feels like one giant bruise. She groans and lifts her left hand to touch her brow, and remembers only too late that her hand is made of metal. It clunks into her face, causing her injury to flare up furiously. She moans pitifully and shakes her head. The back of her scalp grinds on a stone floor.

She frowns and opens her eyes. She's in a jail cell, lit with an electric light. There's only one place in Voortyashtan she knows of that has electricity….

It all comes back to her like a dream.

The swords.

“Hey!” she says. “Hey, somebody!”

Silence.

She forces herself to sit up. It feels like something in her head is sloshing around uncomfortably, a dense fluid that might break through her skull's fragile walls. She feels her brow—with the correct hand this time—and finds her face is crusty with blood. Biswal must have nearly cracked her head open.

There's not much to see through the bars of her cell door: there's just a blank stone wall on the other side, dark and molded, with a fluttering electric light above it. Mulaghesh stands—this takes a lot longer than she expected—walks to the door, and leans on it.

She checks her pockets. Her holster is gone, of course, as is the rest of her gear. So is the sword of Voortya, she realizes. It could be very bad if someone threw that away, not knowing what it is.

She puts as much of her face as she can through the bars and looks down the hallway. There are just more cells to her left, but to her right about twenty yards down is a private in a dark red beret standing at attention, hands behind her back. She's too far away for Mulaghesh to see her name, but she can see the chevrons on her uniform, so she knows her rank. The door beside her is thick iron with a small glass window in its center. This must be an old part of the fortress, because none of the doors or bars look at all modern to Mulaghesh.

“Hey,” says Mulaghesh. Her voice hasn't been used in some time, so she has to clear her throat. “Hey, Private! Listen. Listen, I've…Damn, my head hurts…I've got to speak to Biswal! I've got to! I don't know what he thinks is going on, but he's wrong, he's…he's
wrong
!”

The private is completely still. She barely blinks.

“Listen,” says Mulaghesh. “It sounds crazy, Private, but…But we're about to be under attack. Another Divine attack is about to happen! I swear it's true, and we've
got
to act now! I wouldn't believe it, either, but…”

The private slowly blinks again, staring into space.

Mulaghesh summons up all of her air and bellows, “
Damn it all, Private! I might be in a jail cell but I am still your superior officer, so you had damned well better hop to an order when it's given to you! A critical threat is imminent and it is both my duty and yours to respond!
”

Nothing. It's as if the woman's deaf.

“Ah, hells,” says Mulaghesh. “You're not going to listen to me no matter what I say, are you?”

The private blinks again.

“Well, shit,” says Mulaghesh, and she sits down on the ground and tries to think.

Captain Sakthi sits in the large conference room of Fort Thinadeshi, trying to stay awake. They've been riding nearly all day and all night, so it's a struggle just to sit upright, let alone remain conscious. He glances around at Major Hukkeri and the other senior officers and can tell right away that they feel the same. They're already briefed on the new Dreyling threat. What could General Biswal's meeting possibly be about that could be so important?

The door opens and Biswal walks in, hands thoughtfully clasped behind his back. There is a strange pride and energy to him: his back is a little too straight, his stride a little too jaunty. It's hard to tell if he's pleased or furious.

He takes the podium and turns to his officers. “Thank you for being here with me tonight,” he says quietly. “I know the past days have not been easy on you. We do not have much time, so I will cut to the point. We have recently discovered a long-running plot by the Dreylings to conceal Divine Voortyashtani artifacts collected from the ocean floor. My suspicion is that they did so because they feared that we would shut down the harbor project to prevent any unknown side effects. However, their duplicity has had grave effects—for, due to their actions, we are about to witness another Divine attack on our way of life. And it is our duty to defend these shores.”

The room is dead silent.

“General Mulaghesh, I have discovered, was part of the Dreylings' conspiracy,” says Biswal. “She and CTO Harkvaldsson plotted to assassinate Polis Governor Rada Smolisk, who had deduced their crime. I am grieved now to tell you that General Mulaghesh succeeded in this. And, as there is no honor among thieves or traitors, she also murdered CTO Harkvaldsson in order to cover up her actions. We have apprehended the general, and now have her in holding in the prison.

“Justice will be done. But first, we must fight. The traitorous general confessed that the Divine attack would be coming in by sea, an invasion of Voortyashtan itself. We now have the upper hand, my proud officers of Saypur. We are aware of the attack before it comes. And if we fight, and fight nobly, we will be the victors—and we will be heroes the likes of which will never be forgotten. And all the foolishness our nation has become involved in here on the Continent, all the waste and the stupidity, all of that will end after tonight.”