City of Blades (57 page)

“You've gone mad.” The pistol trembles in her hand. “Is that why you had Signe killed?”

“Harkvaldsson? It was an accident. An unfortunate casualty.”

“You suffer so many of those, it seems.” Mulaghesh is breathing heavily. “She was my friend.”

“She was a Dreyling. She was in a hostile region. Both you and she were acting against the orders of the Saypuri authority here. But I am attempting to serve the greater good.”

“Your idea of the greater good involves far too many innocent deaths, Lalith,” says Mulaghesh. “Give me the sword, or I swear I will shoot you dead.”

“A sword?” He looks down at it. “Is it a sword? For a second, when it was in my pocket, I got the strangest feeling that it was a human hand….And then when I held it, I looked out on the world, and imagined I saw seas of fire, and thousands of banners in the air….” He looks at her. “It's not
just
a sword, is it. It's more than these things that Rada made. What is it?”

“I'm going to give you one more chance.”

“I'll tell you what,” says Biswal, suddenly eager. He stows the sword back in his coat. “I remember when you trained under me almost
no
one could beat you in a sword fight. You used those wooden swords, and I could tell when someone had tangled with you. They'd be moving slow and covered in livid bruises. I remember that.” He walks to one of the racks and picks up a sword—it must be a crude one, one that didn't work, because he isn't instantly possessed by a sentinel.

Lucky for him,
thinks Mulaghesh,
and lucky for me.

“I never contested you, of course. It would have been unseemly for me to do so, an officer so high above your rank. But I did wish to. To test my mettle against the best fighter under my command…We're both creatures of battle, Turyin, here at what might be the greatest battle of our lives. It seems only just for us to fight for the possession of this thing, this strange, whispering trinket.”

Mulaghesh keeps the pistol pointed on him but doesn't speak a word.

He smiles and whips his sword through the air. “Rada's workmanship seems quite capable. Will these things break skin?” His smile dims a little. “Will you still be a worthy opponent, despite being one-handed?” He walks to one side of the room and kicks the couch away, clearing some space. Then he turns to face her, a strange light in his eyes. “Come on. Test yourself. Let the art of combat decide who is the righteous one.”

Mulaghesh pulls the trigger.

The bullet punches through Biswal's chest and smashes the window behind him. A cold, chilly breeze comes pouring in.

Biswal stares down at himself in astonishment. The wound is bleeding freely, his blood striking the floor below him.

He looks up at her, outraged, shocked. “I can't believe you…you…”

She shoots again, hitting him again in the chest. He blinks, eyes wide, and the sword in his hand clatters to the floor. He takes one step toward her, then collapses to the ground, pawing limply for the blade that's now just out of reach.

Mulaghesh keeps the pistol trained on him and slowly walks over.

“You shot me,” he says softly. “I can't believe you
shot
me.”

“I'm not quite like you, Lalith,” she says. She holsters the pistol, bends down, and reaches into his coat. “You've always believed war to be a grand performance. But to me it's just killing, just the ugliest thing a person can ever do.” She pulls out the sword of Voortya. It's covered in Biswal's blood. “So when you need to do it, there's no need to make a show of it.”

He stares at her in disbelief. Then he says, “I'm…I'm not going to die, am I? I can't. I just
can't
….”

Mulaghesh watches him.

“I wasn't…I wasn't supposed to die like this,” he says softly. “I was supposed…to have a hero's death. I'm
owed
a better death.”

“There's no such thing as a good death, Lalith,” she says. “It's just a dull, stupid thing we all have to do eventually. To ask meaning of it is to ask meaning of a shadow.”

Biswal's trembling face fills with fury. “I hope there
is
an afterlife,” he says, his voice shaking. “I hope there
is
a hell. And I hope you go there soon, Turyin Mulaghesh.” His head falls back, his neck no longer able to support its weight.

“I've already been living in one, Lalith,” she says quietly. “Ever since the March.”

She can't quite tell when he dies. She can tell his vision is failing him, and then perhaps he's passed out from blood loss but is still alive…and then…

Nothing.

There's a
click
from the door. Then it swings open to reveal Sigrud kneeling on the other side, lockpicks in his hand.

He looks at her, then at Biswal's corpse. “Success?”

Mulaghesh walks away without looking back. “Get me to the coast.”

Captain Sakthi sprints up the steps to the southwest watchtower, his breath hot and burning in his lungs. He can hear the fortress yards behind him, full of soldiers piling in to arm themselves in case of a potential invasion.

Potential,
he thinks wildly as he keeps running,
or almost guaranteed?

He reviews the situation as he runs. No one knows where the hells Biswal is. The general was last seen reviewing the coastal cannons when he abruptly looked up as if someone called his name, excused himself, and walked away. Colonel Mishwal unfortunately took a bullet to the neck in the highlands, Major Owaisi is suffering from acute pneumonia contracted after tumbling into an icy Voortyashtani stream, and Major Hukkeri is frantically preparing her troops to defend the clifftops south of the fortress.

But this all means that no one is entirely sure whose order they're waiting on to fire the coastal cannons. This has never been done in the history of the fortress—who's the authority in such a situation? Yet Captain Sakthi, having seen what is slowly moving across the North Seas to them, is more than willing to abandon all decorum of rank if that means they make it out of here alive.

He finally makes it to the top of the watchtower. The walls of the tower are mostly glass to allow the radio technicians to see into the bay, so he is instantly confronted with the sight he just left.

“Oh, by the seas,” he whimpers. “There's more of them! And they're
closer
!”

The seas west of the fortress, which are often so dark, are now lit up with a queer blue-white luminescence, giving their slow, undulating waves a creamy, green color. This curious effect extends for miles, as if the waters have been invaded by some strange breed of algae.

But the source of the glow is obvious: it comes from the thousands of spectral ships sailing toward them.

They are the most bizarre and terrifying things Captain Sakthi has ever seen, splintery creations of bone and horn and metal, long and thin and positively lethal-looking, as if someone could teach a knife to float. Their sails are huge and billowing, not at all ragged but smooth and silvery. And Sakthi can see someone is rowing their countless oars, hauling at the ocean and driving the ships forward with furious speed.

He takes out a spyglass and squints through it. He can't quite make out who is rowing, but…but he thinks he can see shadowy, monstrous figures that couldn't
possibly
be human….

“By the seas…” He takes the spyglass away. “By the seas! What are you
waiting
for?” he cries to the technicians. “Why haven't they fired yet?”

“We haven't gotten the order yet, Captain,” says one of the technicians sitting at a radio. “General Biswal sa—”

“General Biswal is
absent
!” says Sakthi. “Radio the damn positions to the artillery and tell them to fire already!”

The technicians look at one another, crouched in their piles and piles of bronzed equipment. To do as Sakthi is asking is the most severe of violations.

Sakthi grimaces, pulls out his sidearm, and points it at them. “Tell them anything afterwards! Tell them I'm culpable! Tell them to hang me! Tell them to put it on my fucking fitness report! Just fire already,
fire, fire!
”

The technicians grab a radio, turn it on, mutter in a jumble of coordinates, and then finish with, “Fire away.”

There's a pause.

Then the first cannon fires.

The boom of the cannon is so loud it feels like it will shake Sakthi's bones to the point of dissolution. The coastal batteries light up with the flare as if a spotlight has shone down on them, and three of the technicians put binoculars to their eyes. Sakthi holsters his weapon, fumbles for his own spyglass, and puts it to his eye just in time to see a column of water erupt up from the ocean.

One of the technicians says, “Miss.”

The cannons fire again and again, targeting the foremost ship. It feels like it takes an agonizingly long time between each blast. Then finally the Voortyashtani ship erupts in a burst of dark smoke, and it begins to drift on the ocean, a flaming, smoking, directionless hulk that now threatens to crash into the other ships.

The technicians cheer, and Sakthi takes away his spyglass to join them. But as he does he sees things in perspective: the smoking, flaming ship is but a fraction of the flotilla, a tiny candle burning in a sea of glittering, soft light.

We'll have to do that a thousand more times for it to make a difference,
he thinks, his stomach sinking.
We're fucked, aren't we? We're so desperately fucked.

Mulaghesh and Sigrud are sprinting across the fortress courtyard when the first cannon goes off. It's incredibly, deafeningly loud, and though the courtyard is full of soldiers preparing for combat it's immediately clear that they've never heard the coastal cannons in use, nor did they ever expect to. They're unnerved, ragged and exhausted from the highlands excursion, and totally unprepared for what might happen.

I have to stop this,
thinks Mulaghesh.
Or else those sentinels will cut through these kids like a hot knife through butter
.

“They likely took down my rope ladder,” says Sigrud. “So I am not sure how to get out. All gates will surely be watched.”

“All but one on the northern side,” says Mulaghesh.

“There's a gate on the northern side of the fortress?”

“The loading dock for the thinadeskite mines,” says Mulaghesh. “I can almost guarantee no one's bothered to put a body on that exit.”

She's right: in all of the confusion and chaos, there are no guards stationed at the loading dock, though it is still penned in with a canyon of tall, forbidding wire fences held up with tall wooden posts.

“No wire cutters this time,” says Mulaghesh. “Shit!”

Sigrud grunts, takes off his coat, and wraps his hands in it. Then he walks to one of the posts, grabs three strands of the barbed wire, and heaves.

With the
plunk
sounds of snapping harp strings, the bolts holding the wire to the post pop out. He stomps on the handful of wires with a boot, then grabs another handful of wires, heaves it up, and opens a narrow hole in the fence. Mulaghesh dives through and Sigrud follows, though his hands are now bleeding and the wires manage to score him over his shoulders and back.

They run north and west along the walls of Fort Thinadeshi. These walls are dark and unmanned, as nearly all the fort's focus is on the west and the south. Yet such is the power of the cannons that each time those on the western walls go off, even here on the opposite side of the fortress, it's like a miniature sun has risen, the pale, burning light rippling across the harsh cliffs.

Mulaghesh can't yet see what they're firing at. She's not close enough yet. But she knows. She saw them, after all, in the City of Blades.

Then a voice shouts from the walls: “
You!
”

Mulaghesh looks up and sees the furious face of Sergeant Major Pandey looking down on her. She's not sure why he looks so angry, but she doesn't want to wait to find out. “Damn,” she says. “Run.”

They move, sprinting over the cliffs with the boom and flare of the cannons just to the left over their shoulders. The western horizon is lit with a queer, unearthly light, and as they near the cliffs she can see the tips of something glowing out on the waters.

She grips the sword of Voortya in her hand. It's sticky with Biswal's blood, but it's still dead, still dormant. She has no idea what to do with it, or even if there is anything to do with it—it might simply be too late.

There's a crash from far behind them. She glances back and sees someone has driven one of the fortress autos through the wire fence and is speeding over the rocks at them in pursuit. The driver must not care for their own well-being or the auto's, as they push the vehicle into terrain most drivers would never attempt. She can hear the tires crunching, the creak of the suspensions, a crack as its bumper dips and smashes into one of the stones. It's obvious that, whoever it is, they're pursuing Mulaghesh and Sigrud and will overtake them soon.

Mulaghesh points ahead at a small gully. “There!” she cries.

She can see the auto's headlights now out of the corner of her eye. Another crunch as it plows over a stone…

She and Sigrud dive into the gully, their elbows banging and scraping on the rocks. The car's engine roars once more and it surges over them.

There's an enormous
pop
as the auto hits the gully, dipping forward enough for its wheels to catch the lip just at the wrong angle. Mulaghesh suspects that the axle has snapped upon impact. More concerning, though, is the spray of rocks and rubble from the impact. She can feel small, stinging stones dappling her body, and nearby Sigrud cries out in real pain.

The auto rumbles and rattles a few feet forward past the gully, awkwardly limping into the brush before coming to a grinding halt. Mulaghesh sits up, pulls out her pistol, and takes stock of herself: she's got a few cuts and bruises, but nothing serious. Sigrud, however, has taken a sizeable stone to the left forearm and is cradling his hand in his lap, cursing prolifically. She can tell the second she sees it that his arm is broken.