City of Blades

17. Defiant Love

Mulaghesh stares at the ceiling of the jail cell.

Everything hurts. Her head, her left arm, her right arm, her knees, both ankles, though one a little more than the other. Even her left hand hurts, her missing hand—a curious, ghostly ache, though perhaps that’s because she still doesn’t have her prosthesis back. Yet none of it’s a real hurt, somehow. It’s all far away, muted, as if it’s happening to someone on the other side of the world.

It takes her a second to hear the sound of the footsteps. That’s unusual: ever since Major Hukkeri had them throw her in here they’ve mostly left her alone, except for bringing her food or taking out her latrine. They treat her, in many ways, like a bomb that’s about to go off, and she can’t quite blame them. So who’s brave enough to get near her now?

She watches as the visitor comes to the door of her cell, and though it’s dark she can tell by the scintillating wall of medals and ribbons on their chest that this is a person of consequence. In fact, there’s only one person she knows of who could have ever accrued that many commendations.

She lifts her head a little. “Noor?”

General Adhi Noor leans forward so that a blade of light falls across his face. It’s him, though he looks about a thousand years older than when she last saw him.

He smiles. “Hello, Turyin. Mind if I come in?”

“Do I have a choice, sir?”

“You do if you’d like to.”

She nods and stands to attention. He unlocks the door and steps in. “There’s no need for that. You look like you’ve had a rough time of it. I’d not put you through any more.” He sits down on the cot at the other side of the cell. “Why don’t you take a seat.”

She does as he asks. She thinks for a moment. “Sir, what are you doing here?”

He smiles again, but there’s a bitter touch to it. “When Biswal messaged the Ministry about Zhurgut’s attack on the city, that put a lot of things in motion. I happened to be in Taalvashtan at the time. The prime minister recommended I jump on a boat and get here as soon as I could. It was only on the way that she…apprised me of your operation here. It sounds like a damn tricky one.” He gives her a piercing glance. “And from what everyone has said you’ve either caused quite a bit of commotion or you’ve walked right into a mess of it.”

Mulaghesh is silent. He looks her over, and she knows the look: she herself has given it to soldiers under her command many times.

He takes off his hat and sets it in his lap. “Why don’t you tell me what happened, Turyin?” he says quietly.

She hesitates. It seems so much easier to just let it all be walled up inside of her, to pack it away and keep it in the dark, away from her waking life. But before she knows it, she begins to talk.

She tells him everything. She describes it in the only language available to her: the dry, clinical, officious vocabulary of an officer making a report. And he listens throughout, hardly moving.

When she finishes he’s silent for a while. Then he says quietly, “That’s some story.”

She swallows. “It’s the truth, sir.”

“I know it is. I believe you.”

“You…You do?”

“Yes. I have never known you to lie, Turyin. I’ve never known you to stretch the truth one jot—even when I really would have preferred you to. And maybe you forget that I was with you just days after the Battle of Bulikov. I know what this country is like just as much as you do.”

“I wasn’t doubting you, sir. It’s just that…that General Biswal…”

Noor purses his lips and nods. “Yes. Biswal. I’ve been in communication with Major Hukkeri and one officer who has, in my opinion, thoroughly distinguished himself, a Captain Sakthi. Their assessments of Biswal’s actions don’t quite enter into the realm of the fantastic like yours do, but…they’re close enough. It appears Biswal told numerous officers numerous different stories about what was happening here, anything to get his men to support his mad endeavor to start a new war. That’s reason enough to doubt him. And it is my personal opinion that his command here, while brief, has been nothing short of a catastrophe.”

“That doesn’t acquit a soldier of killing a superior officer, sir.”

“No. No, it doesn’t. But being that we did discover fragments of these swords you describe in Biswal’s rooms, I am tempted to believe you had reasons for your actions.”

“Fragments, sir?”

“Yes. Both the swords and the statues that SDC so carefully hoarded have all more or less disintegrated. If you’re right—if these miracles persisted only because the will of the dead insisted they did so, as a way to be remembered—then it seems that power is gone. The thinadeskite no longer registers any extraordinary properties at all. It’s simply dust.” General Noor rotates the hat in his hands, fingering the brim. “If the swords—damn, I hate discussing this odd stuff—if these swords drew that fleet to these shores, and if Biswal was passively willing to allow them to do so, for whatever reason, then it is an extraordinarily damning piece of evidence. That you managed to defuse the situation—however you managed to do it—is remarkable.” He glances at her. “I’ll probably regret this—I hate asking about anything miraculous—but how did you do it? You just threw the sword at them?”

She shakes her head. “The sword was…it was like a symbol, sir, an idea made real, or maybe many ideas made real. It was a symbol of their agreement—they’d be soldiers for Voortya, and she would give them eternal life and their final war. It was a matter of just…rewriting the agreement.”

“How so?”

There’s a glint of steel in her eye. “They didn’t qualify as soldiers in my opinion, sir.”

“And as such…you were no longer obligated to allow them their war,” says Noor. “Ah. It seems simple now, but…Well, actually, no, it doesn’t seem simple. I hardly understand a bit of it.” He sighs. “I admire the prime minister, but I don’t much enjoy having to parse through all of her miraculous nonsense. But I’m glad she put you here. She’s foresighted, I’ll give you that.”

“I didn’t do it alone, sir. CTO Harkvaldsson was an enormous asset, and…and…”

“Yes.” Noor’s expression darkens. “The dauvkind.” He is silent for a great while. “Did he really kill those soldiers?”

Mulaghesh nods.

“If he was your friend…If he helped you…well, why didn’t you just lie? Why did you tell me that?”

“Lying about how a soldier died, sir,” says Mulaghesh, “is a damned cowardly thing to do. It would dishonor them. Even if it hurts me to admit what happened, I have to tell the truth. He…He did it in a blind rage. They’d just killed his daughter….” She trails off.

“And you know that won’t matter,” says Noor. “Even if he is the dauvkind. We cannot let such a thing pass. When we find him, we will have to hold him accountable for his actions, no matter who he is.”

“When we find him, sir?”

“That’s right, I suppose you wouldn’t know. The dauvkind has not been found anywhere since the night of the attempted invasion. He’s a Ministry-trained operative. Those sorts can be hard to find.” Noor clears his throat. “He has, however, left a letter behind.”

“A letter?”

“Yes. He confesses that the entire plan about the yard of statues—hiding the Divine here amongst the harbor works—was his idea. His daughter had nothing to do with it, he says. He claims it was an act of patriotism, anything to support his country, and he takes full responsibility for his actions—though that’s not quite true, what with him having fled and all.” He looks at Mulaghesh. “Is this true? Was this his idea?”

Mulaghesh rubs her aching left arm. “Possibly. I don’t know.”

Noor looks her over again, carefully.

“I do know that the statues had little to do with the situation in Voortyashtan,” says Mulaghesh. “Their presence was wholly coincidence—everything that happened here was a consequence of the actions of Rada Smolisk and Lalith Biswal. That is the truth.”

“And why did you never try to contact me? Why did you never reach out to the military council?”

“The idea of the prime minister running an unofficial operation, investigating the Divine…” Mulaghesh shrugs. “What sort of reaction would that have evoked? Even if we had discovered a true threat?”

Noor nods, sighing. “That is probably true. There are some who already think this whole thing was a hoax concocted by the prime minister. I suppose denial is a much more comfortable bed to lie in than the truth.”

“And what’s to become of me, sir? Will I face a trial?”

“A trial?” he says, surprised. “No, not a trial. Not yet, at least. There’ll be a hearing, and likely an inquiry—but I expect they will mostly find your actions commendable, Mulaghesh. There were thousands of witnesses to what you did last night, even if they don’t quite understand what they saw. There are dozens of soldiers here who can testify to General Biswal’s erratic actions before the invasion.”

Mulaghesh feels herself trembling. “But…But Pandey, and…”

His expression softens. “Yes, the poor sergeant major. You explained to me that was an accident. And we did find part of his sword in your false hand. That is proof enough to me.”

“But…But someone has to…to hold me accountable, sir.”

“For what?”

She almost says, “For everything,” because before this only once in her life has she ever felt responsible for so many ills in this world, so many wounds and so many deaths.

General Noor looks at her for a long, long time. “We need to get you home, Mulaghesh. You’ve been out here too long, out on the front lines. Both in body and in mind.” He stands and pushes the door of the cell ajar. Then he turns and says, “I’m going to leave this open, General Mulaghesh. You come out when you’re ready. When you think you deserve it. And you do deserve it, Turyin.”

She waits until she knows he’s out of earshot to finally begin to weep again. It takes her more than an hour to summon the strength to walk out.

The next day Mulaghesh walks the cliffs in the morning air, reveling in the sunlight. A front has blown in out of the south, pushing the clouds away and bringing warm air with it. Noor has given her a new uniform and has allowed her time to clean herself up and seek first aid, and all of this makes Voortyashtan feel like a different world to her.

She wanders the copses and woods atop the cliffs, walking north of the fortress and the city. It takes only a few minutes to lose her tails—two of them, both plainclothes Saypuri officers, neither of them very good. Then she turns toward the coast.

She finds it almost immediately: the hidden place where the tiny, terrifying stairs wander down to the shore. She remembers sitting on the cliffs and watching Pandey rowing out to sea, and the girl in the boat who met him.

Mulaghesh climbs down the stairs. It would normally terrify her, but it doesn’t anymore. Having been death itself for a little bit, she’s no longer much afraid of the idea.

She pauses when she’s almost at the bottom. She calls out, “Sigrud? I’m coming down! Don’t…Don’t fucking kill me or anything!”

A silence.

Then, quietly, “Okay.”

She climbs down the rest of the way and finds him hiding in a cut-in up under a shallow roof of stone. He looks like shit: he’s starved, filthy, and he’s set his own broken arm, albeit poorly.

“Gods be damned,” she says. “How did you survive the past couple of days?”

“Not well,” he admits. He looks at her balefully with one sunken, exhausted eye. “How did you know where to find me?”

She walks over and sits beside him on the gravelly shore. “I thought you would want to come somewhere you could remember her.”

He bows his head, but says nothing.

“Is all well?” he says after a while.

“No. I told them the truth,” she says. “About what happened. About what you did to those soldiers.”

“And the harbor?”

“What, your lie about how it was all your idea? Well…That I didn’t contradict.” She looks at him sadly. “Did you not want to disparage the memory of her?”

“I…I wanted to keep one last part of her alive,” he says. “The one thing she devoted her life to. But now that you’ve found me…Will you tell them? Will you allow them to arrest me, to cast down all the things my daughter built?”

“No. That I won’t do. I’m already arranging meetings with the tribal leaders before I ship out of here about that.”

“About what?”

“About how if they fuck up all that Signe did for them, and fail to make a nation out of this place…Well. Then I’ll come back and kill every single one of them.”

He looks at her. “Do…Do you think that they’ll believe you?”

She thins her eyes. “I was their god the other night, Sigrud. Just a little bit, and just for a little while. But I was still Voortya. They’ll fucking listen.” She sniffs. “But first I’m going to talk to Lem at SDC.”

“About…what?”

“About leaving Signe’s yacht at this location along the shore,” she says, handing him a map. “It’ll be there tomorrow morning.”

He looks at the map, confused, then slowly takes it. “You…You’re letting me get away?”

“No. I’m giving you a head start.”

“But…I killed those soldiers.”

“Yeah. And that’s a hard thing, and I damned well hate it.” She watches as the waves grasp at the stones at her feet, trying but never quite managing to tug them away. “But I did something similar once. And people gave me a second chance. I’d be a shit to deny that to others.”

“I don’t deserve such kindness.”

“Ah, there’s that word.” She looks out at the ocean. “ ‘Deserve.’ How preoccupied we are with that. With what we should have, with what we are owed. I wonder if any word has ever caused more heartache.” She watches as he folds the map, his fingers trembling, his face pinched like a child not to cry. “I’m sorry about Signe.”

He stows the map away. “Will I be able to see her?”

“No, Sigrud. You can’t.”

“Please, I must. Just…give me one thing more. Just this one thing.”

“Sigrud…”

He looks at her, his face resolute. “I want to see her funeral.”

“Her funeral? Sigrud, I can’t…”

“Even if it is far away…I must see this. I must see her at rest.”

“You don’t want her buried at home?”

“Buried? Dreylings do not bury their dead.” Then he looks west, along the shore, to where the SDC cranes sit. “And this is her home. She devoted her life to this place, this work. If that doesn’t make a home, Turyin Mulaghesh, then nothing does. I was never there for her in life, so please…Please just let me be there for her for this.”

It’s a brisk evening, the sun painting the skies with cherry-red swathes. Mulaghesh has pulled out her parade dress uniform for the first time in what feels like ages, and the town below is lit with torchlight as the reconstruction resumes. Yet despite the beauty, Mulaghesh’s heart is dull and leaden.

The rifling is heavy in her hand. She wishes Sigrud hadn’t asked this of her. But once he did, she couldn’t refuse.

She looks up as the smaller gates to the fortress’s west wall open. The litter comes rattling out, pulled by a single big draft horse. Noor walks beside it, also in his parade dress, and he gives Mulaghesh a single nod. There’s a small retinue of officers in tow, not large, just enough to be tasteful: this is, after all, not their moment. She waits until the litter draws close before she puts the rifling to her shoulder and walks beside Noor.

She glances up at the litter. It’s a hastily prepared thing, nothing like a decent hearse, and she can glimpse inside to the fur-wrapped figure within.

“Seems a damned odd ritual,” says Noor as they walk down to the city. “Burning the dead is one thing, but in a ship?”

“It’s symbolic,” says Mulaghesh.

“Seems a waste of a ship,” says Noor. “But then I guess the Dreylings have vessels to spare.”

“They feel they owe it to her, I suppose.”

It’s a long way down to the city, but it’s a familiar one now. Mulaghesh eyes the wooden frames rising along the streets, promises of sturdy Dreyling structures to come, though they’ve halted work for this. In three weeks, she thinks, I won’t even be able to recognize this city. But the biggest change is what’s happening down at the harbor, where the seawall and the lighthouse appear to be glowing a soft, shimmering gold.

“My word,” says Noor as they near it. “What is that?”

It takes Mulaghesh a minute to understand it, but then she sees that the seawall and every balcony of the lighthouse is lined with lights, and above each light is a face, grim and sad.

“Lanterns,” says Mulaghesh. “It’s all the workers. They’ve come to see. They’re holding lanterns, every one.”

“For…her? I thought she was just an engineer.”

The litter turns away from the harbor, south toward the northern shore of the Solda. “She did the impossible,” says Mulaghesh. She nods ahead to where the Solda is now flowing somewhat freely. “She freed the waters, she built the harbor. And by doing that, she kept their country afloat. The United Dreyling States can make good on all their loans.”

“The dauvkind’s daughter did all that, you think?”

“One big push, I suppose.”

The little boat lies on the shores ahead. It’s a small wooden craft, though perhaps in defiance of Signe’s tastes, as it’s also of a somewhat ornate design. SDC Security Chief Lem stands beside it, dressed in his SDC uniform, grim and downcast.

Mulaghesh walks up and sees the boat is empty, except for a small layer of kindling, which she didn’t expect. Lem gives her a guilty look. “We considered lining it with some of her old blueprints,” he says. “The ones she didn’t use. But we didn’t think she would have wanted that. She would have wished us to make use of them.”

“She had no time for creature comforts,” says Mulaghesh. “I doubt she drew much comfort from them, really. So…how does this work?”

“We set her in the boat,” says Lem softly. He lifts a tall, thick glass jar of yellow-orange oil. A candle sits in a small glass cup beside it. “We put the oil in the prow. Then we push it into the water, light the candle, and someone cuts the rope. And when it’s out to sea, it’s set alight. Traditionally it’d be with a flaming arrow, but…” He gives her rifling a guilty look. “Not too many skilled with a bow at the moment.”

“I see,” says Mulaghesh.

Mulaghesh steps to the side as Lem and another SDC worker gently reach in and lift the body out of the litter. They treat their burden as delicately as if it was a bundle of lily petals.

They gingerly lay her inside the boat. Lem reaches for the knot at the top of the furs, and he plucks at it and it falls apart. As it does the furs slide away to reveal the face beneath.

She looks as Mulaghesh expected: colorless, distorted, slightly swollen. Not like Signe, not like the person Mulaghesh knew in life, so filled with hunger and delight. But Mulaghesh has seen corpses before, so she knew what she’d see.

“Good-bye, Signe,” she says softly.

She and Noor turn and slowly make their way down to the seawall beside the Solda. The SDC workers there salute her solemnly, their faces lit with golden light from their lanterns. She salutes back and turns to look upstream.

How many times have I done this before? How many children’s funerals have I been to?

She looks upstream. Lem kneels, lights the candle, whispers something, and slashes the rope. The little boat bobs a bit, then slowly wanders downstream, picking up speed in the weak current. It’s going at a good clip when it passes Mulaghesh, and she snatches the barest glimpse of the still, pale face within.

I’ll wait, she thinks. I want her to see as much of what she built as I can allow before I do it.

The little boat passes the seawall, then drifts out beneath the cranes, which sit dark and hunched in the waters. Mulaghesh scans the horizon. Far in the distance, only a half a mile or so past the lighthouse, she thinks she can discern the slightest hint of a boat’s sail.

There, she thinks. Now he can see….

She kneels, places the rifling on the edge of the seawall—her left arm is still wounded from her duel with Pandey—and draws a bead on the little boat and the glimmering glass jar at the brow.

The rifling jumps. There’s a spark and suddenly the boat is alight. Within seconds it’s a bright, clean yellow flame, drifting out to sea.

And as the light filters across the bay, a strange sound accompanies it. It sounds like a wave or perhaps a roar, starting low and growing the farther the boat drifts to sea. Slowly Mulaghesh realizes the Dreylings are shouting, starting at the lighthouse and rushing down the seawall until all the men around her are shouting as well, a long, sustained cry.

It’s not a cry of grief, she finds, nor one of pain or loss or sorrow; rather, it’s a shout of triumph, of victory, of good-bye and farewell, a shout of love, love, defiant love.

When it’s over she and Noor trudge back up to the fortress. “Do you think it will be any different, Turyin?” he asks. “Do you really think the Voortyashtanis can ever truly be civilized?”

She shrugs. “Why only doubt the Voortyashtanis? I’m not even sure if we can civilize ourselves.”

Sigrud lies in the dark in the hatch of the yacht, unable to sleep. The waves toy with the boat mercilessly, but it took almost no time at all for his head to readjust, learning to move with the waves and the vast ripples of the ocean. He narrowly avoided a storm this morning, which was lucky as he doubted not only his arm but the quality of the ship’s jibsail. He’s not sure how his daughter managed to pilot this thing out to the Teeth of the World so well.

He does some calculations in his head about the time. Then he rolls over to the tiny porthole beside him, licks his finger, and begins to write upon the glass.

Frost creeps across the window, then recedes, leaving behind the moving image of a woman seated at a desk, staring at a sheet of paper in her hands.

She looks old, worn, and yet blearily noble, the look of a woman prepared to speak but no longer quite capable of believing what she’s about to say.

Shara Komayd glances at him, then does a double take. “Sigrud? Sigrud! What are you…My word, you look terrible.”

“Hello, Shara,” he says hoarsely.

To his surprise she appears to pick up the edges of the image and carry it away with her. He must have wound up appearing in a hand mirror of hers by mistake, rather than a windowpane. “You can’t do this, Sigrud. You can’t contact me, not now. They’re looking for you, all of them! And I can’t intervene, not this time!”

“I know,” he says. “I…I just wanted to talk to you.”

She carries him into her bedroom and sets him down on the bedside table. It’s evening there. The four-poster bed sits behind her, its curtains drawn. “I’m…I’m so sorry about what happened, Sigrud. Your daughter…Her presence in the city was wholly incidental to why I sent Mulaghesh in the first place. Are you healthy? Are you safe? Don’t tell me where you’re going.”

“I won’t. I am…I am all right. I can’t tell you where I’m going, because I don’t know. But I will take your counsel. Shara…what should I do?”

“I’m afraid you must hide, Sigrud. I’m sorry, but…I don’t have the clout anymore to change the minds of the military. To attempt something like that after what I’ve done so far—it would cause considerable problems.”

“So I must hide,” says Sigrud.

“Yes. You must run, and hide. Be someone new. Use an identity you’ve never used before or never even had before. One that you can use for a long time.”

“A long time?”

She nods. “I’m afraid it must be so. You killed five soldiers, Sigrud. You killed them brutally during one of the worst assaults in Saypuri history. Those in power—or those who are about to be in power—will not be forgiving of that.”

“So I am alone,” says Sigrud softly. “Again.”

“I’m sorry. The United Dreyling States are in no position to shield you. They depend wholly upon Saypur just to stay solvent, and there is an inquiry into what happened at the harbor. I am already in conversation with your wife about…about how to distance herself from this incident.”

“From me,” says Sigrud. “To distance herself from me.”

“Yes, from you.”

He sighs. “When I first came to Voortyashtan, I wanted nothing more than to make the world leave me alone, to leave the trappings of power behind. But now to actually do it…” He shuts his eyes and shakes his head, fighting tears. “I wish to see my family so much.”

“I know,” says Shara. “When it is possible, I will do what I can. I’m so sorry, Sigrud. I’m so sorry.”

He sniffs and wipes his nose. “Did…Did you know about the swords? About Voortya? About the City of Blades?”

“No, I didn’t. I assumed there was malfeasance and corruption taking place at Fort Thinadeshi—but I had no idea it would spiral into something like this.”

“In that case, I must ask…Why did you send Mulaghesh?”

“Why? What do you mean, why?”

“I mean…I know you, Shara. I know you never play the short game. There is always a bigger objective when you do anything. So why Mulaghesh? Why pull a general out of retirement and send her to Voortyashtan if you thought it was just common corruption?”

Shara sighs deeply. “Well. If you really must know…You are aware, of course, that my term in this office is not long for this world?”

“It would be hard not to know this.”

“Well.” She clears her throat and adjusts her glasses. “The incoming party is riding quite high off of a wave of anti-Continental sentiment. They do not like my policies and programs. They wish to see them end. So if they win, then the harbor will likely be much reduced. Financial support will be cut. All aid to the Continent—that will be cut. Any programs encouraging the participation of Continentals in their own politics—those will be cut. Basically anything Saypur sends to the Continent, except for guns and the soldiers to point them, will be cut.”

“So…what does this have to do with Mulaghesh?”

Before Shara can answer there’s a noise from behind her, from the curtains of the bed: “Momma?”

Shara freezes and turns around just as a small, round face pokes through the curtains of the bed. It’s the face of a young Continental girl, perhaps no older than five, and she blinks sleepily at Shara and rubs her eyes. “What are you doing?”

“Shhh, my dear,” says Shara. “It’s nothing. Just talking to myself. Go back to sleep.”

“You’re talking to that mirror.” The girl looks at Sigrud and frowns. “You’re talking to that man in the mirror.” She pouts and holds out her arms to Shara.

Shara sighs, holds out her arms, and the girl jumps into Shara’s embrace—perhaps a little too hard for Shara’s comfort, judging by her face. Then the girl lays her head on Shara’s shoulder and turns just enough to stare at Sigrud quizzically.

“Did she say…Did she call you momma?” asks Sigrud, astounded.

“Yes,” says Shara quietly. She strokes the girl’s hair and chin. “Sigrud, this is my daughter—Tatyana.” She leans in close to speak into the girl’s ear. “Tatyana, this is an old friend of mine.”

“How is he in a mirror?” the girl asks.

“It’s a special mirror,” says Shara.

“Oh.” She appears to accept this explanation wholeheartedly.

“You…You adopted a Continental?” says Sigrud.

“Yes,” says Shara. “When revisiting Bulikov. There was an orphanage. It was”—she glances at the girl—“not in the best of conditions. She asked to come with me. I took her. I’ve kept it quiet, you see. Maybe because I didn’t need to be linked with the Continent any more than I already am—and maybe because I am unwilling to allow the public to know anything of my private life. When I am voted out of office, I will retire with Tatyana to the countryside, and attempt to live a quiet life. The worst thing I can do for my policies is come near them. My very presence is toxic to my own goals, you see. But I must leave someone behind to fight for them, and for the Continent.”

“So you think…Are you saying you think Mulaghesh could do this?”

Shara sits up straight, and suddenly it’s quite easy to see how she was elected. “Yes. General Turyin Mulaghesh is a born leader. She has fought for her country numerous times, was subjected to abominable trauma at the age of sixteen, and somehow came out of it a better person. She has defended Saypur’s soldiers from Divine forces twice now, in full view of the public. She is admired by the public and respected by the military. She is moral and judicious to a fault. She knows a damned sight more about the military than any politician currently holding office. She is, in short, a highly electable candidate.”

“You mean to force her into politics?” says Sigrud, somewhat horrified.

“I must leave someone behind to fight for my policies, Sigrud,” says Shara quietly. “I must have a champion. When Mulaghesh quit, it was quite a blow. But I believed I understood why she left. Turyin Mulaghesh is someone who has chosen to live her life for the safety and betterment of others. She has chosen, in a word, to serve. If she feels she is not serving, she feels she has no worth. I sent her to Voortyashtan to awaken her, to remind her of this, to be with common soldiers again and remember who she is and why she does what she does.” Shara bows her head. “I feel Turyin Mulaghesh is very awake now. Perhaps more than she has ever felt in her life. Much more than I intended.”

“After what she has been through,” says Sigrud, “after what she has seen and done—you wish to force her into leadership?” He shakes his head. “Shara, Shara…of all the things you could have said you’d done this for, this is by far the cruelest.”

“We all make compromises to try to better the world,” she says, her voice small. “This is but one of the many I’ve had to make. Saypur will soon have to decide what sort of nation it will be. Will it stay the same, and use its force blindly, unaware of the cost it is incurring upon itself and other nations? Or will it try to be something…different? Something wiser, perhaps, and more judicious? Mulaghesh is the best possible person to help my nation through this decision, and the wheels are already in motion, Sigrud. When she arrives next week, I will formally ask her.”

“And if she says no?”

“I can be convincing,” says Shara. “As you know.”

“You are very talented,” says Sigrud bitterly, “at putting ideas into other people’s heads. I wonder if the world will ever forgive us for what we did in our lives, Shara.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…I sometimes wonder if it was fate that took my daughter from me,” he says. “I have taken many lives in my life. Many children, perhaps husbands, wives, parents. Perhaps it is only just that this same violation was inflicted upon me. Perhaps it is just that one who lives a life of war becomes a refugee from it.” He looks at the little girl in Shara’s arms and tries to remember how that felt so long ago—how small she was, how warm, and how her gaze burned so bright. “If you had asked me last week if this fight was worth it, I would have told you yes. But if you asked me today, Shara Komayd, if you asked me right now if this was worth it—I would tell you no, no, a thousand times no. Never, ever, never could this fight be worth what it asks of us.” Then he wipes the glass with a finger, and Shara and her daughter are gone.

Mulaghesh wakes slowly, listening to the sound of the waves. Don’t forget where you are, she thinks to herself. Remember where you are.

It takes her a moment to realize she’s really awake. She opens her eyes and stares at the ceiling of the rundown little shitshack of a hotel. Then she sits up, takes a deep breath, and looks around her.

Sunlight streams in through the stained blinds, strobing as seabirds dip and rise above the docks outside her window. She can hear the longshoremen in the streets below calling to one another, cursing one another’s slowness or incompetence, or sharing a filthy joke. Everything smells like sea salt, or diesel, or cigarettes.

It smells and sounds, in other words, like civilization, in all its filthy, raucous splendor. It’s been twenty-three days since she shipped out of Voortyashtan to finally stop here on the last leg of her journey back to Ghaladesh. The Ahanashtani docks are no one’s idea of a peaceful respite, so she’s not sure why she feels so at ease here. But she remembers something Sigrud said to her years ago, in the hospital in Bulikov: Many people despise ports. They think them filthy, dangerous. And perhaps they are. But sea ports are the staging places of better things.

She looks at her bedside table, where a gleaming metal hand sits, its fingers extended in a curious position, as if waving farewell. Some mechanism inside was damaged by Pandey’s blade, and she can’t get some of the knuckles to work right. But she doesn’t care. She takes it off her nightstand, affixes it to her left arm, which is still bandaged from her duel with Pandey, and with five simple clicks the prosthetic falls into place.

Not completely broken. Still good. Better than what she had before, certainly.

She packs up, tosses her duffel bag over her shoulder, and heads out to port, scanning her papers for her next ship. As she approaches the dock she looks up and does a double take.

“Ah, shit,” she says. “Of all the shitting luck…”

The blinding white hull of the luxury ship Kaypee stands a few hundred feet before her. She’s not looking forward to spending the next three days with a bunch of families and infants and lovers. She’s glad she’s not wearing her uniform, as that would attract a lot of unwanted attention.

But as she approaches the ship she sees that, though the other passengers are indeed very young, they aren’t who she expected.

About thirty young privates, all in fatigues, stand on the dock with their bags in piles around their feet, waiting nervously for permission to board. She glances at their uniforms and sees they’re from the 7th Infantry, which last she heard was stationed somewhere inland—Bulikov or Jukoshtan, she can’t remember which. Probably being sent back to Ghaladesh to prep for new deployment, new assignments. They have a brittle sort of nervousness to them, and Mulaghesh guesses that her nation must be making some bold military moves if they’re willing to pull these troops out and buy up the Kaypee for it. But they would have to be bold, considering what happened. Saypur must posture, and prove it’s not vulnerable.

She’s not surprised no one told her. Her country likely has no idea what to do with her right now.

She gets in line behind the young soldiers and drops her duffel bag. It makes the boards quake, causing a few of the soldiers to glance back at her, watching as she lights a cigarillo. One of them takes in her bruises, bandages, scars, her prosthetic left hand. He gives a nod to her, a gesture between equals. But of course it would be. If she were senior rank, she’d be in uniform. She nods back.

She looks closer at their uniforms. “Seventh Infantry, huh?” she says.

The soldiers look back. “That’s right,” says one, a young woman.

“Last I heard you were in…Jukoshtan, right?”

“Right.”

“That’s an exciting assignment.”

She smirks. “Not hardly.”

“Yes, a great station to work on your Batlan game, they told me. Any of you serve under Major Avshram?”

“Uh. Yes, actually. I did,” says the young woman.

“He still got that fucking mustache?”

The soldiers grin. “That he does,” says the young woman. “Despite any sense of common decency.” She looks her over. “You in the service?”

“Used to be. Might be still. Won’t know until we get home.”

They nod sympathetically. To be a soldier is to no longer own your life.

“Where were you stationed?” asks the young woman.

“Well, technically,” says Mulaghesh, “I was on vacation.”

She laughs in disbelief. “That must’ve been some vacation.”

“You’re telling me.”

They chat and joke and share cigarettes as they wait to board. One bold young private tries one of Mulaghesh’s cigarillos, one of the foul things she purchased at the docks. He turns a dull green a few puffs in, inciting peals of laughter and raucous ridicule. Mulaghesh smiles, watching them, drinking in their adolescence, their optimism, their naiveté, their mannered cynicisms. She knows such youth is far behind her, but she has always felt that to foster it, protect it, and watch it grow is still a fine thing. Perhaps one of the finest things.

She thinks about what could have happened to these children if she hadn’t picked up the sword, if she hadn’t listened to it speak, and then spoke to the sentinels in turn. She wonders what would have happened if she’d figured it all out earlier, if she’d listened and watched Rada a little closer. A contained disaster, she thinks, is still a disaster. Hundreds of people died deaths that could have been avoided. And Nadar, and Biswal, and Pandey and Signe…

She watches light bounce off the waves and dance along the hull of the ship. Gone, she thinks. All gone. And yet again, I survive.

Her arm aches. Less than it used to. But it’s still there. Maybe it’ll always be there.

The young soldier who tried her cigarillo is now trying to feed it to a seagull, much to the amusement of his comrades. Mulaghesh smiles. I don’t know if I’m ever going to wear a uniform again, she thinks, watching the soldiers, but I will still fight for you.

The line starts moving. They throw their bags over their shoulders, lean forward, and start up to the plank to the Kaypee.

The young soldier looks back at her, and says, “Well. No matter what’s waiting for you in Ghaladesh, I hope you find some rest, and peace.”

“Peace?” says Mulaghesh, a touch surprised. “Well, maybe. Maybe.”

They climb aboard and ready themselves for the short journey home.