City of Blades

2. A Reliable Old Horse

She awakes in the night and tries not to scream. The scream rattles around in her throat, a hot bubble of air swelling up inside of her, and she flails around trying to find purchase on something, anything, her right hand twisting the bedsheets into a knot and the balls of her bare feet pressed against the stone wall. She pushes and strains as her brain insists she’s still there, she’s still at the embassy and it’s still five years ago, her arm trapped under the rubble and the sky thick with smoke, the whole world ruined and gone in an instant. She’s still turning over on the street, still glimpsing the young soldier facedown on the concrete, a dew drop of blood in his ear that swells and swells until it brims over, and a trickle of red weaves down his smooth cheek, the cheek of a boy.

Mulaghesh listens for the waves. She knows the waves are there. She knows where she is. She just has to find something to hold on to.

Finally she hears them: soft and steady, the gentle rise and fall as the waters scrape the sand on the shore, just a few hundred feet beyond her little cottage.

You’re in Javrat, she tells herself. You know that. You’re not in Bulikov. All of that happened long ago. Just listen to the waves….

She tries to remember how to relax. She tells each system of muscles to stop, just stop already, and she finally goes limp. It’s then that the pain seeps into her as every muscle remembers it’s been straining to the point of breaking.

She takes a breath and moves her arms and legs to see if she’s strained or sprained anything. She aches, but she seems to be all right.

She glances at her alarm clock. It’s not even midnight yet. But she knows she’ll get no more sleep tonight.

Oh, well, she thinks. Only four hours to wait. She does not look forward to waiting on the docks for the ship to come in. She finds she doesn’t want to see people, or perhaps to be seen by them.

Her gaze moves to the object to the right of the alarm clock: a human hand rendered in dark oak wood, frozen in mid-clutch. The artisan who made it for her said it would help her hold things, and while this is true, Turyin Mulaghesh has always found its pose slightly disconcerting: there is something painful about it, like the hand is so tense in its desire to grasp something that it can hardly move its fingers.

Groaning as her stomach muscles protest, Mulaghesh sits up, takes the false hand and its harness, shoulders her way into its well-worn straps, and gently affixes the prosthetic to where her arm ends a few inches above the wrist. She wraps the soft cotton sleeve around her upper arm, then takes the four leather belts at the false hand’s end, ties them over the sleeve, buckles them, and draws them taut.

She spends some time with the belts, tightening them, loosening them, adjusting them. It always takes time for everything to fit into the right place. She knows it’ll never be perfect.

In the dark, General Turyin Mulaghesh tries to make herself whole.

Mulaghesh squints as the passenger vessel Kaypee slowly approaches the dock, a blinding knife of white on the dark tablecloth of the sea. It takes some time for her eyes to decipher that it is not moving incredibly slowly but is simply incredibly large—nearly eight hundred feet long. She sourly reflects that once her country reserved such effort and industry for warfare, yet now in its eighth decade of hegemony, Saypur deigns to put her vast resources toward decadent indulgences.

But the ship is probably not the true source of Mulaghesh’s ire: there on the boarding dock, she is surrounded by families with shrieking babies and sulky teens, doe-eyed lovers still tangled in one another’s arms, and elderly couples emitting a beatific, contented glow as they stare out at the sea.

Mulaghesh seems to be the one person who hasn’t been reinvigorated by her stay on Javrat. Whereas everyone else is loose and open in their light, tropical clothing, Mulaghesh’s appearance is decidedly contained: her graying hair is pulled back in a taut bun, and she wears her immense gray military greatcoat, which conceals most of her false hand. The one tropical influence she allows is a pair of blue-tinted sunglasses, but their chief purpose is to conceal her puffy, hungover eyes.

From behind the dark lenses she watches the young families, the fathers gawky and long-legged in their too-short shorts, the children awkward, mumbly, desperately earnest. She watches, envious, as the young lovers caress one another.

When did such opportunities become closed to me? she thinks as she watches their clear faces, bereft of scars or kinks in their noses, or their smooth shoulders, which have clearly never borne the weight of a pack. She shifts her left sleeve so it covers more of her false hand. When did I get so old? When did I get so fucking old?

She’s startled by a sharp whistle and sees that she’s been so lost in thought she completely ignored the ship’s arrival. She picks up her bag and tries her hardest to not think about the journey back to the Continent, the land where she fought a war in her youth, wasted decades of her life in bureaucracy, and lost a hand, all in the shadow of that nation’s dead gods.

To call the Kaypee sumptuous would be an understatement, but Mulaghesh has no eye for its latticed ceilings or expansive decks. Instead she marches straight to her cabin—not one of the nicer ones by a long shot—and waits for evening. She sleeps all the way through the ship’s departure, nestled down in the folds of her greatcoat. She forgot how comfortable it is, and as her shoulders and arms lose themselves in its fabric she is reminded of long rests outdoors, in the cold and the rain and the mud, memories that would be unpleasant for most but have gained a somewhat rosy hue for Mulaghesh.

How sad it is, she thinks as she dozes, that on a luxury passenger ship I am cheered most by memories of miserable soldiering.

The sky is purpled and hazy through her porthole when she wakes. She checks her watch, confirms it’s 1600, rises, and winds her way down to the Tohmay reception room.

An attendant out front politely inquires which company she should be listed under. “Thivani Industries,” she says. He checks the list, nods, and opens the door for her with a smile. Mulaghesh enters and walks down the narrow hallway until she enters the final chamber. Like the rest of the ship, it is ridiculously luxurious—How much did they spend on my damn ticket?—though, to her regret, the bar is deserted. The only person in the room sits at a table before a row of glass doors that look out on the wide, dark sea.

Pitry Suturashni hears her coming, stands, and smiles. His face is a pale green color, and there’s a stench of vomit about him. “Welcome! General. I’m glad you could make it.”

“I’m going to assume,” says Mulaghesh, “that the only reason I’m on this ship is because it was the first available.”

“You are correct in thinking that, though you are a valued resource, we would not normally opt for such transportation.” Pitry hiccups and places the back of his hand to his mouth.

“You need me to get a bucket?”

Pitry shakes his head, though he has to think about it. “As…unpatriotic it might be for a Saypuri, I admit my seamanship is not…terribly accomplished.”

“Shara had a terribly sensitive stomach, I recall,” Mulaghesh says as she sits. “You just had to show that girl a picture of a boat to make her paint the walls with her breakfast.” Pitry’s shading grows more unpleasant. “This ship’s bound, I note, for Ahanashtan. Is that where the operation is?”

“No,” says Pitry. “You will be taking a ship from Ahanashtan to your final destination. Though Shara has given me strict instructions that she would prefer to tell you about that herself.”

“Herself?” asks Mulaghesh. She glances around the room. “Is she…here?”

Pitry reaches down and picks up a leather satchel from beside his chair. He pulls out a small wooden box and places it on the table in front of them.

“What, is Shara in there?” asks Mulaghesh.

“In a way,” says Pitry. He slides a panel from the side of the box, revealing a brass tube that he rotates out so it points toward Mulaghesh. Then he slides the top panel away, revealing a small, oily black disc in the center of the box. Pitry finds a small lever on the side of the box and cranks it for about twenty seconds. Then he hits a button and the box begins to hiss.

“Oh, what fresh hell is this,” says Mulaghesh. “Another contraption?”

“One of the Department of Reconstruction’s interesting new projects,” says Pitry, with a slightly hurt tone.

“The DOR never found a functioning thing it couldn’t fuck up,” says Mulaghesh. “I dread what would happen if they tried to reinvent the toilet.”

Pitry sighs again, takes a file from the satchel, and hands it to her. It has a fat, red wax seal on the front. Mulaghesh notes that the seal has no insignia or symbol. So whatever’s in it, thinks Mulaghesh, certainly didn’t come from any of the normal authorities.

“Crack it open when she tells you to,” says Pitry.

“She?”

Then a voice rises up from somewhere in the box’s hissing, soft and somewhat sad, and sounding much, much older than when Mulaghesh last heard it: “Hello, Turyin.”

“Damn,” says Mulaghesh, surprised. “Shara?”

“She can’t hear you,” says Pitry. “It’s a recording. It captures sound, just like telephones transport it.”

Mulaghesh squints at the box. “Where does it keep it?”

“Well, it’s…The sound’s carved, I suppose, into that little black disc bit….At least, I think it is. They had a bunch of graphs when they explained it to me….Anyway, I’ll leave you to it.”

“Pitry,” says Shara’s crackly, ghostly voice, “if you’re still there, you can leave us now.”

“See what I mean?” says Pitry. He smiles again and slips out the door to the balcony, leaving Mulaghesh alone with the box and the file.

“I hope you’re well, Turyin,” says Shara’s voice. “And I hope your time in Javrat has been comfortable. I apologize for approaching you with this task, but…everything aligned far too well for me not to make the ask. It’s been ten months, and you are still a general of prestige who has slipped from the public eye. And you also have good reason to be on the Continent, touring nearly anything you like, and everyone will believe it’s solely to earn out your pension—your country doing you a favor before it puts, how shall we say, a reliable old horse out to pasture.”

“Shit,” says Mulaghesh. “Don’t pull your punches….”

“It is, of course, unusual to appoint a general of your stature to such fieldwork,” says Shara’s voice, “but even more than all the reasons I have listed, I believe that you are personally suited to this task for a number of reasons which I hope will soon become clear.

“I’ll explain now. This message cannot be replayed, so listen closely.”

Mulaghesh leans in until her ear is almost right next to the brass tube.

“Two years ago, a discovery was made on the Continent: one of our installations stumbled across a curious, powdery ore along the mountainous western coastline. This material went unremarked upon until, as part of an experiment, a team in the regional governor’s office tried to pass an electric current through it.

“What they discovered is that this material conducts electricity in a manner heretofore unseen. If you are unaware, no conductor is perfect—whether it is copper or steel, some electricity is lost along the way. But with this material, none is lost. None. And…some recent reports suggest that it possesses properties far, far stranger than that….” A pause. “But I am not sure whether or not to trust these accounts. I will leave it up to you to judge when you arrive.”

Something about that unsettles Mulaghesh. It’s something in Shara’s voice, as if to repeat aloud what she’d been told would make it all a little more real, and thus a little more disturbing.

“If we use this material to its fullest potential, then it would be nothing short of revolutionary for Saypur and the Continent—which could desperately use power and heating. Powerful industrial factions are very keen to make that happen right now. However, I have not allowed it to be processed on any larger scale. My primary concern is that our scientists and engineers are unable to determine exactly how this material does what it does. Normal conductors they understand: this they most certainly do not. And I am most distrustful of what we cannot explain, as you can understand.”

Mulaghesh grimaces, because she absolutely does. If this material possesses astonishing properties, and if those properties can’t be explained, then it’s possible those properties are miraculous: the product or direct creation of one of the ancient Continental Divinities. Between the actions of Shara and her great-grandfather, the much-revered Kaj of Saypur, nearly all of the original Continental Divinities should be dead, and all their miraculous items completely dead and nonfunctional with them. So if this stuff is miraculous, thinks Mulaghesh, then maybe yet another Divinity isn’t as dead as we’d like it to be.

“You are probably now thinking, correctly, that I am concerned this material may be Divine in nature,” says Shara’s voice. “This will probably cause you to wonder why I am sending you to investigate rather than someone from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, someone whose field of study is all things Divine and miraculous.”

“That would be correct,” mutters Mulaghesh.

“The simple answer to this is that we did. Eight months ago. And after three months of studying this material, she vanished. Disappeared. Without a single trace.”

Mulaghesh cocks an eyebrow. “Hmph.”

“Her name was Sumitra Choudhry,” says Shara’s voice. “Her file is in the dossier Pitry has provided to you. As I said, she studied this material for three months, operating out of the Saypuri Military installation in the region. Her communications back became erratic, and then one day Choudhry was simply gone. Quite abruptly. Our forces in the region searched for her and found nothing. They did not suspect any…unusual foul play.” There is a clink of glass, a bloop of gushing liquid—is she pouring a glass of water?—and the sound of a sip. “And I say unusual, because this material was discovered in Voortyashtan. And this is where you are bound.”

“Ah, shit!” shouts Mulaghesh. “Shit! Are you fucking kidding me?”

Another sip.

Shara’s voice says, “I will give you a moment to compose yourself.”

Mulaghesh then says a lot of things to the little box. Mostly she tells it the things she’s going to do to Shara when she gets back to Ghaladesh, if she gets back to Ghaladesh, because isn’t there a one in three chance of her being murdered or drowning or dying of the plague in fucking Voortyashtan, ass-end of the universe, armpit of the world?

And this is where Shara has sent her: to the worst possible hinterlands on the globe, the military outpost you get shipped to only if you sleep with or kill the wrong person.

“…don’t even care if they throw me in prison!” Mulaghesh shouts at the box. “I don’t care if they draw and quarter me! I’ll do it to you in broad daylight, and the hells with your fancy titles!”

Another contemplative sip of water comes from the box.

“You rip me out of Javrat and stick me on a boat to Voortyashtan without even telling me?” says Mulaghesh. “That is bad form, bad form right there! Low character!”

Another sip.

Mulaghesh buries her face in her hand. “Damn it all….What am I going to do?”

“I hope you’re calming down now,” says Shara’s voice primly.

“Fuck you!” says Mulaghesh.

“And I think you may be somewhat relieved when I tell you that the military installation in question is our regional governor’s quarters, Fort Thinadeshi. So, you will be in what is, I hope, a tightly controlled region. As you know, the fortress is located just outside of Voortyashtan proper, the urban area, so it will be a little more…civilized than the rest of the region.”

“That’s not saying mu—”

“This may not be saying much,” says Shara’s voice. “We will also be providing you with a contact, someone who can help you acclimate to the situation in Voortyashtan. Pitry will have more on that.”

Mulaghesh sighs.

“I need someone on the ground that I can trust, Turyin. I must have someone ascertain whether there is any reason to believe this new material has any Divine origins, as well as what happened to Choudhry.”

“What else do you want me to do, capture the sky in a damn beer glass?”

“You may prove uniquely suited to this,” Shara’s voice says. “Because the new regional governor of the Voortyashtan polis is General Lalith Biswal.”

The name is like a hammer upside Mulaghesh’s head. She sits in shock, staring at the little box.

“No,” she whispers.

“As you both fought together in the Summer of Black Rivers,” continues Shara’s voice calmly, ignorant of Mulaghesh’s distress, “I am hoping you will have some leeway with him, where most operatives would not.”

His face flashes before Mulaghesh’s eyes: young, dark-eyed, smeared in mud, watching her from the shadow of a trench as the sky pissed rain down their necks. Though she knows he must be close to sixty-five by now, this is how she’ll always remember him.

“No, no, no,” whispers Mulaghesh.

“And Biswal being about as brass as you are, I think he may be sympathetic to your cover story. He’s a veteran of the military’s petty bureaucracy and has seen many comrades go on the touring shuffle.”

Mulaghesh just stares at the little box on the desk. What vast sin did I commit, she wonders, to be damned to a fate such as this?

“There is also the matter of the harbor,” says Shara’s voice. “As you are aware, Saypur is cooperating with Voortyashtan and the United Dreyling States to try to create a second functioning international port on the Continent. This should not, I hope, influence your mission in any significant way—but it is not an easy project, and tensions are running high in the region.”

“Great,” says Mulaghesh.

Shara then summarizes some communication channels Mulaghesh can use to report back, codexes and tradecraft methods that will be provided to her. “However, this is only to be done in extreme situations,” says Shara’s voice. “Due to recent…political pressures, if the nature of this operation were to come to light, it could turn out very badly. As such, I will have to be much more hands-off with you than either of us would likely prefer. But I have every confidence in you to navigate any obstacles.”

“Ah, shit.”

“I want to thank you for accepting this operation, Turyin,” says Shara. “I can think of no one else I’d rather have in Voortyashtan. And I want to thank you for returning to me, even if it’s for this one operation. I will not claim that I completely understand why you resigned, but sometimes I think I do.”

You obviously do, thinks Mulaghesh, otherwise you would not have sent that letter.

“Thank you again for your support, and your friendship, Turyin Mulaghesh. Your country honors you for the service you have given it—service in the past, present, and future. Good luck.”

A hiss, a click, and the voice fades away.

The door to the Tohmay reception room cracks open. Pitry, who has been staring over the balcony at the moonlit sea with his hands behind his back, glances back and does a double take as Mulaghesh emerges carrying a crystal tumbler full of what looks like very expensive liquor. “Wh-Where did you get that?”

“Helped myself to the bar.”

“But…But we’ll have to pay for tha—”

“Did you know?”

“Did I know what?”

“That Shara was sending me off to damned Voortyashtan?”

Pitry hesitates. “Well, I…I was somewhat aware you wou—”

“Fucking hells,” says Mulaghesh. She quaffs the liquor, then winds up and hurls the tumbler over the edge of the balcony. Pitry watches as what must be a forty- or fifty-drekel glass disappears into the ocean with a plook! “Of all the places in the world to send me sniffing up the Divine! As if I’d ever want to. Haven’t I seen enough of all of that? When am I allowed to rest?”

“But you’ll be among familiar company, won’t you? General Biswal will be there; he’s an old comrade. Which is not to say that your heroic days are necessarily behind you, of course….”

Mulaghesh’s face goes blank, losing all of its cynical swagger, and she stares out at the sea. Though Mulaghesh has not seemed pleased with this mission so far, this is the first time Pitry’s seen her genuinely afraid.

“He wasn’t my comrade, Pitry,” she says. “He was my commanding officer. I thought he was dead, frankly. I hadn’t heard wind of him for years. How did he get appointed to regional governor of Voortyashtan?”

“Because the last one was assassinated,” says Pitry, “and no one else would take the job.”

“Ah.”

“They thought he was the right man for the position, though. I understand General Biswal has a…a history of making do in contested territories.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Mulaghesh says.

Pitry glances at her. “What was it like?”

“What, the Summer of Black Rivers?”

“Yes.”

There’s a long pause.

“Do you remember much of the Battle of Bulikov, Pitry?” she asks softly.

“I…I do.”

“Do you ever want to see something like that again?”

“It is, perhaps, cowardly of me to say so, but…No. No, I do not.”

“Smart choice. Well. I will put it this way: what Biswal and I did to the Continent during the Summer of Black Rivers makes the Battle of Bulikov look like spilled milk.”

Pitry is quiet. Mulaghesh stares out at the sea, running the index finger of her right hand up and down the knuckle of her wooden left thumb.

“Get out of here, Pitry,” says Mulaghesh. “I want to be alone right now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and steps back through the door.