City of Blades

3. Progress

First the rain—the screaming, awful rain. The slap of the downpour is so stunning that Mulaghesh, who’s spent the latter part of her trip cloistered in her cabin aboard the Dreyling cargo ship Hjemdal, is almost stupefied by such brutal weather, and it makes her rethink the desire she’s had for the last two weeks: to get the hells off of this chain of boats and set her feet on dry land.

But not this land, she thinks. Not any land that exists under weather like this….

She shields her eyes, walks out on deck, and looks.

She is faced with the wide, expansive mouth of a river—the Solda River, of course, whose waters once passed through Bulikov, the very city where she was stationed for nearly two decades. On each side of the river mouth are two vast, ragged peaks that slowly recede down to the waters in a rambling jangle of sharp, broken, blade-like stones. No wonder they call it the city of blades, she thinks. It all looks like rubble, as if the cliffs surrounding the city have been steadily collapsing—yet amidst the stones about the peaks are lights, streams of smoke, and thousands of glimmering windows.

“So that’s the city of Voortyashtan,” she says grimly. “Well. It lives up to expectations.”

Then she sees the harbor. Or, rather, what will one day be the harbor—maybe.

“Holy shit,” she says.

The main issue with reconstructing the Continent—the underlying aim of nearly all of Shara Komayd’s legislation—is one of access. There has only ever been one functioning international harbor on the Continent in modern history: Ahanashtan, which has always been Saypur’s key foothold on the Continent. But if you’re trying to bring aid and support to the entirety of the Continent, having only one way in and one way out makes it quite difficult.

Yet as the Continent’s climate changed—growing steadily colder with no Divinities to miraculously warm the weather—there became only one remaining decent warm-water port: Voortyashtan. Which happens to sit on the mouth of the Solda River, which, if brought under control, would give the entire world access to the inner recesses of the Continent.

And long ago, Voortyashtan did once possess a harbor. In fact, back in the days of the Divinities, it was far, far larger and busier than any harbor the contemporary powers could ever aspire to. But it was put to unspeakable, monstrous purposes—purposes that make modern Saypuris shiver to think of even today.

“Every obstacle,” Shara used to say (before her own career became mired in its own obstacles), “is always an opportunity.” Would it not be a tremendous symbolic victory, she asked, if Saypur built a new harbor in Voortyashtan and put it to good use? Wouldn’t they all sleep a little better at night knowing Voortyashtan, that most backward and dangerous of cities, was slowly being modernized, led along like a mule is led by a dangling turnip?

So it was decided that the Department of Reconstruction, with the approval of the polis of Voortyashtan, would reconstruct its ancient harbor, thus bringing swift aid to the other half of the Continent, and probably making Voortyashtan the second-richest polis on the Continent in the meantime.

But as to who would do the actual work—that was another issue. Saypur, being a naval nation, naturally had a dozen contractors and companies willing to do the job—but for Saypuri prices, all of which were astronomically high. For a while it seemed the harbor would never be built without some outrageous financing miracle, but then the newly founded United Dreyling States—having overthrown the corrupt Dreyling Republics a mere three years ago, and desperate for income—came forward with a series of bids so low that Saypur wondered if the Dreylings were using slave labor. But in the end, the Southern Dreyling Company—or SDC, as many prefer—finally captured the prize and signed the contracts.

Though from what Mulaghesh last heard, the construction of the harbor has so far proven to be more difficult than anyone anticipated. She remembers hearing about how some tremendous wreckage from the Blink blocked up much of the Solda River’s mouth and would have to be removed. And if she recalls, all of SDC’s most brilliant engineers were still scratching their heads over it.

Yet now, just outside the Solda Bay, she sees that they seem to be making headway. Remarkable headway, in fact.

In the mouth of the bay is a forest of dredging cranes, each 150 feet high, all in lines radiating outward from the shore. Some of the cranes are building other cranes, reaching farther and farther out to sea, while the ones closer to the shore are deconstructing the cranes at the back. It’s a brilliant, confusing, impressive mess of construction work, and for a moment Mulaghesh wonders if these mechanisms are here to repair the ruined mess of Voortyashtan or if they’re here to tear it down. The shore behind the cranes is awash with activity: tiny timber structures and makeshift piers all fueling the work taking place in the bay, reforging this ruined metropolis into what could one day be the trade capital of the western coast of the Continent.

But where’s the wreckage the cranes are supposed to be hauling away? From what Mulaghesh can see, the Solda Bay is wide and clear.

“We’ll have to cut a sharp turn here, ma’am,” says the captain of the Hjemdal. “Might wish to hold on tight.”

“Cut around what?” says Mulaghesh. “It damned well looks like we’re in open seas to me, Captain.”

“Stand on the port side and look down, ma’am,” says the captain, “and you might catch a glimpse of it.”

Mulaghesh does so, holding tight to the railing.

The ship veers beneath her. Dark water washes up the hull. She sees nothing, but then…

There is a disturbance in the current a few dozen feet out: the surface of the water is rippled where it ought to be smooth. She squints, and sees something down below….

Something white. Something wide and smooth and pale, just below the surface of the water. As the Hjemdal cruises by she spies the faint outline of an aperture in this white surface below the water—a long, thin gap, pointed at the top and flat at the bottom. As they near she sees molding lining the gap, and a shutter hanging off of one ancient, rusted hinge.

Then she understands: It’s a window.

“That…That was a building,” she says aloud, looking back. “There was…There was a building under the water back there.”

“Welcome to old Voortyashtan,” the captain says with false cheer, waving at the mouth of the Solda. “Though you can’t see much of it these days. It’s moved, y’see, about three hundred feet. Vertically, straight down.” He grins and laughs wickedly.

“It’s underwater?” she asks. “Wait…The wreckage that’s blocking the Solda is the city itself? How have I never heard of this?”

“Because someone would have to survive to tell you,” he says. “This here bay is practically a minefield, ma’am—hence why we won’t be going much farther—and once you make it ashore, and you’re among those wild Continentals, why…I’m not sure if your odds improve any.” He stops when he spies a small cutter making its way through the forest of cranes. “Ah, here’s your escort, ma’am. I’ve no doubt you and them’ll have plenty to chat about.”

The cutter zips across the bay, ripped back and forth by the howling winds. Mulaghesh shields her eyes from the gales as they draw close. The area’s not totally bereft of civilization, she sees: farther down the west coast stands a tall, beautiful lighthouse, its slow, revolving beam lancing out to dance over the waters. Beside it is a large, colorful wood-and-stone structure that feels very out of place amid dark, dreary Voortyashtan. Large banners festoon the stairs leading up to it, each embroidered with the letters “SDC.”

“They’re certainly setting up shop, aren’t they,” mutters Mulaghesh.

The cutter pulls up to a pier just east of the lighthouse, which is deserted except for one person, who stands at its end with a flick of glowing cigarette ash suspended in their shadow. Besides this, all she can spy is their thick, sealskin coat with its hood up, wrapped tight about their face.

Mulaghesh awkwardly descends the rope ladder to the pier, forced to compensate for her false hand. The figure at the end of the pier waves to her.

She remembers what Pitry said as the Hjemdal shipped out: We’ve secured you a source, who will contact you when you arrive.

She asked: Who is it?

The best possible resource, the chief technology officer of the whole of SDC. They should know absolutely everything about what’s going on in Voortyashtan. Though now that she thinks about it, Mulaghesh realizes he never actually told her the CTO’s name.

Mulaghesh walks down the pier, her bag slung across her shoulders. “Are you here for me?” she shouts to the figure.

The figure just waves again. As Mulaghesh comes closer she sees another SDC badge on their breast, though this is of a bright yellow color with a gear insignia below, suggesting something different.

“Thank you for meeting me here,” says Mulaghesh as she approaches. “But it won’t mean much if I drown to death in this rai—”

She stops as the figure pushes back their hood.

She expected to see some dour, red-faced, glowering Dreyling, a foreman or dockworker with an abundance of scars and burst blood vessels and a receding hairline. What she did not expect to see is an intimidatingly beautiful Dreyling woman in her mid-thirties, with high cheekbones, bright blond hair, and glacial blue eyes set behind a pair of austere spectacles. She’s tall, over six feet, which means she towers over Mulaghesh. The woman takes a massive drag from her cigarette, flicks it into the sea—it sizzles angrily, begrudging its abandonment—and smiles at Mulaghesh.

And Mulaghesh sees many things in that smile. She sees charm, wit, and a roiling sea of cleverness; she sees a sharp, diamond-hard attention, recording everything that’s witnessed; but what Mulaghesh sees most in that broad, white smile is an unshakable, concrete confidence that its owner is at any given moment the smartest person in the room.

The woman says, “Welcome, General, to the polis of Voortyashtan. I hope our crew treated you well?”

Mulaghesh stares into the woman’s face. There is something familiar about her that she can’t quite place….

In her mind, Mulaghesh removes one of the young woman’s eyes, adds a brutal latticework of scars, and replaces her charming smile with a look of implacable, lethal menace.

“By all the hells,” says Mulaghesh. “If you’re not the kin of Sigrud je Harkvaldsson, then I am a dead fucking dog.”

The charming smile evaporates. The young woman looks at Mulaghesh, astonished, but instantly recovers: she gives a delighted laugh, though her eyes can’t quite match it.

“You have a head for faces, General!” she says. “You are correct. I am Signe Harkvaldsson, chief technology officer of the Southern Dreyling Company. And you, of course, would be the famous general Turyin Mulaghesh.”

“If you say so. You know, I feel like someone could have told me it’d be Sigrud’s daughter I was meeting here. Why couldn’t they get me someone at the military base?”

“Because that’s where Sumitra Choudhry disappeared from,” says Signe coolly. “And I don’t particularly think your minister trusts everyone there right now.”

Mulaghesh glances over her shoulder. “Why don’t we find someplace else to discuss this?”

“Certainly. I’ve arranged for you to stay with us at the SDC construction headquarters, just outside of the city.” She points in the other direction, toward the SDC building beside the lighthouse. It’s about a thousand times more hospitable-looking than Voortyashtan.

“That works fine for me.”

“Excellent! Then please follow me. The train to the SDC headquarters is waiting for us.”

“You have a train just for your headquarters?”

“More for the work on the bay itself. We can’t ship resources to the river mouth—we’re here to specifically amend that situation. So we ship them to an easier spot, outside of the city, and use a train to bring them here.”

“All to build a harbor for the Continent,” says Mulaghesh. “Seems like it’d be easier to just make a new one somewhere else.”

“But this isn’t just a harbor, General. It’s a gateway to the Continent itself!” She points to the two peaks above the Solda River. “Past those gates—or what’s left of them—lies a water passage granting access to nearly the whole of the Continent! And no one’s been able to use it in decades! Yet soon, in a matter of months, we’ll be able to”—she opens the door to the train’s sole passenger car—“well, throw the gates back open.”

Mulaghesh glances back at the peaks. “You keep calling them gates. Why?”

Signe smiles. “That’s a very interesting question. Come aboard, and I’ll tell you.”

The tattered cityscape of Voortyashtan slides by as the train picks up, replaced by tall white cliffs. Signe lights another cigarette—her fifth so far, Mulaghesh gauges. There’s something distinctly mercantile about the Dreyling woman: her hair is tied back and parted in a fashion Mulaghesh knows is now quite chic in Ghaladesh, and she wears a close-cut, collarless black jacket with a flap that hides all buttons, paired with slim, dark trousers and glossy black boots. A tremendous gray scarf sits in piles around her neck, going right up to her chin. Mulaghesh feels Signe would fit right in at some high meeting of a company board, spitting out numbers and calmly allaying the fears of stockholders. Which is probably exactly what she does, Mulaghesh reminds herself.

But her hands are an anomaly: when Signe removed her gloves Mulaghesh expected to see smooth, soft, perfectly manicured digits. But instead her hands are hard, callous, cracked things suggesting years of brutal labor, and they’re smudged and smeared with black ink, as if she’s been handling cheap newspapers all day.

Mulaghesh shivers as a draft snakes into the train car.

“Late winter,” says Signe. “It’s quite harsh here, as it is for the rest of the Continent. But Voortyashtan sits on the Great Western Current, ensuring its waters will never freeze over. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here.”

“What a pity that would be.”

“Perhaps so. It does bring with it a great deal of moisture. Did you know, for instance, that Voortyashtan is the flood capital of the world?”

“Another charming trait to recommend it. As if its history wasn’t enough.”

“True. What do you know about Voortya, General?”

“I know she’s dead.”

“Besides that.”

“I know I like that she’s dead.”

Signe rolls her eyes. Smoke pours from her nostrils.

“Fine,” says Mulaghesh. “I know she was the Continental Divinity of war and death. I know she was terrifying. And I know her sentinels once essentially controlled the known world, shipping out of this very bay by the thousands.”

“By the hundreds of thousands,” Signe says. “If not more. And you are correct that she was the Divinity of war and death, but she was also the Divinity of the sea—something many forget. Likely because her martial exploits are…much more memorable.”

“If by that you mean her sentinels killed and maimed and tortured Saypuris by the millions, yeah. That’s pretty memorable, for us. Maybe a little too memorable.”

“True. But what many forget is that, as the Divinity of the sea, most of her domain was built on the sea. The original Voortyashtan, as we understand it, was one giant, floating city, constructed on many docks and plinths, or perhaps floating on the sea itself. Either way, we’ve gleaned from its current position that, whatever its methods of support, they were definitely miraculous.”

“You mean because it’s at the bottom of the bay.” This part of the story is familiar to Mulaghesh: there’s hardly a part of the Continent that wasn’t devastated when the Divinities were killed by the Kaj, which caused all the miracles that supported the Continent’s way of life to abruptly vanish—an event known as “the Blink.” If the original city of Voortyashtan was allowed to float on the ocean by miraculous means, that would definitely explain why it’s currently playing home to the fish of the North Sea.

“Correct.” Signe flashes her cunning smile. How the hells does she keep her teeth so white, Mulaghesh thinks, irritated, if she smokes so much? “What you see now of the city was not the city. Just the entrance portion of the Voortyashtan of old. Those two peaks east of the city aren’t mountains, General—they’re the frame of a door.”

Mulaghesh chews her cigarillo. “So modern Voortyashtan is built on ruins of the old city’s gates?”

“Correct. And the original city now clogs up the Solda, causing massive seasonal flooding downriver and preventing one of the grandest rivers in the world from becoming a passageway of incredibly lucrative trade.”

Mulaghesh laughs wickedly. “So your job here is to give the whole of the Continent an enema, is that it?”

This doesn’t even put a dent in Signe’s smile. “That is one way of putting it, yes.”

“And you actually think you’ll make this rendition of the schedule?”

“Oh, well…In truth, my current calculations suggest we’ll beat the latest iteration of the dredging deadline by nearly three months.”

Mulaghesh stares at her, mouth open. “You…You think you’ll beat it?”

“Yes,” says Signe mildly.

“You’ll beat this deadline that keeps getting pushed back years?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re not being completely and utterly mad?”

“Not to my knowledge, no.”

“How do you think you could possibly manage this?”

“I don’t begrudge you your skepticism,” says Signe. “For years, SDC struggled with figuring out how to dredge the bay, how to rectify this decades-old damage done by sustained catastrophes. But eventually our engineering staff came up with a solution: modular component processing.”

“What?”

Signe smiles, and Mulaghesh realizes she’s just given the expected reaction in Signe’s little presentation. “We can’t work from the outside in of the Solda Bay—there’s a whole undersea city between us and, well, the city. So we decided to work from the inside out. We broke down the two main pieces of equipment—a crane, and a cargo ship—into their most basic components. Simple, cheap, functional components requiring the least amount of effort to put together and take apart. Then we made a small landing depot a few miles from Voortyashtan where we could get to shore”—she motions out the window toward the approaching lighthouse—“and built track that would allow us to ship the components closer to the bay. Once we could get the components to the mouth of the Solda, and once we got our first two cranes built, the game was over.”

Signe takes a nonchalant puff from her cigarette. Mulaghesh studies her, waits, and finally asks, “How was it over with just two cranes?”

“Why, get two cranes in the right places, and you can do anything. First they built ships and piers. Then they built four more cranes farther out in the sea, one on either side of each of them. Then those four cranes hauled up rubble, loaded up the ships, and built eight more cranes out into the sea, one on either side of each of them. Then the eight new cranes hauled up rubble, loaded up the new ships, and built sixteen new cranes…and then thirty-two, and sixty-four, and so on, and so on. This is a gross simplification, but you get the idea.”

Mulaghesh looks at the forest of cranes out the window. “So all that out there took…”

“The state of the project, as you see it today, took just under twenty months to produce.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes,” says Signe, with a very slight pout of vanity. “We’re told the Solda has already stopped flooding downstream—something your old station of Bulikov will be glad of. And one day, very soon, parts of the Continent that were once completely isolated and cut off will now be linked. Pretty soon the rejuvenation of the Continent will truly begin.”

“Whose brilliant idea was all this?”

“Oh, why, the credit belongs to a variety of teams, as each component and each step in the process required incredible oversight and planning, and—”

“It was you, wasn’t it.”

Signe pauses just long enough to satisfy modesty. “I had the idea on a…somewhat grand, abstract scale. I did formulate the modular process and oversee its sourcing and detailing, yes. And portions of the arm design are mine. Though there were countless other SDC teams that played their part.”

“I guess you don’t get to be chief technology officer for nothing.”

“Who can say? My position is the first in the company’s history. We’ve never had a CTO before me.”

“So…how exactly does a member of the Dreyling royal family come to have a hand in all this?”

Signe blinks, confused. “Dreyling royal family?”

“Your daddy is, unless I’m forgetting, the heir to the Dreyling throne?”

Signe exhales slowly through her nostrils and taps her cigarette ash into the ashtray in the armrest. “The United Dreyling States are a free democracy now. We no longer cater to a monarchy, or to the pirate kings like we did back during the Republic days.”

“Even if that monarchy was originally yours?”

Her eyes glitter. “It is not mine, General. It was never mine. And that has nothing to do with the harbor.”

“So you’re saying your father has nothing to do with your position here?”

Signe pinches out the end of her cigarette with her thumb and forefinger, her skin hissing as it touches the ash, though her face registers no pain. Those calluses run deep, thinks Mulaghesh. “My father, General,” Signe says slowly, “has terribly little to do with anything significant happening these days, as far as I can tell. And if you want his opinion on the matter, I suggest you find someone who would know more than I do. Or, moreover, someone who would care to know.”

Signe looks up as the train comes to a halt. The white shaft of the lighthouse hovers above them. Signe’s composure immediately returns, the clever smile blooming back on her pretty face. “Ah! We’re here. Allow me to take you to dinner. I know it’s late, but I’m sure you’re starving.” Without another word, she strides off the passenger car, leaving Mulaghesh to struggle with her bags.

Mulaghesh and Signe dine in the private dining room just below the control rooms for the lighthouse. It’s clear this is reserved for the upper echelons of the company: Signe had to use multiple keys just to get to this part of the building. Their server—a Dreyling boy with a wispy half-beard—enters and exits through a secret panel door beside the bookcase in the corner. Everything about the room is designed for privacy, a place to hold conversations and do the real work once the formal meetings are done, though it feels like an extremely upscale whalers’ inn: everything is dark, ornate wood, and most of the walls are covered in the bones of unsettling sea creatures, some with harpoon barbs still lodged in them.

“One way to keep a skilled workforce,” Signe explained to her when they entered, “is to give them every creature comfort. These men have come out to the end of the world to risk their lives—so even if they are hard laborers and seamen, we give them the best chefs, the best entertainment, and the best accommodations money can buy.”

But Mulaghesh also notes that the accommodations are quite permanent. One wouldn’t build such a site if you weren’t intent on staying here for a while. And if they truly expect to get the harbor ready in a matter of months, then what comes after?

From this angle she can see Fort Thinadeshi: a dark, squatting, massive installation on the cliffs just north of the lighthouse. Its most immense cannons are pointed at the city, threatening to rain death down on them at any second. She wonders how the Voortyashtanis must feel with those cannons pointed at them day and night.

“You’re briefed on the situation?” asks Mulaghesh quietly.

Signe picks up her napkin and delicately dabs at the corner of her mouth. “Sumitra Choudhry. Yes.”

“So,” says Mulaghesh. “What can you tell me about her?”

“She came here a half a year ago. Sent to investigate some discovery made just on the outskirts of the fort.”

“Do you know what discovery that was?”

“No. When I volunteered to be your contact here they made it very clear that, for me, this was a need-to-know situation, and I did not need to know that.” She sniffs. “Anyway. At first Choudhry stayed up at the fortress, but then she started coming down and asking questions of my employees. I chose to handle it for the company. She seemed quite…disturbed.”

“Disturbed?”

“Yes. I wondered if she was slightly mad. Bit loopy in the head, if I may say so. At some point in time she had suffered a head injury,” says Signe, gesturing to her left brow, “a white bandage here, so I wondered if that was it, but I wasn’t sure.”

“How’d she get injured?”

“I’m afraid she didn’t say, General. She asked us a lot about geomorphology—the way land is formed. I suppose that because we were doing all this work on the bay, she thought we would know something. But we’re just fixing damages done a few decades ago, not millions of years.” She points out the window to an area just west of the fortress. “People would see her wandering the cliffs with a lantern at night, looking out to sea. I’m told she looked like a painting—the maiden awaiting the return of her beloved, or whatever. Like I said, we thought she was mad.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well, then one day we got word she was just…gone. I heard rumors it took the fort some time to even realize she was AWOL—that’s how odd her movements were. They conducted searches out as far as they could, but found nothing. And that, quite seriously, is all I know.”

“Would any of your employees know anything more?”

“Possibly. Why? Would you like to talk to each and every one of them? How much time do you have, General?”

“I was thinking you might have an alert you can send out. A notice to all SDC employees to come forward if they ever had any contact with Choudhry.”

“Well…we do have a system somewhat like that, but it’s usually reserved for emergencies, an—”

“If you can put that alert through I’ll be quite grateful, CTO Harkvaldsson.” Mulaghesh studiously ignores Signe’s irritation. “But what I find most curious right now is—why you?”

“Why me what?”

“Why are you the one to help me, of all people? You’re not involved with anything at the fortress. And I’m surprised SDC can spare their CTO to help out on a clandestine military operation.”

“Oh, they can’t. Not really. Though we did just go through one of the more difficult crane sitings, so that does make it a little easier. Less burdens upon my back.”

“So why you?”

“I’m familiar with the country, the culture,” says Signe. “I was raised just outside of this polis, after all.”

“You were?”

“Yes,” says Signe. She kneads her napkin in between her finger and thumb. “I’m a Dreyling, certainly. But after the coup we couldn’t stay in the Dreyling Shores. There were plenty of people who wished to see me and my family dead. So we had to hide away somewhere. Voortyashtan was closest, and the least likely place for anyone to look.”

“What did you do when you got here?”

“Survive, mostly. And little more than that.” She smiles, and there’s a touch of bitterness to it. “So, after thirty years here, I know the culture. I know the people. I know the geography, and I know the history. And I have resources that you can’t get at the fortress without raising questions.”

“But you don’t actually want to help,” says Mulaghesh.

“Does anyone actually want to help in a clandestine investigation?”

“Saypur says, ‘Dance,’ you say, ‘How many turns?’ Is that it?”

“Hm…True enough,” Signe says acidly. “Your nation does have mine by the delicates, as one might say. But there is also the matter of your reputation.”

“My reputation? And what reputation is that?”

“General Mulaghesh,” she says, “you are, whether you like it or not, something of a celebrity. You’re not only associated with the prime minister of Saypur, you are also associated with the death of two Divinities. And you’re also associated with an unimaginable amount of destruction and devastation done to the city of Bulikov, damage that city still hasn’t fully recovered from—if it ever can.”

“I couldn’t have helped that!”

“Possibly. But, nevertheless, your reputation is such that your very presence in this city makes me wary. It also makes a lot of investors wary. Voortyashtan is an old friend of violence. The concern is that you, as innocuous as your cover story may be, could be a catalyst.”

“So what? They think I’m going to show up and blow up the city?”

“You forget that these people have cannons pointed at them day and night,” says Signe. “And although you might have developed a reputation as something of a cautious taskmaster in Bulikov, there are still many rumors surrounding what you did before your stint as governor.” Signe smiles so wide Mulaghesh can see her molars. “None of it’s confirmed, of course—but you and General Biswal have some kind of special connection to the capture of Bulikov during the Summer of Black Rivers, don’t you?”

Mulaghesh says nothing.

“Continentals fear you, General,” Signe says. “They fear Biswal, especially. And they fear those cannons. And now you’re all in the same place. I think their concerns are quite valid—don’t you? So it’s wise that someone has to keep an eye on you. It might as well be me.”