City of Miracles

7. A Social Acquaintance

It takes him most of the next day to hike back to Ahanashtan. He can’t stop shivering, and by this point, he knows it’s more than just the cold and his injury. Sigrud’s swum through freezing water before and was raised within spitting distance of glaciers. He remembers having to crack through the ice at the top of his washing basin every morning as a child.

Cold he knows. And this isn’t cold.

I really do not think, he says to himself as he limps onto a trolley, that I was supposed to go to Nokov’s…place. If it can even be called a place.

He gets off at a telegram office. There he sends a message to Mulaghesh, using the instructions she provided, and awaits her call in a nearby phone bank.

He almost falls asleep as he waits. Then the phone blares to life, ringing so loudly that Sigrud nearly reaches for his knife. He takes the earpiece off the hook, then waits a moment, unsure what to do.

“Sigrud?” says Mulaghesh’s voice. “Are you there? Answer me, damn it!”

“I am here,” says Sigrud into the mouthpiece. “Turyin, I—”

“ ‘Am a fucking idiot’? Is that what you’re going to say? I tell you Shara’s address, and the next day you trot out there and detonate her house like it was a damn firewo—”

“Ivanya Restroyka,” says Sigrud. The words are little more than a gasp. He can’t stop shaking, and suddenly it’s very hard to talk.

“What?” says Mulaghesh. “Huh? What in hells are you talking about?”

“The only woman to share Shara’s love.” He swallows. “That love being Vohannes Votrov.”

“You…Wait. You think Tatyana is with Restroyka? The richest damn woman alive?”

“If you were to hide your child with someone,” says Sigrud, “wouldn’t it be with a person of means?”

“Yeah, but, Sigrud…You sound like shit.”

“I know.” He swallows again. His teeth chatter a little. “I saw him there. He surprised me. Attacked me.”

“He? He who?”

“Shara’s enemy.”

“Wait. Wait. So you fought a god?”

“Yes. No. Sort of. I don’t know.” He tries to explain what he put together about the Divine children, hiding away among the population of the Continent, as well as the woman with the golden eyes in the mirror.

“That doesn’t make a damn bit of sense!” says Mulaghesh. “How could they have survived? I thought the Kaj killed anything and everything Divine, children or not!”

“I don’t know,” says Sigrud. “But I think Shara’s enemy, this person of darkness…I think he’s wiping out his siblings one by one. He said something about devouring them, about hungering, making them reside inside him….”

“He sounds loony as fuck-all.”

“Well. Yes. But I think he…eats them, in a way. Absorbs them. And gets more powerful each time.”

“And the mirrors you mentioned…”

“Yes. Turyin…You cannot trust the Ministry. There are eyes and ears everywhere. Who knows who is on their side? Who knows what all they’ve heard?” He stops. “Wait. Where are you calling from now?”

“A secure line,” says Mulaghesh. “And by that I mean the phone bank behind my favorite bar in the wrong part of town. If Ghaladesh even has a wrong part of town. I don’t really think they would have put a mirror up here.”

“Assume nothing,” says Sigrud. “Be as cautious as possible in everything you do. In searching for the Salim…or in helping me find where Restroyka is right now.”

“Ah, shit,” says Mulaghesh. She grumbles for a moment, then sighs. “Well. You may be in luck. Restroyka throws around a lot of money, enough that people notice.”

“Such people including yourself?”

“Yeah. She donated to a few parliamentary campaigns a couple of years ago. Caused a minor scandal, what with her being, you know, not actually a resident or a Saypuri or anything, which then brought up the whole ‘sovereignty of the Continental states’ subject, which is just a giant ongoing clusterfuck, as you are well aware.”

“Yes.”

“Anyways, I had to handle it. Had to do a bit of research on Miss Restroyka, not to mention send her a couple trees’ worth of correspondence. She’s got some kind of sheep ranch in a little town just west of Ahanashtan—last I heard, that’s where she operates out of. Apparently she’s a total recluse. Never leaves the town, barely leaves the ranch. Sends a shitload of letters, though. Now—if I give you the name of the town, are you going to blow up her damn house too?”

“I guarantee nothing.”

“You know, you don’t exactly inspire confidence, Sigrud.”

“I am just being honest. But I will try.”

Mulaghesh sighs again. “Dhorenave. The name of the town is Dhorenave. Population of about two hundred. You’ll stick out like a red turnip there, so be careful.”

“Thank you,” says Sigrud. He touches his brow and sees his fingertips are glistening with sweat. “Thank you, Turyin.”

“You need to get some help, Sigrud,” says Mulaghesh. “You sound terrible. Find a doctor. You talked about forgettable ends—seems like falling over dead in a phone bank would be mighty forgettable.”

Sigrud thanks her again and hangs up.

Stealing automobiles is second nature to Sigrud. So many operations required improvised or untraceable transportation that it became standard practice for Ministry officers to steal an auto, do their part of the operation, and then promptly drive the automobile into the nearest river. Sigrud suspects that he alone is probably the cause of hundreds of thousands of drekels of lost property.

Enough damage, he thinks as he cracks open the door of an old jalopy, that one more won’t make a difference.

He climbs in, starts it, and pilots the coughing old wreck northwest, out of the city. Driving proves to be surprisingly difficult. His hands shake and tremble enough that he has to grasp the wheel hard, so hard his wrists ache. More than once he thinks he’s going to drive the auto off the road.

He glances at himself in the mirror. He’s pale, and his eye sockets are blue. He looks like a man who’s just been hauled out of an icy stream. Which is also what he feels like.

He focuses. Just a little farther. Just half a day’s drive to Dhorenave, and from there to Restroyka.

The trip feels impossibly long. He uses every ounce of energy to stay focused on the road. He realizes he needs to eat, yet he doesn’t feel hungry. He needs to drink, yet he doesn’t feel thirsty.

What happened to me when I fell into Nokov’s realm? He pulls over once, to rest and to check his body for puncture wounds, certain that Nokov or someone poisoned him somehow. He finds nothing, though his left side is an ugly, mottled blue-black. That cold infected me, worked its way into me. He starts the auto again. Will it pass? Or is this how I am to be from now on?

Finally he makes it to Dhorenave, part of the rural southern coasts of the Continent that share the moisture of Saypur’s climate, but not the heat. But while the climate of the Continent continues to go through massive shifts as the weather sorts itself out following the death of the Divinities, people have been forced to figure out how to survive.

Which, for a lot of the southern coasts outside of Ahanashtan, means sheep. And a lot of them.

Sigrud peers out the window at the muddy green hills, dotted with muddy, off-white sheep. The housing he sees is rudimentary, mostly stone, with no heating that he can see. So when Mulaghesh said “ranch,” he thinks, she really meant ranch.

He’s worried he’ll have to get out and ask one of the locals where he can find Restroyka, which he knows won’t go well: a big, ill-looking Dreyling wandering around town asking where the wealthiest resident lives would certainly raise eyebrows. But there is just the one main road, and he drives a little farther than he should—and to his surprise, he gets rewarded for it: he spots a pair of huge, elaborate, white stone gates set in the hills to the west of the town.

He pulls over and stares at the gates. They’re at least two or three stories tall.

“That’s it,” he says, wiping sweat from his brow. “That’s got to be her.”

Sigrud climbs out of the automobile and nearly falls over. I hope Shara told Restroyka I’d come, he thinks. And I hope I can make it up the hill.

He does, though it’s not easy. He slows as he approaches. The gates are huge and intimidating. A single name is carved at their top: VOTROV.

Inherited, then, he thinks. And she hasn’t even taken time to change the name.

He looks closer. The old Worldly Regulations from twenty years back must have missed this place, because the gates are covered in Divine references, most of them Kolkashtani. Sigrud identifies the bent, veiled, dour-looking figure in the center of most of the bas-reliefs as Kolkan himself, and each carving of him is paired with his sigil: the hands of Kolkan, forming a scale, ready to weigh and to judge.

Sigrud flexes his left hand. It doesn’t hurt today. But perhaps that’s just because he feels so cold.

He walks through the gates. For the next forty minutes he limps along the muddy road—the only path or road of any kind that he can spot—and sees only hills and streams and shrunken little shrubs, and lots and lots of sheep.

Finally he crests a hill and sees the ranch house ahead, sitting atop a small ridge. It’s big, but nothing like Shara’s mansion. It’s a low, rambling, stone structure that has obviously aged and not aged well. What really attracts his attention, though, is the extensive steel fence running around the perimeter of the house, topped with barbed wire.

“Gates within gates,” says Sigrud with a sigh. In some ways, the Continent never changes.

He staggers down the muddy road to the fence. It has a big set of steel gates that stand locked, though the lock doesn’t look too complex to Sigrud. He looks for some kind of way to signal to the house that he’s here, but there is none. He certainly doesn’t have the voice to shout right now. He considers cutting through the barbed wire atop the fence, but he doesn’t trust himself to be able to scale the fence in his state.

He kneels before the lock and takes out his lockpicks. I’ll knock on the front door, he thinks, and just apologize later.

The lock clicks open after twenty minutes of work—unusually long for him, but then his hands are shaking like mad now. He pulls the gate open, the hinges whining slightly, then shuts it behind him and continues up the road.

He wonders what to say. He hasn’t seen this woman in twenty years, and they met only briefly. He hopes that “Shara sent me” will suffice.

And he hopes she has a fire. It feels as if his very bones are freezing over.

Then he hears the gunshot.

He immediately identifies it as a rifling, very high-powered. Then the muddy road six feet in front of him suddenly pops, spattering him with wet earth.

Sigrud instinctively leaps away. He lands on his left side and nearly screams in pain as his broken ribs creak and crackle. He manages to stifle the sound, then lies in the ditch facedown, not moving.

What in hells, he thinks. What in the hells was that?

He waits. There’s nothing, no other shot, no shout to stand up. He begins to crawl away, back to the gates.

Another shot, this one striking the earth about four feet to his right. Then a second one, three feet to his left.

Warning shots, he thinks. I’d be dead if they wanted me to be dead. Though he isn’t sure if this counts as a comfort.

Sigrud stays still, facedown, right hand on his head—his left, of course, he can’t lift. He can’t stop shaking now.

He hears footsteps on the hills above. He considers lifting his head, but decides not to bother. This proves to be the wise decision when a woman’s voice barks, “Don’t move! Don’t you think about moving!”

He waits, listening as they approach. He wonders how he got himself into this, then realizes: Electrical alarm system in the gates. They must have known I broke through. Stupid. Stupid and sloppy.

“Are you armed?” the woman’s voice asks.

“Yes,” says Sigrud.

“Take it out and throw it away, please.”

Sigrud complies, throwing away his knife—though he does wonder what sort of person says “please” when giving orders from behind a gun.

“Good. Stand up, please. Slowly.”

Sigrud, groaning and whimpering as his left side screams in pain, clambers to his feet.

There’s a woman standing up the hill from him. He wipes mud from his eyes and peers at her.

She doesn’t look like a millionaire. She’s dressed in appropriately rural clothing, wearing a sheepskin vest and leather boots, and the high-powered rifling—one that even has a telescopic sight—is an uncommon accessory for the wealthy.

Yet the face that looks down the rifling at him…It’s clearly Ivanya Restroyka, clearly the girl he met all those years ago, laughing in delight as he lit his pipe with a coal from the fire. But she’s aged in the time since, and toughened. She is not at all the glittering socialite he remembers from Bulikov, but a thin, weathered, stone-faced creature with her long, black hair pinned back behind her head.

“And who,” she says, “might you be?”

“Sigrud je Harkvaldsson,” Sigrud says. He tries not to tremble as he speaks, but it’s a lost cause. “Sh…Shara…She—”

Restroyka laughs. It’s a cold, brittle sound. “Sigrud je Harkvaldsson! The fearsome Dreyling from Bulikov! So here’s the top man Shara said she’d send to us!” She looks him over. “You’ll pardon my saying so…but I’m not quite sure how much help you can offer.”

Sigrud tries to say that he’s not sure what he can do either, but then he shivers again. And this time it doesn’t stop. He keeps trembling, keeps shaking, keeps shivering until his sight fails, until he can’t see or speak or even breathe.

The next thing he knows, the muddy road is rising up to him. He hits the ground and he’s conscious enough for it to hurt. But not for long.

The last thing he hears is Restroyka sighing and saying, “Oh, for the love of—”

Then things go dark.

Kavitha Mishra awakens in the night.

She’s not disturbed by how dark it is. Though that is disturbing, certainly—she left a candle burning by her bedside when she fell asleep, so it shouldn’t be dark, or not impenetrably dark, like it is now—what’s most disturbing is that her apartments are filled with the sounds of cheeping and rustling and creaking, as if she’s not sleeping in her bed but in some giant, vast, ancient forest, a forest so thick no moonlight could ever penetrate it.

Then a voice: “Mishra.”

Ah, she thinks. She asks aloud, “Yes, sir?”

“He hurt me, Mishra. The man hurt me.”

She sits up. “Nokov? Sir? How did you…How did you find me? I didn’t say your name.”

“I remembered where you once called me,” says his voice. “I remembered. I remembered where it was. I’m getting stronger, Mishra. I can go to places uninvited, if I’ve been there before. But still, he…Still, despite this, he hurt me, Mishra.”

“Who do you mean, sir? The dauvkind?” She knew that the operation in Ghaladesh had gone wildly south. The decimation of Komayd’s house was all over the news. She’d received one message from Nokov—a letter, made of black paper, which mysteriously manifested itself in her dresser drawer the morning after—saying to distribute a sketch of the dauvkind to all Ministry sources, which she’d done. But she hadn’t seen Nokov himself—and she certainly didn’t know he’d been hurt.

Or even been capable of being hurt, really. That’s disturbing.

There’s a grunt to her right. Then something in the shadows…shifts.

And she sees him. Or, perhaps, he allows her to see him.

When she first saw him that day nine years ago, when he left her the letter asking if she would join him, he looked like an ordinary Continental boy—though his eyes had been a little dark, as if difficult to see, and he’d been able to slip in and out of shadows unusually well. Yet as time went by and their mission progressed, he changed.

Nokov stares down at her. He’s still a young man, certainly, appearing to be not yet twenty, but his bearing and his eyes have changed, faint stars flickering in endless darkness, capable of seeing…more.

He’s stronger now. A prince arrayed in his vestments of power.

Yet then he holds up his hand, and she sees his fingers are bruised and swollen.

“He hurt me,” says Nokov. “How is this possible? How could he have done this? Do you know?”

“I…No. I didn’t know that you could be hurt.”

“I can’t! I’m stronger than any of my siblings now!” His voice comes from all around her, as if all the shadows are vibrating at once. “I know that, you and I both know that. If I could just find them I’d…I’d…” He struggles for a moment, and then says, “It’s not fair, damn it. It’s not fair! I shouldn’t…I shouldn’t be able to be hurt anymore. Not anymore.” He looks at her, troubled. “How strong do I have to be to stop them from hurting me?”

Her mouth opens. Though she finds it hard to believe, she suspects he’s looking to her for comfort. But what’s odder still is that there’s an unspoken again in that comment, as if he’s suffered once and has since been running from it.

“Are you all right, sir?” she asks him.

He lowers his hand. His face hardens. “No. I am not. A mortal man, who can physically hurt me? That makes it much harder for me to personally intervene! Because wherever I approach, he could be there. And now he knows what he can do to me. As do my siblings, I have no doubt.” He shakes his head. “This is bad, Mishra, this is very bad.”

“How did he escape, sir?” asks Mishra.

“He…Well. I accidentally pulled him into my domain.”

“I don’t understand, sir.”

“It is…quite difficult to put this in simple terms,” says Nokov. “There is a place where I am purely me. In that place, I touch every shadow, every bit of darkness. I pulled him into this place, and he…I think he slipped through another shadow. Entered and promptly exited.” Nokov narrows his eyes. “I think. Which might have killed him.”

“Why would it kill him, sir?”

“Because that place was made for me,” says Nokov. “It is where I am I. Mortals were not meant to be there, even for one second. But this mortal is…concerning. He might have survived. He might have.”

“Where would the shadow have exited, sir?”

Nokov makes a face as if trying to balance a complicated budget in his head. “I suspect it would be…to here. To Ahanashtan. The place I visit the most. They are like doors….And I’ve left more doors open around Ahanashtan than any other place.”

Mishra slowly exhales. “Ahanashtan is where we have the most resources. But there are also lots of exits. We’ll watch the train station, and the docks—as much as we can. Which might not be enough, sir.”

Nokov is silent for a long while.

“But…But what do we do besides that, sir?” asks Mishra.

Nokov says, “Did you know, Mishra, that you were my first?”

“The first what, sir?”

“The first mortal that…that I showed myself to. That I approached and spoke to. I’d been watching you before then, I thought you might help me. But I wasn’t sure. Yet I chose to show myself to you anyway.”

“I didn’t know, sir.”

“I have never asked you this—you have always done what I asked, and you have every right to refuse to answer—but…why did you join with me? Why did you say yes that first time, so many years ago?”

“I…I’m not sure, sir.” She thinks about it. “I suppose that when I first said your name, it was to see if what you were offering could possibly be real. And you came, and it was real. And we talked, but…But when I saw you, you…reminded me of someone.”

“I did?” he says, surprised.

“Yes.” She bows her head. “My brother, Sanjay. He was killed in Voortyashtan.”

“Oh.”

“I know you’re not the same age, sir, but you both look sort of the same age, and…Well. You both…” She struggles to search for the term. “You both believed. In something. Anything. Which, at the time, I couldn’t.”

“I see,” says Nokov quietly.

“Might I ask, ah, why you asked, sir?”

“It’s complicated. Have you ever heard of a seneschal, Mishra?”

“I’m sorry, sir?”

“A seneschal. It was something the old Divinities used to do. A mortal who bears the miracles and blessings of a Divinity, and speaks and acts for them. A representative or a champion, in a way. It was considered a tremendous honor among the old Continentals. But it comes at a price. A seneschal bears the miracles of a Divinity—but a miracle is a piece of that Divinity. To be a seneschal is to consume and be merged with a god—and that is no small thing.”

“What are you saying, sir?”

He looks at her, his eyes glimmering. “I am saying,” he says, “that if you were to become my seneschal, Mishra, you might not be you anymore. You would be something new. And I am not quite a Divinity yet. I am close to it. With each victory we have, I grow closer. But I know that I am not yet there. So I do not know how this exchange could go.”

“I…I see, sir.”

He thinks for a while, then sighs. “I will not ask this of you, not yet. But we face hard choices ahead, Mishra.” He stands. “Notify me the moment you know anything.”

“Yes, sir. We will listen carefully for any whisper of the dauvkind.”

“Good.” He steps farther back into the shadows. “Sleep well, Mishra.” He flickers, as if a nearby candle flame is being buffeted by a breeze. Then he’s gone. The darkness disappears with him, soft moonlight returns, and Mishra stares around at her empty apartments.

In the dark, Sigrud dreams.

He dreams of a memory, of things as they once were.

His father, small and weary, waiting in a dark hallway as Sigrud walks out of a door. Torchlight quakes on the stone walls. The air is moist and cold.

His father smiles at him, looking at something in his arms. Sigrud looks down. He holds an infant girl in his arms: Signe, mere minutes old.

“Look at you,” says his father to the child. Then, to Sigrud: “And look at you.”

Sigrud frowns at the look in his father’s eyes. “You don’t look happy.”

His father smiles. “I am happy. But I am also not happy.”

“Why? Why are you sad?”

“I’m not sad, Sigrud. You will learn many beautiful things about life now. But also many sad ones.”

“Like what?”

“Well, to start with…” He looks down at his granddaughter, still sleeping, still beautiful. “Now that she is in this world, your life will never truly be your own.”

Sigrud looks down at Signe, this tiny, perfect, frowning thing.

The infant opens her mouth. A scream comes out, loud and pained, an adult scream of genuine terror.

The scream continues, but the scene changes. He’s in Voortyashtan, in Fort Thinadeshi, screaming madly, one hand around the throat of a Saypuri soldier, the other thrusting his knife up into her belly again and again and again, slashing her open until her intestines begin spilling out….

Her eyes are wide as they stare up into his. Her face, though blood-spattered and pale, is smooth and soft—the face of a girl hardly older than eighteen.

She was a child, he thinks. She was just a child.

Sigrud opens his eyes, terrified. The dream is gone, and he thinks he’s awake—but he’s not sure. He’s wrapped in blankets and lying on something wooden. There’s a fire beside him and the moon in the distance, huge and bright. And standing over him is…

Someone familiar. Someone small, skinny, with slumping shoulders, their thick glasses flickering in the firelight.

“Shara?” Sigrud whispers. “Are you there?”

He sleeps.

He feels air moving out of his open mouth. His tongue is dry, his head aching, and his back feels scored for some reason he can’t fathom. But he’s alive.

He cracks open his eye. He appears to be lying on the porch of Restroyka’s ranch house. It’s night now, and he’s wrapped in a pile of woolen blankets, and there’s a fire in some kind of stone chimney next to him, built up to a roaring height. He can feel the heat, but just barely.

The fragments of his dream are still flittering through his head. He tries to look around. There’s someone in a chair beside him, looking out at the stark hills, a rifling in her hand. She hears him move and turns to look at him. It’s Restroyka.

“Awake,” she says. “Are you thirsty?”

Sigrud nods. It feels like he hasn’t had a drink in years.

Restroyka rises and goes inside, rifling slung over her shoulder. She brings back a wooden cup, brimming with ice-cold water. He slurps it down greedily, but chokes on it, which makes him cough violently.

Restroyka watches him closely, her thin, hard face still and inscrutable. “What happened to you?”

Sigrud considers telling her that he was injured and poisoned after struggling with a near-Divinity, but decides such a claim would not be the best way to start off their relationship.

“What do you know?” he asks, though his voice can’t rise above a whisper.

“I know you broke onto my property, unannounced,” says Restroyka. “And I know you look like you’re dying. Though I haven’t dug the grave quite yet. I apologize if your back hurts. You were too heavy for me to carry, so I had Nina drag you up to the porch.”

“N-Nina?”

“My mule. Getting you into the house was impossible. So we improvised,” she says, waving to the fire. She looks at him, and he sees a hardness to her gaze he didn’t expect. “I remember you, you know.”

“What?”

“From the party. In Bulikov.” She sits back down. “I don’t forget a social acquaintance. There was you, with your big red coat and your hat and your pipe. And then there was her. Little Shara. And the second Vo saw her, I…” A bitter smile. “I felt the world falling apart. Even before the Battle of Bulikov.” She looks back at him, her eyes flicking over his face. “You—you’ve held up marvelously well, haven’t you? You look almost exactly as I recall you. Except not quite as alive, of course. That can’t be right, can it? I must be misremembering how you looked….”

Sigrud watches her as she talks. She keeps one hand on her rifling at all times. There’s an easy familiarity to how she holds it that suggests this weapon might be her constant companion out here—if not her only companion.

He tries to take a breath to ask about Tatyana, but his side hurts too much. “Don’t bother talking,” says Restroyka. “You’ve slept all day, and it looks like you needed it. Someone has worked you over like a cheap piece of mutton, and you still seem terribly sick. But you won’t find any more harm coming from me. Shara told me to check the eye, and the hand. She said you might come. And you are who she said you’d be.” She taps her left eye. “I like the false eye, though. It’s very pretty.”

She and Sigrud look at each other for a moment, his breath shallow and ragged.

“Did anyone follow you?” she asks quietly.

He shakes his head.

“Are we in danger?”

He nods.

“But is our location known?”

Sigrud tries to shrug, but he’s not sure if she can see it.

“I told her it wouldn’t last,” says Restroyka to herself. “I told her these things always fall apart….”

There’s a clunk from down the porch. Sigrud can’t lift his head to see, but Restroyka sits up, alarmed. “Dear, I thought I told you to go back in and stay in the house!”

“You also told me to fetch another cord of wood,” says a voice, low and sullen. “Those are two contradictory orders, Auntie.”

Sigrud frowns. Auntie?

“I don’t like you being out of the house,” says Restroyka. “If someone skulking around in the trees out there took some potshot at you and got lucky, I’d never forgive myself!”

“Unless the sheep have rebelled and taken up sharpshooting, I suspect we’re quite safe here.”

Someone steps into view, though they’re still in the shadows. Someone small and thin, their glasses glinting in the firelight, someone familiar.

Sigrud blinks in shock. “Sh-Shara?”

His vision focuses more. He sees he was wrong: though this new girl carries herself like Shara, dresses like Shara, and even talks a bit like her, she’s clearly a Continental, short and pale with curly, inky black hair.

“No,” she says quietly. “Not Shara.” She looks at Restroyka. “Why does he keep saying that?”

Then the girl draws closer, toward the light, and he sees her fully. He sees her wide, pale face, her upturned nose, her small, thin-lipped mouth.

It’s a face he recognizes instantly. Not from the photograph he saw in Shara’s house, though, not the laughing six-year-old girl he saw there.

It’s the girl from the slaughterhouse, he thinks, astonished. The one who saved me. She looks exactly like her! But…that’s impossible….

“I suppose I should ask you to introduce yourself, Tatyana,” says Restroyka, rising to stand beside her. “But then, I never properly introduced myself to our guest either.”

“We’ve met,” says Tatyana, her eyes a little wide with awe.

“You have?” says Restroyka, surprised.

“Yes. Once. I thought I dreamed it.” She stares into Sigrud’s face. “I was a little girl, and I walked into Mother’s room, and she was talking to a man in a mirror. The man was on a ship, and he was weeping. He was so sad, that man. And I never learned why.” She cocks her head. “She said it was a dream. But it was real. It was you. Wasn’t it?”

Sigrud is still so surprised that he’s hardly listening to her. He can’t stop looking at her face, watching her every movement. He can’t believe that Tatyana Komayd, Shara’s adopted daughter, could possibly look so much like the girl from the slaughterhouse.

He remembers Nokov, laughing at him in the dark: But have you seen her?

Sigrud swallows. “How are you…How are you…”

“How am I what?” Tatyana asks.

His strength fails. He lets his head fall back, and he blinks once, twice, then a third time. He can’t keep awake any longer. Consciousness slips out of his grasp, and he sleeps.

He awakens to the smell of something cooking, something thick and starchy. It’s not something he would ordinarily find appetizing, yet his stomach feels so totally empty that it growls at the merest whiff of it. He realizes he hasn’t felt hungry in hours, if not days—which means he must be getting better.

He opens his eye. It’s morning, and he’s still on the porch. There’s an awful taste in his mouth, and everything feels moist. He realizes he’s been sweating pints and gallons all night.

And sweat means…that I feel warm.

And he does feel warm, he finds. He feels very, very warm. He needs to get these blankets off of him, and now.

He shoves them off, which releases a cloud of saline stench that’s almost overpowering. His left side is still in terrible pain, but his skin delights in the feel of the cold morning air.

Slowly, slowly, he stands. His sweat-drenched clothes steam slightly in the cold air, as if his pockets were full of candles. He limps to the front door of the ranch house.

He looks inside. Everything is quite rudimentary, all candles and torches and spindly wooden chairs, not at all the trappings of a millionaire. He can smell a wood fire somewhere, and the creamy, starchy smell is stronger. He limps down the hallway.

The hallway ends in the kitchen. There’s a small kitchen stove in the corner with a little wood fire flickering below an iron cauldron. A thread of steam unscrolls from the edge of the cauldron, where something white and lumpy has calcified.

“It’s porridge,” says a voice.

He turns and sees Tatyana Komayd sitting in the corner, reading a tremendous book whose spine says: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CONTINENTAL COPPER INDUSTRY. She peers over the top with an expression of measured disdain, as if remembering some personal slight he did to her.

“Oh,” says Sigrud. He scratches his arm, feeling awkward. “Is it.”

“Yes. It is. It’s all Auntie Ivanya eats. That and mutton, and carrots, and potatoes.”

For a moment they just look at each other. Sigrud can’t stop looking at her arms, her legs, her feet, as if to verify that every visible piece of her is human and normal—which they all seem to be.

She is just a girl. Just a teenage girl, watching him with an air of resentment. It’s so surreal to think that this is who he risked his life to save, who he fretted over in the dark, the person who vexed and concerned him as he sailed across the South Seas to Ghaladesh.

And yet to look at her…

“Something on my face?” asks Tatyana.

Sigrud stares at her for a second more. She has no idea. No idea who she looks like. Or what she might be.

He coughs awkwardly. “Restroyka is…your aunt?”

“She’s a family friend.” A frosty smile. “Bowls are in the top-right shelf. Spoons in the drawer below.”

Sigrud opens the cabinet and sees there are indeed bowls on the middle shelf, but on the bottom shelf sits something far more alarming: a big, black revolving pistol.

“She also left that,” says Tatyana from the corner. “I think she left it for me…but you might have more use for it.”

Sigrud stares at it for a moment longer before filling his bowl with porridge. “Why would she leave you a gun?”

“In case anyone leapt in here and threatened my life, I suppose. I sort of think I’d welcome it. Nothing else has happened since Mother brought me here.”

“Your mother brought you here?” asks Sigrud.

“Who else?”

He looks around. “Where is Restroyka?”

“Feeding the sheep and the pigs. I think. I can’t confirm it, because I’m not allowed out of the house. I’m a person of some importance, you see.”

Sigrud sits at the table. He’s about to take a giant bite of porridge when Tatyana rises and sits opposite him. She fixes him with a steely look, as if he were some bizarre animal and she’s not quite sure how to categorize him.

“So,” she says. “You knew my mother.”

“Uh,” says Sigrud. “Yes.”

“Do you know how to use a pistol?”

He glances at the cupboard. “I do.”

She nods. “And were you a spy as well?”

Sigrud pauses. It’s naturally a hard rule of espionage that one should avoid running around confessing one is a spy. But you don’t get to be a decent operative without being able to read people—and he senses that Tatyana Komayd already knows the truth, and expects it from him.

“Something like that,” he says.

She nods again. “I see,” she says, just a little too pertly. Then she stands, grabs her book, and marches out of the room.

Sigrud stares at her as she goes, wondering what just happened. Then the back door opens and Restroyka strides in, wearing a thick leather coat and muddy boots, the scoped rifling slung over her back.

“You’re up, I see,” she says. “And eating. Perhaps you’ll live yet.” She frowns when she hears a door slam from far back in the house. “What’s going on?”

Sigrud gestures helplessly at the empty chair across from him. “Tatyana was here, and…”

“And?”

“And she asked if I knew her mother.”

Restroyka narrows her eyes. “And what did you tell her?”

“I told her I did. Then she asked if I was a spy.”

“And then what did you tell her?”

“I told her…Well. Yes? Though that is a poor word for it. Then she just walked away.”

Restroyka sighs and blows a stray thread of hair away from her face. “Oh, dear. Well. That’s how it’s been out here. Can you walk?”

“I would prefer not to,” says Sigrud, thinking of his injured side.

“And I would prefer not to play babysitter to a pissed-off girl and a half-dead Dreyling, but here we are. When you’re done with your breakfast, come outside. I wish for you to see something, please.”

“Will Tatyana be all right?”

“Taty? Hells, certainly not! Not only is she still grieving, but worse….Well. Apparently Shara didn’t tell her the truth. About anything.”

“The…truth?”

Restroyka smiles acidly. “I liked Shara, believe it or not. She was something of a friend of mine in later years. But I do question some of her parenting decisions. Especially hiding from your only child that you were one of the most accomplished espionage agents in Saypuri history, and that you personally killed two gods.”

Sigrud’s mouth falls open. “She…She never told her?”

“Not a word of it. Apparently Taty grew up thinking her mother’s tenure as prime minister was little more than another stage in the career of a milquetoast high-level bureaucrat. How Shara managed that, I’ve no idea. And now that she’s dead, all the truths have come out. I couldn’t keep the news from her when her mother’s life is international news. So trust me, after all the crying and screaming and weeping that I’ve put up with in the past month, Mr. Sigrud, a bedridden man who can barely talk is an absolute vacation.”

Sigrud follows Restroyka as she strides toward a small barn in the corner of her lot. He glances back at the ranch house as they leave it. He sees that though it’s in need of repairs, security has been a priority: the windows have bars on them, and a few of them have been covered up with plates of iron.

“So,” says Ivanya. “You’re to be our bodyguard. Yes?”

“I believe that was the general idea,” says Sigrud. He glances at her rifling. “But you seem to be doing a very good job. You call her…Taty?”

“Yes. She is Taty, and I am Ivanya. None of this Miss Restroyka nonsense, all right? You’re not my damn errand boy. I had one, but I fired him. Didn’t trust him. Also he seemed to be somewhat fearful of the sheep. Bad fit all around. Tell me—how did you know to come here?”

“Shara told me, in a way.” He tells her about his journey here, though he doesn’t yet tell her about Nokov and the Divine.

Ivanya laughs lowly. “Old Mother Mulaghesh…How she hated me. Didn’t like me interfering with Saypuri politics. Ironic, isn’t it, since Saypur has had its hand in every Continental ballot box since the Kaj’s day. Though Shara tried to fix some of that.”

“How did you come to know Shara?”

She stops and looks at him, her gaze bright. “How did you come to know her, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson?”

He shrugs. “She got me out of prison.”

“Hm. How I’d wish for such a simple story.” She continues walking. “She started sending me letters about, what, five years ago or so? Said she wanted to know if I was interested in starting a charity. Some kind of thing about providing shelter for Continental orphans. I ignored her at first, but she was persistent. Eventually I let her come to Dhorenave and pitch me in person. And she struck a chord with me. Still a lot of kids displaced from all the disasters we’ve had. These things…They linger. They linger for generations.”

Sigrud listens carefully. “So…You were involved in her charity on the Continent?”

“I don’t know about involved. I paid for a damned lot of it. Consulted on her board via correspondence. And sometimes I let her daughter come and stay with me, when Shara’s life got too busy, and I had more of a staff here. Little Taty thought it was fun, riding the ponies and whatnot. I got rid of all the staff when Shara died. Didn’t trust them anymore.”

“It was Shara who brought Taty here, though—correct?”

“Yes,” says Ivanya. “You don’t know any of this?”

He shakes his head. “I only became involved after she died. I knew nothing.”

“After she died, eh? Are you her self-anointed avenging angel? How very masculine of you.”

“When did she bring Taty here?” asks Sigrud.

“A little over three months ago,” says Ivanya, “after she moved into Ahanashtan. And then…”

“She was murdered.”

“Yes.”

“And she sent no other communications to you during this time?”

“No. But that’s not abnormal. I do everything at a distance these days. I try not to involve too many people in my life, or what I do here.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“I manage my assets,” she says, walking up to the little barn. “I raise the sheep. And then there’s this.” She unlocks the padlocked door and throws it open.

Sigrud stares. Inside is an armory of weaponry and munitions that would give even the most veteran operative pause. Dozens of pistols and riflings—both of the semiautomatic and fully automatic variety—as well as cleaning kits, ammunition belts, and boxes and boxes of bullets. There are also tins of food at the back, and boxes of things like rice and flour, all of them very carefully sealed to make them last as long as possible.

Ivanya carefully gauges his reaction. “I’ve trained,” she says. “As much as I can, at least. But I suspect you know a lot more about such weaponry. You said you were told to come here and protect Tatyana. I wanted you to know where these were. In case anything happened.”

“And…do you expect anything will happen?”

“I’ve expected something will happen for a very long time now, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson,” says Ivanya, staring off into the hills. “Disasters, on the Continent, are more common than rain. And I want to be ready, and for you to be ready too. Come on. Let me show you the roads.”

Ivanya Restroyka spends a good part of the next two hours showing him the territory. She starts with the one road that leads through the sheep pastures—the one he came in on—but she also shows him the two or three dozen various footpaths through the hills that are accessible from the town.

Or from the river. Or from the forest. Or from the lowlands. Or from the neighboring sheep ranches.

Sigrud listens as Ivanya points out all the various routes and methods someone could use to attack them. He watches as her hand never leaves her rifling—always a very tight grip on it. He nods thoughtfully as she tells him how the fences are alarmed. And he understands immediately that Ivanya Restroyka has not been preparing an attack just in the month or so since Shara died—she’s been preparing for an attack for years. Maybe even a decade. Or more.

“…could float up the river,” says Ivanya, pointing. “If they brought inflatables of some kind. Rafts, perhaps. That’s another possibility.” She glances at him, then stops. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Sigrud thinks for a moment. “I remember you too, you know. From the party.”

“Do you.”

“Yes. You were very young.”

“Younger than young, it feels. I was twenty-one.”

“Yes. But you were also very…unconcerned. Very social. Very talkative. You talked to everyone.”

“So?”

“So…I am trying to reconcile that memory with the person before me. Someone who has no company on her property except sheep and quite a lot of guns.”

She laughs bitterly. “You want to know how I got to be here?”

“I would be curious why a millionaire does not appear to enjoy any creature comforts, yes.”

She shrugs. “What happened to you? What happened to Shara? What happened to any of us? I lived through the Battle of Bulikov, Mr. Sigrud, just as you did. I saw the world fall apart around me, just as you did. I saw death on a scale I could never have imagined. And I lost the one thing that felt real to me. I lost Vo. Or perhaps he was taken from me.” She looks off into the barren wilderness. “I tried to get better afterwards. We all did. But then Voortyashtan happened. And I stopped looking at cities and civilization as refuges. I started looking at them as liabilities.”

“So you came here?”

“Here was better than anywhere else. It used to be a horse ranch for Vo’s family, but sheep are a lot more valuable now. What was I supposed to do, go to cocktail parties? Wear a slinky dress and gossip? None of that meant anything anymore. Some new Divine horror could come along and blow away all of those quaint notions of safety and security as if they were but the seeds of a dandelion. People think me a madwoman, but I know I’m not wrong. Even the humans can’t be trusted these days, as we’ve learned. I just hope the bastards who killed Shara get tracked down fast. Then maybe we can get Taty home soon, and you can be on your way, Mr. Sigrud.”

Sigrud glances sideways at her. “So…What did you think Shara did for your charity?”

“Huh? What do you mean, think? You mean besides run it?”

“Yes.”

“Well. Whatever was needed? I was sent all of her minutes, all of her meeting reports, her finances, all of her—”

“Were any of the orphans she located,” asks Sigrud, “considered special?”

“What do you mean, ‘special’?”

“I mean things Shara would handle personally.”

“We had escalated cases,” says Ivanya. “Cases of danger or extreme circumstances.”

“Which were escalated to Shara.”

“Of course. She was the head of the charity.”

Sigrud nods absently as he stares into the fog-laden hills.

“Why?” she asks. “Why all these questions about the charity? Surely the charity had nothing to do with Shara’s death.”

Sigrud takes a deep breath in, then quickly regrets it, as it pains his side. “You were right, Ivanya. You are not a madwoman.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Shara did not die due to some mortal plot,” says Sigrud. “She was murdered by agents of the Divine.”

Ivanya stares at him. “What are you talking about?”

“I will tell you,” says Sigrud. He grunts a little as he shifts his shoulders, trying to find a more comfortable position. “But I am going to need a chair. And I suggest we have this conversation…away from Taty.”

“Could this upset her?”

“Something like that.”

Sigrud talks. He talks for a long time, more than three hours, seated crookedly on an old, cobwebbed chair in Ivanya’s armory, with her standing in the corner opposite him. When he finishes, Ivanya is silent for a long while.

“You’re…You’re mad,” she says.

Sigrud nods, for this is the natural response. He stands and walks among Ivanya’s armaments, lightly touching a pistol or rifling or knife, leaning this way and that to confirm the make or model or the integrity of the weapon.

“You’re mad,” says Ivanya again. “You’re absolutely mad!”

He nods again, then picks up a carousel pistol. He smiles a little, remembering Turyin running around Voortyashtan with one of these monstrosities on her hip.

“Quit nodding!” snaps Ivanya. “It’s patronizing!”

“Your reaction is completely reasonable,” says Sigrud. He puts down the carousel and picks up a revolving pistol. He flicks open the cylinder and examines the chambers. “What I am telling you is mad. But also true. On the Continent, as you know, things can be both.” He shuts the revolving pistol with a snap.

“You are telling me that Shara Komayd was using her damned charity to…to locate Divine children?”

“Yes. From what I have gathered.”

“Because there’s some Divine child tyrant out there trying to gobble them up?”

“Yes.”

“And…And you think Tatyana might be one of them?”

“I think her name is on a list I have,” says Sigrud. “And she looks almost exactly like the girl who saved me from the slaughterhouse. There is too much similarity for any doubt, to me.” He pauses and looks over the many barrels of riflings at Ivanya. “Has she done anything odd?”

“Her mother was assassinated!” says Ivanya, exasperated. “And now she’s stuck out here in the hills, with me, and I know I’m no storybook ladies’ maid! All she’s done is cry!”

Sigrud sucks his teeth. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Oh, that’s the part that doesn’t make sense! All the rest of the shit you just told me, yes, that’s perfectly logical.”

“She must do something strange. Be something more than what she is.”

“Or you’re dead wrong, and Shara’s murder was just some, I don’t know, Continental separatist plot!”

“Are you not curious,” says Sigrud, walking over to the fully automatic section of weaponry, “as to why Ministry agents haven’t been pounding on your door, asking where Taty is?”

“I do a good job controlling my connections to the world out there! We don’t even have a telephone here.”

“But nobody’s that good,” he says, “unless Shara did such a good job slipping Tatyana out of Saypur that they still don’t even know she left the country. The Ministry is not here, Ivanya Restroyka, because Shara did not trust the Ministry. She knew it had been compromised. That was why she chose to do all this herself.”

“If what you’re saying is true,” says Ivanya, “then why isn’t her Divine enemy knocking on our door either? Why haven’t Taty and I been murdered in our beds?”

Sigrud pauses to think, for this has troubled him too. Nokov seems capable, competent, and preternaturally dangerous. How could they have survived on the Continent for three months without his notice?

Then he gets an idea.

“Do you have a jar?” he asks.

“A what?” says Ivanya.

“A jar. And…When livestock dies. Where do you bury it? Or their ashes, if you burn them.”

“What are you—”

“And if there are any star lilies that grow near here,” he says, “I would appreciate if you would point them out to me.”

An hour later, Sigrud stands next to the armory barn and tries to ignore Ivanya’s bug-eyed stare as he smears the bottom of the muddy little glass jar with grave dirt. I hope it counts as grave dirt, he thinks, if it’s sheep that occupy the grave. He also hopes that onion lilies—apparently the most predominant wildflower around here—count as lilies, for he has a handful of them at his feet. It could really go either way: they smell like onions, but look like lilies.

“So this is a miracle,” says Ivanya flatly.

“Not yet.” He picks up the lilies, shreds their petals, puts them into the jar, and gives it a good shake. “Now it’s a miracle,” he says, dumping them out and scraping off the grave dirt.

“Oh, obviously. Obviously. I didn’t check your temperature, Mr. Sigrud, but I’m increasingly worried you boiled your brain.”

Sigrud smiles politely and looks around. It’s late afternoon now, so the hills are dappled with the gold-yellow light of sunset. It’d be prettier if it weren’t for the hot ball of dread churning in his stomach.

Sigrud lifts the jar to his eye. And, as he expected, the hills light up.

It’s like they’ve been drawn on with some kind of glowing paint, forming giant rings of phosphorescence surrounding the ranch house, rings and rings and rings. The muddy road back to Dhorenave has received the most attention, it seems: the path looks like a huge, glowing stripe cutting through the hills, and it shines so bright it hurts his eye.

“Well?” says Ivanya.

He hands it to her without a word. She looks at it suspiciously, then back up at him. Then she makes a face, lifts the jar to her eye, and peers through.

She gasps. She stares into the jar, leaning forward as if the Divine designs were right in front of her, and then slowly, slowly turns about. “What in the world…? It’s a trick, isn’t it? You’re fooling me, aren’t you?”

He shakes his head. “This is what I saw outside the Golden Hotel in Ahanashtan. I think someone did this to protect you. Just as they did for Shara.”

Ivanya takes the jar away, blinks at the hills, then puts it back to her eye again. “But…Who…”

“Shara’s helpers,” he says softly. He peers at the sun-dappled landscape. “Perhaps other children she saved. I don’t quite know. I have no doubt that she would ensure her daughter had as much protection as she had—if not more.”

She goes pale. “You’re…You’re saying that Divine children came here, crept through the forest, and built invisible, miraculous walls around my house?”

“It would explain why you haven’t been found yet. Shara did her work. I don’t know what these protections do. Perhaps they ward away people or agents who mean well. Wipe the memories of those looking for Taty. Or perhaps these wards just kill trespassers outright.”

“I’m fine with any of those results.”

“Yes. But Shara’s enemies found a way past the barriers at the Golden. And worse, it means more people—if they can be called people—know where Taty is than we realized. If Shara’s enemy gets a hold of whichever children made these protections—and it sounds like he would dearly love to do that—then he will know where we are as well.”

Ivanya slowly puts down the jar. She turns to look at Sigrud, her face wan with horror. “You mean that…You mean Taty could really be…”

“What’s going on?” says a voice.

Sigrud and Ivanya turn to look, and see Taty standing on the back porch of the house, watching them. “What…what are you doing with that jar?” she calls. “Are you playing some kind of game or somethi—”

Ivanya turns and hurls the jar away, smashing it against the wall of the barn, which makes both Sigrud and Taty jump. She whirls back around and stabs out a finger. “Get back in the house!” she snaps.

Taty gapes at her, shocked. “Auntie, I—”

“Now! Back inside! Now!” Her face is bright red, her mouth tight with fury.

Taty watches her a second more. Then she glares at Ivanya and Sigrud, walks back in the house, and slams the door behind her.

Ivanya stands there without saying anything, just breathing hard.

“That,” says Sigrud, “was probably an overreaction.”

“Oh, was it?” snarls Ivanya. “You’ve just told me that not only am I probably targeted for Divine assassination, but so is the girl entrusted to my care, and you’ve shown me that my property has been infiltrated by Divine agents! Agents working for Shara, perhaps, but still people who took away the…the one thing I had out here. The chance to be lost, to be forgotten, to keep all that away from me.” She looks at the back porch. “But now here it is, right next door to me….In my home. In my home.”

Sigrud watches her as she tries to regain control of herself. He’s not sure if Ivanya’s going to have a panic attack or burst into tears. But to his surprise, she does neither: she shuts her eyes, clenches her jaw, turns to him, and growls, “What do we do?”

“I am not sure yet,” he says.

“We can’t stay here.”

“Not forever, no.”

She laughs miserably. “Can we even stay here tonight?”

“I think so,” says Sigrud. “We can risk a few more days. I injured our enemy. Maybe for the first time ever. He will avoid being where I am, for a time. But I need rest as well.”

“And we’re supposed to just go back into the house with”—she looks toward the porch—“with her? A girl you think might be Divine?”

“I…Yes. I think so.”

“She’s just a girl, Sigrud,” says Ivanya softly. “Just a hurt, scared girl. You can’t be right. You can’t be.”

“I know.”

“You don’t. You just met her. She’s hardly older than I was when…” Ivanya shuts her eyes, swallows, and shakes her head. “It’s not fair, damn it. Not to me. Or to her.”

“Yes,” says Sigrud. “But ‘fair’ is but a word.”

Ivanya sighs. “What are we going to do?”

“Do you have a telegraph office here?”

“Yes. There’s one in town.”

“I need you to send a telegram,” says Sigrud. He finds a scrap of paper in the armory and writes down the information. “For Mulaghesh. So she knows where to contact me.”

“I’m sending telegrams to ministers now? What can she know?”

“She’s doing me a favor,” says Sigrud, “looking for the location of a ship.”

“And what’s so special about this ship?”

“I think it can tell me what our enemy really is—how he thinks, how he works—and perhaps where the Divine children came from. All of these will be crucial to staying alive.”

Ivanya takes the scrap of paper and, grimacing, shoves it in her pocket. “Do you want a weapon or not?”

Sigrud raises his eyebrows and nods.

“Go on, then.” She gestures at the armory. “I don’t want to be out here past dark, not after what you told me.”

Sigrud selects a nice handheld revolving pistol with decent stopping power, and a semiautomatic Kamal rifling—a reliable, efficient service weapon he’s had some experience with.

“I thought you’d go for one of those giant machine guns,” says Ivanya.

“If I were running from house to house in street warfare, maybe,” says Sigrud. “But out here, in the wilderness…When I shoot at someone, I want to hit them.”

Ivanya shuts the armory and locks it. Then she leans against the door and sighs again.

Sigrud looks her over as she tries to struggle through this. “Thank you,” he says.

“For what?”

“For saving my life.”

“You’re welcome,” she says. She starts off back to the house. “I hope you can return the favor, and soon.”