Then Biswal lifts the carousel, points it at Rada’s face, and pulls the trigger.
The gunshot is deafeningly loud in this confined space. The bullet strikes the inside of Rada’s right eye, just where the tear gland sits, and her right eye sinks in just slightly, giving her face a strangely fabricated look, as if she were a poorly made mannequin. The back of her head erupts, dark purple viscera spattering over the forge, sizzling furiously where it strikes the coals. Then Rada slumps over, a look of dull surprise forever frozen on her pale, round face.
Mulaghesh stares, shocked. Then she looks up into Biswal’s face and sees a stony resolution there that she’s glimpsed only once before, years and years ago outside the gates of Bulikov: the intent to see done what he feels should be done, and the expectation that the world will either comply or get out of the way.
“I’d been wondering how we could wake up Saypur,” he muses quietly. “And another Battle of Bulikov…That is something I would not wish to miss.”
“Lalith,” asks Mulaghesh. “What…What…”
“Lieutenant!” he calls out.
“What…what did you do, Lalith?” she asks faintly. “What are you doing?”
Biswal nonchalantly unloads the carousel, the rounds tinkling on the floor. There’s the rumble of footsteps as someone sprints down the steps. Then Biswal flips the carousel around, grabbing it by its barrels, and swings it toward Mulaghesh….
The world goes bright with pain. Mulaghesh feels herself tumble sideways, the ceiling spinning above her.
A young Saypuri officer trots into the forge, though she slows when she sees Rada’s corpse. “General Mulaghesh has just assassinated Polis Governor Rada Smolisk,” says Biswal calmly. “I have managed to subdue her. Please take her into custody.”
He walks out without glancing back at her. Mulaghesh tries to hold on to consciousness, but then everything goes dark.
I gave my child to this. I gave my child to Her.
I give myself to Her. Now, and forever.
To ask me to release my sword is to ask me to give up the one thing I have left.
—WRITS OF SAINT ZHURGUT, 731
Vallaicha Thinadeshi struggles to breathe. She thought this would be easy; she thought Mulaghesh would destroy the swords and they would all simply begin to drift once more….But rather than drifting, rather than shifting back into the shadows of reality, she feels them all becoming more real, more themselves, more awake.
And as they do, they grow aware that she is not who they thought she was.
This bleeding, terrified woman is not the Empress of Graves. This is not the Divinity of death and warfare. Why is she here? Why were they listening to her? So they continue to reject her.
The process is agonizing. They reject her like flesh slowly pushing out a thorn. She wasn’t aware she had become a part of them in so many ways, and for them to abandon her, force her away, is like losing a limb she never knew she had.
She finally accepts what’s happened: the strange general has been defeated. She has failed. The swords still persist; they still draw the dead close. And now that Thinadeshi no longer has the sword of Voortya, she’s powerless against them.
She’s dying now. She can feel it. She can feel herself fade, feel the City of Blades itself push down on her, crushing her mind, removing a person who never should have been here in the first place.
She can still hear the sentinels’ thoughts echoing over the beaches: Mother…Mother, we are coming…We are coming for you…And then she feels them begin to leave, departing for the land of the living.
“No,” she whimpers. “Please, no…”
It’s all too much. She shifts sideways and falls over, unable to support herself. She listens to them pleading for their mother. Their voices intermingle in her head, and suddenly she remembers a day long ago, back in Saypur with her children, when they all held hands and ran down the hillside together, laughing with glee, and some of them tumbled and rolled all the way down….
These are her last thoughts: the hot summer sun; the soft embrace of the grass; the tinkle of children’s laughter; and the warm, eager grasp of a tiny hand.
***
Sigrud normally feels at home in the shadows. To be unseen and occupy the dark interstitial parts of the world is second nature to him. But as he squats in the shadows of the trees outside of Rada Smolisk’s house, he can’t bring himself to feel comfortable.
None of this is right. None of this is what he expected.
He watches as the Saypuri soldiers file out of the house, carrying what appear to be sword racks and then finally two bodies. One of them is Mulaghesh, her hands bound behind her back, with one soldier holding her feet and another holding her by the armpits. Probably alive, he thinks. No one binds the hands of a dead person. But she’s also a deep, dark red color, which is…unusual.
The second body is on a stretcher, covered up. The only thing that he can see is that the person is very short, and, from the drip of blood from the side of the stretcher, probably very dead.
He frowns as they load up and drive away. What happened here? Why would Mulaghesh go to the polis governor’s office? What could she have discovered in the afterlife to send her here and ask him to come here as well?
And where is his daughter?
Biswal exits the house. He’s listening as an officer briefs him on something. Biswal is nodding, though he looks displeased, but not furious: he’s being told of something they can deal with, manage, tolerate, not desired by any means but not of chief concern. The lieutenant keeps pointing to a place in the trees just beyond the house, a thick spot of bracken. Biswal looks at it with flat, cold eyes and nods. He says something short—It is what it is, perhaps—and then climbs into an auto, which speeds off up the road.
There are only a handful of soldiers left in the area. Sigrud waits for them to disperse, then sneaks through the trees.
There’s a guard at the door of the polis governor’s office, so he won’t bother to try to get inside. But he creeps his way toward the spot of bracken, wondering what could have caused such consternation….
He’s ten feet away when he smells it. Blood—a lot of it.
He looks at the area from the shelter of a tree. He can’t fully investigate in these circumstances, but he can see where the bracken’s been crushed, like someone fell back into it.
And he smells something…familiar. The scent of cigarettes. An unusual kind, aromatic and exotic. The exact sort, Sigrud reflects, that his daughter smokes nearly constantly.
Sigrud looks uphill, in the direction of Fort Thinadeshi, and thinks.
***