“Stop it!” screams Mulaghesh. “Stop it!”
But he doesn’t. He slams the guard’s head into the bars over and over again, thrusting forward with one arm, and with each blow her face deforms just a little more, splitting along the temple and the cheek. Blood wells up from around the guard’s right eye as Sigrud pounds her head into the bars with a sickening, steady pace.
“You piece of shit!” screams Mulaghesh. “You stupid bastard!”
When the guard is beaten beyond all recognition, Sigrud tosses her aside and lunges at the bars like a wild animal. Mulaghesh is just barely fast enough to escape the grasp of his fingers, which nearly catch her neck. He screams furiously, straining to reach her, kicking and beating at the bars. Then, growling, he steps back, grasps the bars, and begins to pull.
The jail cell should be too strong for him—it really should. But Mulaghesh knows that Fort Thinadeshi is quite old, so, like the latch on the hallway door, not everything is built to modern engineering standards. This makes her deeply concerned when something in the doorway begins to creak and moan, and puffs of dust come floating down as if the very stone is about to give way.
Sigrud, growling and snarling, digs his heels in and heaves again. The hinges of the door begin to whine.
She knows that if he gets through that door he’ll likely tear her to pieces. Mulaghesh is no slouch at close-quarters combat, but she’s seen Sigrud single-handedly kill half a dozen people in combat, and he’s got an age, weight, and limb advantage. She eyes the guard’s corpse and the knife sticking out of her, which Sigrud has thankfully forgotten, but it’s too far away.
“Sigrud!” she shouts. She steps closer. “Fucking snap out of it already—”
His hand snatches out and grabs her prosthetic hand. He rips her forward, and the buckles along her arm begin to give.
“Fucking do it, then!” she screams at him. “Kill me if you have the guts!”
He rips her prosthetic off, which sends them both stumbling back. Sigrud stands, his face furious, gripping the prosthetic like he plans to crush it, his knuckles white and his fingers flexing.
Yet it holds. The metal does not bend.
Sigrud pauses. He blinks and slowly looks down at the metal hand in his grasp. He stares at the hand like he doesn’t quite understand what it is. Then he begins blinking rapidly, face trembling, and he cradles the prosthetic in his hands as if it were a child.
“No,” he murmurs. “No, no, no…”
“What the hell is the matter with you?” snarls Mulaghesh. “You’re lucky you’re not dead, you stupid bastard! Though you damned well should be! You’ve murdered Saypuri soldiers!”
“She’s gone,” he whispers. It’s like he’s speaking to her prosthetic. “She’s…She’s really gone.”
“She certainly fucking is,” says Mulaghesh. “I hope you’re damned well happy! She was a soldier of Saypur, a soldier of Saypur! An innocent damned bystander and you fucking beat her to death! Do you understand what that means? If this is your idea of a jailbreak, it’s a piss-poor one!”
“I thought…I thought it was all a dream,” says Sigrud. He looks up at Mulaghesh, his one gray eye pale and burning on his bloodied face. “And…And Signe? It wasn’t a dream, was it? She’s…She’s…”
“What are you talking about?”
“I…I dreamed I found her here, dead, lying on a table,” he whispers. “Shot in the back. I dreamt they shot her in the woods outside of Smolisk’s house.”
It feels like Mulaghesh has just swallowed a lump of ice. What Sigrud is describing sounds chillingly plausible.
“Wait. Are you saying she’s…she’s dead? Signe’s dead?”
“I thought I dreamed it.” His voice is a whimper. “But I…I don’t think I did. She’s dead, isn’t she. My daughter is dead. They took her from me just when I got her back.” Then his face twists up and, to her shock, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson begins to weep.
Mulaghesh kneels at the door. She’s not yet forgiven him for what he’s done, but at least now she understands what sent him into a rage. “Biswal had Signe shot?”
“I don’t know,” he says through his tears. “I don’t know. But she is dead. They have her on a table here. They stole her body and hid it away.”
“I’m…I’m sorry, Sigrud,” says Mulaghesh. “I’m truly sorry. I…I would never have asked her to come if…” She trails off. She knows such comments are useless.
“I wasn’t there for her!” he says, sobbing. “I wasn’t there! Never when she needed me, not ever!”
“I’m sorry,” whispers Mulaghesh. “I’m so sorry. But it wasn’t your fault. None of it was your fault, Sigrud. It wasn’t.”
Sigrud covers his face, beyond words.
She leans her head up against the bars of her jail cell. “Listen, Sigrud…Listen, she chose to be there. She chose to help me get to Smolisk’s house. She did so because she saw a threat was coming and she wanted to do something to stop it. Signe spent her whole life trying to do something remarkable here, trying to make life better for millions of people. And if we don’t do anything now, she’ll have spent her life in vain.” She reaches through the bars and rests a hand on his leg. “Please, Sigrud. Help me. Help me make what she did matter.”
Sigrud sits up, still weeping. “I don’t…I don’t even understand what is going on.”
“Take the keys and unlock my cell,” she says, “and I’ll tell you.”
***
Captain Sakthi paces up and down the coastal walls of Fort Thinadeshi, though he is not at all sure what he and his men are doing here. They’re trained for reconnaissance and surveillance, certainly, but not naval reconnaissance and surveillance. Almost no one in Fort Thinadeshi is really, thoroughly trained for naval assault, because no other nation has ever had a real navy besides Saypur, not since the Blink: the idea of any Continental nation ever being rich enough to fund such a venture is absolutely insane.
“See anything, Sergeant?” he asks, stopping behind Sergeant Burdar.
Burdar is currently nestled down atop the coastal battery with a giant telescope on a tripod glued to his eye. “Not a thing, sir,” he says, his cheek crinkled as he watches the horizon. “Though it would help if we knew what we were looking for.”
“Ships, Sergeant,” says Sakthi. “We are looking for ships.”
“That’s what the general said, sure,” says Burdar. “But what kind of ships, I ask you, sir?”
“Continental ones,” says Sakthi. “Voortyashtani ones, I suppose.”
“And those I don’t know the look of,” says Burdar, “being as they haven’t been seen in nearly a hundred years, sir.”
“Well, keep looking. If you see so much as a sole farting swan, I wish to know of it.”
Burdar smirks. “Yes, sir.”