The ground trembles underneath her, threatening to collapse. Yet it holds.
The warriors aboard the ships stare at her, confused. Why does she not do as she promised? Why does she not permit them to wage the last war?
Mulaghesh looks out at the bay, sets her jaw, and rips the sword out of the cliff.
Somehow the sword understands what she wishes to do, and cries to her, No, no! You cannot, you must not!
She forces her will upon it, using every measure of her conviction to change it, to unwrap and unfold and redefine and rewrite it and all it stands for—an invisible, agonizing battle that exhausts her, nearly kills her.
The sword cries out: I was meant for death! I was meant for battle! I was meant for war!
Mulaghesh’s answer has the ring of cold iron: Times have changed.
She finishes her work. Then she turns to the warriors below.
She begins to speak, her voice quaking with fury: “Listen to me, my children! Listen to me! You have slain many and taken many lands! You have won countless battles and waged countless wars!” Her voice rises until it echoes like thunder. “Yet I now ask of you—are you marauders or are you servants? Do you give power to others, or do you hoard it? Do you fight not to have something, but rather fight so that others might one day have something? Is your blade a part of your soul, or is it a burden, a tool, to be used with care? Are you soldiers, my children, or are you savages?”
The bay is silent save for the flicker of flames and the slap of the waters. The sentinels stand upon their ships, staring at her in confusion.
Then one sentinel calls to her, “Mother, Mother! What is this you speak of? What is this you describe? That is not what a soldier is! A soldier does not give, they take! A soldier does not serve, but forces others to serve! A soldier does not cede power, but wields it, wrests it from the hands of any who dares lay claim to it! A soldier never gives, a soldier never serves! A soldier fights only to kill, to claim, to take, to conquer! That is what we are!”
The dead murmur their agreement, their low mutterings floating over the waters.
Mulaghesh bows her head. Her disgust and outrage and contempt burn bright within her, and the sword reacts, flaring brighter than the midday sun, a white eruption of purest light, as if she holds in her hand the morning star.
She holds the sword high and screams in fury, “THEN I FIND YOU WANTING! NO SOLDIERS ARE YOU IN MY EYES! NO TRUE SOLDIERS ARE ANY OF YOU! AND SO I SAY OUR AGREEMENT IS BROKEN!”
She hurls the blazing sword down.
***
Captain Sakthi stares in disbelief as Voortya swings her hand out and throws the glittering, burning sword down to the waters. It is a bolt of lightning, a comet, a blaze of light so bright it’s like the sky has been split open. He raises his hand to shield his eyes, watching through the cracks in his fingers as this fiery, flickering star comes shrieking down to touch the waters at the very center of the fleet.
The horizon erupts. It’s like a thousand shells have gone off, like the death of a star, a wall of purest, bright white light flying at them.
Sakthi shuts his eyes. He cries out and crumples to the ground, covering his face with his arms, bracing for the impact. Surely this explosion will send a crushing wave of water roaring up the shores. Surely shrapnel will fall on them like screaming rains, rending them to pieces. Surely they’ll dissolve in a wave of hot fire that will set the whole of the countryside alight.
But nothing comes.
He waits. Then he lowers his arms, raises his head, and looks.
His eyes are still adjusting, so the dimly lit world bursts with faint blue-green bubbles. Once this passes he sees the bay is covered with thick, curling smoke. But he can’t see a single mast or burning hull in any of it.
The wind picks up. The smoke curls faster, then withdraws like a curtain.
He slowly stands.
The bay is empty. No, not just empty—it’s calm and placid, as it has been nearly every night this week. Not a lick of flotsam or jetsam bobs upon its shores, and the figure of Voortya has vanished with it.
“Gone,” he says. “They’re all gone.”
He is still too stunned to react when all of the technicians begin cheering.
***
Sakthi tries to run faster, but his body is rebelling against him now. He’s been racing about for nearly four hours, moving at breakneck speeds since Biswal first mentioned this mad night was happening, and now his feet ache and his knees creak and some of his lower vertebrae are complaining terribly. Yet he knows his fellow soldiers must be as exhausted as he is as they sprint over the rocks to where they saw the Divinity, their torches bobbing up and down in the dark, so he pushes himself a little harder, raising the guttering red flare in his hands and crying, “To me, to me! Hurry, my boys and girls, hurry!”
It’s all so impossible. He’s thinking the same thing everyone else is: Did they really see the Divinity of war tonight? And did she really strike down her own army, wiping them out in a single blow? Or did something…else happen tonight?
Sergeant Burdar flings out a finger. “There, Captain! Over there!”
There, on the farthest point, the shape of a single person sitting on the cliffs.
Captain Sakthi sprints toward them, crying, “Don’t shoot, damn you, don’t shoot a damn thing unless you have to! Don’t you damned well fire a shot, my boys and girls!”
They drop back, allowing him to be first on the scene. He’s not sure what he’s expecting: perhaps they’ll find the sword of Voortya still buried in the side of the cliffs up to the hilt. Or perhaps they’ll find some unearthly, Divine wound in reality, like they have in Bulikov. Or perhaps the cliffs will be sloughing away entirely, unable to support the madness of this evening.
But as his soldiers encircle the people on the cliffs, he finds it is nothing so strange, nothing so surreal. Captain Sakthi is a veteran of combat, so the sight is not unfamiliar: a young soldier, lying on the ground, pale and still with a wound in his side; and there next to him curled over double is a woman, sobbing hysterically, as if it were she, not the soldier, who was mortally wounded.
She says the same words over and over again: “No more, no more. Please, please, no more.”
People often ask me what I see when I look at the world. My answer is simple, and true.
Possibilities. I see possibilities.
—LETTER FROM VALLAICHA THINADESHI, 1649
Mulaghesh stares at the ceiling of the jail cell.