Everything hurts. Her head, her left arm, her right arm, her knees, both ankles, though one a little more than the other. Even her left hand hurts, her missing hand—a curious, ghostly ache, though perhaps that’s because she still doesn’t have her prosthesis back. Yet none of it’s a real hurt, somehow. It’s all far away, muted, as if it’s happening to someone on the other side of the world.
It takes her a second to hear the sound of the footsteps. That’s unusual: ever since Major Hukkeri had them throw her in here they’ve mostly left her alone, except for bringing her food or taking out her latrine. They treat her, in many ways, like a bomb that’s about to go off, and she can’t quite blame them. So who’s brave enough to get near her now?
She watches as the visitor comes to the door of her cell, and though it’s dark she can tell by the scintillating wall of medals and ribbons on their chest that this is a person of consequence. In fact, there’s only one person she knows of who could have ever accrued that many commendations.
She lifts her head a little. “Noor?”
General Adhi Noor leans forward so that a blade of light falls across his face. It’s him, though he looks about a thousand years older than when she last saw him.
He smiles. “Hello, Turyin. Mind if I come in?”
“Do I have a choice, sir?”
“You do if you’d like to.”
She nods and stands to attention. He unlocks the door and steps in. “There’s no need for that. You look like you’ve had a rough time of it. I’d not put you through any more.” He sits down on the cot at the other side of the cell. “Why don’t you take a seat.”
She does as he asks. She thinks for a moment. “Sir, what are you doing here?”
He smiles again, but there’s a bitter touch to it. “When Biswal messaged the Ministry about Zhurgut’s attack on the city, that put a lot of things in motion. I happened to be in Taalvashtan at the time. The prime minister recommended I jump on a boat and get here as soon as I could. It was only on the way that she…apprised me of your operation here. It sounds like a damn tricky one.” He gives her a piercing glance. “And from what everyone has said you’ve either caused quite a bit of commotion or you’ve walked right into a mess of it.”
Mulaghesh is silent. He looks her over, and she knows the look: she herself has given it to soldiers under her command many times.
He takes off his hat and sets it in his lap. “Why don’t you tell me what happened, Turyin?” he says quietly.
She hesitates. It seems so much easier to just let it all be walled up inside of her, to pack it away and keep it in the dark, away from her waking life. But before she knows it, she begins to talk.
She tells him everything. She describes it in the only language available to her: the dry, clinical, officious vocabulary of an officer making a report. And he listens throughout, hardly moving.
When she finishes he’s silent for a while. Then he says quietly, “That’s some story.”
She swallows. “It’s the truth, sir.”
“I know it is. I believe you.”
“You…You do?”
“Yes. I have never known you to lie, Turyin. I’ve never known you to stretch the truth one jot—even when I really would have preferred you to. And maybe you forget that I was with you just days after the Battle of Bulikov. I know what this country is like just as much as you do.”
“I wasn’t doubting you, sir. It’s just that…that General Biswal…”
Noor purses his lips and nods. “Yes. Biswal. I’ve been in communication with Major Hukkeri and one officer who has, in my opinion, thoroughly distinguished himself, a Captain Sakthi. Their assessments of Biswal’s actions don’t quite enter into the realm of the fantastic like yours do, but…they’re close enough. It appears Biswal told numerous officers numerous different stories about what was happening here, anything to get his men to support his mad endeavor to start a new war. That’s reason enough to doubt him. And it is my personal opinion that his command here, while brief, has been nothing short of a catastrophe.”
“That doesn’t acquit a soldier of killing a superior officer, sir.”
“No. No, it doesn’t. But being that we did discover fragments of these swords you describe in Biswal’s rooms, I am tempted to believe you had reasons for your actions.”
“Fragments, sir?”
“Yes. Both the swords and the statues that SDC so carefully hoarded have all more or less disintegrated. If you’re right—if these miracles persisted only because the will of the dead insisted they did so, as a way to be remembered—then it seems that power is gone. The thinadeskite no longer registers any extraordinary properties at all. It’s simply dust.” General Noor rotates the hat in his hands, fingering the brim. “If the swords—damn, I hate discussing this odd stuff—if these swords drew that fleet to these shores, and if Biswal was passively willing to allow them to do so, for whatever reason, then it is an extraordinarily damning piece of evidence. That you managed to defuse the situation—however you managed to do it—is remarkable.” He glances at her. “I’ll probably regret this—I hate asking about anything miraculous—but how did you do it? You just threw the sword at them?”
She shakes her head. “The sword was…it was like a symbol, sir, an idea made real, or maybe many ideas made real. It was a symbol of their agreement—they’d be soldiers for Voortya, and she would give them eternal life and their final war. It was a matter of just…rewriting the agreement.”
“How so?”
There’s a glint of steel in her eye. “They didn’t qualify as soldiers in my opinion, sir.”
“And as such…you were no longer obligated to allow them their war,” says Noor. “Ah. It seems simple now, but…Well, actually, no, it doesn’t seem simple. I hardly understand a bit of it.” He sighs. “I admire the prime minister, but I don’t much enjoy having to parse through all of her miraculous nonsense. But I’m glad she put you here. She’s foresighted, I’ll give you that.”
“I didn’t do it alone, sir. CTO Harkvaldsson was an enormous asset, and…and…”
“Yes.” Noor’s expression darkens. “The dauvkind.” He is silent for a great while. “Did he really kill those soldiers?”
Mulaghesh nods.
“If he was your friend…If he helped you…well, why didn’t you just lie? Why did you tell me that?”
“Lying about how a soldier died, sir,” says Mulaghesh, “is a damned cowardly thing to do. It would dishonor them. Even if it hurts me to admit what happened, I have to tell the truth. He…He did it in a blind rage. They’d just killed his daughter….” She trails off.
“And you know that won’t matter,” says Noor. “Even if he is the dauvkind. We cannot let such a thing pass. When we find him, we will have to hold him accountable for his actions, no matter who he is.”
“When we find him, sir?”
“That’s right, I suppose you wouldn’t know. The dauvkind has not been found anywhere since the night of the attempted invasion. He’s a Ministry-trained operative. Those sorts can be hard to find.” Noor clears his throat. “He has, however, left a letter behind.”