“A letter?”
“Yes. He confesses that the entire plan about the yard of statues—hiding the Divine here amongst the harbor works—was his idea. His daughter had nothing to do with it, he says. He claims it was an act of patriotism, anything to support his country, and he takes full responsibility for his actions—though that’s not quite true, what with him having fled and all.” He looks at Mulaghesh. “Is this true? Was this his idea?”
Mulaghesh rubs her aching left arm. “Possibly. I don’t know.”
Noor looks her over again, carefully.
“I do know that the statues had little to do with the situation in Voortyashtan,” says Mulaghesh. “Their presence was wholly coincidence—everything that happened here was a consequence of the actions of Rada Smolisk and Lalith Biswal. That is the truth.”
“And why did you never try to contact me? Why did you never reach out to the military council?”
“The idea of the prime minister running an unofficial operation, investigating the Divine…” Mulaghesh shrugs. “What sort of reaction would that have evoked? Even if we had discovered a true threat?”
Noor nods, sighing. “That is probably true. There are some who already think this whole thing was a hoax concocted by the prime minister. I suppose denial is a much more comfortable bed to lie in than the truth.”
“And what’s to become of me, sir? Will I face a trial?”
“A trial?” he says, surprised. “No, not a trial. Not yet, at least. There’ll be a hearing, and likely an inquiry—but I expect they will mostly find your actions commendable, Mulaghesh. There were thousands of witnesses to what you did last night, even if they don’t quite understand what they saw. There are dozens of soldiers here who can testify to General Biswal’s erratic actions before the invasion.”
Mulaghesh feels herself trembling. “But…But Pandey, and…”
His expression softens. “Yes, the poor sergeant major. You explained to me that was an accident. And we did find part of his sword in your false hand. That is proof enough to me.”
“But…But someone has to…to hold me accountable, sir.”
“For what?”
She almost says, “For everything,” because before this only once in her life has she ever felt responsible for so many ills in this world, so many wounds and so many deaths.
General Noor looks at her for a long, long time. “We need to get you home, Mulaghesh. You’ve been out here too long, out on the front lines. Both in body and in mind.” He stands and pushes the door of the cell ajar. Then he turns and says, “I’m going to leave this open, General Mulaghesh. You come out when you’re ready. When you think you deserve it. And you do deserve it, Turyin.”
She waits until she knows he’s out of earshot to finally begin to weep again. It takes her more than an hour to summon the strength to walk out.
***
The next day Mulaghesh walks the cliffs in the morning air, reveling in the sunlight. A front has blown in out of the south, pushing the clouds away and bringing warm air with it. Noor has given her a new uniform and has allowed her time to clean herself up and seek first aid, and all of this makes Voortyashtan feel like a different world to her.
She wanders the copses and woods atop the cliffs, walking north of the fortress and the city. It takes only a few minutes to lose her tails—two of them, both plainclothes Saypuri officers, neither of them very good. Then she turns toward the coast.
She finds it almost immediately: the hidden place where the tiny, terrifying stairs wander down to the shore. She remembers sitting on the cliffs and watching Pandey rowing out to sea, and the girl in the boat who met him.
Mulaghesh climbs down the stairs. It would normally terrify her, but it doesn’t anymore. Having been death itself for a little bit, she’s no longer much afraid of the idea.
She pauses when she’s almost at the bottom. She calls out, “Sigrud? I’m coming down! Don’t…Don’t fucking kill me or anything!”
A silence.
Then, quietly, “Okay.”
She climbs down the rest of the way and finds him hiding in a cut-in up under a shallow roof of stone. He looks like shit: he’s starved, filthy, and he’s set his own broken arm, albeit poorly.
“Gods be damned,” she says. “How did you survive the past couple of days?”
“Not well,” he admits. He looks at her balefully with one sunken, exhausted eye. “How did you know where to find me?”
She walks over and sits beside him on the gravelly shore. “I thought you would want to come somewhere you could remember her.”
He bows his head, but says nothing.
“Is all well?” he says after a while.
“No. I told them the truth,” she says. “About what happened. About what you did to those soldiers.”
“And the harbor?”
“What, your lie about how it was all your idea? Well…That I didn’t contradict.” She looks at him sadly. “Did you not want to disparage the memory of her?”
“I…I wanted to keep one last part of her alive,” he says. “The one thing she devoted her life to. But now that you’ve found me…Will you tell them? Will you allow them to arrest me, to cast down all the things my daughter built?”
“No. That I won’t do. I’m already arranging meetings with the tribal leaders before I ship out of here about that.”
“About what?”
“About how if they fuck up all that Signe did for them, and fail to make a nation out of this place…Well. Then I’ll come back and kill every single one of them.”
He looks at her. “Do…Do you think that they’ll believe you?”
She thins her eyes. “I was their god the other night, Sigrud. Just a little bit, and just for a little while. But I was still Voortya. They’ll fucking listen.” She sniffs. “But first I’m going to talk to Lem at SDC.”
“About…what?”
“About leaving Signe’s yacht at this location along the shore,” she says, handing him a map. “It’ll be there tomorrow morning.”
He looks at the map, confused, then slowly takes it. “You…You’re letting me get away?”
“No. I’m giving you a head start.”
“But…I killed those soldiers.”
“Yeah. And that’s a hard thing, and I damned well hate it.” She watches as the waves grasp at the stones at her feet, trying but never quite managing to tug them away. “But I did something similar once. And people gave me a second chance. I’d be a shit to deny that to others.”
“I don’t deserve such kindness.”
“Ah, there’s that word.” She looks out at the ocean. “?‘Deserve.’ How preoccupied we are with that. With what we should have, with what we are owed. I wonder if any word has ever caused more heartache.” She watches as he folds the map, his fingers trembling, his face pinched like a child not to cry. “I’m sorry about Signe.”
He stows the map away. “Will I be able to see her?”
“No, Sigrud. You can’t.”
“Please, I must. Just…give me one thing more. Just this one thing.”
“Sigrud…”
He looks at her, his face resolute. “I want to see her funeral.”
“Her funeral? Sigrud, I can’t…”