“Very.”
“So let me test your memory. If one were to have rosemary, pine needles, dried worms, grave dust, dried frog eggs, and bone powder…what Divine ritual would one be able to complete?”
There is a long pause as Signe considers it. For a moment Mulaghesh thinks she won’t tell her, but then she says, “I believe the frog eggs give it away—those are the reagents one once used to complete the Window to the White Shores.”
“The what?”
“The White Shores—the City of Blades itself. The rite would allow those that performed it to see across to the City of Blades and consult with their deceased friends and relatives.”
“How would this rite work?”
“If memory serves, the components were placed in a sackcloth, which was then tied up with dried seaweed and set alight. But it doesn’t work anymore, none of Voortya’s miracles do. I’ve seen them tried. Why? What could that possibly have to do with anything?”
Instantly Mulaghesh remembers Nadar telling her in the laboratory: Some of our operations crew noticed signs that someone had started a fire in one of the branches….It looked as though whoever had done it had been burning just…well, plants, I suppose. Leaves. Some cloth. Things like that.
Mulaghesh takes in a long, slow breath.
Choudhry snuck into the thinadeskite mines, she thinks. And performed this rite down there.
Which leaves the question: why? What did Choudhry think she could accomplish by going down to the mines and performing a Divine ritual that almost certainly wouldn’t work anymore? If Voortya’s miracles don’t work anymore, certainly the afterlife she created is gone, too. And—perhaps more damning—how did Choudhry manage to bypass security to do it?
Thinadeskite shows up in a shack miles away from the mine, thinks Mulaghesh. At the scene of a murder that Choudhry had some knowledge of. And now it seems Choudhry had some way of infiltrating the mines….
Suddenly things look quite bleak for the reputation of Sumitra Choudhry.
“Are you quite all right, General?” says Signe.
“No,” says Mulaghesh huskily. “No, I certainly am not.”
***
Over the next four days Mulaghesh’s work grinds to a slow, creaking halt. She pores over the communications Choudhry sent to Ghaladesh and back. Mostly it’s just requests for documents and references. She hauls out the codex of encryption keys and runs through any text of Choudhry’s she can get her hands on. None of them produce anything, but she didn’t expect them to: all of these messages would have been received by the Ministry, who would have done all this already, and then some.
If I were a Ministry operative, she thinks, would I spy countless codes hidden in the margins? Would I know all the tradecraft about infiltrating the mines? She has no idea, because she’s a far cry from a Ministry officer. She’s just a beat-up old military officer running into walls.
Mulaghesh spends her four days watching the SDC harbor works. Initially this was just an idle way to pass the time, checking to make sure Signe and her security people were reacting properly to the possible bomb threat. But as she watches them she notices something—something she’s seen in combat drills before, when commanders didn’t distribute their forces correctly.
She’s fairly sure she’s identified the most flagrant vulnerabilities in the harbor works so far: there’s the fuel yard, which the whole harbor draws from in order to run; and then there are three manufacturing yards that see a lot of traffic, trucks and forklifts pouring in and out from the break of dawn until late at night. What they’re manufacturing, she doesn’t know—something for the cranes and the ships, she assumes—but hitting any of these four yards would probably cripple the harbor works.
Yet only a handful of new SDC guards are stationed at these three sites. No more than four to five more people, from what she can see—three at the main entrances and two performing surveillance. It’s barely anything at all.
Instead the vast majority of any new security measures are stationed at Signe’s test assembly yard, which is on the other side of the harbor works, far away from most of the construction. Mulaghesh spends two days, mornings and evenings, watching as over a dozen new security employees—thuggish-looking Dreylings with riflings thrown over their backs—take up positions along all the lanes leading to the yard. Signe’s security chief Lem is almost always with them, glowering and scanning the streets, his hand close to his weapon.
On the evening before she has to attend Biswal’s meeting of the tribal leaders, Mulaghesh slinks through the harbor yard and finds a hiding place among a stack of pallets. The SDC workers have seen her with Signe, so most just accept her presence here; but seeing her watching the door to the assembly yard with a spyglass pressed to her eye would be another thing entirely.
For hours, there’s nothing. Then she watches as Signe strides up, clipboard in hand. Lem steps forward. They exchange a word or two. She nervously flicks away a cigarette, stops in front of the door, and checks something on her clipboard. She looks pale and ashen, like she’s eaten something foul.
She’s anxious, thinks Mulaghesh. No. She’s terrified….
Signe turns back around and nods to the guard posted at the test assembly yard door. He gives her a quick salute—a curious gesture, for what’s essentially a commercial operation—and he cranks a lever somewhere in his checkpoint booth.
The door must function with some kind of mechanism, for it slowly falls back. It’s almost like a bank vault door, now that she’s watching, and beyond its threshold she sees…
A second door. Much like the first door.
Signe walks in, turns, and watches as the first door slowly, slowly shuts. It’s only when it’s almost shut that she turns and begins to open the second door.
They really, really don’t want anyone knowing what’s in there, she thinks.
The first door slams shut with a faint boom.
Mulaghesh smirks. “Test assembly yard, my ass.”
O, the things we kill for our dreams, forgetting all the while we shall wake up to find them naught but dust and ash!
What fools we are to pretend that when we walk to war we do not bring our loved ones with us.
If I had known the grief I’d bring upon myself, I would have been a toymaker instead.
—VALLAICHA THINADESHI AT THE FUNERAL OF HER FOUR-YEAR-OLD SON, JUKOSHTAN, 1659
In the white citadel the goddess opens her eyes.
She knows what she’ll see. She knows she’ll see the huge, white, cavernous halls, the crenellated white columns, and the endless, twirling white staircases. She knows she’ll see the cold white moonlight pouring in through the windows. And she knows if she goes to the windows she’ll see the endless beaches beyond, the massive white statues, and hear the slow murmur of the sea.