Was Voortya driven to stop them from mining the thinadeskite? But why would Voortya care about what by all accounts is simply a new type of electromagnetic ore? Are they violating some kind of sacred rule by drilling deep into the earth?
Even if she saw something, Mulaghesh reasons, it couldn’t have been Voortya. For one thing, the Divinity Voortya had four arms. Mulaghesh doesn’t know much, but she knows that. In every instance when she presented herself, the Divinity of war had four giant, muscular arms, two to a side. And yet the thing she witnessed here on the cliffs had two. It also seemed to react in pain when I popped off some rounds at it, she thinks. Though Saypur’s made some striking breakthroughs in weapon technologies, she doesn’t think small arms fire would make a Divinity pause. Hells, six-incher cannons only stunned Kolkan and Jukov back in Bulikov, but didn’t seem to injure them any.
And last but certainly not least: it couldn’t have been Voortya, because Voortya is stone-cold fucking dead. A couple hundred Saypuris witnessed the Kaj blow her head clean off her shoulders in the Night of the Red Sands.
More questions, and no new answers.
Mulaghesh comes to the cliffs where she dropped the bottle off the edge. She sees nothing: no giant finger marks in the rocks, no footsteps, no churning of the earth. There is no sign, save for her empty, warm carousel, that what she experienced was anything more than a dream.
Am I going mad?
The gulls are still shrieking, still wheeling and dipping through the air. They cry to one another in terror, communicating some terrible threat, some passing predator. But Mulaghesh can see no sign of what disturbed them so.
***
Three hours later Mulaghesh, wheezing and gasping, staggers back through the gates of Fort Thinadeshi. She is not at all happy to be parted from the disaster site: though she is ostensibly here as a tourist, she pitched in as much as she could in the recovery effort, trying to locate the bodies of the three guards trapped inside. But then a tremulous Saypuri messenger came up, tapped her on the shoulder, and gave her the request.
When she gets to the main conference room everything’s in chaos. Runners—Saypuri and Dreyling, mostly, though there are a few Continental ones—keep darting in to deliver messages. The table is an utter mess, covered in cups, papers, pencils, balled-up napkins. It’s clear this has been a point of activity for some time.
Biswal, Captain Nadar, and Signe are all shouting over one another. Rada Smolisk sits quietly in the corner, attempting to take notes. Nadar, unsurprisingly, looks like shit: red-eyed, soaking wet, with a bandage around her right hand. Her face is flushed, which makes the white scar on her forehead glow white. Biswal grips the edges of the table like he’s about to break it in half over his knee, and stares straight into it as he issues a steady stream of orders. Signe is pacing along the long side of the table, a frenzy of smoke and ash and frantic gestures, pointing to the wall of maps and describing access points.
For a moment Mulaghesh just watches this scene and drips on the floor. The topic of discussion appears to be throwing up roadblocks, barricades, and traffic stops in order to try to catch whichever perpetrators could be responsible for this.
“…very few weak points at the harbor,” Signe is saying indignantly. “The entirety of the harbor works is self-contained.”
“Per your testimony,” says Biswal. “You have not permitted Saypuri officers to tour the harbor works in over four months, so we have no way of knowing that for ourselves.”
“This is because we are at the height of the dredging operations!” says Signe. “We can’t stop now to allow a top-to-bottom security assessment!”
“Well, you may have to, CTO Harkvaldsson,” growls Biswal. “I have three dead soldiers and a caved-in installation on my hands. I expect your full cooperation.”
“And I would expect yours,” says Signe. “You tell me that this is an ‘installation’ or an ‘expansion,’ but it’s clear to everyone that it’s some kind of mine! But what you’re mining you won’t say.”
“I cannot say,” says Biswal. “That is privileged information. And it should not affect how we conduct the search in the harbor works.”
Nadar shakes her head. “We can throw up as many dragnets as we’d like, General, but I am convinced the perpetrators are long gone. It cannot be a coincidence that the very day we allow all the tribal leaders into the city is the same day that the mines get bombed. Whoever did this left early today, with the procession out of the city.”
“Your suspicions are noted, Captain,” says Biswal. “But we still must at least try.”
So far, Mulaghesh seems to be invisible. She waits, then pulls out a chair and sits. The scrape of the chair leg makes the four of them jump, and they turn to look at her as if she just appeared out of thin air.
“Don’t mind me,” she says, taking out a cigarillo. “I’d hate to interrupt.”
“General Mulaghesh,” says Biswal, suddenly formal. “Kind of you to join us. You were with us at the scene just after the cave-in, correct?”
“You saw me, General Biswal,” says Mulaghesh. “Unless you’ve already forgotten.”
“I haven’t. But your appearance on the scene was quite quick, by my estimation. Word had hardly broken out before you were there. My question is—where were you when the collapse occurred?”
“What, am I a suspect?” says Mulaghesh. She lights her cigarillo. She’s suddenly very aware of Rada Smolisk in the corner scribbling down her words.
“We have no witnesses, General,” says Nadar. “If you were in the area, ma’am, we’d appreciate hearing anything you have to say.”
Mulaghesh sucks on her cigarillo, flooding her mouth and nose with the pungent aroma of tobacco. She swallows, thinking what to say.
She can’t tell them what she saw, she decides. Not after Choudhry already went mad up here, painting up the walls with her visions. They’d think her a lunatic and block her out from the investigation. And besides—she herself doesn’t know what to make of what she saw.
So what to tell everyone now?
“I was sitting on the cliffs,” says Mulaghesh, “watching the storm rolling in, and drinking wine. Probta wine, specifically,” she says, remembering the label.
Signe pulls a face. “Ugh. You know there’s fish oil in that, right?”
“It got me pretty drunk,” says Mulaghesh, “so I can’t fault it.”
“So you were drunk while the mines exploded, General?” says Nadar. She does a good job of keeping some contempt out of her words, but not all of it.
“I figured I’d take a day off,” says Mulaghesh. “I wasn’t the only one out there, so you can ask them. I fell asleep. I woke up with the rain and thought I heard thunder. It didn’t take long to realize what it really was.”
“So you did not see anything suspicious in the area after the explosion?” asks Biswal.
“No. I saw what happened and came running. I’ve been pitching in at the site ever since.” She glances around. “So you think insurgents snuck in with the tribal leaders and did this?”
“It’s the only theory that makes sense, General,” says Nadar.