“A bad thing, to haul an old warrior back onto the field. What game is she playing now?”
She’s relieved Sigrud doesn’t ask about the circumstances of her exit, as she’s so tired of fielding questions about it. “They discovered some kind of ore or metal or whatever up near the fort. Shara’s concerned it might be Divine.”
The two of them sit on the plinth of Saint Zhurgut, and she summarizes the generalities of Sumitra Choudhry’s investigation and disappearance. He listens intently, smoking his pipe—his old pipe, she notices, not a fine little ivory piece but the filthy, scarred, oaken thing he was always carrying around. And suddenly Mulaghesh feels more relaxed and more open than she’s felt in weeks. It takes her a moment to realize she might be being more honest with him than she should, but she doesn’t care. She and Sigrud passed through fire and death together, and spent weeks recuperating in a hospital outside Bulikov, trapped in their beds. Though she still holds a grudge against him for making a fast and mostly full recovery—which astonished the doctors, who had all written him off as either permanently crippled or, much more likely in their opinions, soon to be dead. Mulaghesh’s recuperation was far longer and far more excruciating, fighting infections and trying to keep what was left of her arm.
He thinks for a long while when she’s finished. “What kind of ore is this, again?”
“It’s an electrical conductor. Like, what they use to make the electric lights work. They think they can use it to…I don’t know, power more of them, do it easier, faster.”
Sigrud stares at her blankly. “Faster? How would they make light…faster?”
“Hells, I don’t know. It’s some engineering shit. I told them they were sending the wrong person, but they squeezed my plums, so to speak.”
He shakes his head, staring around at the statues and the form of SDC peeking just over the walls. “Look at this world they shoved us into.” He looks up at a bone-white arch. “Maybe they should leave us in here, with this graveyard of relics.”
“Hey, it might not all be new. I saw something last night….Something that’s probably only familiar to Shara, you, and m—”
Before she can speak further the iron door swings back open. They both look up to see Signe walk through.
Signe sees them and stops in her tracks. Then she gives a savage little nod, as though to say, As I expected, all along. She resumes walking toward them. “Well,” she says. “Isn’t this a delight.”
Why is it that, despite us being decades older than her, thinks Mulaghesh, I feel like we’re two children caught causing mischief? She stands and says, “Evening, CTO Harkvaldsson. Lovely night, isn’t it?”
“I will presume it was you that broke into the fuel yard checkbox, stole a truck, and vaulted over the walls.”
“Is it really stealing if you never take it off the lot?”
“I could have you shot, you know.”
Sigrud stands. “Well, n—”
“Try it,” says Mulaghesh. “Then try explaining where I was shot. Looking around me it seems like you’re in a much more vulnerable position than I am, CTO Harkvaldsson.”
“As a Saypuri, I would imagine you’d be quite concerned about keeping Divine artifacts like this closely watched.”
“True, and as a Saypuri, I think it was damn shitty of you not to tell us you had these. Though I can understand you wouldn’t want us taking your trump card. Then what would you play against the tribes?”
Signe’s brow creases, wondering how Mulaghesh understood her intent.
“I was hiding over there,” Mulaghesh says, gesturing with the cigarillo. “I heard everything.”
Signe turns bright pink. “How dare you! That…That…” She looks to her father. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
Sigrud shrugs, bewildered. “What do you wish me to say?”
“Something authoritative and helpful, to start! How ridiculous it is that you must ask me what to say when this woman has breached our personal privacy!”
“This isn’t some family secret,” says Mulaghesh. “Or a company trick of the trade. All this shit is a national security threat, CTO Harkvaldsson.”
“They’re just statues,” says Signe indignantly. “We’ve tested them for any trace of the Divine and found none. If they registered as Divine I would have alerted the fortress immediately.”
“Right, if they registered using the tests you procured from Thinadeshi,” says Mulaghesh. “Do you want me to go sniffing around up there for your source?”
Signe pales a little at that. “This has nothing to do with Sumitra Choudhry.”
“Are you so sure? Are you hiding any other secrets from me now, Signe? Or is this the only one? Because a fine way to search your operation top to bottom would be to tug on Biswal’s coat about this and have him take the harbor apart out of sheer paranoia.”
Signe opens her mouth, aghast, then looks at her father. “This…This woman is putting our nation at risk. Everything will fall apart if the harbor project isn’t finished. Are you going to idly stand by?”
“You are a cunning creature, Signe,” says Sigrud. “Smart enough to know when you’re backed into a corner. If you have something to tell her, tell her.”
Signe sighs, exasperated. “I have told you everything I know about Choudhry. I have always been aboveboard on that subject!”
“Look me in the eye,” says Mulaghesh, stepping closer, “and tell me that.”
Signe’s glacial eyes burn brightly. “I promise. I promise, General.”
Mulaghesh holds her gaze for a moment, then nods. “All right. I believe you. For now.”
“And…And the statues…Will you, ah…”
“Tattle? Maybe. I haven’t made up my mind yet. I have fatter lambs to cook at the moment, and doing something like that would just complicate things.”
“I suppose I’ll have to accept that for the time being. If we are all done threatening one another, can I please escort my father to meet with Biswal? And where is your hat?”
Sigrud shrugs. “The wind took it.”
“Oh, well. We’ll find you a replacement. Come on. Let’s go.”
The three of them begin to exit the yard. Sigrud coughs and mutters about how after this he’ll be happy to return to the headquarters for a night’s rest.
“Your rooms are already prepared for you,” says Signe curtly. “You will have the lighthouse suite.”
“Oh,” he says.
“It’s the nicest suite in the building,” she says. Mulaghesh isn’t sure how, but Signe manages to pack a lot of animosity into this statement.
“I do not need that,” says Sigrud. “I have slept in far worse pla—”
“I know you have,” she says. “That’s not the point. The point is that you are the dauvkind, and everyone here will expect you to be treated as such. If I stuck you in one of the laborers’ quarters they would think I was being disrespectful.”
“Then…I will tell them not to think these things!” says Sigrud, bristling. “I will tell them to mind their own business!”
“And you can’t do that, either! Then it will look as if you’re trying to cover for me. You aren’t just a nobody anymore! People expect things from you!”