“The strange woman spotted at the charcoal kilns,” says Mulaghesh. “That’s my best guess. She must have found a way to open, I don’t know, a door of some kind and let them through. And I think she’s the same one who butchered that body to throw me off her trail.”
“And though you have not said so,” says Sigrud, very slowly, “it sounds like you believe this woman to be Sumitra Choudhry.”
Mulaghesh is silent. The wind slaps the windowpanes.
“Yes,” she says quietly. “Yes, it seems that way. From the drawings in her room, which seemed so insane, and the way she drew the murder scenes on her very walls…She’s certainly the one person in Voortyashtan who would know the most about the Divine. And who else would want me to think Choudhry is dead besides Choudhry herself?”
“You think she is mad? That that is why she is doing this?”
“I don’t know why she’s doing this. But it’s the most obvious answer.”
“What goal could she have in mind? Why do these things to these families?”
“I don’t know what her endgame is. But it’s like she’s testing this process, figuring it out, getting better at it. She’s refining her technique, whatever ritual it might be. Something with thinadeskite, though, since we found it at the first murder scene.”
“The material from the mines,” says Sigrud. “Which you said a Divinity caved in.”
“Voortya, yes. Some version or rendition of her, at least, and I still don’t understand that one tiny fucking bit. And I don’t know why the sentinels don’t stick around, why they don’t last, but…Maybe that’s why Choudhry keeps trying. She wants to pull them all the way through and keep them here. But damned if I know why.”
Sigrud slowly sits back, absently carving at the block of cheese.
“What’s your professional opinion?” asks Mulaghesh.
“My professional opinion,” says Sigrud, “is that Voortya is dead. That is known. That is undeniable. Shara said Voortya proved the example of what happens when a Divinity dies. None of Voortya’s miracles work anymore.”
“Yet I walked into one last night.”
He scratches his eyebrow. “And how this is possible, I do not know. But…I have a troubling idea.”
“What?”
“Voortya was the Divinity of death, yes?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So, could it be possible for such a Divinity, who aided her own people in defeating death, to do the same for herself?”
“What are you saying? That I saw Voortya’s ghost on the cliffs?”
“Is it so mad? If you saw all those souls in the City of Blades, if they still exist, then why not Voortya? Perhaps whatever mechanisms that allow an army of dead warriors to persist could also do the same for a god. If it is really the afterlife of these lands, then the City of Blades must hold, what, millions of souls? Tens of millions? All the dead warriors from centuries and centuries…Many times larger than any standing army in existence today. Keeping them there is no small feat.”
Mulaghesh goes still. Something in the fireplace pops.
She sits up, feeling the blood drain from her face. Then she slowly turns to look at Sigrud.
“What?” says Sigrud, wary.
“An army,” says Mulaghesh. “An army, you said. And I said it myself not too long ago.”
“Yes?”
“And what do armies do?”
“They, uh…”
Mulaghesh stands. “That’s what this is all about. It must be! It’s like what Signe said about the Voortyashtani afterlife!”
He frowns. “What does Signe know about the Voortyashtani afterlife?”
“Like…everything? You do realize she was raised here, right?” Sigrud is so disconcerted he appears not to have heard her. She ignores him and continues, “Signe said that when Voortyashtani warriors died, their souls went over the ocean to a white island, the City of Blades. She said the Voortyashtanis believed that one day all the souls would sail back over from the City of Blades…and then they’d make war upon all of creation in the Night of the Sea of Swords.”
“So?”
“So don’t you see? That’s what she’s trying to do! Sumitra damned Choudhry is trying to trigger the fucking Voortyashtani apocalypse!”
***
“We need to tell Shara this right away,” says Mulaghesh. “Tell her that her operative hasn’t just gone AWOL, she’s gone fucking mad and wants to start a damned war! A Divine war, the last war!”
Sigrud shakes his head. “But there are too many unknowns here, Turyin. Imagine if we go to the Ministry, and tell Shara and her people to start investigating….She will have to make her case before the authorities, convincing them to act. But she has no case, just…guesses. Speculation. You must find more; you must find something concrete.”
“What’s more concrete than seeing the damned City of Blades?” says Mulaghesh, frustrated.
“But I did not see the city in the statue yard. Nor did my daughter. And one cannot initiate a military action based purely on visions. Especially since much of the government is no longer purely under Shara’s control. Many of her powers have been stripped from her in the past year.”
“So what now! What do we fucking do now! Wait for another murder?”
“I did not say that,” says Sigrud. “And I may be able to be of some use to you….Let me see your notepad. I wish to see these sketches you described.”
She hands it to him and he flips through them, examining each mad scrawl.
“What do you think?” asks Mulaghesh.
“I think,” he says quietly, “that it was not wise for my people to come here, and unearth the many things that should stay sleeping.”
“Don’t let your daughter hear that.”
His face clouds over. She instantly understands that this was the wrong thing to say. She stays silent rather than fall all over herself apologizing.
The fire crackles and pops. A log gently shifts, sending up a spray of sparks. He flexes his left hand, its white glove rippling. “It still hurts, you know,” he says softly. “My hand. I thought it would go away, after Bulikov, after Kolkan. But it came back.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Perhaps the past cannot be so easily forgotten. Tell me,” he says. “You did not ever have any children, did you?”
“Natural ones, no.” She snorts. “Had about a few thousand adopted ones, though.”
He looks at her, perplexed, then understands. “Ah. Your soldiers. I see.” He turns back to the fire, shaking his head. “I do not understand how to talk to young people.” He rethinks his statement. “Or, I suppose, to young people like her.” Another pause. “Or, perhaps, I do not know how to speak to her, specifically.”
Mulaghesh is quiet.
“She does not like me,” he says. “She does not like me coming back into her life.”
“She doesn’t know you,” says Mulaghesh. “And you don’t know her. But you will, if you want to.”
“Why would she want to know me?” he says. “How do I tell my daughter what I’ve seen, what I’ve done? How do I tell her that at times, in prison, I…I became so furious that my own blood would leap out of me, pouring out of my nose, and I would go mad with anger, a berserk rage, hurting anyone and everyone around me, even myself? Sometimes innocents. Sometimes mere bystanders. I throttled them to death with my bare hands….”
He trails off.