She stops, twists her finger in one ear, and then listens. Despite the blaring “eeeee” in her ears, it doesn’t take her long at all to locate Saint Zhurgut—she just has to follow the sputtering om sound, which now sounds like it’s coming through a bad radio.
He’s been cut in two, she sees, vivisected by one of the train’s wheels. His intestines have unspooled like rice noodles, and though his arm is obviously broken in several places, it’s still reaching for his giant sword, which lies on the ground several feet away.
She cocks her head: the sword is still singing, murmuring, I am Her brightest blade. I am the distant star of war. I am conquest everlasting….
“I sure wish you would shut the fuck up,” she says.
There’s a splash of water from the shore. Sigrud staggers up, one arm folded in close to his chest. He limps over, and his mouth moves.
“What?” shouts Mulaghesh.
“Did we get him?” shouts Sigrud back.
“Kind of,” says Mulaghesh. She points to the twitching body on the ground. “But that’s not Saint Zhurgut.” Her finger moves to the giant sword lying on the ground. “That’s Saint Zhurgut.”
Sigrud frowns. She can’t hear him, but she can tell he says, “What?”
“He said he was Voortya’s blade. I think he meant it both metaphorically and literally. His heart and soul and mind are bound up in that metal.”
She takes off her coat, walks to the sword, and—pausing as she realizes this might kill her, as it was likely intended to—picks the sword up with it, making sure not one piece of metal touches her skin. To her relief, nothing happens, but the sword is terrifically, burningly cold. She sees the blade is cracked, the barest hairline running from its base to its point.
She begins dragging the sword back toward the locomotive. “Come on. Help me get this big fucking thing up in the train. But don’t touch your skin to it. Use your coat or something.”
The two of them lift the sword up into the locomotive door. It takes Sigrud a minute to find the right position, as he’s favoring his left side.
“Broken rib?” asks Mulaghesh.
He nods. “Not a bad one, though.”
“There are good broken ribs?”
“Sometimes. Also a sprained shoulder, I think. I was lucky. Pull harder on your end.”
Once they get it in the locomotive they stand before the firebox, and then—with Mulaghesh muttering, “Ah-one, ah-two, and ah-three”—they hurl the giant sword inside.
Instantly the sword’s om begins to sputter, scream, rise and fall, like a radio frequency oscillating wildly. They watch through the hatch as the cracks in the sword’s blade grow, like thin ice under too much pressure, until it finally dissolves, falling away to nothing but the hilt, which slowly begins to melt, like a wax candle set too close to the fireplace.
“Not normal metal,” says Sigrud.
“No. Definitely not. I’ve got to hand it to your daughter. She got this fucking thing hot.” She watches as the sword appears to disintegrate, dissolving not into bubbling metal but clumps of something soft and powdery, almost like graphite.
She stares into the boiler, leaning in until it’s so hot that her skin can’t bear it anymore.
“Holy shit,” she says. “Holy shit! It’s…It’s damned thinadeskite, isn’t it!”
“What?” says Sigrud.
“Thinadeskite!” shouts Mulaghesh. “His fucking sword is made out of thinadeskite! That means that…” She jumps out of the locomotive and runs to where Saint Zhurgut lay.
But Zhurgut is gone. In his place is a young Dreyling man’s body, thickset and red-haired and very dead. His corpse, however, is maimed just as Zhurgut’s was, vivisected at the waist.
Sigrud walks to stand beside her. She sees him mouth the words, What happened to him?
“That’s what happened in the countryside!” shouts Mulaghesh. She’s no longer sure if she’s shouting because she’s deaf or because she’s excited. “At the farmhouses, at the charcoal kilns! There were the butchered bodies, but nearby, on the same property, was a man’s corpse, dead but uninjured! That’s what must have happened!”
“I…do not understand,” says Sigrud.
“Listen—someone came to these families, gave them a present—a sword—then hid nearby and watched! Then, when the man of the house picked up the sword—”
“He transformed into a sentinel,” he says slowly. “And killed his own family, just as Zhurgut tried to kill all of us.”
“Butchered them just as a sentinel would Saypuris,” says Mulaghesh. “Because it was a sentinel! A man made of thorns, just as Gozha said!”
“Wasn’t the thinadeskite found at only one of the murder scenes?”
“Yeah, the one that didn’t go right,” says Mulaghesh. “Back when they were sloppy, whoever they are. On this last one, at the farmhouse, they must’ve been smart enough to clean up after themselves.”
“Then why did the sentinels stop?” says Sigrud. “Why did they die? Why did they not keep killing?”
“I don’t know! It must have failed somehow. The swords couldn’t keep them here, I guess, and their—hell, I don’t know, their hosts—died from the sheer stress of it. I said it seemed like the killer was testing something—maybe some swords work, and others don’t.” She looks up at the devastation of Voortyashtan. “But it sure fucking worked tonight. They’ve figured out how to do this right.”
“But where are they getting the swords from? How could they have persisted after Voortya died?”
“I don’t know that, either. But…But thinadeskite must be what the Voortyashtanis made their swords out of! A special ore, just for them to use. We need to tell someone at the fo—”
She looks up to see one of the cannons of Fort Thinadeshi slowly rotating to point at their very location.
“Shit!” she says. “I forgot!” She sprints off toward the watchtower, which is now on fire around the PK-512.
“Where are you going?” Sigrud calls after her.
“I’m keeping us from getting blown to pieces!” she shouts over her shoulder.
She runs up to the radio box, sits, and holds its receiver up to her head. “He’s down!” she shouts. “Hold your fire, he’s down!”
There’s a tinny voice on the other end, but she can’t hear it.
“What?” she says into it. “I’m nearly fucking deaf, speak up!”
“Can you confirm, General?” says the tinny voice, much louder. “Can you confirm that the threat is eliminated?”
“Confirmed!” shouts Mulaghesh back. “Confirmed! The threat is…” She pauses as a piece of flaming timber falls to the ground near her. “Shit! Anyway, yeah, the threat is eliminated!”
There’s static. She hears the voice say: “—econdary assault?”
“What?” says Mulaghesh.
More static. Then: “—ssault in progr—”
Then the static dies. Mulaghesh kicks the big metal box, but the receiver is silent. However gigantic the lead-acid battery in this thing is, it was never meant to last so long.
She sits on the ground, fumbling for a cigarillo. She settles for a half-crushed one found in her inside coat pocket, but she can’t find her lighter.
A pigeon alights on a nearby shop rooftop. It coos twice, then sits and watches her with one bemused eye, as if to say, What was that all about?