He takes out a flare gun and hands it to her. She hesitates before pointing into the air and firing.
The flare is bright and brilliant, a festive cherry red, and as its light flickers across the hillsides it touches upon the face of the young man lying on the ground: a Voortyashtani boy of about fifteen, his neck elegantly tattooed, a perfectly round entry point drilled just below his collarbone. Strapped to his chest is a Saypuri pistol. He had to adjust the holster considerably to allow for this slight, boyish frame, perhaps two or three years from truly being a man. Mulaghesh is still staring into his face when the Saypuri troops surround them.
Peace is but the absence of war. War and conflict form the sea through which nation-states swim.
Some who have had the fortune to find clear, calm waters believe otherwise. They have forgotten that war is momentum.
War is natural. And war makes one strong.
—WRITS OF SAINT PETRENKO, 720
She looks for Biswal in the fortress hospital, though the term feels out of place with what she sees: Fort Thinadeshi’s medical wings are dark, primitive, and dirty. Rickety cots and beds line the walls, almost all of them occupied.
As she walks through the hospital she’s faintly aware of the bloodstains on the front of her fatigues, none of them hers—she and Sigrud assisted the medical corps as much as they could—and from the deep ache all along her right side she knows she needs to see a medic now. But mostly she hasn’t the mind for it: the sight of these young men and women trapped in their beds brings back memories of her hellish recuperation in Bulikov. Her arm aches just to think of it. She pities them.
She stops a nurse and asks, “The general?”
He points to the back of the hospital, to the morgue. Mulaghesh walks to the morgue doors, hesitates, and pushes them open.
The room is larger than she expected. Tall cabinets line the walls, cold and blank. One of them is open, with a table on wheels half-rolled out of its dark, chilly depths.
Lalith Biswal stands in front of the table, looking down on the body on the table. The deceased soldier is short, her clothes dusty, her hands chalky and pale, the queer colors of the dead. The room is quite dim, but Mulaghesh can tell by the gleaming scar on the forehead that it was once Captain Kiran Nadar.
Biswal looks over his shoulder, nods to Mulaghesh, then turns back to Nadar. Mulaghesh pauses, wondering how to be respectful, then walks to stand beside him.
She was shot three times in the left side. She must have died quickly, as none of her clothes have been removed for operation. Her cheek bears a purple slash, the flesh around it dark. Mulaghesh guesses she fell, likely from her horse.
“They targeted her specifically,” says Biswal quietly. “She was riding at the front of the line. Standard shtani behavior, as of late. Kill the officers first.”
“What happened?”
“I did tell you we were under surveillance. Shtanis in the hills, watching our movements. They saw us preparing to send a battalion down to the city. When the…that horror began his assault on the city, the passages in and out of Voortyashtan were flooded with civilians escaping the slaughter. Under this cover over seventy insurgents took positions east along the main passage. They ambushed us, pinned us down, inflicting heavy casualties. They retreated when we mounted a counterattack.”
Mulaghesh bows her head, disgusted and furious. “We were trying to help them.”
“Yes. We were trying to help the city. But they do not see it in those terms.”
“It feels rude to ask, but…Sergeant Major Pandey…”
“He’s alive, miraculously enough. He was at the front with Nadar, and survived the first volley. He sought shelter in a checkpoint and ably defended a group of civilians that were fleeing the horror in the city. A group that included CTO Harkvaldsson.”
Once again, Signe and Pandey are thrown together. It’s all too coincidental for her tastes.
Biswal looks at her. “What in the hells happened in that city, Turyin? What in hells was that thing that attacked us?”
Mulaghesh decides that now’s the time to lay as many cards on the table as she can, to try to convince Biswal that something Divine is unfolding here in Voortyashtan. So she summarizes her conclusions about Zhurgut and the sentinels and the murders, aware as she speaks that she sounds more and more outlandish: magic swords, possessed bodies, secret mines, ancient ore. She doesn’t say anything about the City of Blades and Voortya, feeling it would be a step too far in the current circumstances.
Biswal is perfectly still as he listens. When she finishes he says, “Do you still believe the issues with the insurgents to be wholly separate from the murders and the interference with the mines—as well as the Divine horror that awoke in the harbor, I suppose?”
“I…suspect so. I don’t think the insurgents were behind any of this. Their concerns are earthly—they’re fighting over land. Whoever is behind this is far more concerned with the spiritual.”
Biswal looks down at Nadar and shakes his head. “Thirty-seven soldiers. The most we’ve ever lost since the Battle of Bulikov.” He shakes his head again, his neck cracking and popping. “The prime minister tells me to do one thing. Parliament signals that it wishes me to do something very different. And now you, Turyin, you now come here and tell me stories of the Divine, of plots and conspiracies taking place under our very noses.”
“Lalith…”
“You tell me that these are two very separate things, the insurgents and the Divine. You say this despite the mine collapse taking place just after the tribal leaders came to this city. You say this despite the appearance of that Divine horror coinciding perfectly with an orchestrated insurgent assault. You and the prime minister, Turyin, you have some gall.” He whirls on her. “What are you really here for, Turyin? You aren’t here on the touring shuffle, are you? Don’t lie to me, Turyin, I’ll know.”
Mulaghesh decides to tell the truth. Or some of it, at least. “I was sent here to find Choudhry.”
“Why keep that a secret?”
“They weren’t sure what had happened to her. They thought maybe—”
“That one of her own comrades had killed her, one of her fellow soldiers.” Biswal laughs bitterly. “The prime minister thinks so poorly of the soldiers in her service. She thinks us cutthroats and brigands.”
“She didn’t know what had happened. She thought it better to be careful tha—”
“Oh, of course she did, and I am so tired of being told to be careful!” snarls Biswal. “I am so tired of being told to draw back, stay firm, appease, and placate! And I am so tired of being told that this is not a war. Any fool with eyes in their head can see that these people will never cooperate, never be civilized! They treat us like enemies. And those who treat us as enemies should be treated the same in turn.”