Outside, Signe and Sigrud look out at the ravaged cityscape of Voortyashtan, ruby red in the glow of the sunset. Smoke spills out of countless crushed hovels. There is the distant crack of gunfire—looters, probably, Mulaghesh expects. Three of the giant, deformed statues have been sliced in two, one at the waist, one at the knees, then the final at the feet.
Yet despite this, there is a warmth to Signe and Sigrud’s discussion that Mulaghesh hasn’t ever seen before. They stand close together, shoulders almost touching, and whereas before Signe stood still and rigid around her father, now she’s animated, her movements excited, natural, and unself-conscious. She’s found a way to feel at home with him, thinks Mulaghesh.
Signe seems to remember Mulaghesh standing beside them, leaning on a crutch. “I can’t precisely say you look better, General, but…Are all your various organs in the right place?”
“More or less, though my hip got pretty scrambled. Rada says no fun and play for two weeks.” She struggles to light a cigarillo while still leaning on her crutch. “But she’s going to have to accept two days.”
“Two days? You’re only going to rest for two days?”
“Yes,” says Mulaghesh. “Because then you’re going to take me to the Tooth.”
Signe pales at the mention of it. “Even after Zhurgut…You’re still determined to chase Choudhry?”
“Someone out there has access to Voortyashtani swords,” says Mulaghesh, starting the long walk back to the SDC headquarters. “Just one of which can wreak devastation in minutes, if activated. They’re practically weapons of mass destruction, and someone has been perfecting them, testing them out on innocent, isolated families out in the country—likely, I assume, building up to bring on the Night of the Sea of Swords. And now they’ve got the process figured out.”
“How do they plan to do it, though?” asks Signe.
“I don’t know. But Choudhry thought she’d find something out on the Tooth. Maybe something that could tell her how this was all supposed to go down.” Mulaghesh rubs her eyes. “By the seas, I’m tired. I can’t remember the last time I slept. What time is it?”
Signe checks her watch. “Sixteen hundred.”
Mulaghesh laughs hollowly. “Almost evening again.”
Signe glances over her shoulder, then twitches slightly and grunts. “I think you have the right idea. I have one last piece of business to do, and then I am off to enjoy a giant feather mattress while I can. Good evening.” She turns and trots away.
Mulaghesh watches her go, frowning. “That was rather abru—”
“I will go too,” says Sigrud. “I need to get very drunk and lie down somewhere very dark.”
“Typical Dreyling curative?”
“Something like that.” He stands and lumbers away, limping down the steps.
Mulaghesh stands alone on the hillside, wondering what tomorrow will bring. But something troubles her.
Signe saw something, she thinks. Just now. Didn’t she? She saw something that made her want to leave.
She scans the streets of Voortyashtan with a keen eye. Eventually she notices the short, gray-coated figure standing in the shadow of a tumbled-down house, his peaked cap barely visible in the evening mist.
“Pandey,” says Mulaghesh quietly.
She sits perfectly still, waiting for him to move. When he does she follows, carefully.
***
Pandey heads north, climbing up out of the city and across the cliffs. Mulaghesh falls back when he enters the open country, moving from stone to stone and tree to tree, her hip screaming that she is a complete and utter idiot with every step.
Mulaghesh curses herself for not acting on this sooner. Signe accused me of being an industrial spy once, she thinks, and here she is with a spy of her own up at the fortress! She ducks down behind a boulder and watches Pandey hurry over the cliffs. Oh, Pandey, you stupid boy. What have you gotten yourself into?
They pass the ruined mines, the copse of trees where she found the tunnel, farther and farther north. She makes careful note of his boot print and begins to read its small, ridged scar in the landscape. It should be almost impossible to lose him now.
Yet she comes to the cliffs, and finds she has. She looks to the left and right, wondering if she could have missed him, or perhaps he dove off into the sea itself. Yet when she looks over the edge, she sees only a smattering of sharp, murderous rocks, and the gray gravelly shore.
She pauses. A small sculling shell rests on the shore with two oars nestled inside. As she leans out to look she sees a small stone staircase has been cunningly hidden in the folds of the cliffs, perhaps carved by someone decades ago.
Mulaghesh gets down on her elbows and knees and watches as Pandey finishes climbing down the narrow staircase and walks over to the sculling shell. He looks around, then looks up.
She moves back, waits, and then looks back out again.
Pandey is now stripping down to his undergarments, carefully folding his clothes and setting them on the gravel. Even though it’s evening and cooling off quick, he’s naked to the waist now, wearing only a pair of dark gray breeches. He shoves the sculling shell out onto the waves, wading in chest-deep, and then ably lifts himself up and into the shell. She sees his rowing prowess hasn’t diminished one jot, for he capably navigates his way through the jagged rocks and out to the sea, where another craft is ponderously making its way north to meet him.
Mulaghesh shields her eyes and squints at the craft. The boat is not half as sleek as Pandey’s, a fat washtub of a thing. She takes out her spyglass and places it to her eye, and is not surprised to see it is Signe laboring away at the two oars…though she is a little surprised to see that SDC’s chief technology officer has also stripped down quite a bit for this jaunt, though she still wears her scarf. Even if she’s holding a clandestine meeting with a spy, it’s…a bit much.
“What the hells?” mutters Mulaghesh.
When Pandey’s shell nears Signe he pops the oars out, slides them in, and hops into the open water. Mulaghesh feels cold just watching him. He loops a rope to the prow of his shell, frog-kicks over to Signe’s bathtub of a boat, and knots it to the stern, with her assistance. When he grabs onto the edge of the boat Signe leans out over him, and Mulaghesh frowns when she sees the huge, ecstatic grin bloom on the Dreyling girl’s face.
Pandey lifts himself out of the water, shoulders rippling and flexing, and places a kiss upon the smile.
Mulaghesh’s mouth drops open. “Oh. Oh.”
Pandey climbs in with Signe and rows to some hidden, rocky inlet along the coast. As the boats slowly leave Mulaghesh’s range of vision Signe undoes her ponytail, her bright gold hair rippling down in a shimmering curtain, and then she reaches down and starts to lift her shirt.
“Oh, shit,” says Mulaghesh. She lowers the spyglass, ashamed.
“Yes,” says a voice behind her.
Mulaghesh jumps so much she almost goes tumbling off the cliffs. She turns to see Sigrud about twenty feet down the cliff, sitting with his legs dangling over the edge and watching the waters with a strange look on his face, as if he is both puzzled and pleased by what he just saw.
“Damn it!” says Mulaghesh. “You nearly made me kill myself just then!”
Sigrud is silent.