And flesh. Possibly mutton, as the camp is now flooded with sheep that broke free of their pens—but he doubts it. He knows that somewhere in this camp, a body is burning. Probably more than one.
He surveys the cavalry’s work, hand on his sword—a nervous tic he acquired on the battlefield. They did a clean job of it, riding around the forest to come up on the north side of the encampment, then attacking in the dark, driving the insurgents south, where they were met by the guns of the 112th Infantry.
They’d lost a lot of soldiers by then. Picked off in the woods by the shtanis, little bands of fleeing fighters. So the 112th was eager to make someone pay, at least.
He stares out at the burning tents. An honest war, a real war. A far better thing than the miserable secret wars of spies and diplomats and trade ministers. I wonder, he thinks, if the world will ever see a real, true war again?
He feels he will. Lalith Biswal believes with all his heart that peace is but the absence of war, and war itself is almost always inevitable. But when it comes, will our politicians admit it is war? He steps lightly over a body. What must I do to wake them?
How alone he feels, how betrayed. Abandoned by his nation for the second time in his life.
I will not be shamed like this again.
He hears a rustling beside him and stops. There’s a twitch from a collapsed tent, just to his right.
He waits and watches. It could be one of his own soldiers, after all, perhaps wounded.
The canvas flies back and a Voortyashtani boy leaps up, pistol pointed at Biswal’s chest. The boy hesitates just a little too long, his dark eyes blinking behind his sandy-colored curls.
There’s the click of Biswal’s sword sliding out of its scabbard. He’s trained for this so much that he’s hardly aware of what he’s doing, his elbow extending and his tricep flexing, wrist rotating just so….
The boy’s chest and throat turn into a red flash. A fan of hot blood splashes across Biswal’s face. The pistol fires, the round thumping into the soil at the boy’s feet, and the boy tumbles backward into the wreckage of the tent.
Biswal stands over him and watches silently as the boy’s panicked eyes search the night skies, blood pouring from his neck.
“General Biswal!” cries a voice behind him. “General Biswal, are you all right?”
Captain Sakthi appears at Biswal’s elbow, pistol in his hand. He does a double take when he sees the dying Voortyashtani boy, who lies gurgling at his feet.
“Nothing to worry about,” says Biswal calmly. He takes out a handkerchief and wipes off his sword. “Just another insurgent. Didn’t have the sand to pull the trigger. What are you doing here, Captain? I ordered you to fortify the roadways.”
“Yes, sir, but I received a message from Fort Thinadeshi, General. Some…strange information about the harbor.”
“That damn thing? Has someone finally blown it up, too?”
“Ah, no, sir.” Sakthi cringes. “You have a little…you have some blood on your face, sir.”
“Mm? Oh. Thank you. Such a mess…” He wipes his face with the already bloody handkerchief. “Well, if it’s not blown up, then what is it?”
“An anonymous tip, sir, sent to the fortress…Here, I’ll let you see it.”
He hands Biswal the envelope, then uses a small torch to illuminate it for him.
Biswal frowns as he reads. Then he reaches into the envelope and pulls out a small stack of black-and-white photographs. He flips through them, looking at each one. Then he stares into space, thinking.
“So…someone is claiming that the Dreylings,” he says, “have a secret storeroom full of Divine artifacts?”
“Yes, and…this anonymous source also seems to claim that General Mulaghesh had full knowledge of the situation, and has abstained from informing us. The photographs are…Well. They are very convincing. Those statues do look Divine.”
Biswal’s face darkens. He begins slowly folding up the paper. “How did we receive this anonymous tip?”
“It was mailed to Major Hukkeri at the fortress. It might have been a Saypuri, sir, as they certainly knew the correct mailing protocols.”
Biswal is silent.
“If we were to do any sort of investigation, sir,” says Sakthi nervously, “if we were to take any kind of action, we’d…we’d need your approval, sir. But it’s an international matter, and the boundaries of authority aren’t implicitly clea—”
“Aren’t they?” says Biswal. “If the question is what to do about Divine artifacts on the Continent, then we do not need treaties or any diplomatic overtures to establish authority. If I am there, then I am the authority.” He stows the message away in his coat. “And I do plan to be there.”
“You…You mean to withdraw from the counterattack, sir?”
“No, no. The work here will continue, Captain, of course it will. But this requires my personal attention.” He gets a faraway look in his eyes. “She talked about how worried she was about the Divine….” He looks back at the photos, staring into those cold, white stone faces. “And why would she do that, unless she knew something I didn’t?”
***
It’s late afternoon by the time Signe and Mulaghesh return to the SDC dock, exhausted and sunburned but still alive. Either Signe signaled ahead or they were seen coming, because Sigrud awaits them on the dock, waving to them. “Was it a success?” he asks as he helps Signe moor the yacht.
“That depends on your idea of success,” she says, glancing at Mulaghesh, who has dark rings of fatigue under her eyes.
She clears her throat. “Yeah. Yeah, it was a success. It’s the next part I’m worried about.”
As they leave the dock Mulaghesh describes the ritual as told to her by the old man from the Tooth: the basin, the seawater, the materials from the Window to the White Shores, and the goat’s bladder of killer’s blood. And with them together, the passageway through to the City of Blades.
“A whole goat’s bladder?” says Sigrud.
“That’s what the man told me,” says Mulaghesh. “Why? How much is that? I don’t know my goat’s biology.”
“Two to three pints,” says Signe. “At least.”
“That much?”
Signe nods. “Old Voortyashtanis used them as water bags. They were big enough to keep a man on his feet for days. I suppose that was their standard amount of measurement.”
“I guess we don’t know any killer’s corpses we could drain,” says Mulaghesh. “Or any murderous prisoners sentenced to death.”
“No,” says Sigrud. “Though one wonders how Choudhry got any, in order to perform it herself.”
Mulaghesh has been wondering the very same thing during her journey back, but it isn’t until she sees Sigrud that she has the idea. “Wait, we talked about this….Choudhry’d been in the military briefly before she joined the Ministry. She’d had to use lethal force once when someone tried to charge through a checkpoint.”
“Lethal force?” says Signe. “So…you’re saying Choudhry was a killer herself?”
“Which means she could have used her own blood,” says Sigrud. He pulls a face. “Two or three pints of blood…Very difficult for someone to manage that.”