He waits, listening, until he’s sure the policeman’s gone. Then he waits more, another ten minutes, just to be sure. Then he finally lets out a breath.
He looks down at the knife in his hand and sees it’s shaking.
Just a policeman. No one of consequence, no one of note. An innocent bystander, really.
Sigrud sheathes his knife. He wonders—how many innocent lives is he responsible for? How many have fallen simply because they happened to be close to him while he did his work?
He walks back downstairs, trying to ignore the trembling in his hands.
Once he’s outside the hotel and back in the safety of the shadows, Sigrud explores the alterations done to the streets around the Golden. He must look like a madman, standing there with a glass jar stuck to his eye, but there’s no one around to see him at this hour.
Whoever made the miracles in the Golden clearly did far more work to the streets outside. There are barriers and lines and invisible barricades everywhere—some hanging in the air, ghostly modifications to what must be reality itself—and it doesn’t take long for Sigrud to understand what this is.
If the Golden was Shara’s fortress, he thinks, then these must be its moats, its drawbridges, its outer walls and gatehouses. He has no idea what would trigger these miraculous traps. They certainly didn’t do anything to keep him out, or to harm him. But perhaps they were attuned to a specific opponent. The Divinities could change reality as they wished, so they were certainly capable of creating a miraculous defense that would respond to a single, precise enemy.
But it’s still concerning that he’s never seen these miracles before in the whole of his career. Then again, he really only knew what Shara knew—and it’s possible Shara learned a lot of new things during their time apart.
Who was she when she died? Perhaps she was no longer the woman you knew.
The thought troubles him. Yet Sigrud doesn’t think Shara would act too differently. He knew Shara perhaps better than anyone in this world—and an operative is an operative until the day they die.
She must have had some method of communication, he thinks, scanning the streets. Some way of sending messages to clandestine agents and allies. And he has no doubt that if she had access to Divine defenses, she would have used some of those same methods to prepare a communications system.
He wanders the darkened streets around the Golden for nearly two hours, the glass jar stuck to his eye. He shies away from any early-morning pedestrians, especially police officers, even though he appears fairly harmless—he cannot risk having a common stop escalate into something nasty.
Then, finally, he spies it: it’s just a dot, a distant blot on a brick wall nearly two blocks away. But it’s there, glowing bright, that same, curious blue-green phosphorescence of the Divine.
He puts the jar away and approaches the brick wall slowly, conscious of any surveillance. If this was part of Shara’s communication methods, it might be compromised.
He takes his time, spending two, three hours circling through the streets surrounding the blue-green blot. He sees nothing, but since he now seems to be dealing with something Divine, not seeing things doesn’t necessarily mean anything. The Divinity Jukov once stowed the body of his lover in a glass bead or something, if he recalls. An assassin could pop out of the walls and cut him down if they had enough miracles at their disposal.
Yet this does not happen. The closer Sigrud gets, the more confident he grows that this site—whatever it is—remains secure.
Sigrud walks toward the wall and casually holds the jar up to his eye, or at least as casually as one could possibly do such a thing.
One brick in the wall glows bright blue-green. Five bricks up from the ground.
Sigrud walks up to it, then scans the streets. There’s no one.
He looks at the brick. Throwing lots of caution to the wind, he touches it.
His fingers pass through it as if it were made of fog, and the instant this happens, it vanishes, leaving a hole in the wall.
Sigrud peers into the hole. There are two objects inside: one is a candle, burning with a strange intensity. The other is an envelope, sealed but unmarked.
He picks up the candle and quickly blows it out, for it’s not wise to be lit up like a firework when you’re trying to go unnoticed. He thinks, then flips the candle over.
Inscribed on the bottom is a symbol of a flame between two parallel lines—the insignia of Olvos, the flame in the woods.
Sigrud grunts, surprised. He’s seen such miraculous candles before, with Shara, in Bulikov—they never burn out, and give off an intense, bright light. But why put one here? Why light up a dead drop?
He drops the candle and picks up the envelope. On its front is a single letter—an S.
He pockets the envelope, turns, and takes a long, circuitous walk back to his rooms. He’s fairly confident he has no tails, no surveillance. One person happens to walk alongside him for a little bit—a pale, young, Continental girl with odd eyes and a queerly upturned nose—but their paths quickly diverge, and he never sees her again.
Once he’s back in his rooms, Sigrud watches the streets for another hour. When he’s satisfied he’s gone unnoticed, he shuts the curtains and opens the envelope.
It contains two letters, both handwritten, though one is in code. Sigrud reads the uncoded one first.
Shara,
Spotted him again on Neitorov Street, then again on Ghorenski Square. This was on the 9th and 12th. I am almost positive it’s the same man we sighted around the hotel two weeks ago. Small, upper middle-aged, Saypuri, scar on his neck. Clearly a hood of some kind, but not Ministry. And he has a team working for him, I think. Too many familiar faces.
I suspect he’s working for our opponent. He’s difficult to track—I believe he has been given tools to hide his movements. Highly recommend leaving Ahanashtan with all due haste.
We were drawn here, I think. This city has always been a trap. Now he has our list of possible recruits. We have to act immediately.
As for the little Saypuri hood, and his team—I managed to steal a communication of theirs. I pilfered it from a dead drop of theirs, copied it, and replaced the original before anyone noticed. It’s enclosed, but it’s in code. Yet codes have always been your kind of thing.
Stay vigilant. He’s not the poor child we thought he was. He’s broken in more awful ways than we could have ever imagined.
—M
Sigrud rereads the letter. Then he reads it a third, fourth, and fifth time. Then he sits back and lets out a long, slow sigh.
It’s clear now that Shara was working a big operation—especially if she was putting together lists of possible recruits. It’s not at all clear what they were recruiting agents for, but it must have been something specialized, something sought-after—otherwise, their opponent stealing a list of those recruits wouldn’t be such a devastating blow, which this letter makes it sound like it was.
But as to who wrote this letter, and who their enemy is, Sigrud has no idea. Who is “M”? Could that be Mulaghesh, Shara’s longtime military ally? He doesn’t think so. Last he heard, Mulaghesh was still serving in Parliament in Ghaladesh, and was enjoying a surprising burst of popularity—he knows her supporters fondly call her “Mother Mulaghesh,” which amuses him, as Mulaghesh was about as motherly as a dreadnought.