“What happened then?”
“After I gave her that file she stopped living so quietly. Threw herself into her charity work, started visiting the Continent more and more, arranging shelter and foster homes for orphans. Seemed like the usual charity shit. But I wondered—was it really a charity? It couldn’t have been a coincidence that I’d told her about this operation and then suddenly she starts practically living on the Continent. And then, three months ago, she makes a surprise visit to me, tells me the bit about you and Tatyana—and then…” She trails off. “I had to identify the body, you know.”
Sigrud sits up and looks at her, alarmed.
“They found parts of it,” she says. “Of…her, I suppose. And it was odd to ask me to see her. She was the fucking prime minister, everyone knew what she looked like. But I guess you have to be formal in such situations. I thought maybe she’d faked it all, up until that moment. But maybe that’s just what one does in reaction to such things. The unreality of death. Hoping it was a dream. You know?”
Sigrud shuts his eyes. He sees Signe standing on a pier, staring out to sea, watching all her astonishing contraptions going to work, forging a new age.
“Yes,” he says softly. “I know.”
“Did you come straight here once you heard about her?”
“No,” he says. “And I am here to tell you that you were right, Turyin. Shara was not just involved in some charity. I think when she went to the Continent, she was going to war.”
Mulaghesh listens as he tells her about the past month of his life. When he tells her what happened in Ahanashtan, she drops all pretense of polite attention and instead grabs the bottle of wine.
By the time he finishes talking the bottle of wine is almost gone. Mulaghesh, rolling her eyes in dismay and sighing heavily, keeps pouring glass after glass of it, tossing each one down her throat with a weary resignation. The one piece of information he withholds is Nokov’s name: he’s not willing to take the chance that she could repeat it and bring that creature down on her head.
When he’s done, Mulaghesh takes a deep breath and says, “Okay, first off—you are the stupid asshole who left seven bodies in a coal warehouse in Ahanashtan last week?”
“Oh. You heard about that?”
“Gods damn it, Sigrud, a former prime minister got assassinated in Ahanashtan a month ago! If so much as one body hits the ground in the whole of that province, I get briefed about it, let alone seven!”
“Well. If it is any consolation, things mostly went to plan….”
“Except for the part where it sure sounds like a gods damned Divinity showed up and nearly killed you!” says Mulaghesh, furious. “Not to mention you telling me that the streets of Ahanashtan are apparently riddled with what sounds like some damned Divine booby traps. And fuck knows if I can understand what that’s all about!”
“You will need to keep your voice down,” says Sigrud. “Your guards have ears.”
Mulaghesh rolls her eyes again and tosses herself back in her chair.
“I do not think,” he says, “that the things I met were Divinities.”
“Oh? And what makes you say that?”
“In…In Voortyashtan…When you held the Sword of Voortya. What did it feel like?”
“What are you digging up that awful memory for…?”
“Turyin. Please.”
She stares out the window, her eyes wide and haunted. “Like I could have…could have done anything. Anything. Cut the world in two if I wanted to.”
“Yes. Even a shred of a true Divinity’s power is incomprehensible to the human mind. They can warp reality without even thinking. But the two beings I encountered…They struggled. They had limitations. The world was filled with boundaries and limits for them.”
“So, what are they? Divine creatures? Living miracles?”
“I’ve no idea,” says Sigrud. “But I think Shara knew. They both knew Shara, I suspect. Though one fought against her, and the other with her. And it sounds as if all of what she did on the Continent was started by the file you found….”
“Operation Rebirth.”
“Right.” Sigrud breathes deep. “So. This is…a lot to take in.”
“You’re telling me, asshole. What I can’t figure is, if Shara was tangling with these things that sure as hells acted like Divinities, why not use her black lead on them, just as she did Kolkan? Why not use the one thing she knew could kill them?”
“I don’t know,” says Sigrud. “I assume she still had it. She did not even trust it with the Ministry, after Bulikov. Such weapons, she said to me, should not be trusted with governments.”
“As someone who’s been trying to lead one for a while, I can understand that.”
“I think she trusted nothing and no one,” says Sigrud darkly. “The Shara I knew would have at least written a message for me. Something encoded, something secret. But a spoken word, passed along verbally…Such methods speak of desperation.”
“I don’t like the idea of Shara desperate.”
“Nor I,” he says. “Especially when her enemy, whoever he is, seems to be after her daughter.”
“I don’t understand that at all. She’s just a kid.”
“Khadse said his employer was targeting Continental youths,” says Sigrud, thinking. “Children. Adolescents. First their parents were killed, then the children vanished.”
Mulaghesh’s face grows grave. “Then you…You think Tatyana might already be…”
“I don’t know. It sounded as if Shara’s enemy had just gotten that list of Continentals. So there might still be time.” He pokes at his false eye, trying to get it into a better position.
“Can you please not do that?” says Mulaghesh. “It’s creepy.”
“Sorry. Tell me. I only saw her the one time. What do you know of Tatyana?”
“Not much,” says Mulaghesh. “Shara zealously guarded their privacy after she left office. I suppose she put her Ministry skills to good use there. People barely even knew she’d adopted a daughter, let alone a Continental. I met her only once. She was young. And she was obsessed with the stock markets.”
“The…the what? The stock markets?”
“Yeah. She was a weird kid, I’ll be honest. Read a lot of economics books. But being around Shara probably makes anyone weird.”
Sigrud sits back in his chair, thinking. “Where did Shara live? Before she died, I mean.”
“Her ancestral estate. Eastern Ghaladesh.” She gives him the specific address. “It’s a huge place, belonged to her aunt. Why?”
“Because I think, yet again, that there is something I need to remember,” he says, “and I need something to jog my memory.”
Mulaghesh frowns at him. Then her mouth falls open. “Whoa. Wait. Are you saying you’re thinking of breaking into Shara’s estate? Just to jog your memory?”
Sigrud shrugs. “That is where I was going originally. I don’t know where to go otherwise. Shara was trying to make me think of someone, but we knew so many people….If I can see her records, see what she was doing, it would help me understand.”