She opens the door, steps inside. Total darkness embraces her.
Then she takes a breath, and says one word.
“Nokov.”
There’s a pause, and then from somewhere in the closet there’s the sound of a soft shuffling, like something creeping through nearby weeds.
A high, cold voice wafts through the darkness: “Mishra.”
He chooses not to physically manifest before her. This is increasingly normal now: she senses that, as he grows in power, he also becomes more and more abstract, and harder to comprehend. But understanding it doesn’t make it any less uncanny.
She clears her throat and tries to focus. She definitely tries to ignore the low groans coming from somewhere out in the darkness, like trees weighed down with ice. “I have a report for you, sir.”
“Ah.” The voice is right beside her now. “Excellent. Thank you.”
“I’ve observed an…unwelcome visitor to the Komayd household in Ghaladesh. His appearance matches the man you encountered here in Ahanashtan, at the slaughterhouse.”
A long pause.
“Does it.”
“Yes. Tall. Dreyling. He appears to have infiltrated without the awareness of the Ministry officers stationed there. He was, ah, wet—which makes me think he approached through the stream running by the house.”
A long, long silence. There is a strange, curious rumbling in the darkness, like the sound of a wild boar growling in the undergrowth.
She shivers. Whenever she talks to him like this she can’t help but get the feeling like she’s alone in a deep, ancient forest on a moonless night….
“What…what orders would you have, sir?” asks Mishra.
“Do you have assets in Ghaladesh?” asks the voice, cold and fierce.
“Yes. I can reach out to them with the Frost of Bolshoni. I’ve become somewhat adept at it.” Being as I have to do it about thirty to sixty times a day, thinks Mishra, to maintain the mirrors.
“Can they respond quickly?”
“Quite quickly, sir.”
“How many? Ten? Twenty?”
“I think I have twelve ready contacts, sir.”
“Good. Mobilize all of them.”
“Um. All of them?”
“Yes. And do they have access to the trunk full of soil?” says the voice. “The one we sent along?”
“Yes, sir, they do, but…Are you saying you wish to personally approach this man?”
“Yes, if I can,” says the voice. “I have questions for him—if he survives that long. He’s in Saypur, which makes it difficult for me….Even though I have grown since my last encounter with him, I still cannot extend my influence far beyond the Continent. But he knew Komayd. And one of the others interrupted my time with him. He is valuable, I’m sure of it. We must treat him with the utmost precaution. Tell them to use the trunk to prepare all entrances and exits to the Komayd estate.”
“Certainly, sir. Shall I keep watch on him through the mirror?”
“Yes. And if he tries to leave, stall him if you can.”
“Yes, sir.” As Nokov seems so interested, she opts not to tell him that she might have been seen in the mirror. We’ll just cross that bridge if we come to it. “And…for the assets and contractors you wish to mobilize…”
“Yes?”
“They will expect payment, sir.”
“Oh. Right. Yes.” The voice pauses, as if he’d forgotten about this inconvenience. “How much? And to which bank accounts or locations?”
She gives him the amounts and the accounts.
“One moment,” says the voice.
There’s a pause. The flicker of faint, white stars up above, pinpricks of luminescence that somehow fail to illuminate anything.
Then the voice is back. “It is done,” he says. “As you said. I have also provided you with a sum, in case you need to deal with any…irregularities.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll proceed shortly. And, ah, one last thing?”
“Yes?”
“The Ministry officers there at the Komayd estate?”
“Yes?”
“What should we do with them?”
“Oh.” A pause. “Well. I don’t see another option but to kill them.”
Mishra winces. “I see. Yes, sir.”
“I mean, do you? Do you see another option?”
“I…No. I don’t think so, sir. Not if this man is that valuable.”
“Yes.” A pause. “Mishra…”
“Yes, sir?”
“Do you still believe our actions are for the good? That what we are accomplishing here is necessary?”
From his tone, she understands he is not interrogating her: this is a genuine question, as if he’d like to hear her thoughts. “I believe I do, sir.”
“The Divinities failed,” he says. “Now Saypur has failed. You know that. It is just a long, grand cycle of suffering. Someone must end it. I shall take up that task, if no one else will. I never thought it’d be easy. It will test me. And it will test you. Do you see?”
“I see. I think I see, sir.”
“Good. That is good.”
Then silence. It’s difficult to tell, as it always is with him, when he’s really gone.
She opens the door to leave. Light floods in. She’s alone in the tiny room. Except now there are three items on the floor at her feet, items that definitely weren’t there before.
One item is a large burlap sack full of silver drekels—probably a thousand of them or so. The other two items are solid gold bars, about ten pounds each, at least.
She sighs. She appreciates the payments he gives her, being as it’s a fortune every single time—she just wishes he paid her in ways that were easier to hand in at the bank.
Sigrud is very accustomed to moving through the homes and spaces of other people. He’s operated beyond the normal boundaries of law and property for so long that the idea of ownership has faded and blurred for him. If he can grab anything, or break into anywhere, then it’s difficult for him to imagine a real reason not to do so.
Yet he feels a powerful violation here, here in the living quarters of his friend.
Her books, worn but cared-for. A half-finished painting she’d made of a pair of hands—Tatyana’s?—peeling an apple with a knife. Stacks of letters to friends and confidants, none in code, not that they needed it: these are all innocent inquiries and missives, letters of “how are you” and “doing fine, thanks” and “oh my goodness she’s gotten so big.”
And then there are the pictures. Sigrud leans close to one, staring at the woman—and the child—trapped behind the glass, arms thrown about each other as they laugh, unable to bear the ridiculousness of posing for a picture….
By the seas, he thinks, is that old woman really you, Shara?
He stares at her lined skin, her graying hair—prematurely white, surely. The effects of office. Her eyes are still the same, though, large and dark, magnified behind her bulky spectacles. He imagines that, though he hadn’t seen her in a decade and a half, she still looked at the world the same way.
But he looks closer at the girl next to her.
It’s a very curious thing. Tatyana, maybe six in this photo, is obviously adopted: the pale white skin and brown hair, cut in a short, modern bob, make that very clear. Her nose is a little sharp and pointed in a way he finds strangely familiar, yet he can’t place it. But the way she stands, the dresses she wears—all of it is so much like Shara that it’s disorienting to him. It’s as if this little girl wished so much to be like her adopted mother that she took on all of her physical mannerisms.