City of Blades (Divine Cities #2) by Robert Jackson Bennett

Author:Robert Jackson Bennett [Bennett, Robert Jackson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9781848669604
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2016-01-07T05:00:00+00:00

11. A just death

Peace is but the absence of war. War and conflict form the sea through which nation-states swim.

Some who have had the fortune to find clear, calm waters believe otherwise. They have forgotten that war is momentum.

War is natural. And war makes one strong.

– WRITS OF SAINT PETRENKO, 720

She looks for Biswal in the fortress hospital, though the term feels out of place with what she sees: Fort Thinadeshi’s medical wings are dark, primitive, and dirty. Rickety cots and beds line the walls, almost all of them occupied.

As she walks through the hospital she’s faintly aware of the bloodstains on the front of her fatigues, none of them hers – she and Sigrud assisted the medical corps as much as they could – and from the deep ache all along her right side she knows she needs to see a medic now. But mostly she hasn’t the mind for it: the sight of these young men and women trapped in their beds brings back memories of her hellish recuperation in Bulikov. Her arm aches just to think of it. She pities them.

She stops a nurse and asks, ‘The general?’

He points to the back of the hospital, to the morgue. Mulaghesh walks to the morgue doors, hesitates, and pushes them open.

The room is larger than she expected. Tall cabinets line the walls, cold and blank. One of them is open, with a table on wheels half-rolled out of its dark, chilly depths.

Lalith Biswal stands in front of the table, looking down on the body. The deceased soldier is short, her clothes dusty, her hands chalky and pale, the queer colours of the dead. The room is quite dim, but Mulaghesh can tell by the gleaming scar on the forehead that it was once Captain Kiran Nadar.

Biswal looks over his shoulder, nods to Mulaghesh, then turns back to Nadar. Mulaghesh pauses, wondering how to be respectful, then walks to stand beside him.

She was shot three times in the left side. She must have died quickly, as none of her clothes have been removed for operation. Her cheek bears a purple slash, the flesh around it dark. Mulaghesh guesses she fell, likely from her horse.

‘They targeted her specifically,’ says Biswal quietly. ‘She was riding at the front of the line. Standard shtani behaviour, as of late. Kill the officers first.’

‘What happened?’

‘I did tell you we were under surveillance. Shtanis in the hills, watching our movements. They saw us preparing to send a battalion down to the city. When the . . . that horror began his assault on the city, the passages in and out of Voortyashtan were flooded with civilians escaping the slaughter. Under this cover over seventy insurgents took positions east along the main passage. They ambushed us, pinned us down, inflicting heavy casualties. They retreated when we mounted a counterattack.’

Mulaghesh bows her head, disgusted and furious. ‘We were trying to help them.’

‘Yes. We were trying to help the city. But they do not see it in those terms.’

‘It feels rude to ask, but .

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