gotten. Then one day, she never came back. We conducted a search, and found this. I’ve no idea what happened to her. But then, she did disappear right when another spate of fighting broke out.”
Mulaghesh steps on the mattress and slowly looks around. “And she left no paperwork trails? Nothing in your labs or in the fort that she was unusually fixated on?”
“She stopped coming to the labs mere weeks after arriving,” says Nadar. “Soon she was like a ghost. We rarely saw her, and she rarely engaged with us. Though some patrols mentioned she was sometimes seen walking the cliffs, holding a lantern. But that could have been anyone, General.”
“What sorts of tests did she run?”
Nadar runs through a litany of tests Mulaghesh hasn’t ever heard of, things involving lily petals and graveyard mud and silver coins. “What’s more,” says Nadar, “she went beyond the thinadeskite itself, and started testing the
fort
. The stones in the walls, the dirt, the trees…She tested all of this region, practically, for any trace of the Divine—and found
nothing
. It was like living with a madwoman.”
“Who was the last person to see her alive?”
“That’s difficult to say, because we aren’t totally sure when she disappeared. We had some reports of a Saypuri woman being sighted on the shore down in Voortyashtan, but no one could confirm if it was Choudhry or not. That’s the last hint of her movements that I have.”
Mulaghesh makes a note of this. “And is there any cause for this?”
“Cause?”
“Any, I don’t know…abuse or injury or trauma that could have given her this break from reality?”
“She did receive some kind of wound at some point….A head trauma, though she made up several stories about how she got it.”
“Is that the reason for her behavior?”
“I doubt it. Her change was much more gradual.”
“Then what?”
“General…” Nadar sighs and smiles weakly at her. “If you figure it out, you’d be the first. But this place puts pressure on a mind. A lot of awful things happened here. A lot are still happening. And if I can speak freely, General…” She glances around the room. “This shit frankly gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
Mulaghesh can certainly see why. She tries to memorize everything she’s seeing, all the sketches, all the strange glyphs. She tries to make some copies in her portfolio, but they feel clumsy and crude.
I wish Shara was here,
she thinks.
She knows about everything Divine. Or I wish I knew a Voortyashtani to ask about this….
She then realizes that she does—or, rather, she knows a Dreyling who grew up in Voortyashtan.
She grimaces. Playing with Signe Harkvaldsson, she feels, is playing with fire.
Then she notices a stack of papers lying in the corner. She walks over, picks them up, and does a double take.
“What the hells?” she mutters.
Mulaghesh knows Choudhry graduated with top honors from the Fadhuri Academy with a discipline in history—so why was she reading about a historical subject every schoolchild in Saypur knows backward and forward?
Mulaghesh stares down at the painting of Vallaicha Thinadeshi, perhaps the most famous woman in Saypuri history, and the person Fort Thinadeshi is named after.
***
When Mulaghesh was in school—which was so long ago that she doesn’t even want to think about it—there were two kinds of kids: those that worshipped the Kaj and those that worshipped Thinadeshi. Most flocked to the Kaj: the man was, in a way, the savior of Saypur, a brilliant martial leader who freed them from bondage.
But what children eventually realized was that the Kaj never came
back:
he died on the Continent, less than a year after his final victory. He never saw the founding of Saypur. He never had any idea that their country could ever happen. He didn’t build; he only destroyed.
Which was where Vallaicha Thinadeshi came in. As the Continent had relied on Saypur to provide a huge amount of
Mulaghesh steps on the mattress and slowly looks around. “And she left no paperwork trails? Nothing in your labs or in the fort that she was unusually fixated on?”
“She stopped coming to the labs mere weeks after arriving,” says Nadar. “Soon she was like a ghost. We rarely saw her, and she rarely engaged with us. Though some patrols mentioned she was sometimes seen walking the cliffs, holding a lantern. But that could have been anyone, General.”
“What sorts of tests did she run?”
Nadar runs through a litany of tests Mulaghesh hasn’t ever heard of, things involving lily petals and graveyard mud and silver coins. “What’s more,” says Nadar, “she went beyond the thinadeskite itself, and started testing the
fort
. The stones in the walls, the dirt, the trees…She tested all of this region, practically, for any trace of the Divine—and found
nothing
. It was like living with a madwoman.”
“Who was the last person to see her alive?”
“That’s difficult to say, because we aren’t totally sure when she disappeared. We had some reports of a Saypuri woman being sighted on the shore down in Voortyashtan, but no one could confirm if it was Choudhry or not. That’s the last hint of her movements that I have.”
Mulaghesh makes a note of this. “And is there any cause for this?”
“Cause?”
“Any, I don’t know…abuse or injury or trauma that could have given her this break from reality?”
“She did receive some kind of wound at some point….A head trauma, though she made up several stories about how she got it.”
“Is that the reason for her behavior?”
“I doubt it. Her change was much more gradual.”
“Then what?”
“General…” Nadar sighs and smiles weakly at her. “If you figure it out, you’d be the first. But this place puts pressure on a mind. A lot of awful things happened here. A lot are still happening. And if I can speak freely, General…” She glances around the room. “This shit frankly gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
Mulaghesh can certainly see why. She tries to memorize everything she’s seeing, all the sketches, all the strange glyphs. She tries to make some copies in her portfolio, but they feel clumsy and crude.
I wish Shara was here,
she thinks.
She knows about everything Divine. Or I wish I knew a Voortyashtani to ask about this….
She then realizes that she does—or, rather, she knows a Dreyling who grew up in Voortyashtan.
She grimaces. Playing with Signe Harkvaldsson, she feels, is playing with fire.
Then she notices a stack of papers lying in the corner. She walks over, picks them up, and does a double take.
“What the hells?” she mutters.
Mulaghesh knows Choudhry graduated with top honors from the Fadhuri Academy with a discipline in history—so why was she reading about a historical subject every schoolchild in Saypur knows backward and forward?
Mulaghesh stares down at the painting of Vallaicha Thinadeshi, perhaps the most famous woman in Saypuri history, and the person Fort Thinadeshi is named after.
***
When Mulaghesh was in school—which was so long ago that she doesn’t even want to think about it—there were two kinds of kids: those that worshipped the Kaj and those that worshipped Thinadeshi. Most flocked to the Kaj: the man was, in a way, the savior of Saypur, a brilliant martial leader who freed them from bondage.
But what children eventually realized was that the Kaj never came
back:
he died on the Continent, less than a year after his final victory. He never saw the founding of Saypur. He never had any idea that their country could ever happen. He didn’t build; he only destroyed.
Which was where Vallaicha Thinadeshi came in. As the Continent had relied on Saypur to provide a huge amount of
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