City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(96)

“And?”

“And it’s … killing people. Snatching them off the banks.”

Mulaghesh massages the center of her forehead. “Oh, by the seas …”

“It’s even come up on the shore and attacked the buildings,” says the officer. “It’s … huge. We don’t know what it is, but we’re evacuating every quarter near the river. And that includes the embassy.”

“And this just started happening very recently?” asks Shara. “Within the past few hours?”

The officer nods.

Shara and Sigrud share a silent moment of communication. Shara’s eyes say, From the Warehouse? Sigrud gives a grim nod: Absolutely.

“Thank you for notifying us, Officer,” says Shara. She extends a hand, and Sigrud tosses her her coat. “We will depart the embassy shortly. Where is Nesrhev now?”

“He’s staked out on the Solda Bridge, watching for it,” says the officer. “But why d—”

“Excellent.” Shara pulls her coat on. “We’ll be all too happy to join him.”

*

The Solda Bridge’s short walls provide no shelter from the cold wind, so nearly everyone crouches down as low as possible to escape. Shara wishes she’d wrapped every extremity in furs, and her feet in a layer of rubber, and Mulaghesh has not stopped swearing since leaving the embassy, though her swears shiver a bit more now. Captain Nesrhev sits against the wall, receiving messages and runners from his officers, who are hidden among the streets and homes that line the river. Only Sigrud leaves his face exposed, kneeling and staring into the bitter wind across the wide, frozen expanse of the river.

Shara peeps over the wall. The Solda resembles a jigsaw puzzle, with huge holes in the ice in perfect circles and half-moons. On the west bank, two buildings have had their facades and walls completely ripped off: white limestone lies crumbled on the mud like cottage cheese. “And that … ,” asks Shara. “That was where it attacked?”

“Yes,” says Nesrhev. “We didn’t see it. We were alerted too late. It’s a miracle”—he checks himself, but Shara waves him on—“it’s a good thing it hasn’t attacked the bridge, whatever it is. Though we hope the bridge is too strong for it. It’s the only way across the Solda for four miles.”

“How many killed?” asks Mulaghesh.

“Twenty-seven reported missing or dead, now,” says Nesrhev. “Plucked from the banks of the river, or sucked through the ice, or ripped from their homes.”

“My word,” murmurs Shara. “So … what is it?”

Nesrhev hesitates. “We are told,” he says slowly, “that it is a sea monster, with many arms.”

There is a pause as Shara absorbs this; Nesrhev and the officers watch, waiting to see how this will be received. “Like a dragon?” she finally asks.

Nesrhev is relieved to be taken seriously. “No, like … like a sea beast. But enormous.”

Shara nods, thinking. A many-armed creature of the sea, she thinks. That’s a very short list of possibilities. …

“So do you know what in all the hells this could be?” asks Nesrhev.

Shara watches as part of the ruined buildings tumbles off and drops into the river with a plook. “I have some ideas,” she says. “But … Well. I will just say that I suspect this thing is in violation of the WR.”

For the first time, the veteran Nesrhev looks shocked. “You’re saying this thing is Divine?”

“Perhaps. Not everything Divine was good or godly,” says Shara.

“So what are you going to do?” asks one of Nesrhev’s lieutenants. “Give it a fine?”

Sigrud makes a tch sound.

Shara sits up. “Do you see it?”

“I see”—he tilts his head, squints—“something.”

Everyone peeks over the wall of the Solda Bridge. Several hundred feet south, a faint yellow light slips under the dense ice toward the east bank.

“Mikhail and Ornost are there,” says Nesrhev, concerned. “Just behind the wall on the bank.”

The yellow light pauses. Then a faint cracking and creaking echoes across the river. Shara watches in amazement as a wide circle appears in the ice, like someone is carefully sawing at it from under the water.

“Viktor,” says Nesrhev to one of his officers, “go over there and tell the two of them to get away, get away now.” The officer sprints away.

The circle of ice slowly sinks and slides underneath the frozen river. A dexterous creature, then, thinks Shara. The yellow light creeps to the center of the hole. Nesrhev lets loose a florid string of curses. Something very small and thin pokes out of the hole in the ice and rotates through the air, as if smelling for something. Then many more thin appendages—tentacles?—appear at the edge of the hole in the ice.

The yellow light sinks lower. It readies, Shara realizes, for a leap… .

It bursts out of the water, sending shards of ice flying; its eruption is so powerful a fine mist washes over them, even from here.

Nesrhev and his officers begin screaming; Mulaghesh’s hand flies to her mouth; Shara and Sigrud, well used to horrors such as this by now, silently watch and observe.

It is not quite a jellyfish, not quite a squid, and nor is it a prawn, exactly, but a thirty-foot combination of all three: a slightly translucent creature with a long, black-shelled back and—maybe—head, with a face almost concealed in a squirming bundle of thrashing tentacles that are long enough to start probing the shore, rising up like the spear points of a phalanx.