City of Stairs (17 page)

“Who?”

“The shally professor.”

“Shallies don’t have professors. They haven’t the minds for it.”

“The little foreign professor who was … committing blasphemy.”

“All foreigners are blasphemous. Being alive is blasphemous, for them. There is only us. We are the children of the gods. All others are people of ash and clay. For them to live and not pay us fealty is the greatest of blasphemies.” He frowns and leans forward like his stomach hurts. “Oh. Oh, dear.”

“There was a man here, studying at the university,” says Shara slowly and clearly. “You didn’t want him here. The city didn’t, I mean. There was much outcry about it.”

The boy rubs his eyes. “My head. There’s … There’s something in my head. …”

“He died, just a few days ago. Do you remember?”

He whimpers. “There’s someone
in
there …” He raps the side of his head with his knuckles hard enough to make a noise. “Please … Please help me get him
out.
 …”

“Someone attacked him at the university. They beat him to death.”

“Please.
Please!
”

“Tell me what you know about the professor.”

“He’s inside my head!” shrieks the boy. “He’s inside my head! He’s been jailed for so long! Let me see light, oh, let me see light!”

“Damn it,” says Shara. She walks to the cell door and places her hand on the viewing slot. “You want light?”

“Yes!” screams the boy. “By all the mercy of the gods, yes!”

“Fine.” Shara opens the slot. A trickle of light pokes through. “There,” she says. She turns back to him. “Now will you tell me—?”

The boy is gone.

Not just the boy: half the room is gone. It is like half the room is cut off by a standing wall of black water, only now in the center of it there is a little hole of yellow light, yellow like the sky before a storm.

“Oh,” says Shara.

The hole of yellow light widens. Shara feels like someone is reaching into her head with thick, massive hands, and opening a tiny door. …

Shara just has time for one thought—
I thought
I
dosed
him
—
before she begins to see many things.

* * *

There is a tree, old and twisted.

It stands at the top of a lonely hill. Its branches form a dark dome against the yellow sky.

There is a rock below the tree. It is dark and polished, polished so deeply it looks like it is perpetually wet.

There is a face carved into the center of the stone. Shara can just barely see it. …

Then comes a voice, booming like thunder:

WHO ARE YOU?

They all vanish—the hill, tree, and stone—and things shift.

* * *

The sun, bright and terrible and blazing. It is not the huge ball of light she is so accustomed to: it is like the sky is a sheet of thin yellow paper, and someone is standing behind it holding an oily, flaming torch.

This land is lit by an ancient fire. Yet who started it?

Below the sun is a lone, strange mountain. It rises from the earth in a straight, rigid shaft. Its top is smooth and rounded—not unlike the stone she just saw—and its sides are straight and rippled. There is something fiercely, disturbingly organic about the mountain, though it might simply be how its smooth form looks in the shuddering light of the sun.

Then the voice again:

HOW DID YOU GET IN HERE?

Again, the scene vanishes.

* * *

A hillside swells before her, lit with firelight. It is night. Shadows leap about her: faces, hands, all feral, all twisted. Above her is the moon, huge and swollen like a spider’s egg. The moon appears to balance on the top of the hill, and she thinks she can make out a figure with a tricorn hat dancing before it, thrusting something up to the sky—a jug?—as if asking the moon itself to partake.

Starlings pour across the night sky in a dark, cheeping flood.

I CANNOT SEE YOU. COME CLOSER TO ME.

The darkness vanishes. She feels herself pulled away.

* * *

A road on a plain. Again, the yellow sky lit by a sun with the light of a dying torch. Besides this, there is nothing but the dusty road and the plain.

She is pulled along the road, like she is flying mere inches above the earth.

Hills swell in the distance, lumpen and yellow and barren. She is ripped toward them as if pulled by a string, and she flies up their smooth sides until she sees a crack between two of the hills, a small aperture, a stab wound, a cave.

There is something in the cave, pulling her in.

She enters. The light dies around her.

They are hollow, these hills.

No, not hills—statues.

Yet whose likeness do they mimic?

There is someone at the back of the cave. She cannot see them. She thinks she can make out a tall form, draped in gray cloth, like that of a thick robe.

She sees no face, but she feels eyes all over her.

THERE YOU ARE.

She sees no hands, but she feels like she is in someone’s grasp.

HOW DID YOU GET IN? NO, IT DOES NOT MATTER. LET ME OUT.

She sees no movement, but she feels like the walls close in around her.

LET ME OUT. YOU MUST LET ME OUT.

A flutter of gray cloth. It grows nearer, but she still cannot see.

THEY HAD NO RIGHT. THEY HAD NO RIGHT, TO DO THIS TO ME.

Shara struggles. She reaches out, tries to push away.
No! No!

YOU MUST LET ME OUT.

In the darkness comes a bright flame.

* * *

It takes Shara a moment to realize she is standing in the jail cell. There is a blazing fire in the center of the cell, and the firelight on the stone walls gives the cell a primeval look, not unlike the visions she just saw. But when she hears Mulaghesh’s voice shouting, “
Get out of there! Shara! What are you just standing there for? Get the hells out of there!
” she realizes where she is.

There is another voice. Someone is screaming, she realizes.

Then the fire in the jail cell stands to its feet, looks at her, and reaches out.

She sees a face through the flames, blistering and cracking.

It is the boy, yet he burns as if doused in kerosene.

He opens his mouth to scream again. Shara watches as flames flood into his mouth, down his throat. She can see his tongue bubbling.

The door behind her flies open. Mulaghesh grabs her and jerks her into the hallway.

The cell door slams shut, its edges and cracks illumed with bright firelight. There is a pounding from the other side, and screaming. Policemen come running, but they are unsure what to do.

“Oh,” says Mulaghesh. “Oh, by the seas. What in the
fucking world
. Someone get some blankets! We need to put that man
out
! Come on, everyone,
move
!”

The pounding on the door weakens, softens. A smell pervades the air, bubbling lipids like a chandler’s shop. By the time the officers finally manage to bring blankets and a doctor, there is a dark smoke seeping through the top crack of the door.

They prepare themselves and rip the door open. It opposite side is black, charred. Beyond is a wall of smoke, streaming plumes like black water.

“No,” says Mulaghesh. “No. Far too late. Far too late.”

A dark, crinkled shape surfaces among the sea of black. Shara moves to look, but Mulaghesh pushes her away.

* * *

Wild havoc. Hallways of people screaming and shouting, fighting to get out. Shara wishes to ask
“What’s all the commotion about”
but she feels too stunned and slow to ask.

She sees Saypuri soldiers fighting through the crowd to get to her; feels Mulaghesh shove her into their arms; feels herself being ripped out of the stampeding throng.

She feels these things, but they do not register.
I suppose this is what shock feels like,
she thinks, rather curious.

She is stuffed into a car along with Mulaghesh and two soldiers. Pitry looks back at them from the driver’s seat, alarmed. Mulaghesh tells him, “The embassy.
Now.
” When they pull away, an armored car bearing the polis governor’s insignia on its side coughs to life and follows closely.

“Look
up,
” Mulaghesh tells the soldiers. “On the rooftops. And keep an eye on the alleys.”

“What are you telling them to look for?” Shara asks softly.

“Are you in
sane
? For any more assassins! That’s, what,
twice
in six hours? By the seas, I don’t even know how he did it. … He must have had a device on him, some flask with oil, or something. … I don’t know how the police missed it, unless one of them snuck it to him while he was imprisoned. Which I wouldn’t put past them.”

Shara thinks,
She thinks he attacked me.

But he didn’t. I know exactly what that was.

But I only ever read about it. …

“I was turned away,” says Shara. “What did you see?”

“No, you weren’t,” says Mulaghesh. “You were looking right at him. I thought it was some kind of mind game you were playing with him. You went to the door, opened the slot so I could see in. Then you said something about light and turned around, and you both just …
stared
at one another.”

“For how long?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Then he just … burst into flames. I didn’t see him activate anything, push any button, light any match. He didn’t even seem to
move
. Whatever he used, I want to know what it was. They might use more of them.”

“And … And did you hear a voice in the room?”

“A what?”

“A voice? While we stared at one another?”

Mulaghesh takes her eyes off the street to look Shara over. “You’re in shock. You need to lie back and rest. Let me take over today. This is what I do. This is what I know. Okay?”

He spoke to me from the heart of the world
.

No—he was the heart of the world.

“You don’t need,” says Shara softly, “to order your men about so.”

“Shara, just
lie back—”

“No,” says Shara. “Listen. That was not a planned, coordinated attack. And it was most certainly
not
an assassination attempt.”

“Then what was it?”

Shara debates not telling her.
Some secrets,
she tells herself,
can’t be borne alone.

She sits up and says to Pitry, “Pardon, Pitry, but could you pull over briefly? And when you do, could you roll up the partition back here?”

“What?” says Mulaghesh. “Why?”

“Because I’m afraid your soldiers will have to join Pitry in the front seat,” she says. “This conversation will have to be private, you see.”

* * *

The broken buildings are like savage landscapes as they speed by, gray glaciers creeping down a mountain. A pale face appears at a window: a young girl heaves out a prodigious amount of what can only be human waste. The passersby stop only briefly: not an unusual occurrence for them.

“I have read more about the history of the Continent than nearly anyone else alive in the world,” Shara says. “Before me, the only person who knew more was Efrem Pangyui. He’s now passed, of course. Which means it is only me.”

“What’s your point?” asks Mulaghesh.

“I have read of instances of spontaneous combustion on the Continent. It hasn’t happened in decades, but once, long ago, it happened occasionally. The cause of these episodes of spontaneous combustion was widely known here, back then: they were the result of Divine possession.”

“Of what?” asks Mulaghesh.

“Divine possession. A Divine being could project his or her intelligence into a mortal agent to commune with them directly—almost using them as a puppet, essentially. This was quite common among some of the lesser Divine beings—sprites, spirits, familiars, and so on.”

“All of which the Kaj killed in the Great Purge,” says Mulaghesh. “Right?”

“Presumably. But the
primary
Divinities could not possess a mortal agent to the same degree. Their very beings were too large, too powerful, too intense. The mortal body could not bear it. Sort of like spiritual friction, I suppose.”

Mulaghesh is silent for a long, long time. “And … you’re saying you think this is what happened.”

“I’m positive of it.”

“How so?”

“Because”—she takes a breath—“whatever possessed that boy spoke to me. To you, outside the cell, it looked like we were simply standing still. But to me, something … took me somewhere. I was there for some time. It pulled me in. It wanted to see me. And it wanted me to let it out of … wherever it was.”

“It spoke to you?”

“Yes.”

Mulaghesh swallows. “Are you … quite sure of this?”

“Yes.”

“This wasn’t a side effect of the drug you used on that boy? Maybe you absorbed it through your skin?”

“I’m sure the drug contributed, but not in the way you mean. Like I said, a philosopher’s stone was often used to commune with the Divinities. Records indicate it acted like lubrication, in a way. I believe I might have unintentionally opened that boy up for … whatever it was, to possess him.”

“Whatever it was,” echoes Mulaghesh.

“Yes.”

“But it’s … It’s not a ‘
whatever it was
.’ Because you sound like you know what it was.”

“Yes.”

“Because if what you’re saying is correct, then the only thing that … made people combust was …”

“Yes. A primary Divinity.”

“And … if you’re saying that was what you saw, what took control of that boy, then that would mean …”

“Yes,” says Shara. “It would mean at least one of the gods has survived.”

Winning the War is most certainly the single greatest shift in Saypur’s history. However, both the Kaj and the War often overshadow the handful of years directly after the downfall of the Continent—which were just as crucial for Saypur as the death of the Divinities. But this period is almost completely forgotten.

This is likely because the events following the War are so unpleasant to remember.

After the Kaj had killed the last Divinity, it became evident that the Divinities had been protecting the Continent—and Saypur, to a certain extent—from not only outside attackers, but also from a number of viruses and diseases. And for the twenty years after the death of Jukov, the last Divinity, horrific plague and rampant outbreak became as seasonally predictable as rain and snow.

The estimated worldwide loss during the official Plague Years is innumerable. The Continent, being so dependent on the Divinities, was especially vulnerable: immediately after the Blink, nearly one-third of all its population died of various ailments. Saypuri soldiers—who were just as vulnerable, being on the Continent—wrote letters home describing streets stuffed with rotting corpses, rivers of the dead piled twice as high as any man, endless trains of litters bearing bodies to pyres outside each polis. Every polis suffered an explosion of insects, rats, cats, wolves—nearly any pest one can imagine. Everywhere one went in the Continent, one was met with the overpowering scent of rotting flesh.

Saypur, however, being a colony that only peripherally benefited from miraculous intervention, had better knowledge of nonmiraculous sanitation. They quarantined the infected, and when soldiers arrived home, they promptly quarantined them as well—a decision that caused much outrage in Saypur at the time. Overall, though the Plague Years were far from easy, Saypur lost less than ten thousand lives to the sudden, massive influx of disease.

It is this self-sufficiency that also came to Saypur’s aid in terms of technology. For the 867 years of its subservience, Saypur was forced to provide resources to the Continent chiefly by its own means—without Divine support. (Exactly why the Divinities needed Saypur to produce resources at all, rather than simply producing them with any number of miracles, is a favorite, and often rather infamous, question among Saypuri historians.) Having been forced to generate such technological innovation under threat, and now suddenly finding itself sitting upon a wealth of resources that could now be called its own, Saypur underwent a phenomenal technological transformation overnight. Vallaicha Thinadeshi herself, who is generally acknowledged to be the greatest of the iconic engineers of this period before her disappearance in Voortyashtan, said that for two decades “you could toss a stone out any window in Ghaladesh and strike four geniuses on the way down.” (It is perhaps noteworthy that the Kaj himself was an amateur scientist, performing many experiments on his estate.)

In contrast, the Continent—plague-ridden, starving—sank into its own helplessness. In the absence of any single ruling force, the polises succumbed to internal conflict. Bandit kings sprang up like mushrooms. During their withdrawal, some Saypuri soldiers recorded rumors of cannibalism, torture, slavery, mass rape. The people that were once the blessed luminaries of the world had, almost overnight, descended into monstrous, barbaric savagery.

It must have seemed to the newly founded Saypuri Parliament an easy if not satisfying decision: Saypur, for so long the subservient nation, would intervene in the Continent’s affairs and bring order. They would reinvade, this time under a banner of peace, and reconstruct.

But I am not sure if they truly understood the memory of the Continent—which, despite the Blink, despite the Plague Years, despite the bandit kings—remains to this day quite long, and bitter.

They remember what they were, and they know what they have lost.

—“The Sudden Hegemony,”
Dr. Efrem Pangyui

H
azy morning light trickles across the rooftops. Shara squints as she tries to discern exactly where the walls of Bulikov start and stop, but she can see only the early morning sky—or perhaps she only imagines the diamond-flecks of stars glittering above the dawning sun.
It’s not really the sun,
she thinks.
I’m not seeing the sky. It’s just the picture of the sun and the sky, produced by the walls. Or, at least, I
think
it is . …
The Bulikov pigeons can tell no difference: they emerge from their roosts, fluff their feathers, and descend to the city streets in wheeling clouds.

Shara is not afraid. She tells herself this repeatedly, in the calm, cool voice of a doctor.

I have never thought of knowledge as a burden,
thinks Shara,
but how heavy this weighs on me . …

But inside her a small, quiet voice reminds her that this isn’t completely surprising. Shara spent enough time buried in the restricted information at the Ministry to understand that the history taught in Saypuri schools is just one variation on a story—one with many, many holes.
But just because the nightmare you expected comes true,
she tells herself,
it doesn’t make it any less terrifying.

More and more, she worries about what could be in the Warehouse. And, more and more, she worries that someone other than Efrem could have gotten access to it. That
should
be impossible; but having just had what
should
be a dead Divinity directly address her, she knows the impossible cannot really be ruled out.

She picks up the morning paper on her desk and reads the account of the deaths last night for the hundredth time, paying close attention to two paragraphs in particular:

Vohannes Votrov expressed grief for his slain staff members and regret that the attack happened, but said he was not surprised: “With the current discourse we’re seeing in the city, I am not shocked at all that some citizens felt violence was the only answer. They are told day in and day out that [New Bulikov’s] vision for the city is one of destruction and death, that we are liars and deceivers. I have no doubt that such men felt they were acting out of a moral principle—and this I regret perhaps most of all.”

City Father Ernst Wiclov, a frequent opponent to Votrov and New Bulikov, was quick to condemn these accusations. “The very idea that someone would capitalize on such a tragedy for political gain is abhorrent,” he said in an interview mere hours after the attack. “This is a time for mourning and reflection, not self-righteous posturing.” Mr. Vohannes was not available for response.

There’s a knock at the door, and Mulaghesh sticks her head in. “I didn’t want to open up shop for anyone, but I thought I’d make an exception for this—your boy is here.”

“My what?”

Mulaghesh pushes the door open the rest of the way to reveal Vohannes standing in the hallway, looking quite awkward despite his elegant gray suit and thick white fur coat.

“Ah,” says Shara. “Come in.”

Vohannes limps in. “I must say, I am happy to see you in one piece. … Two attempts on your life in one day! I thought you were important, Shara, but not …” He rubs his hip. “Not
that
important.”

Shara rolls her eyes. “I see your charm has not been dulled by all the excitement. Please sit down, Vo. I have some rather bad news for you.”

As he does, Shara finds she only hates herself a little for finding this all a fortunate coincidence: she needs Vohannes to be frightened in order to do what she needs him to.

“Bad news?” asks Vo. “Beyond all the damage and … and
stains
done to my home?”

“We are happy to compensate you for that,” says Shara. “Those damages were done, after all, by a Ministry employee.”

“That man works for the
Ministry
? For you? But he’s a
Dreyling,
isn’t he? Haven’t they all become savages and pirates since their little kingdom collapsed?”

“Maybe so,” says Shara, “but he saved your life.”

Vohannes pauses while taking out a cigarette. “Well, I don’t think … Wait,
what?
My
life?”

“Yes,” says Shara. “Because those men were not there for me. They were there for you, Vo.”

He stares at her. The cigarette hovers an inch from Vohannes’s open mouth.

“That would be the bad news I just mentioned,” she says gently.

“He … He what?”

Shara summarizes what she learned from her interrogation of the surviving attacker. “I can say, though, that you are quite lucky to be sitting in front of me,” she says mildly. “I am probably the only person on the Continent right now who can help you.”

“Help me what?”

“Help you stay alive. Did you see how those men were dressed?”

His face grows slightly bitter. “Kolkashtani robes …”

“Yes. Those haven’t been seen on the Continent for decades. They were devotees of the Divinity Kolkan. This is not a matter of politics, I think, Vo—I think it is a matter of
faith
. These men are willing to die for what they believe. And they need something from you. And if they’re willing to die, they’re definitely willing to try again.”

“Try again to get … what?”

“The attacker I questioned was not in a … state where he could provide much detail, but he said they specifically needed your
metal
. Do you know what that means?”

Vohannes stares into space for nearly a minute before he’s capable of processing her question. “My
metal
?”

“Yes. I don’t believe he meant anything precious—gold, silver, or anything like that. But as you said, you’re playing into the resources game … so I wondered.”

“Well … I told you my biggest project is saltpeter … which isn’t a metal, you know.”

“I am familiar with the nature of metals,” she says. “We
did
go to school together, you know.”

“Right, right … The only other thing I could think of”—Vohannes scratches an eyebrow, smooths it down—“would probably be the steelworks. But that’s incredibly new.”

“Steel?”

“Yes. No one else on the Continent can produce steel—mostly because no one can afford the process.”

“But you can?”

“Yes, to a limited degree. It takes a specialized kind of furnace, which is expensive to build and maintain. It’s a bit of a test project, and one I’m not very much interested in because it’s so damn expensive. And because Bulikov isn’t building anything big or grand enough to
require
steel.”

“But you
are
producing steel?”

“Yes. I’ve no idea why some reactionary Restorationist would want it, though.”

“He suggested it was for ships that would sail through the air.”

“He said it was for
what
?”

Shara shrugs. “It’s what he said.”

“So this man is insane. Barking mad, surely. I admit, it’s a bit of a relief to hear it. …”

“He was in an induced state, let’s say. But we can’t question him anymore, I’m afraid. The man has died.”

“How?”

Shara is silent. She briefly remembers the sight of the boy’s face, flames filling his mouth as he tried to scream. … “I can’t say at the moment,” she says. “But it was unpleasant. All of this is unpleasant to me, Vo. And I don’t like that you’re at the middle of it. You’re a lightning rod, it seems.” She gently touches the newspaper before her. “And I do not want you to make it worse.”

Vohannes studies her. “Oh … Oh, Shara. I hope you are not about to suggest what I think you are about to suggest.”

“I will go ahead and assume you’ve had visitors from all your supporters and allies,” says Shara, “and I will assume they have all told you, in varying terms, how you have just been handed some very valuable political capital. Being attacked, and surviving that attack, puts a powerful weapon in your hand. I will also assume that both you, and they, think it politically expedient to get on as much newspaper sheet as possible.”

“I was attacked,” he says. “Am I not allowed to decry my attackers?”

“Not when I am trying to catch them, no,” says Shara. “I want you to stay out of the papers, Vo, and I do not want you to inflame the situation any more than it is.”

A short laugh. “Really.”

“Really. This particular job is proving difficult. But you can make it easier.”

“
Your
job is difficult? Oh, so you just step into my city and all the sudden it’s
your
arena?
You’re
the person dictating how everything should happen in Bulikov? Gods. … Were I a less-enlightened person, Shara, I’d say such behavior was typical of a …”

Shara cocks an eyebrow.

Vohannes coughs. “Listen, Shara. I have spent my life building my career. I have thrown away fortunes doing it. And I have battered and battered on the invisible walls surrounding this Continent, trying to bring in aid, wealth, support, education. And now, just when it looks like I might be getting somewhere, just when it looks like I might unify the support of Bulikov … you want me to
stop
? When the City Father elections are next
month
?”