City of Stairs (19 page)

“Which were all in the Warehouse.”

“Exactly. He actually wrote and submitted a paper about this theory, which promptly got sent to me, as this sort of thing is very much looked down upon. I think they expected I’d imprison him, or exile him, or something.”

“But instead you gave him exactly what he wanted. Why?”

“Well, think about it, Shara,” says Vinya. “Saypur is now the strongest nation in the world. Our might is undeniable. Nothing in the world even feigns to threaten us. Except … we know that Divinities once existed. And though they were killed, we do not understand what they were, or how they did what they did, where they came from, or even
how
the Kaj killed them.”

“You’re thinking of them as weapons.”

Vinya shrugs. “Maybe so. Imagine it—if a Divinity wished a land to be bathed in fire, it would be bathed in fire. They would be, in a way, a weapon that would end modern warfare as we know it. No more armies. No more navies. No more soldiers of any kind—just casualties.”

Shara feels a cold horror growing in her belly. “And you wished … to
produce
one of these for Saypur?”

Vinya laughs. “Oh, my
goodness
, no. No, no, no. I am
quite
happy where I am. I would be insane to invite in something that would wield—how shall I put this?—a greater authority than my own. What I would wish would be to prevent anyone
else
from getting one.
That …
That is something that has kept me and many a Saypuri up at night. If Efrem could answer exactly where the gods came from, and how they worked, then we could actively prevent them from recurring. And if he just happened to find some information about the Kaj’s weaponry—about which we to this day still know absolutely
nothing
—that would help me sleep a little better, too.”

“Knowing how to kill a god would help you sleep better?”

A flippant shrug. “Such are the burdens of power,” says Vinya. “Efrem was a little less eager to explore this avenue—I think it bored him, to be frank—but anything would be better than what we know now.”

“And we would … Well. We would know why we were denied, too,” says Shara.

Vinya pauses, and slowly nods. “Yes. We would finally know.”

Neither of them says any more on the topic, but they do not need to: while no Saypuri can go a day without thinking of how their ancestors lived in abysmal slavery, neither can they go an hour without wondering why. Why were
they
denied a god? Why was the Continent blessed with protectors, with power, with tools and privileges that were never extended to Saypur? How could such a tremendous inequality be allowed? And while Saypuris may seem to the world to be a small, curious people of education and wealth, anyone who spends any time in Saypur soon comes to understand that in their hearts lives a cold rage that lends them a cruelty one would never expect.
They call us godless,
Saypuris occasionally say to one another,
as if we had a
choice
.

“So we dressed it up as an act of diplomacy,” says Vinya. “An effort to heal the gulf between our nation and theirs. We only wanted to peruse the books in the Warehouse. That’s all. I … I honestly never thought Efrem was in any danger. We assumed Bulikov would continue being Bulikov—all squalor and filth—and he could simply go about his business.”

Shara pauses, wondering how to broach the most obvious question. “And … I’m curious,” she says slowly. “
Why
did you not tell me about this when I first came to Bulikov?”

Vinya sniffs and sits up. But for one second her dark eyes skitter and dance as she considers how to answer.

Shara leans forward slightly and watches her aunt carefully.

“This was a highly, highly restricted project,” pronounces Vinya. Still her eyes search the bottom of the pane before wandering up to find Shara’s face. “If you had caught someone, good on you. If not, we would have pursued the matter through different channels.”

Vinya smiles haughtily.

Lying,
screams Shara’s mind.
She’s lying! Lying, lying, lying, lying!

In that instant, Shara decides not to tell her aunt what she witnessed in the jail cell. It goes against every line of reasoning she can imagine—Vinya wishes to know how to destroy any new Divinity, so of
course
she’d want to know Shara has actually encountered such a being—but Shara feels something is very, very, very wrong. She knows she should discount her own paranoia, of course—
Paranoia of one’s case officers and commanders
, as she’s told her own sources,
is a perfectly natural feeling—
but her aunt has not been her normal shrewd self recently, and now every instinct Shara has is shouting that Vinya is lying. And after nearly seventeen years of interviews and interrogations, she’s learned to trust her instincts.

With no small amount of disbelief, she begins to wonder if her aunt has somehow been compromised. Could someone possibly gather enough material to own and control the heir apparent to the prime minister’s seat?
A corrupt politician,
thinks Shara sardonically.
What a wildly unconventional idea.
After all, one can’t mount the last few steps on the ladder without a lot of nasty compromises. And, more so, if one pried open any of Auntie Vinya’s closet doors, surely a whole parade of skeletons would come tumbling out.

But Shara is surprised at how terribly guilty and ashamed she feels to make such a decision. This is, after all, the woman who raised her, who took care of her and oversaw her education after her parents died in the Plague Years. But just as Vinya is minister first, aunt second, Shara has always been an operative first and foremost.

So Shara returns to her old maxim:
When in doubt, be patient, and watch.

Vinya asks, “Now. What is this movement you talked about?”

Shara summarizes the New Bulikov movement in a handful of sentences.

“
Oh,
” says Vinya. “Oh, I remember this. This is the thing with the man who wants to make us guns.”

“Yes. Votrov.”

“Yes, yes. Some ministers are really keen on it, but I’ve tried to stall it as much as I can. … I do
not
want us to be dependent on a place like Bulikov for
anything
. Especially gunpowder! So Votrov is the man who got attacked last night?”

“Yes.” Shara measures exactly what to share now, and decides not to reveal that the Restorationists were after his steel.

“
Votrov
 … that name is strangely familiar, for some reason. …”

“We … went to school together.”

Vinya holds up a finger. “Ah.
Ah
. I remember now. That’s
him?
The boy from
Fadhuri?
He’s the one wanting to make us guns? I remember being terrified he’d get you pregnant.”

“Aunt Vinya …”

“He didn’t, did he?”

“Aunt Vinya!”

“Fine, fine …”

“I don’t think he will give up on the munitions proposal,” says Shara. “Just as a note. He seems very insistent on trying to bring industry to the Continent.”

“He can be as insistent as he likes,” says Vinya. “That’s not happening on my watch. It’s better for the Continent to remain the way it is. Things are tenuously stable right now.”

“Not here,” says Shara. “Obviously.”

Vinya waves a hand. “The Continent is the Continent. It’s always been that way, ever since the War. And I hope you’re not getting soft on me, Shara. You know every country in the world wants to bleed Saypur dry. And every single time they’ll claim children are starving in the streets, bloodshed of the innocent, and so on and so forth. … We hear it dozens of times every day. The wise look after their own, and leave the rest to fate—especially if it’s the Continent. But enough about this. So. You want me to extend your work there, I assume. What do you have that’s so solid?”

“We’ll be pulling in a likely Restorationist agent for questioning shortly. Off the grid.”

“Who’s this agent you wish to grab?”

“A … maid.”

Vinya laughs. “A
what
?”

“The university maid! Which, I remind you, is where Pangyui worked. Cases and operations, as you
know
, frequently run on some of the most menial of workers.”

“Hm,” says Vinya. “Fair point. Speaking of which, have you found anything else on Pangyui’s murder?”

Here it is,
thinks Shara. She attempts to step back into a cold veil and keep her face still. “No, not yet. But we are following our leads.”

“No? Nothing?”

“Not so far. But we’re working on it.”

“That’s interesting.” Vinya’s tongue, red as a pomegranate, explores an incisor. She smiles. “Because I show you ran a check on a bank just two days ago. You haven’t mentioned that.”

Shara’s blood turns to ice.
She’s watching my background check requests?

She scrambles for an excuse. “I did,” she says. “I was checking on Votrov.”

“Were you?” says Vinya. “Votrov owns several banks in Bulikov. Many much larger than the one you asked for a check on. And
that
one he owns through a rather dense tangle of channels. So I’m curious—why that bank, in particular?”

“For the reasons you just outlined. It seemed likely that if he had anything to hide, it’d be there.”

Vinya nods slowly. “But looking for something like
that
would require a full finance check. Which you did not initiate.”

“I became distracted,” says Shara. “So many bodies, you see.”

Both Vinya and Shara’s faces hang in the windowpanes, staring at one another, perfectly stoic.

“It would have nothing to do, then,” says Vinya quietly, “with how that particular bank is the closest bank to Bulikov University with safety deposit boxes, would it?”

She knows.

“Safety deposit boxes?” asks Shara. Her words drip with innocence.

“Yes. That is, after all, your most preferred method of dead drops. You tend to like the finance people. They are so process-oriented, not unlike yourself.”

“I haven’t had enough time here to do anything necessitating a dead drop, Auntie.”

“No.” Vinya’s eyes appear to drift backward into her head, and Shara gets the strange and horrible feeling of being looked through. Suddenly she understands how Vinya has commanded so many committees and oversight hearings with complete confidence. “But you would have probably taught this method to Efrem.”

I hope I’m not sweating right now.
“Where are you going with this, Aunt Vinya?”

“Shara, my dear,” says Vinya slowly, “you’re not
hiding
anything from me, are you?”

Shara attempts a tiny smile. “
I
am not the one who is hiding things.”

“I am your superior. It’s my job to restrict what people know. And I will tell you what this all tastes like, to me. … It tastes like you have stumbled across a dead drop of Pangyui’s, and you have yet to access it. But you do not wish to report it until you review its contents. However, my dear, I
must
remind you”—her words are so frosty Shara feels like she’s been slapped—“Pangyui was
my
agent.
My
operation. I don’t run many ops these days, but when I do, I make sure they stay mine. And the product of that operation, whatever it may be, goes to
me
first.
Me
, Shara. It does not get digested by another operative who just
happens
to be there, an agent
not
assigned to that operation. Not unless that operative wishes to be very abruptly pulled out of that intelligence theater. Do I make myself clear?”

Shara blinks slowly.

“Do you understand, Shara?” Vinya asks again.

Though Shara is perfectly passive, in her head she is engaged in rigorous debate. As she sees it, she has four options. She can:

1. Tell her aunt that she’s had contact with a Divinity, and thus needs access to everything Pangyui has produced. (However, this would require telling a possibly compromised official about the most dangerous intelligence breakthrough in modern history.)

2. Withhold both the Pangyui dead drop as well as the Divine contact from her aunt and pursue her own investigation of both. (However, this would risk being pulled from Bulikov altogether, though all her aunt seems to care about now is the Pangyui dead drop.)

3. Give up the content of Pangyui’s safety deposit box to her aunt—its contents likely being the very thing someone killed Pangyui to try to get, and failed—and continue investigating the Divine contact and Pangyui’s death on her own.

4. Tell Vinya she isn’t going to read the material, see what the maid has to say, and then decide from there.

Right,
thinks Shara.
Number four it is.

“If I find anything produced by Efrem,” says Shara, “rest assured that I will deliver it to you first, Aunt Vinya.”

“
Without
your review?”

“Without my review, of course. I am only interested in Efrem’s operation to the extent that it could have caused his death.”

Vinya nods and smiles widely. “What a satisfying briefing this has been! So much intrigue, so much history, so much culture. … I believe I may send you some messengers shortly. Because I suspect that Efrem’s work
did
generate some product, and I expect you will find it soon.”

Translation: I
know
it has already generated product, and I’m sending someone to get it now before you can do anything with it.

“Thank you, Auntie,” says Shara. “I appreciate all the support you can lend.”

“Oh, absolutely, dear,” says Vinya. “An intelligence agency is only as strong as its operatives in the field. We
must
support our overseas operatives: where boot soles strike the ground is where the work gets done.” She smiles again, says, “Take care, dear, and keep me posted,” and wipes the glass with her fingertips.

As her aunt’s face dissolves, Shara wonders what speech she pilfered those lines from, and mutters, “Ta-ta.”