City of Stairs (20 page)

People tell me what a great woman I am for helping the Kaj kill the gods. They tell me this with their eyes filled with tears. They paw at my clothing, wishing to touch me. They treat me as if I am a god myself.

But I say to them, “I did not lift a sword to the gods. I did not strike them down. I loosed not a single shaft against them. That was him, and only him. He was the only one who knew how his weapon really worked. And when he died, he took his secrets to the grave.”

As he should have. Such a thing should never be known by people.

In truth, we did almost no fighting at all on the Continent. The gods were dead, or dying. The land was dead, or dying. We saw many horrors that I cannot describe, nor would I wish to. Most of the fighting done was in our souls.

The only people we made war against on the Continent was a tribe the Continentals called “the Blessed.” They were, I was to understand, descendants of unions between humanity and the Divine, creatures of perverse intercourse with either the gods or the creatures of the gods. These beings rallied some of the people of the Continent, most of them sick or starving, and fought us.

The fighting was bitter, and I hated the Blessed so. They were almost impossibly hard to kill. Yet their skin was not iron, nor were they strong of arm: they were simply lucky, impossibly lucky. Their lives were charmed, for they were the children of gods, though it seems the more they muddied their blood with that of other mortals, the less charmed they became.

They were not charmed enough, though. We cast them down with the others. We slaughtered their tiny armies and shed their blood in the streets. We piled their bodies in the town squares and we set them alight. And they burned just the same as other men and other women. And other children.

The people in the towns came outside to watch the fires. And as they watched, I could see their hearts and hopes die within them.

I wondered if we, soldiers of Saypur, were still men, still women, on the inside.

Such is the way of victory.

—Memoirs of Jinday Sagresha,
first lieutenant to the Kaj

S
hara checks the clock for the sixth time and confirms that, yes, it is still 3:30 in the afternoon. She sighs.

This day has been spectacularly ill-timed. Sigrud was bailed out just as the workday started, which meant that when he arrived to pick up the university maid, she’d already gone to work—and though there are many powers Shara can exercise in her duties for the Ministry, walking into a woman’s workplace, picking her up, and walking out with her is something she can’t quite pull off.

She guesses it is still about an hour and a half until the maid returns to her apartments. Shara mutters to Pitry that she’s going for a walk around the corner, and he protests, but one glance from her quiets him. Still, she wears a coat with a hood, so she’s not immediately identifiable as Saypuri.

The staggered streets and alleys unscroll before her, damp gray walls and gleaming stones and khaki ice slurry. Her nose grows raw and brittle, her toes numb. She thought the walk would clear her head, but all the suspicions and paranoia cling to her like fog.

Then she glances up, sees the man standing in the street ahead of her, and stops.

He wears only a pale orange robe: he has no shoes, no hat—in fact, he is completely bald—and no gloves. His arms are even bare, and, like his face, they are deeply tanned.

She stares at him.
No … It can’t be. That’s illegal, isn’t it?

The icy wind rises. The robed man takes no notice: he sees her watching and smiles placidly. “Looking for something?” His voice is deep and cheery. “Or would you be here for warmth?” He points up. A sign above him reads:
drovskani street warming shelter.

“I’m … not sure,” says Shara.

“Oh. Would you perhaps be here to make a donation?”

She considers it, and finds he intrigues her. “Possibly.”

“Excellent!” he cries. “This way, then, and I will show you all the good work we do here. So thoughtful and kind to give to us, on such a bitter day.”

Shara follows him. “Yes …”

“People rarely wish to even go out of doors, let alone give.”

“Yes … Pardon me. Might I ask you something?”

“You may ask me”—he shoves open the door—“anything you wish.”

“Are you … Olvoshtani?”

He stops and looks at her with an expression both confused and slightly offended. “No,” he says. “That would be illegal, to follow a Divinity. Wouldn’t it?”

Shara is not sure what to say. The robed man smiles his glittering grin again, and they continue into the shelter.

Ragged urchins and trembling men and women crowd around a wide, long fireplace bedecked with many bubbling cauldrons. The room is filled with coughs and groans and, among the children, miserable whimpers.

“But your robes,” says Shara. “Your bearing …”

“What have they,” he asks, “to do with the Divine?”

“They’re …
historically
that of an Olvoshtani.”

“And
historically
when one wished to praise the Divine, one looked up to the sky, arms outstretched.” He hauls an empty cauldron out of the kitchens and pours soup into it, with a
rap rap rap
as he taps his spoon against the side of the pot. “But if a man were to do this today, in the street, would he be arrested?”

Shara looks back into the kitchens. She sees many other shelter attendants there wearing pale orange robes, cheerily working away, all hairless, all quite exposed to the frozen air. “So if you are not Olvoshtani,” says Shara, “what are you?”

“We’re a warming shelter, of course.”

“Well, all right, but what are
you
?”

“A person, I suppose. A person who wishes to help other persons.”

She tries another tack: “Why do you not warm yourself against the cold?”

“Cold?”

“It is freezing outside. I can see men hacking holes in the ice to fish from here.”

“That is the water’s affair,” he says. “The temperature of the wind, that is the wind’s affair. The temperature of my feet, my hands … that is
my
affair.”

“Because,” says Shara, remembering the old texts, “you have captured a secret flame in your heart.”

The man stops and appears to struggle between trying to close off his face and looking positively delighted with what she has said.

“
Are
you Olvoshtani?” says Shara.

“How can I be Olvoshtani,” says the robed man, “if there is no Olvos?”

Then it comes to her. “Oh,” says Shara. “Oh, I remember this. You are … Dispersed.”

The robed man makes a face:
If you wish to say so.

When the Divinity Olvos abandoned the Continent, her people did not—not completely, anyway. Jukoshtan and Voortyashtan were the first cities to record sightings of people resembling Olvoshtani priests, wearing yellow or orange robes and sporting no other adornments, not shoes or gloves or even hair, only too happy to expose themselves to the elements. These people appeared nomadic, traveling through villages and cities, walking the world with apparently no other agenda than to help people when they most desperately needed it. Yet they did not claim to be Olvoshtani, or priests, or part of any higher order: though some called them “the Abandoned” or “the Dispersed,” they themselves did not declare to be anything at all. “We are here,” they were known to say. “What more is there to be?”

“I am afraid you are mistaken,” says the robed man. “We do not claim that name.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” says Shara. “You reject names, don’t you?”

“There is nothing to reject. Names are other people’s affairs. They are things to help people identify the things that they themselves are not.”

“So what are you doing, here in Bulikov? By what reason are you here?”

He gestures to the throngs of miserable people huddling by the fire. Some are families, with young children: a father pulls off his infant’s tiny boots to bare her bluish feet to the warmth. “This,” says the robed man, now without a trace of joy, “seems reason enough.”

“So you live to offer hope, as the old texts say. To be a light in dark places.”

“Old texts say many things. You say these things as though they are special—as if it is unusual for one person to see another in pain, and wish to help. As if,” he says quietly, “to do the extraordinary—or what you think is extraordinary—a person must be
told
to do so, by the Divine.”

“Well, don’t you?”

“Do you? You have not donated yet, but if you did—would it be because you were told to?” He picks up a lump of black bread.

“No.”

“Do you—a Saypuri, obviously—need a Divinity to live your life?”

“That’s different. We’re from different countries.”

“I never saw a country before,” says the robed man. “All I saw was the earth under my feet.”

“You do these things,” says Shara, insistent, “because Olvos told you to.”

“I have never met Olvos,” he says. He spears the black bread with a thick wire and holds it over the coals. “Have you?”

“You would not be here without Olvos,” says Shara. “Olvos started your order. Without her, this shelter would not exist.”

“If this Olvos—whom, if I recall, I am not legally allowed to acknowledge ever existed …”

Shara, irritated, impatient, waves her hand.

“… if Olvos was ever here, then the greatest thing she ever gave us was the knowledge that we did not
need
her to do good things. That good can be done at anytime, anywhere, to anyone, by anyone. We live our lives thinking up so many rules …” He twists off some of the bread. As the crust splits, a tiny bloom of steam rises up. “… when often things can be so simple.”He offers the piece of steaming bread to her and smiles. “A bite? You look cold.”

Before she can answer, Pitry comes running down the street, calling for her. Shara flips the robed man a ten-drekel piece—he snatches it out of the air with shocking speed, smiling—and she hurries out.

He still follows his god, in his own way,
she thinks. Which begs the question: who else in Bulikov is doing the same thing, but with far less benevolent intentions?

* * *

The old woman sits in the embassy hallway, eyes beet-red from weeping. Her upper lip glistens with snot in the lamplight. Her knuckles are purple from ages of soaking in soap and water.

“That’s her?” Shara asks quietly.

“That’s her,” says Sigrud. “I am sure.”

Shara watches her closely. So, this is one of the two “expert” agents who were watching them at the university just yesterday: Irina Torskeny, university maid from Pangyui’s offices, who perhaps moonlights as a Restorationist. Could this sad old creature somehow be complicit in Efrem’s death?

Shara frowns, sighs.
I
really cannot afford a second botched interrogation,
she thinks. “Put a table and two chairs in the corner of the reception hall, by the window,” she tells Pitry. “Brew some coffee. Good stuff—vitlov if you have it.”

“We do, but … it’s expensive,” says Pitry.

“I don’t care. Do it. Get our best porcelain, too. Quick as you can.”

Pitry scampers away.

“She thinks you are to kill her,” says Sigrud softly.

“Why would she think a thing like that?” asks Shara.

He shrugs.

“She didn’t put up a fight?”

“She came,” says Sigrud, “as if she’d been expecting it all day.”

Shara watches the old woman a moment longer: Irina tries to wipe away her tears, but her hands tremble so much she resorts to using her forearm.
How much more I would prefer it,
Shara thinks,
if it were just some simple thug. …

When the reception hall is arranged, Pitry leads the old woman over to where Shara waits, seated before a small, modest table bearing two teacups, saucers, biscuits, sugar, cream, and a steaming pot of coffee. Despite the cavernous space, this corner now has the atmosphere of someone’s tidy front room.

“Sit,” says Shara.

Irina Torskeny, still sniffling, does so.

“Would you like some coffee?” Shara asks.

“Coffee?”

“Yes,” says Shara. She pours a cup for herself.

“Why would you give me coffee?”

“Why wouldn’t we? You are our guest.”

Irina considers it, then nods. Shara pours her a cup. Irina sniffs the steam uncurling from the tiny cup. “Vitlov?”

“I’m eager to hear your opinion of it,” Shara says. “So often the people we serve feel obliged to compliment everything we do. It’s … polite, but not quite honest—do you see?”

Irina sips it and smacks her lips. “It is good. Very good.
Surprisingly
good.”

Shara smiles. “Excellent.” Then her smile grows slightly sad. “Tell me—why were you crying?”

“What?”

“Why did you cry just now?”

“Why?” Irina thinks, and finally says, “Why would I
not
cry? There are only reasons to cry. This is all I have now.”

“Have you done something wrong?”

She laughs bitterly. “Don’t you know?”

Shara does not answer: she only watches.

“Looking back, I have done nothing
but
wrong things,” says Irina. “Everything, all of it … it has been a huge mistake. This is what they need of you, isn’t it? This is what idealists and visionaries ask of you—to make their mistakes for them.”