City of Stairs (21 page)

“Who have you made mistakes for?”

Again, the laugh. “Oh, they are too clever to allow an old thing such as me to know too much. They knew I was—how should I say?—a risk. A necessary one, but a risk. Oh, my mother, my grandmother … I think of how they would feel to look at me now, and I …” She almost begins crying again.

Before she can, Shara asks, “Why were you necessary?”

“Why, I was the only one who worked with him, wasn’t I?”

“The professor?”

She nods. “I was the only person who had access to his affairs behind the university walls. And they came to me, and they said, ‘Are you not a proud child of Bulikov? Does not the past burn in your heart like a smoldering cinder?’ And I said yes, of course. They were not surprised, or gracious—I expect people say yes to them a lot.”

Shara nods sympathetically, though internally she is rapidly recalibrating her approach. She has dealt with sources such as this woman only a few times before: people so angry, so worn down, so anxious that the information comes spilling out of them in a dangerous flood. Questioning her will be like riding a rabid horse.

She tries a calmer tack: “What is your name?”

Irina dries her eyes. “Do you not know it?”

Shara gives her a sad look that could mean anything.

“My name is Irina Torskeny,” says the old woman softly. “I am a university maid. I have worked soap and water into those walls, into those floors, for twenty-four years of my life. I was here when it was built—
re
built. And now I feel I will die and those stones shall forget me.”

“And you worked with Dr. Pangyui?”

“
Worked?
Pah.
You say it as if I was his colleague, his peer … as if he consulted me, saying, ‘Here, Irina, take a look at this. …’ I was his
maid
. I picked up his teacups. Swept his floor, polished his brass, dusted his bookshelves … All those bookshelves.” Her righteous bitterness recedes. “Will you kill me?”

“Why would we do something like that?”

“For his death. For allowing your countryman to die.”

“ ‘Allow’? It doesn’t sound like you killed him.”

“No. No, I did not do the deed. But I think I … I think made it happen.”

“How, Irina? Please tell me.”

She takes a breath, coughs. “He had only been at the university a few days before they contacted me. They came to my apartment. I had gone to … meetings, you see. Rallies for people who did not wish to deal with sh— … Saypuris anymore.”

Shara nods. She understands, and Irina sees she understands.

“Do you hate me for this?” asks Irina.

“I might have, once,” says Shara, in a moment of such honesty that she surprises herself.

“But you don’t now?”

“I don’t have the time or the energy to hate,” says Shara. “I only wish to understand. People are what they are.” She smiles weakly and shrugs:
What can one do?

Irina nods. “I think that is a wise way to look at things. I was not so wise. I went to these meetings. I was angry. We all were. And these men found me there.”

“Who?”

“They never told me their names. I asked, but they said it was not safe. They said they were in danger, always in danger. From who, they did not say.”

“How many were there?”

“Three.”

“What did they look like?”

Irina describes them, and Shara takes notes. Her descriptions for the first two—short, dark-eyed, dark-haired, excessively bearded—could describe nearly any man in Bulikov. But the last one is different: “He was tall,” she says. “And pale. And terribly starved. It was like he ate only broth, the poor thing. He could have been quite handsome, if he took care of himself. He spoke the least. He only watched me, really. Nothing I said seemed to surprise him. They knew I worked at the university—how, I don’t know. But they asked me to serve them, to serve Bulikov. Just like the old ways. And I did.” Irina coughs again. “I was to spy on him, the professor. I was to pilfer his pages, open his drawers, look among his folders.”

“For what?”

Irina colors, but does not answer.

“What were you looking for, Irina?”

“
I
was not going to look for anything.”

“Then how were you to know if you’d found something?”

Irina turns an even brighter red. “I would just … I would just have to
guess
.”

“Why?”

“Because, the words …” She is on the verge of tears again. “I look at them on the page, and they don’t make sense to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was never taught such a thing, you see? We had no school here, in Bulikov, when I grew up. And when they brought schooling to us, I was too old, and I could never figure it out. … I could only pretend. I would hold a book, and pretend to look at it, and …” She purses her mouth; Shara gets the strong impression of a humiliated child. “I
tried
.” She reaches into her pocket, and pulls out a crumpled-up piece of what looks like anti-Saypuri propaganda. “I tried to learn. I
wanted
to learn to be righteous. I wanted to know. But I could only ever pretend. …”

Shara is not surprised: much of the Continent is still illiterate. “So what did you do, when they asked you to spy on him?”

“I told them I would. I did not want to let them down. And I … I hated him. I hated the professor, always so giddy to be reading our histories, when we, when I …” She trails off. Then: “What I chose to bring to them was a list.”

“A list of what?”

“I do not know. The professor worked out of this list
all
the time, so I knew it had to be important. But to me, it was just a list, with lots of information. Many squares, going all across the page, up and down, side to side, with letters and numbers in them. I did this over a period of weeks. I could not take it
out—
he would know if I did, and he only had pieces of this list at a time—so I would sneak out one page, maybe two or three or four, and take it to the broom closet and copy it, sketching it. The first time was hard, but after that I could do it in minutes. Even if I didn’t know how to read, I knew how to copy,” she says with a slight sniff of vanity. “Then I would bring them the copies.”

“How many copies of pages did you bring them?”

“Dozens. Maybe more than a hundred, over the course of many weeks. I was quite good at it,” she says, pleased with herself. “And they were
so
pleased when I first brought it to them. They were overjoyed. They
wept
. I felt … I felt …” She trails off, unable to finish the thought.

“Why did you stop?”

“They asked me to. Not at first—after the first time, when I brought them copies, they were less and less pleased. ‘Oh, this is good, but it is not what we were looking for, not what we need at all.’ As if it was all my fault! But then, one day, the tall pale one, he saw something on the list, and he did not
smile
, exactly, but his eyes, they crinkled, and he nodded. And the men laughed and said, ‘Good! Good, good, very good.’ As if they’d found what they needed. And they never asked me to get anything else again.”

Shara feels an immense dread welling up in her. “What day was this?”

“Day? I am not sure. …”

“Month, then.”

“It was still warm, then. It must have been late fall. The month of Tuva, I think.”

“Is there
anything
else you can tell me about this list?”

“I do not know anything more than what I said.”

“You copied it. You copied hundreds of pages of it. What was on them?”

Irina thinks. “Well. There were page numbers.”

“
Besides
those.”

“Besides those, there was … There was a stamp in the corner. No, not a stamp—a sign of some kind, in the corner of every page. Like a … a bird atop a wall.”

Shara is quiet. Then: “Did it have a crest on its head? And did it have its wings outstretched?” She holds out her arms to show her.

“Yes. I had never seen a bird quite like it.”

That’s because it lives only in Saypur,
thinks Shara, who knows this insignia well. There could be only one list bearing the stamp of the polis governor’s office that would excite the Restorationists so much:
So not only have our enemies known about the Unmentionable Warehouse for months,
she thinks,
but they also know its
contents
, something even I am not allowed access to . …
She deeply regrets her promise to her aunt now: perhaps Pangyui’s dead drop contains some hint of what the Restorationists were looking for.

“What does it all mean?” asks Irina.

“I’m not sure yet,” says Shara.

“I thought I hated the professor,” says Irina. “But when I was told he was dead, I realized I never really did. I
wanted
to hate him. But I hated things far larger than him. I hated feeling so … humiliated.” She looks at Shara, her eyes wet with fresh tears. “What will you do with me? Will you kill me?”

“No, Irina. I am not in the business of hurting innocents.”

“But I am
not
innocent. I got him
killed
.”

“You cannot know that. As you said, you hated things far larger than you—and I think things far larger than you, or me, or the even the professor are in play here.”

Irina looks hopeful, relieved. “Do you think so?”

Shara tries not to let her face hint at her dread. “I know so.”

Then both women look up as shouts echo up from the street outside: “
Let me through! Let me through!
”

“What is that?” says Irina.

Shara leans over and pulls a drape aside with a finger. There is a small crowd gathered before the embassy gates: Shara can see the glimmer of a golden sash, suggesting a City Father, and numerous official-looking men in off-white robes. And before them, on the inner side of the gates, is Mulaghesh, arms crossed, feet fixed in a martial pose, emanating contempt like a fire makes smoke.

Shara smiles at Irina. “Excuse me.”

* * *

Shara can hear the bellowing before she even exits the front doors. “This is a political and ethical travesty, do you hear me!” shouts a man. “A crime that verges on a declaration of
war
! Grabbing a woman from her home? An old maid, who’s spent her life serving one of Bulikov’s most beloved and revered institutions? Governor, I
insist
you step aside and release her immediately! If you do not, I will do everything in my power to guarantee this becomes an international incident! Am I clear?”

Mulaghesh mutters something back, but it is too quiet to hear.

“Attack?
Attack?
” the man’s voice answers. “The only attack we should be concerned with is the attack on the rights and privileges of the citizens of Bulikov!”

Shara crosses the courtyard. She can see Sigrud lurking in the shadows, leaning up against the embassy wall. The City Father outside grips the gate as prisoners do their cell bars. He is tall, for a Continental, and his face is brown and bright red. Shara imagines a potato that has been glazed and fired in a kiln. Half of his face, however, is concealed behind a thick, woolen beard that climbs almost up to his eyes.

Shara recognizes him.
The photo in the paper,
she thinks,
does not do the real Ernst Wiclov justice. …

Behind him stand at least twelve bearded men in the plain, off-white robes of Bulikovian advocates. Each of them observes Mulaghesh with small, unimpressed eyes, and in their right hands they carry leather valises like most men would swords.

Now we must deal with lawyers, too,
thinks Shara.
If I were to die now, I’d count myself lucky.

“As this embassy is technically Saypuri soil—,” says Mulaghesh.

Wiclov laughs. “Oh, I am
sure
you would be
giddy
to see all the world called Saypuri soil!”

“As this embassy is part of Saypur,” says Mulaghesh, through gritted teeth, “we have no obligation to inform you of who is or who is not on our property.”

“But you do not have to! For my own friends and colleagues personally observed the woman being taken here!”

Shara glances at Sigrud, whose brow is furrowed in concern: normally he can spot nearly any tail, so if anyone escaped his watch, then they must be talented indeed.

Wiclov continues: “I tell you, Governor Mulaghesh”—he intentionally butchers the pronunciation of her name—“if a child of Bulikov is harmed or threatened by your familiars in any way, then the streets will ring with calls to tear down your embassy, and your quarters, and to cast you out as we should have done years ago!”

“You can cut the rhetoric, Wiclov,” says Mulaghesh. “There’s no crowd. There’s just you, me, and an empty courtyard.”

“But there
will
be a crowd if you do not release that woman! I guarantee that there will be
riots
if that poor woman is not released!”

“Released? Anyone who’s here is here voluntarily.”

“Voluntarily! After being visited by
that
?” Wiclov points a finger at Sigrud, who scratches his nose, bored. “This is intimidation! Threats! How is that any different than capturing her?”

Shara clears her throat and says, “You are mistaken, sir. Mrs. Torskeny has been having coffee upstairs with me. I can personally testify to that.”

He shifts his scornful gaze to her. “And who are you? Oh, are you the replacement for that vile oaf Troonyi? If so, then I no more accept your authority in this matter than I would a drunken simpleton!”

Shara blinks slowly. It has been a while since she’s been spoken to like that. She asks, “You would be Ernst Wiclov, I take it?”

He nods savagely. “I know my name must be on one of your lists somewhere. ‘Enemy of Saypur,’ I am sure, and I am
proud
to wear the target you lay upon my chest!”

“Quite the opposite, sir,” says Shara. “I only read about you in the paper last night.”

Mulaghesh covers her mouth to prevent a laugh. Wiclov colors. “Insolence is one of the few things your kind actually excels in,” he says. “Little miss, neither you nor your governor can lie your way out of this. There are no diplomatic tricks to play. The facts are plain: you are holding a citizen of Bulikov hostage, almost certainly as an act of petty revenge for the scuffle last night!”