City of Stairs (24 page)

“So?”

“So. We know it was the
last
few pages they were interested in. Once they found what they were looking for, or what would help them, they stopped. This occurred in the month of Tuva, per Irina. So we simply need to pull the segments of the list that he checked out in that period …”

“… and we’ll know what it is the Restorationists found! Of course! Damn, that’s brilliant!”

“No, it’s narrowing it down from a needle in a haystack to a needle in a slightly smaller haystack,” says Shara. “From what Irina told me of this list, there are dozens of entries on each page. So we would be reducing the quantity from thousands of entries to check to, oh, maybe only a few hundred.”

Mulaghesh’s face falls. “A few hundred …”

“It’s a starting point, at least,” says Shara. “And speaking of Irina …” She turns to look at Sigrud.

“We are watching,” says Sigrud.

“You’re certain of the men you hired?”

“I know what we are paying them,” he says. “For a job this simple, it will be no trouble. She’s been returned to her house, I am told. They have left her there, alone. And we are watching.”

“You must make sure not to miss her. She’s one of our last solid leads. And we must keep a close eye on Wiclov.”

“We”—Sigrud pulls his knife free of the ham shank—“are watching.”

Shara taps the side of her teacup.
Sit on your leads,
the saying goes,
until they crack under your weight.

“If you only drink tea when you work,” says Mulaghesh, “I advise you switch to coffee. I see a lot of work in our future, and coffee packs more punch.”

“Coffee refreshes the body,” says Shara. “Tea refreshes the soul.”

“And is your soul so bruised?”

Shara opts not to respond.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” says Pitry. “Have some before we eat it all.”

“We could never eat all this,” says Mulaghesh.

“Mm. No,” says Shara, through the fog of thought.

“Why? Aren’t you hungry?”

“That’s not the issue. I tend to find,” says Shara as she refills her tea, “that the taste reminds me a little too much of home. If I want a taste of Ghaladesh, I prefer it to be tea.”

* * *

The coffin sits inside the shipping crate perfectly, hardly an inch of space on any side.
I wonder,
Shara thinks,
if there’s a market for crates for coffins. Do so many people die overseas?

“Do you want us to nail it shut now?” asks the foreman. He and his three employees do not try to bother to hide their impatience.

“Not just yet,” says Shara quietly. She touches the surface of the coffin: lacquered pine, something most Saypuris would never be buried in. “Could you give me a moment, please?”

He hesitates. “Well … The train to Ahanashtan is set to leave within an hour. If it goes out late, then …”

“Then they dock your pay. Yes. I will gladly pay the difference, if I make you late. A moment. Please?”

The foreman shrugs, gestures to his men, and Shara is alone in the alley behind the embassy.

There ought to be more ceremony than this, but there almost never is. Her operative in Javrat; the dockworker they turned in Kolkashtan; the peddler from Jukoshtan, going door to door selling cameras, taking pictures of the residents, ostensibly as part of his pitch … None of them she ever truly laid to rest. They wander in her mind still, just as they often did in life.

If I could go home with you,
she tells the coffin,
just to see you rest, I would
.

She remembers when he first came to her in Ahanashtan, how delighted she’d been to see he was exactly the bright-eyed, nattily dressed little man she’d always imagined him to be. After a day of training, he was impressed with how well read she was: “What university did you study at? I am so sorry. I’m unfamiliar with your publications.” And when she told him that she was not published, that she would
never
be published, that her line of work was
far
outside of academia, he paused, thinking, and asked, “I am sorry, I must ask … You are, ehm, Ashara
Komayd,
yes? Everyone seems a little reticent to say so … but that is the case, yes?”

Shara smiled a little, and reluctantly nodded.

“Ghonjesh and Ashadra—they were your parents?”

She stiffened, but nodded again.

He reflected on this a moment. “I knew them, you know. Very distantly. Back in the reformist days. Did you know that?”

In what sounded like a very small voice, Shara said, “Yes.”

“They were much more active than I was. I stayed behind my desk and wrote my letters and my articles, but they actually
went
to the slums, to the Plague areas, setting up medical tents and hospitals. … I suppose they knew the danger—the Plague was so infectious—but they did it anyway. I sometimes think I was a coward, in light of what they did. A cloistered academic to the core.”

“I don’t think so,” Shara said.

“No?”

“I think you … you changed history. You changed history when we
needed
it changed.”

He grew a little stern at this. “
Change?
No, I did not
change
anything, Miss Komayd. I told what I thought was the truth. Historians, I think, should be keepers of truth. We must tell things as they are—honestly, and without subversion. That is the greatest good one can do. And as a Ministry servant, you must ask yourself—what truth do you wish to keep?”

And after that, Shara felt he held back a little, as if he’d sniffed her out, sensed she was a creature with different values than his, maintaining an agenda and a story he knew he’d one day refute. And Shara had wished to say,
No, no, please don’t spurn me—I am a historian, just as you. I seek the truth, just as you do.

But she could not say this, for she knew in her heart that this would be a lie.

I have never met a person who possessed a privilege who did not exercise that privilege to the fullest extent that they possibly could. Say what you like of a belief, of a party, of a finance system, of a power—all I see is privilege and its consequences.

States are not, in my opinion, composed of structures supporting privilege. Rather, they are composed of structures
denying
it—in other words, deciding who is not invited to the table.

Regrettably, people often allow prejudice, grudges, and superstitions to dictate the denial of these privileges—when really it’s much more efficient for it all to be a rather cold-blooded affair.

—Minister of Foreign Affairs Vinya Komayd,
letter to the prime minister, 1688

A
nother wintry morning. As Shara opens the embassy front door, the courtyard guard, up to his nose in furs, turns and says, “He’s at the front gate. We didn’t let him in, because …”

“I understand,” says Shara. She crosses the embassy courtyard. The trees bow with what looks like layers of black glass; the embassy’s numerous corrosions and cracks are filled with pearly white, as if given fresh spackling overnight. The mug of coffee in her hand leaves a river of steam behind like a ship leaves bubbles in its wake. She reflects that it feels so much different in the day, clean and cold and glittering, than it did the night before, when Wiclov bayed through the bars like a guard dog.

The gates rattle open. The boy stands in the embassy drive, holding a silver plate aloft. He is dressed in what she recognizes as manservant clothing, but it seems he has walked some way: his upper lip is frosted with icy snot. If he were not shivering so fiercely, the expression he makes at her could almost be a smile. “Ambassador Thivani?”

“Who are you?” she asks.

“I … have a m-message for you.” He holds the silver plate out to her. In its center is a small white card.

Shara fumbles at it with her cold hands and squints to read.

HIS EMINENCE VOHANNES VOTROV

CITY FATHER OF THE 14th, 15th, and 16th WARDS OF THE POLIS OF BULIKOV

INVITES YOU TO A SPLENDID EVENING

TO BE HELD AT 7:30 PM TONIGHT

AT THE GHOSHTOK-SOLDA DINNER CLUB

SHOULD BE A LOT OF FUN

Shara crushes the card. “Thank you,” she says, and tosses it away.
Of all the luck,
she thinks.
The one thing to break is the one thing I told Vinya I wouldn’t look at
.

“Pardon, miss,” says the boy. “I hate to interrupt, but … c-can I go?”

Shara glowers at him for a moment, then shoves the cup of coffee into his hand. “Here. This’ll do you more good than it will me.”

The boy trudges away. Shara turns and swiftly paces back to the embassy front door.

A child begins crying in the street beyond the embassy. A snowball fight has taken a bad turn: one salvo contained an excessive quotient of ice, and the sidewalks fill up with pointed fingers and the persistent cries of
Not fair, not fair!

* * *

Upon the opening of the door, the interior of the Ghoshtok-Solda Dinner Club appears to be a solid wall of smoke. Shara is perplexed by this sight, but the attendants do not seem to notice: they gesture as if this dense block of fog is a perfectly welcoming sight. The outside wind comes sweeping through, turning the smoke to swirling striae and slashing it thin, and Shara can just barely see the wink of candlelight, the sheen of greasy forks, and faces of men laughing.

Then the overwhelming reek of tobacco hits her, and she is almost blown backward.

As she enters, her eyes begin to adjust. The smoke is not quite so thick as she initially imagined, yet the ceiling remains all but invisible: chandeliers and lamps seem to be suspended from the heavens. The desk attendant looks at her—surprised, slightly outraged—and requests a name, as if he could not expect a Saypuri to provide anything more. “Votrov,” says Shara. The man nods stiffly—
I should have known—
and extends a sweeping arm.

Shara is led through a labyrinth of booths and private rooms and bars, each stuffed with men in suits and robes, all gleaming gray teeth and gleaming bald heads and gleaming black boots. Cigar ashes dance in the fug like red-orange fireflies. It’s as if the whole place is smeared over with oil and smoke, and she can feel the smoke snuffling bemusedly at the hem of her skirt, wondering,
What is this? What alien creature has infiltrated this place?
What could this be?

Some tables go silent as she passes. Bald heads poke out of booths and watch her.
I am, of course, a double offense,
she thinks as she maintains her composure.
A woman, and a Saypuri …

A twitch of a velvet curtain, and a grand backroom is revealed. At the head of a table the size of a river barge sits Vohannes, half-hidden behind a tent of newspaper and slouched in a cushioned chair with his light brown (but muddy) boots propped up on the table. Behind him, in very comfortable-looking chairs, sit his Saypuri bodyguards; one looks up, and waves and shrugs apologetically:
This wasn’t
our
idea.
Vohannes’s tent of newspaper deflates slightly; Shara spots a bright blue eye peeking over the top; then the tent collapses.

Vohannes springs up as quickly as his hip allows, and bows. “Miss Thivani!”

He would make an excellent dance hall emcee
. “It’s been less than two days,” she says. “There’s hardly need for such ceremony.”

“Oh, but there’s plenty of need for ceremony! Especially when one is meeting … how does the saying go? The enemy of my enemy is my
 …”

“What are you talking about, Vo? Do you have what I asked you to get?”

“Oh, I have it. And what a
joy
it was to get. But first …” Vohannes claps twice. His gloves—white, velvet—bear smudges from the newsprint. “Oh, sir—if you could, please fetch us two bottles of white plum wine, and a tray of snails.”

The attendant bows like a spring toy. “Certainly.”

“
Snails?
” says Shara.

“Are you fine gentlemen”—Vohannes turns to the Saypuri guards—“in need of any refreshments?”

One opens his mouth to respond, glances at Shara, rethinks his answer, and shakes his head.

“As you wish. Please.” Vohannes gestures to the chair next to him with a flourish. “Sit. So glad you could make it. You must be terribly busy.”

“You have picked an interesting venue for our meeting. I believe a leper would have received a more cordial welcome.”

“Well, I figured that if I meet you at your place of work, you might as well meet me at mine. … For though this place may look like a lecherous din of old fogies, Miss
Thivani,
I guarantee you, here is where Bulikovian commerce lives and dies. If one could see all the flow of finance, envisioning it as a golden river hanging above our heads, here—right here, among all this smoke and all the crass jokes, all the boiled beef and bald heads—would be where it forms its densest, most impenetrable, most inextricable knot. I invite you to look and reflect upon the rickety, shit-spattered ship that carries Bulikov’s commerce forward into the seas of prosperity.”

“I get the strangest sense,” says Shara, “that you do not
enjoy
working here. …”

“I have no choice,” says Vohannes. “It is what it is. And though it may
look
like one building, it’s actually several. Any house in Bulikov is a house divided, and this house is cut to ribbons, my battle-ax. Each booth could be color-coded for its party allegiances. You could draw lines on the floor—if the warped floorboards would allow it—highlighting barriers some club members would dare never cross. But recently, this club—like Bulikov—is beginning to align itself around two main groups.
My
group, and, well …”

He slaps his paper in her lap. A smallish article has been circled:
wiclov takes stand against embassy
.

“You’ve been accumulating some ink, my dear,” says Vohannes.

Shara eyes the article. “Yes,” she says. “I have been notified of this. What do you care about it?”

“Well, I have been ruminating on ways I could help you.”

“Oh, dear.”

“And I can help you quite a lot with Wiclov.”

A waiter materializes out of the smog with a bottle of white plum wine. He proffers the bottle to Vohannes; Vohannes glances at the label, nods, and lazily extends a hand, which is promptly filled with a brimming crystal glass. The waiter looks doubtfully between them, as if to say,
And do you
really
want me to serve her, as well?
Vohannes nods angrily, and the waiter, exasperated, gives Shara a perfunctory version of the same ceremony.

“Cheeky shit,” says Vohannes as the waiter leaves. “Do you get a lot of that sort of thing?”

“What are you proposing, Vo?”

“What I am pro
po
sing, is that I can get you somewhere on Wiclov. And I would do this out of the godly goodness of my own heart … provided you also bury that fat bastard.”

Shara sips her wine, but does nothing more. She sees there is a suitcase sitting beside Vohannes, as white and velvet and ridiculous as his gloves.
By the seas. Have I honestly enlisted a clown as an operative?
But, she notes, there’s a second suitcase on his opposite side.
Were the contents of the safety deposit box
that
extensive?

“How would you get us somewhere on Wiclov?”

“Well, that’s the tricky bit. … I’m not the sort for sneaky, underhanded political machinations, despite what is happening, ah, right now. My style is much more”—he twirls a slender finger, thinking—“grand idealist. I win support specifically because I
don’t
dirty myself.”

“But now you are willing to do so.”

“If that fly-ridden turd of a human being is genuinely,
really
connected to the people who attacked us, who killed Pangyui, it would not grieve my heart excessively to see him removed from the political theater, no. But while I can’t plant the dagger in his back, perhaps I could pass the dagger along to someone more talented in its use.”

The waiter pounces back out of the reeking mist with a large, flat stone covered in small holes. The stone swims with butter, and the holes appear to be stuffed with tiny beige buttons.

“What are you saying, Vo?” she asks again.

Vohannes sniffs and picks up a fork the size of a needle. “I have a friend in Wiclov’s trading house. That’s how he made himself, you know—Wiclov is one of the few old-guard icons to actually dabble in trade. Made his living with potatoes. Seems appropriate for him, somehow. Something that grows in the mud, away from the sun. …” He spears a snail, pops it in his mouth, grunts, and says around it, “
Haat
. Mm.” He maneuvers the little ball of flesh onto his teeth, breathes, and swallows. “Very hot. Anyways. I have convinced this contact within Wiclov’s trading house to pass along all investments and purchases Wiclov has made in the
past year
.” He smiles triumphantly and taps the second suitcase beside his chair. “I am sure there is something very rotten going on under his robes, let’s say. Probably nothing smutty, unfortunately—once a Kolkashtani, always a Kolkashtani, and Wiclov is about as Kolkashtani as they get—but something. And I would love for you to find out.”

Shara cuts to the point: “Is he funding the Restorationists?”

“I’ve taken a glance at the pages, and I admit that I haven’t seen
that
, unfortunately. Though there is some oddness that stands out.”

“Like what?”

“Like the loomworks.”

“Like … Wait, the
what
?”

“Loomworks,” says Vohannes again. “Wiclov has bought, outright
bought
, three loomworks around the city. You know, the big weaving factories they use to make rugs?”

“I understand the general idea. …”

“Yes. He’s
bought
them. Not cheap, either—and he hasn’t changed the names.”

“So you think he doesn’t want anyone to know,” says Shara.

“Yes. But there must be
something
else in all his history. I just can’t see it. But then, I don’t have a massive intelligence agency behind me.”

She considers it. “Did he buy these loomworks after the month of Tuva?”

“Ah … Well, I can’t recall off the top of my head with complete accuracy, but I
suppose
so.”

Interesting,
she thinks. “How good is your source?”

“Quite good.”

“Yes, but
how
good?”

Vohannes hesitates. “I know him very personally,” he says slowly. “That should be enough for you.”

Shara almost asks further, but then she understands. She coughs uncomfortably and says, “I see.” She watches him take another sip of wine. He is sweating, and pale; suddenly he seems wrinkled and soft, as delicate as finely made linen. “Listen, Vo. I … I am going to do something I don’t often do for willing sources.”

“What’s what?”

“I am going to give you the chance to reconsider.”