City of Stairs (45 page)

Volka growls like he’s been struck.

“Are you so sure, Brother,” asks Vohannes, “that she’s your inferior?”

“And Wiclov?” asks Shara. “Will he participate? It was you who was running him, wasn’t it? You were the man who trapped the
mhovost
here and set it up as a guard dog.”

“What happened to Wiclov will seem like a blessing in comparison to what happens to you,” snaps Volka. “Wiclov, he was … He was a believer. A true Kolkashtani. But once he led you to the Seat of the World, and once you realized how I had found the Warehouse of stolen items, I could not forgive him.”

“What did you do?” asks Shara.

Volka shrugs. “I had to find out if the Butterfly’s Bell really worked
some
how. I had never seen it performed. Wiclov made … a tolerable subject. I reminded myself—we are but instruments in the hands of the Divine. I did not mind you chasing after Wiclov. You
obviously
had no idea I was even here, for I’d laid all my plans years before you ever arrived.”

“Though I startled you, didn’t I?” says Shara. “When I arrived, you thought you had to hurry—so you attacked Vohannes’s house to try and force him to give you what you needed.”

“The arrival of the great-granddaughter of the Kaj would upset any true Continental,” says Volka. “And I
knew
who you were.” Another flash of teeth as brown as old wood. “I had stared at portraits of the Kaj for hours, days, thinking of him, hating him, wishing I could have been there to end his life, stop history from bringing us here. … And the second I saw you—saw your eyes, your nose, your mouth—I saw the past come to life. I knew you were his kin. From there, it was easy to find out who you were, and a simple thing to tell my countrymen.”

“Wait. …
You
blew my cover?” She glances at Vohannes, who stares at the two of them, uncomprehending.

“Yet they did not rise up against you, nor did they hang you in the streets as I expected,” says Volka. “They
praised
you for killing Urav, one of Kolkan’s sacred children. I honestly cannot tell if you are actually talented, or if your inopportune appearances are all coincidence. Like today. Did you
actually
follow us to the
real
Votrov estate, or did you simply stumble into it?”

“Oh,” says Shara. “You were in the house, weren’t you? When Sigrud and I traveled to Old Bulikov. You saw us.”

“I wouldn’t even be performing this rite now if things had gone as I intended,” says Volka. “But again, your intrusion forces us to make haste. You went to the true Bulikov. You saw the waiting ships. So, rather arbitrarily, unfortunately, the new age will have to begin today.”

“Will you destroy the city now, with your warships?” asks Shara. “Why do you need flying warships at all, if you’re freeing a Divinity? Can’t Kolkan just point a finger at us and turn us into stone?”

“Why would we bother with the city?” Volka says. “It’s wiser to divide and conquer. Saypur is wed to the sea—its strength lies in ships. Our vessels of the air will race directly to Saypur itself and shell its harbors and shipyards before your blasphemous nation ever realizes what is happening. We wished for more ships, but I’ve no doubt that even with only six ships, we’ll still outmatch any Saypuri weaponry. For all its might, Saypur could
never
expect an attack from the air. We will rain down fire from the clouds. We will shower destruction from the sky like angels. We will castrate your vile country, as it deserves.”

Irrationally, this revelation horrifies her more than the resurgence of any Divinity.
Six six-inchers a ship, probably,
she thinks rapidly.
Thirty-six cannons total. They could shred our infrastructure and cripple Saypur’s navy for months, even
years
, in a single day. We’d be fighting with both hands tied behind our backs.

“This is good, you know,” says Volka. “This is
right
. The world is our crucible. And with each burn, we are shaped. You will know pain. Both of you will know pain. You must. And scourged of flesh, stripped of sin, some part of you, some shred of bone, might just be saved, and found worthy in his eyes.” He takes a breath. “And he
will
see you both. How pleased with me he’ll be—handing over not only one of the most monstrous betrayers of the old ways, but also the very child of the man who killed the gods.”

Volka steps aside. Two thickset men in Kolkashtani wraps join him at the doorway. There’s a very faint
pop
as Volka’s Butterfly’s Bell dissolves. The two men walk to Shara and Vohannes, violently thrust both of them onto the ground, and tightly bind their hands. Shara is still too sluggish to resist much, and Vohannes is obviously quite injured.

“Oh, Volka?” Shara asks as she is hauled to her feet. “In regards to your previous comments about me. … You
do
know the original Continentals were almost as brown as any Saypuri? The Continentals today are fairer simply because the climate’s changed, and you no longer get as much sun. So while you may admire fairness yourself, it is not, I suppose one could say, a
godly
trait. But you would have known that, if you read any Divinity’s texts besides Kolkan’s. He preferred not to mention flesh at all, let alone skin tone.”

Volka attempts a regal pose. “Shallies speak nothing but lies,” he whispers, and walks away.

* * *

Captain Mivsk Ashkovsky of the good ship
Mornvieva
stares through the green lenses of his goggles and into the wild riot of the dawn. Clouds cling to the horizon like newspaper headlines. Down below—miles below, possibly, Mivsk isn’t sure—the gray, dark countryside of the Continent speeds by.

Mivsk rummages in his jumper pocket, takes out his pocket watch, and does some estimations. “Two hours!” he bellows over the raging winds. “Two hours until the coast!”

The crew cheers. All of them are wrapped in thick thermal clothing, all of them wear goggles and masks, and all of them are tied to the deck of the
Mornvieva
by stout cables; Jakoby already fell victim to a sharp starboard wind and went tumbling off the side, only to be hauled back on deck by his comrades, swearing and spitting and purple in the face.

Two hours,
thinks Mivsk. Two hours until he finds out what the good ship
Mornvieva
—and its twenty-three souls, six cannons, and three hundred six-inch shells—can really do, besides fly very fast in a straight line very high above the ground. He was not even sure it would get
off
the ground, for the experiments with the Carpet of Kolkan had not always gone well: on their first effort they used only one thread of it, and when Volka’s priest read the rites to activate it, the thread rose up so fast the priest was unprepared and lost much of his face. “The miraculous,” Volka observed as the man shrieked, “requires great caution.” It took months to create the design to stabilize the threads—in the case of
Mornvieva
, five threads, each lifting eight hundred tons—and months after that to acquire the steel the designs required. And all that time, Mivsk—though he was, he felt, quite faithful—had never quite believed it would work.

But now here they are, higher than the highest building in Ahanashtan, hurtling through the atmosphere, pulled along by sword-like sails and giant wings.

Forget not,
he reminds himself,
that you have a mission, and a duty. We fly not for your glory, Mivsk Ashkovsky, nor for the crew’s, but for the glory of Father Kolkan
. And secretly Mivsk cannot wait to see what Kolkan will think of the destruction the cannons will wreak upon the wretched Saypuris, who, for once, will be outmatched. To imagine reducing the great, monstrous shipyards of Ghaladesh to flaming rubble … It makes his heart sing.

Mivsk goes belowdecks for what must be the seventh time to review the cannonry. No Continental has ever possessed firepower on such a level, and seeing the giant, massive cannons and their huge shells, longer and thicker than Mivsk’s forearm, gives him a sense of power he has never felt before. It is all mechanized, as well: one needs only pull a lever to fire any cannon.

Mivsk checks the three port cannons: Saint Kivrey, Saint Oshko, Saint Vasily, all in fine shape. Then he checks the three starboard cannons: Saint Shovska, Saint Ghovros, and then Saint—

Mivsk stops before Saint Toshkey. There is a tall man in a ripped Kolkashtani wrap leaning against the cannon, staring out the gunport toward where the good ships
Usina
and
Ukma,
the starboard portion of their small armada, cut through the clouds.

Captain Mivsk stares at him, bewildered. “Who … ? Who … ?”

“I have never sailed upon a ship of the air,” the man remarks. “Many things I have sailed upon, but never a ship of the air.”

Mivsk wants to ask him why he is not wearing his goggles, why he is not in uniform, why he does not have on his safety cable; but all these questions are absurd, for Mivsk knows there is
no
one in his crew of this size … right?

The man looks at Mivsk; one eye in his Kolkashtani wrap is dark. “Does it sail,” he asks, “like a regular ship?”

“Well …” Mivsk looks behind him, wondering how to deal with this bizarre occurrence. “Why aren’t you abovedeck, sailor? Why aren’t you cabled to the mast? You could fall off i—”

“And the cannons? Could they also function as air-to-air cannons?”

“I … Why?”

“I believe so. Yes. Yes, I thought so.” The man tilts is head and thinks aloud: “Six cannons onboard, and five other ships … One shot a ship … Then this should be no trouble.” He nods. “Thank you. That is very good to know.”

Then there is a blur, and Captain Mivsk suddenly feels as if he’s swallowed a large chunk of ice.

He looks down and sees the handle of a very large knife sticking out from between his ribs. The ship begins to spin around him.

“It is good for a captain to die,” says the man’s voice, “before seeing the death of his crew. Go quietly, and with gratitude.”

The last thing Mivsk sees is the giant man standing behind Saint Toshkey, using the blade of his hand to imagine lining up the cannon with the good ship
Usina
far away.

* * *

They’re forced in a familiar path, to Shara: down the little blank hallways, back to the room that held the
mhovost
—the ring of salt still sitting on the floor—and back to the tunnel leading down to the Seat of the World, which, she now sees, is completely restored.

“You caved in this tunnel, but it was easily fixed,” says Volka. “I doubt if you can guess at which miracle I used to make it.”

Shara had not imagined that the tunnel’s creation was miraculous, but now that she considers it, she jumps to the obvious conclusion. “Ovski’s Candlelight,” she says.

Volka’s face tightens, and he waves a hand and leads them down the tunnel, holding his invisible flame. Vohannes chuckles.

He hasn’t freed Kolkan yet,
thinks Shara.
Maybe Mulaghesh … Maybe she can …
If anything, Shara realizes, Mulaghesh is raiding the Votrov estate right now. That, or fortifying the embassy. Neither of which could possibly save either of them. And Sigrud is miles and miles and miles away, outside of Jukoshtan. They are alone.

The tunnel stretches down. Shara imagines Kolkan waiting for them at the bottom, the man of clay seated in the back of a cave, his eyes gray and blank.

“I’m sorry, Vo,” whispers Shara in the dark.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” says Vo. “I’m embarrassed you had to meet the little shi—”

“Quiet,” says one of their captors, and he jabs Vohannes in the kidney. Vohannes, whimpering, struggles to keep walking.

They enter the Seat of the World. Vohannes gasps in shock. “My word …” Shara wishes she could feel as amazed as she did when she first discovered this place, but now the temple feels dark and twisted to her, full of black corners and whispers.

Over two dozen Restorationists, all in Kolkashtani wraps, stand in Kolkan’s atrium before the blank window. Beside it, Shara sees, is a ladder.

This is really happening.

Volka walks to the stairs leading up to the Seat’s defunct bell tower. He raises his hand, which glitters with orange light. “First to restore the temple to its glory,” he says. He points at Shara and Vohannes, mutters something. There is a squeaking sound, like fingers being rubbed against glass. Shara’s hands are still bound, but she sticks a toe out, testing, and feels an invisible wall.
The Butterfly’s Bell again.

“Don’t breathe too much,” says Volka, smiling. “That one’s much smaller.” Grinning like a pompous head boy, he mounts the stairs to the bell tower. Soon he is out of sight.

“He must have found a way to restore the bell tower, too,” says Shara.

“Quiet,” says one of the Restorationists.

“That was just filled with earth a few days ago.”

“Quiet!”

“What are you going to do, punch us through the barrier?” says Vohannes.

The Restorationist makes a threatening pose at him, then abandons it, as if he has better things to do.

“I should have seen this coming,” says Shara. “I should have seen this all coming.”

“Shara, shut up,” whispers Vohannes. “Listen, you . … You’ve got something hidden up your sleeve, right? You always do?”

“Well … No. No, actually, I don’t.”

“But you’ve got the army coming in, right? They’ll notice you missing—right?”

“They might, but they definitely won’t look
here
.”

“Okay, but … Shara,
please
. Please think!” he hisses. “You’ve got to think of something! You’ve got to, because
I
definitely won’t. I don’t have a fucking clue what’s going on! So please—is there
anything
?”

Shara thinks hard, but she has no idea how to penetrate the Butterfly’s Bell, a miracle she never even knew existed until now. And even if they got out, what could they do? A wounded, limping man and a drugged ninety-pound woman against twenty-five Restorationists?
I could blast our way out of here with Ovski’s Candlelight … if I actually
knew
Ovski’s Candlelight. But I don’t. I just know
of
it, which is not the same thing.
If only there was some other way to hide, or maybe tunnel into the ground, or …