City of Stairs (53 page)

Shara shrugs. “I killed a god last week. A ministry should be a small task, shouldn’t it?”

“That’s a pretty good point, I suppose.”

“Will you help me, Turyin? You and I were meant to be servants, and for years we chiefly served policy. I am offering what I think is our first real chance to serve.”

“Aw, shit …” Mulaghesh strokes the scars on her jaw with her right hand and contemplates it. “Well. I must admit all this is somewhat interesting.”

“I hoped you would think so.”

“And last I checked, the pay grade for a general is almost twice that of a colonel . …”

Shara smiles. “Enough to afford frequent vacations in Javrat.”

* * *

Shara creeps down the hospital hall toward Sigrud’s room.

Is this how governments are made? Forcing decisions on wounded people in the middle of the night?

She halts when she enters the ward, and looks out on the sea of beds—each with a pale white burden, some with arms and legs propped up, others eclipsed in bandages—and wonders which of her choices put them in those beds, and how things could have been different.

Sigrud’s voice seeps through the wall beside her: “I can hear you, Shara. If you want to come in, come in.”

Shara opens the door and steps inside. Sigrud is a mountain of stitches, bandages, tubes; liquids pour into him and out of him, draining into various sacks; a thick set of stitches marches from his left eyebrow up into his scalp; his left nostril has been split, and his left cheek is a red mass. Otherwise, he is still most definitely Sigrud.

“How did you know it was me?” she asks.

“Your footfalls,” he says, “are so small, like a little cat’s.”

“I will take that as a compliment.” She sits down beside his bed. “How are you?”

“Why haven’t you visited?”

“Why do you care?”

“You think I wouldn’t?”

“The Sigrud I knew and employed for ten years was never one for caring about much. Don’t tell me your brush with death has given you a new perspective on life—you’ve brushed it many times, often right in front of me, and it never seemed to affect you before.”

“Someone,” says Sigrud, “has been telling you tales about me.” He thinks. “You know, I’m not sure what it is. When I jumped off that ship, I didn’t think I would have a future at all. I thought I would be dead. But for the first time, I felt … good. I felt that the world I was leaving was good. Not
great,
but good. And now I am alive in what could be a good world.” He shrugs. “Perhaps I only wish to sail again.”

She smiles. “How has this affected any plans for your future?”

“Why do you ask?”

“The reason I ask is that, if my plans go accordingly, I will no longer be a ground-level operative. I will return to Ghaladesh and take up a desk job. And I will no longer need your services.”

“Am I to be abandoned? You leave me here to rot, in this bed?”

“No. This desk job in particular will be very, very important. There is no title for it yet—if all this works out, I shall probably have to make one for it. But I will need all the overseas support I can get. I believe I will have a strong ally in Bulikov, but I will need more.”

“More being …”

“If, say, the North Seas are suddenly tamed …”

Sigrud’s look of confusion contorts to one of considerable alarm. “No.”

“If, say, a personage most Dreylings thought to be dead suddenly returned …”

“No!”

“If the legitimacy of the coup that killed King Harkvald was utterly undermined, and the rampant piracy were to end …”

Sigrud drums his fingers on his arms and fumes in silence.

Something drains out of one of his tubes with a quiet
ploink.

“You won’t even consider it?” asks Shara.

“Even when my father was alive,” says Sigrud, “I did not relish the idea of … governing.”

“Well, I’m not asking you to. I have never really approved of monarchies, anyway. What I am asking,” says Shara, sternly and slowly, “is that if you,
Dauvkind,
lost prince of the Dreyling shores …”

Sigrud rolls his eye.

“… were to return to the pirate states of the Dreyling Republics, and had the
full and total
support of Saypur …” She can tell that Sigrud is now listening. “… could that not begin
some
kind of reform? Would that not offer
some
promise for the Dreyling people?”

Sigrud is silent for a long time. “I know”—he digs deep in the bandages on his arm and scratches—“that you would never ask me such a thing in jest.”

“I’m not. It may never even happen. I am returning to Saypur, but … there is a chance I might not survive.”

“Then you will need me with you, of course!”

“No,” says Shara. “I won’t. Partially because I am confident I will succeed. But I also wish for your life to be your
own
, Sigrud. I want you to wait here, and get healthy, no matter what happens. And if nothing at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs changes, then you should know that I am dead.”

“Shara—”

“And if that is the case”—she takes out a small slip of paper and places it in his hand—“then here is the village where your wife and daughters are hidden.”

Sigrud blinks, astonished.

“If I am dead, I want you to go home to them, Sigrud,” says Shara. “You said the father and the husband they knew was dead, that the fire of life in you had gone out. But I think that is a foolish and vain thing to think. I think that you, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson, are
afraid
. You are afraid that your children have grown, that your family will not know you, or want you.”

“Shara …”

“If there was anything I’ve wanted throughout my life, Sigrud, it was to know my parents. It was to know the people I wished so hard to live up to. I will not ever have that chance, but your children might. And I think they will be overjoyed with who comes home.”

Sigrud stares at the slip of paper in his hands. “I was not at all prepared,” he grumbles, “for such an assault.”

“I have never really had to persuade you before,” says Shara. “Now you know why I’m good at what I do.”

“This nonsense with the
Dauvkind …
,” says Sigrud. “It is all just a children’s tale! They believe the son of King Harkvald to be a, a fairy prince! They say he will come riding out of the sea on a wave, playing the flute. A flute! Can you
imagine?
They will not expect … expect
me
.”

“After all the battles you’ve fought, this one gives you pause?”

“Killing is one thing,” says Sigrud. “
Politics
is another.”

Shara pats his hand. “I will make sure you have someone to help you. And it will not all be politics. Many of the pirate kings, I expect, will be quite reluctant to leave. Despite what you may fear, Sigrud, I expect your exploits are far from over.” She checks her watch. “I’m late. My train leaves in an hour, and I must prepare for my final interview.”

“Who else must you browbeat into doing your bidding?”

“Oh, this won’t be
browbeating,
” says Shara grimly as she stands. “This will just be simple
threats.
”

Sigrud carefully stows away the slip of paper. “Will I see you again soon?”

“Probably.” She smiles, takes his hand, and kisses one scarred knuckle. “If we do a good job, we may meet as equals on the world stage.”

“No matter what happens, to either of us,” says Sigrud, “you have always been a very good friend to me, Shara Komayd. I have known very few good people. But I think that you are one of them.”

“Even if sometimes I almost got you killed?”

“Being killed …
Pah
.” His one eye glitters in the gaslight. “What is that to good friends?”

* * *

The walls of Bulikov are peach colored with the light of the dawn. They swell before her, rising out of the violet countryside as the train speeds by.
Are the walls alabaster in daylight?
she thinks.
Bone? What word best describes them? What shall I write? What shall I tell everyone?

The train wheels squall and sputter. She touches the window, the ghost of her face caught in its glass.

I must not forget. I must not forget.

She will not go into Bulikov: the train takes a straight track from the governor’s quarters to Ahanashtan. She will not see the collapsing temple of the Seat of the World. She will not see the cranes around the Solda Bridge. She will not get to see the construction teams hauling the ancient white stone out of the rubble, the stone of the Divine City, nor will she get to see what they will do with it. She will not get to see the armadas of pigeons wheeling through the spokes of smoke as the day begins. She will not get to watch as the mats in the market are rolled out, as the wares are put on show, as merchants wade through the streets crying prices, carrying on as if nothing has happened.

I will not see you,
she tells the city,
but I will remember you.

The walls continue to swell; then, as she passes, they shrink behind her.

When I come back to you,
she thinks,
if I come back to you, will I know you? Will you be the city of my memory? Or will you be a stranger?

She could ask the same of Ghaladesh: the city of her birth, of her life, a city she has not seen in sixteen years.
Will I know it? Will it know me?

The walls have shrunk to a tiny cylinder of peach-white, a can floating on black waves.

The past may be the past,
she tells them,
but I will remember.

* * *

Shara waits for over two hours. So far the movements of the ship are smooth and easy, but very shortly they’ll enter the deep sea, where the waves will be much less kind.

Shara’s cabin is as spacious as the merchant’s vessel could allow, and she has promised a worthy fee from the Ministry when she finally returns to Ghaladesh.
Penny for pound,
she muses,
I am probably the most profitable cargo this ship has ever carried.

She stares into the porthole in her cabin wall. The South Seas are on the other side, but in the window’s reflection is a large, dark office, and a big teak desk.

Aunt Vinya finally arrives, looking harried and harassed. She violently rifles through her desk, tearing open drawers, slamming cupboards. “Where is it?” she mutters. “Where is it! These questions, these damn
questions
!” She picks up a stack of papers, flips through them, and angrily throws them in her trash can.

“It looks,” Shara says, “like you’ve had a few rough meetings.”

Vinya’s head snaps up, and she stares at Shara in the window. “You …”

“Me.”

“What are you doing?” Vinya snaps. “I should have you arrested for this! Performing a miracle on the Continent is a treasonous act!”

“Well, then, it’s probably a very good thing that I’m not on the Continent anymore.”

“You
what
?”

“This is obviously not my office.” She gestures to the room behind her. “You look at me in the cabin of a vessel in the South Seas, bound, of course, for Ghaladesh.”

Vinya’s mouth opens and shuts, but no words escape.

“I am coming home, Aunt Vinya,” says Shara. “You cannot keep me away any longer.”

“I … I damn well can! If you come home I’ll have you imprisoned! I can have you
exiled
! You are disobeying the orders of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in essence you are committing
treason
! I don’t … I don’t care
how
damn famous you are now, you’ve no idea what sort of powers I’m allowed, with no questions asked!”

“What sort of powers would those be, Auntie?”

“Powers to eliminate threats to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, without question, without disclosure, without testimony to any damnable oversight committees!”

“And would this be,” Shara asks slowly, “what happened to Dr. Pangyui?”

Vinya’s righteous fury evaporates. Her shoulders sink as if her spine has vanished. “Wh-what?”

“You may wish,” says Shara, “to take a seat.”

But Vinya is too shocked to move.

“As you wish,” says Shara. “I will keep this short. Let’s say I have a feeling that somewhere in all the cables and transmissions and orders that have come out of the Ministry—in all the inscrutable, impenetrable, classified, technically
nonexistent
communications—there is a message to some unquestioning thug on the Continent informing him or her of a national threat, that threat being Dr. Efrem Pangyui at Bulikov University, and that he or she is authorized to eliminate this threat with utmost discretion, and to search for and destroy any sensitive material in his office and library.” Shara adjusts her glasses. “Would that be right?”

Vinya has gone terribly pale.

“You want to shut down this conversation altogether, don’t you, Auntie?” says Shara. “But you want to know what I know and how I know it. You want to know if I know, for example, that the reason Dr. Efrem Pangyui was labeled a threat was one very personal to you.”

Shara waits, but Vinya does not move or speak. Shara thinks she can see something trembling in her aunt’s cheek.

“I do,” says Shara. “I do know, Auntie. I know that you are Blessed, Vinya. I know that you are a descendant of the very thing that haunts Saypur’s nightmares.”

Vinya blinks. Teardrops spill down her cheeks.

“Efrem Pangyui deduced the Kaj’s parentage in Bulikov,” says Shara. “And he, being the dutiful and honorable historian of Saypur, sent back a report without realizing he was signing his own death warrant—for him, the truth was the truth, and hiding it never occurred to him.”

Vinya, who has resisted upper-middle age for nearly fifteen years, sits in her chair with the slow movements of an old woman.

“And you hated hearing this, of course,” says Shara. “Just as the Kaj hated it when he learned it himself. Efrem, obviously, had no plans to keep quiet about it—he was a historian, not a spy. So you reacted as you would to any national threat, and had him, as you say, eliminated.”