The Divine Cities Trilogy: City of Stairs, City of Blades, and City of Miracles, With an Excerpt From Foundryside

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  Sigrud sniffs and rubs his nose. He appears only mildly interested in such stories. Mulaghesh, however, eats up every word. “So Jukov was the last god killed.”

  Shara salts the goat meat, then tosses it in with the simmering vegetables. “Yes. The Plague Years came just after, the last bit of Divine protection falling away, so we know for sure that he is gone from this world.”

  Mulaghesh thinks. “It feels damn odd,” she says, “to list Divinities as you would suspects for a robbery. As if we could go out and line them up on a wall and have the victim come in and point the criminal out. So, the only confirmed dead gods—or at least, the ones that other people saw die—are Voortya, Taalhavras, Ahanas, and Jukov?”

  “That would be a fair estimation,” says Shara.

  “Which leaves Olvos and Kolkan.”

  “Yes.”

  “You haven’t said anything about Kolkan.”

  “True. We know quite a bit about his existence. His end, though…That, no one knows. We don’t even think anyone on the Continent ever knew.”

  “Did he also leave, like Olvos?” asks Pitry.

  Shara washes her hands clean on a rag. “No. He did not. Or at least, we do not think so.”

  “Then what happened to him?”

  Shara checks the time. Twenty minutes until it’s all ready.

  “That,” she says, sitting down, “is a very different story.”

  * * *

  —

  “Kolkan, it is said, was a Divinity of judgment, and order. He was the Man of Stone, He of the High Places, the Far Shepherd. He’s depicted in many different aspects, but his most dominant appearance is as a man seated on a mountain, with both hands extended forward, palms up. Waiting to weigh, balance, and judge, you see. He was by far the most active Divinity out of the six. Jukov played tricks with his mortal followers, turning them into animals—wolves, sometimes, but most frequently brown starlings—and sometimes even going so far as to impregnate them, regardless of gender, if you can believe it.” Pitry’s mouth falls open, but Shara continues: “Taalhavras and Ahanas, being builders and growers, had larger affairs, and were only broadly concerned with mortal life. Olvos, as you know, was content to leave. And Voortya was quite active in her own right, personally leading war parties and raids. But none of them compare to Kolkan, who was fascinated—if not fixated—on the affairs of mortal creatures.”

  Shara gently turns the goat meat over. Fat snaps and sizzles. She withdraws her hand before a gobbet of oil can leap onto her knuckle.

  “Kolkan wished for nothing more than for his followers to lead a good and ordered life. After the city of Kolkashtan was established, he told his followers to come to him with any questions, any concerns, and he would be there to answer them, to judge them, and to help them. And they responded quite enthusiastically. There are records of lines of people five, ten, fifteen miles long. Of people fainting, starving, growing sick and infirm as they waited. The historical accounts are vague, but it’s estimated Kolkan listened to however many millions of people, judging day and night, sitting in one place, for over one hundred and sixty years.”

  “By the seas,” mutters Mulaghesh.

  “Yes,” says Shara. “Historians have agreed that it probably had some effect on Kolkan. Eventually he realized that this process was not efficient. So he ended his period of judgment, emerged from his temple, and began creating edicts based off of what he had learned during his time judging.”

  Sigrud pulls a cured ham from the pantry. He sits, carves off a perfect scroll with his black knife, begins chewing it, and absently saws at the rest of the hard flesh.

  “Over the space of two years, Kolkan produced twelve hundred edicts. By our modern standards, they were wildly invasive, often arbitrary rules: do not stack this type of stone upon this type; a woman’s hair should not be braided in this manner; these times of days are the appropriate times to speak, and these for silence; these meats can be cured, these cannot…and so on, and so on, and so on. You would think normal people would resist, and try and free themselves….But the Kolkashtanis did not. They welcomed these rules, all twelve hundred of them. For, after all, if their Divinity said they deserved them, then did they not deserve them?”

  “You can’t be serious,” says Pitry.

  “I am quite serious. They genuinely tried to follow his edicts, no matter how bizarre. But, naturally, no one is perfect, and very few completely followed the edicts. But the edicts couldn’t be wrong—people enjoyed being told what to do. So, at some point, Kolkan decided the issue was that there wasn’t a big enough impetus to follow the edicts.” Shara lifts the top off the pot of rice. A rolling bloom of steam rises up, fogging her glasses. She steps back, sets the lid down, and polishes her glasses. “This was how the Writs of Punishments began. A living, ongoing, constantly edited document about how people should be…encouraged to follow the edicts. Over time, one sees an increasing tendency to—how shall I put this?—mar the flesh.”

  “Mar?” says Mulaghesh.

  “Whipping. Branding. Hobbling, blinding, and amputation for the worst offenders—striking off the right hand of a thief, and so on. Never death. Kolkan had decreed that life was sacred. Even he would not violate this proclamation. One of the most prominent punishments was called the Finger of Kolkan: a small round stone that would, when touched to flesh, grow heavier and heavier and hotter and hotter. Punishers would tie down the victims, place the Finger on their leg, or stomach, or chest, or…”

  There is a squeak from Sigrud’s leather glove: his right hand is a trembling fist; his jaw is clenched around his pipe; the black knife is buried deep in the pork leg.

  Shara coughs. “You get the idea,” she says. “These punishments were carried out with almost no objection. The people did not fight. They welcomed these punishments with the sober obsequiousness of the condemned.

  “Over time, Kolkan’s punishments and rules became more and more severe, and odder and odder. He became fixated on flesh and desire, on sexuality and lust. He wished to wholly censor these subjects. His first method of repression may be ironically resonant to any Saypuri. For he banned any public acknowledgment of the female sex or anatomy. Much like how some of our own laws censor discussion.”

  “What!” says Mulaghesh. “That’s not…That’s not like the Worldly Regulations at all! We’re trying to suppress something dangerous!”

  “And to Kolkan, there was nothing more dangerous than sexuality. Saypuri historians are not sure why he opted to suppress the female sex….It’s a highly debated point among certain specialists. But Kolkan demanded that his clerics and saints force women to completely shroud their figures in public, and to illegalize any mention of the female anatomy, sexuality, form—any of it—in public. This was referred to as the ‘Excision of Impurities.’ It led to a darkly amusing conundrum: how do you make a law outlawing saying a thing if you are not allowed to say that thing, even in the law? The lawmakers settled on the vague term ‘secret femininity,’ which can mean anything, really. So the law allowed for either mercy, or great cruelty, depending on the arbiter.”

  The chill of the jail cell, the clutch of the shadows. The young boy whispering, Do not tempt me with your secret femininity!

  “Things grew worse and worse. He began to insist that all his followers ‘veil their flesh’ and deny themselves all mortal pleasures: the taste of food, drink, the feeling of naked human skin, even comfortable sleep, for all of Kolkan’s followers were forced to sleep on beds of stone. Physical pleasure of any kind was not to be encouraged. And his punishments grew grotesque. Castration. Clitoridectomy. Terribly extreme amputations. And so on.

  “Yet now the other Divinities began to take notice. While Divinities did have many interactions among themselves—even relationships—they were mostly happy to stay out of one another’s Divine business. But Kolkan’s new fixations began to spill over. He insisted Bulikov
adopt his personal views on sexuality—homosexuality and promiscuity, for example, which were allowed under the more permissible Divinities, became illegal in Bulikov. Jukov was a particularly passionate opponent of this, but Kolkan’s perspective took root and has never left Bulikov, despite what happened later. Eventually, Jukov convinced the other Divinities to act.”

  “Act how?” asks Mulaghesh. “You can’t tell me no one knows about a second war.”

  “No,” says Shara. “There was no war. Because in 1442, Kolkan simply disappeared. With no explanation whatsoever.”

  A pause.

  “He just…disappeared?” asks Pitry.

  “Yes.”

  “Like with the Kaj’s weapons?” asks Mulaghesh.

  “Not quite,” says Shara. “None of Kolkan’s works disappeared. Kolkashtan remained intact. But there were a few alterations: overnight, all those who were mutilated by Kolkan’s methods were suddenly whole, and healed. Except for the ones who had passed on, of course. This is strange in its own right, but the victims could also no longer recall even being punished—it was as if those memories had been painted over in their minds.”

  “Then how…” Sigrud rolls his one eye up as he formulates his question. “How do you even know they were punished?”

  Shara nods. “A fair point. It took a while, but Saypuri historians have pinpointed 1442 as a year of great historical confusion. They’ve tracked it regionally—all historical records, journals, and testimonies in Kolkashtan and Bulikov went suddenly and completely blank for the specific years of Kolkan’s punishments. We only know what we know from texts recovered far from Kolkashtan and Bulikov—these, somehow, escaped what seems to have been a historical purge.”

  “And you assume it was the other four Divinities,” says Mulaghesh.

  “I assume so—especially because the other Divinities did not remark upon Kolkan’s sudden absence at all. We have recovered no indications of a proclamation, or explanation….They didn’t even mention him. It was as if he’d simply never existed. Reality was edited—no, overwritten.”

  “And this…” says Mulaghesh. “Do you think it was this that you saw? A vanished Divinity, but not a dead one?”

  Shara thinks. She finally says, “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Our attackers were dressed and definitely spoke like traditional Kolkashtanis. But I have read accounts of communing with Divinities. And what I encountered in that jail cell was nothing so coherent. It was like a cacophony of voices, of images—many people in one. I do not know what to call it. Even Kolkan would have made much more sense than the thing I spoke to, I think.”

  They are silent. Sigrud belches softly. “What happened”—another belch—“to the people?”

  “The people?”

  He waves a hand. “Of Kolkan.”

  “Oh. Do you know, they more or less kept doing the same things? They wore Kolkashtani robes, followed Kolkashtani precepts, even enforced the Writs of Punishment, to an extent. They had faint memories of Kolkan, and they retained his edicts—those that were not erased—and they continued doing what they’d always done. It was never as terrible and punitive as it was under Kolkan himself, but the same perspective, the same beliefs…These persist in Kolkashtan and Bulikov even today, as you know.”

  “So the reason Votrov’s art show was so scandalous,” says Mulaghesh slowly, “is because of what some mad god believed three hundred years ago?”

  “More or less.” She checks the time, then the goat: much of the fat has rendered out. She scoops the diced meat out and allows it to drain. “I suppose these things are like momentum,” she says. “Once you get started, it’s hard to stop.”

  Fat strikes the stovetop and sizzles like lava rushing into the sea.

  * * *

  —

  Sigrud, Mulaghesh, and Pitry eat like starving refugees. There is curried goat, soft white rice, fried vegetable pastries, pork-wrapped melon. Within minutes all of Shara’s artful displays are reduced to ravaged scraps.

  “This is”—Mulaghesh hiccups—“amazing. This is the best curry I’ve had in years. As good as at home. Where did you learn to cook?”

  “From another operative.” She sips her tea, but does not eat. “You get stuck in one place a lot, in an operation. You learn to make do with what you have.” She sits back, looks up. Smoke stains trail across the stone ceiling. There is an oily sheen to them: grease deposits, no doubt, from dozens of bubbling meals. “You are absolutely positive, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there has been no disturbance at the Warehouse?”

  “None,” says Mulaghesh around a mouthful. “I sent a runner there just now to check. But I am confident that they don’t have the resources to mount an attack on the Warehouse.”

  “Why?”

  “The attack on Votrov took a lot of manpower. It wasn’t a distraction. If anything, it smacks of desperation to me. I don’t think they could mount two such operations at once.”

  “But we will increase security at the Warehouse.”

  “Most definitely.”

  “Inside, and outside.”

  “Well, no.” Mulaghesh coughs and wipes her mouth. “We don’t have any security inside the Warehouse.”

  “None?”

  “No. No one goes in the Warehouse.”

  “Not even patrols?”

  “Even if I wanted to do patrols, I doubt if I’d be able to order anyone in there. That place is full of ghosts, Shara. What’s there, we don’t want to disturb.”

  “But you do have a list of what’s in the Warehouse?”

  “Oh, yeah. Definitely.”

  “And I don’t suppose,” she says slowly, “that you have more than one copy? Since Efrem was taking out parts of the list to study, I assume you’d want a backup in case something happened to it….”

  “We have two copies, yeah. What are you thinking?”

  “I am thinking,” says Shara slowly, “that Irina Torskeny told me she copied around a hundred pages from the list before the Restorationists found either what they were looking for, or something that would be useful to them.”

  “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 re
freshes the soul.”

  “And is your soul so bruised?”

  Shara does not 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 mine overseer 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 wandered 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?”