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

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “What are you saying?” asks Taty.

  “I am saying, Taty, that…I think I am somewhat like you,” says Sigrud. “There are things that I can do. I do not understand them. I do not know how they work or if they have affected who I am. I do not know how or if this scar has changed me. So I fall back on the things I know.”

  “Which is what?” asks Taty.

  “That there are those who mean us harm,” says Sigrud. He makes a fist and lowers his hand. “And those who offer us shelter. We must flee from one to get to the other. The rest—that is beyond our control.”

  Taty smiles sadly at him. “This is what you know how to do, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you were on the tram, with that thing, you looked…different. You looked relieved. Like you were playing a game you hadn’t played in a long, long time. That’s how you worked with Mother, wasn’t it? She figured out what to do, and you made sure it happened. This is what you know. You were finally getting to do something you understood.”

  Sigrud sits in silence.

  “You want her here even more than I do, maybe,” says Taty. “To tell you what to do again. To figure it all out. That’s why you waited on her for thirteen years, isn’t it? So she could tell you what to do next, how to make things go back to normal. To help you get home.”

  He looks away. “There is no going back to normal, Tatyana Komayd,” he says softly. “There is no going home. I know that now. There is no way out of this, not for me. I have made my peace with knowing that my fight is lost.”

  “But you’ve defeated such things before, haven’t you?”

  “ ‘Defeat?’ ‘Victory’? Those are words. What comes after them? What comes next?” He looks up at the moon. “In Voortyashtan, after my daughter died…There were soldiers there, guarding her, trying to capture me. Young people, fresh recruits. Just following orders. I was in a rage, and when I found them, I, I fell upon them, and I…I…”

  The tram clunks and clinks through the next tower.

  “Your daughter had just died,” says Taty.

  “What kind of an excuse is that?” asks Sigrud. “I am old, Taty. All those things that one saves for, that one builds for, that one lives for…I have lost those things by now. I have only my grudges and grievances to keep me going now. They are my only guiding stars. And I suspect they shall not last much longer.”

  “You live to hurt, then,” says Taty. “And nothing more?”

  Sigrud is quiet.

  “I know I’m young,” says Taty softly, “but it feels to me that…that death is but a thunderstorm. Just wind and noise. You can’t ask meaning of such a thing. Not even of your own.” She shakes her head. “I thought it would feel better. You killing them, hurting those people. But it feels like…like nothing.”

  “Anger is a hard thing to live with, Tatyana. I think sometimes we are not punished for our anger—we are punished by it, I think.”

  “Or perhaps,” says Taty, “we just weren’t punishing the right people.”

  They sit in silence.

  “Mother wouldn’t have said that, would she?” says Taty softly.

  “No. She would not have.”

  “Perhaps I’m changing already, then. Perhaps I don’t even know it’s happening.”

  Sigrud looks at her, his jaw set. “If you really change, Taty…If something takes you and makes you different…I will not let you forget who you are. I will be there to remind you, Tatyana Komayd. Until you are you.”

  “I didn’t think you were quite the staying type,” she says.

  “For you, I will stay.”

  She looks at him questioningly—wondering, of course, if this time he’s telling her everything.

  “You’re tired,” he says. “Sleep here if you wish.”

  “And you’ll really stay?”

  “Close your eyes,” he says, “I’ll be here in the morning.”

  She closes her eyes.

  My definition of an adult is someone who lives their life aware they are sharing the world with others. My definition of an adult is someone who knows the world was here before they showed up and that it’ll be here well after they walk away from it.

  My definition of an adult, in other words, is someone who lives their life with a little fucking perspective.

  —UPPER PARLIAMENT HOUSE MINORITY LEADER TURYIN MULAGHESH, LETTER TO GENERAL ADHI NOOR, 1735

  They come to the city late the next morning. The tram car crawls down the cables through the Tarsils, then to the foothills, and then, suddenly, there it is.

  Bulikov. The City of Stairs.

  The sight of it takes his breath away. Sigrud hasn’t been here in twenty years, yet it’s all still the same, this huge, massive, ancient metropolis, with its tremendous dark walls, hundreds of feet tall and dozens of feet thick. He can see strange, tiny, curling structures peeking past the tops of the walls: massive staircases, reaching into the sky to end in nothing at all. The staircases, he knows, are not the most disturbing of the distortions and damages left behind by the Blink. Those he’s seen before, firsthand. Though probably they and nearly half the city were decimated in the Battle of Bulikov.

  And yet, Bulikov survived. A city more than a thousand years old, still defiant despite the passage of time.

  “It’s so strange,” says Taty, joining him, “to view a city from this angle.”

  “I’ve seen it before,” he says lowly.

  “What?” says Ivanya. “You have? Ah. Yes. That’s right. The flying ship.”

  Ivanya and Sigrud’s moods are significantly darker than Taty’s: despite the conversation the night before, she’s positively bubbling over with excitement as they approach Bulikov. “See the walls there? I read all about those, they’re having immense infrastructural problems because the city needs to expand, to site more industrial facilities, to just do more stuff, and because the walls are nigh impenetrable and also because they’re, well, considered pretty holy, they haven’t made much progress there. Oh! And look there, you can see the tip of the Brost Tower, Auntie! Aren’t your firms the ones doing the financing for that?”

  “Yes,” says Ivanya grimly. “Though I frankly never hoped to see it in person….”

  Taty ignores her, rattling off facts and figures about Bulikov that do little to impress the adults. Sigrud peers out the window as they make their final approach. He sees their destination is a huge train station, built right up against the side of the walls of Bulikov, an iron-and-glass-roofed structure that’s just as large and beautiful and stately as the one in Ahanashtan. They certainly didn’t have that when he was last in Bulikov—and now that he’s closer to the ground, he realizes he knows this location on the side of the walls.

  “Is that…Morov Station?” he says, incredulous.

  “Well, of course it is,” says Taty. “What other station would it be?”

  “That was the station Shara and I first used when we came to Bulikov,” he says. “It was this tiny, grubby dump of a station….We had to use an old coal train to get here.”

  “I keep telling you both that Bulikov has changed,” scoffs Taty. “Everyone knows that!”

  Ivanya rolls her eyes. “The girl hasn’t ever even been here before,” she mutters.

  Sigrud narrows his eye. There’s a large crowd waiting for them—no doubt due to the disaster on the tram behind them. He can see uniforms, and the odd badge. “Police,” he says. “And the press. They must be waiting to talk to all the passengers.”

  “What do we do?” asks Ivanya.

  “I’ll find a way to break off from you two,” says Sigrud, “and evade them. Can you take the trunk and arrange for transportation, Ivanya, or should I steal a car?”

  “I can get a car!” says Ivanya hastily. “We don’t need you breaking into things!”

  “All r
ight, then,” says Sigrud. He goes to the door. “I’ll go first. Meet me outside the train station in thirty minutes. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” says Taty.

  Sigrud walks out into the cabin, where all the fretful passengers are gathering their luggage and lining up before the door. He tries to get close to the front. He can hear the crowd at the platform as they make the final stretch of the approach—the crowd must be big and anxious, which means it’ll be difficult to handle.

  The doors are flung open, and Sigrud finds his suspicions were right: despite the best efforts of the Bulikovian police, things devolve into total pandemonium within seconds. The passengers bolt out to be greeted by loved ones, lawyers, business associates, members of the press, all shouting, crying, laughing, screaming….Sigrud takes stock of the situation, slinks through the side of the crowd, and makes for the train station doors within seconds.

  He keeps walking, doesn’t look to the side, doesn’t look anywhere. No one notices. Everyone’s focused on the raucous chaos beside the tram car. With a slight sigh of relief, he slips into Morov Station.

  Sigrud loops through the station, trying to spy out any more of Nokov’s operators. He suspects there aren’t any—after the Saypuri woman’s sudden transformation, he thinks Nokov threw nearly everything he had at them—but it’s best to make sure.

  He sees nothing, to his relief. But while he looks, he can’t help but marvel at what a different place Morov Station is now. He compares it to the last time he arrived: stepping off the train to find a trembling little Pitry Suturashni waiting for them, bowing low and mistaking him, impossibly, for Shara. This place had been abandoned, dark, and dingy, yet now it’s full of light and noise and traffic, and shouted questions.

  He waits until his time’s almost up, then moves out to the front of the train station. There are no automobiles waiting, except for a thoroughly absurd black limousine. He stops behind a column, frowns, and pulls out his watch, wondering where the two women are. Then he hears a high-pitched whistle.

  He looks up to see Taty leaning out the back window of the limousine, smiling and waving to him. Sigrud stares at her, then slowly comes over.

  “This is…not quite what I meant when I said transportation,” he says.

  “Get in,” says Ivanya crossly from inside. “And stop scowling!”

  Sigrud climbs in. The seats are large enough to allow him to sit comfortably. He looks back, befuddled, as the driver of the auto—a short, thickset Continental man in a shiny black cap—starts it up and pulls away.

  “How…did we do this?” Sigrud asks.

  “Auntie owns it,” says Taty happily.

  “It’s the estate car,” explains Ivanya.

  “The estate car.” Sigrud flicks a thumb over his shoulder. “And the driver is…”

  “Choska,” says Ivanya. “My valet.”

  “Your…valet.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have a valet.”

  “Yes. I had to have someone to look after the estate while I was away, after all. It’s not a completely uncommon thing to have,” she says, nettled.

  “It seems an uncommon thing for a sheepherder to have.”

  “Yes, well, as you are the one who has dragged me back to Bulikov, I don’t believe you have any right to criticize me. I was happy where I was.” She peers out the window. “Or happier than I am here, at least.”

  Taty pulls herself close to the window. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it! We’re actually in Bulikov! We’re really here!”

  Sigrud can’t help but smile to see her reaction. When he first came here, Shara rode in the auto with her nose practically pressed to the glass, drinking in the sights of this mammoth, historic city—just as Taty acts now. Yet at the time Sigrud could have hardly cared a fig for any of it.

  “Look at it!” says Taty in awe. “Just look at it all….”

  Sigrud has to duck low to look out. “Yes,” he says, surprised. “Look at it.”

  He sees now how different it all is. There are bright, resplendent buildings where there used to be ruins, modern brick structures with large, glass windows—he remembers very few windows had good glass when he was here last. The auto putters through clean, square avenues lined with electric lights, all clear of rubble or blockades. The surfaces of the streets are smooth and unbroken, which is powerfully strange, as he recalls the concrete and paving was as cracked and creaking as a sheet of warm ice. People walk the streets with the casual air of pedestrians going about their daily routines, rather than the anxious skulking that Sigrud remembers.

  It’s all so modern, so organized. An elevated tram runs through the tall buildings, a face in every window of every car. Water fountains and shops and trees. An open-air market where people sell meats and fruit—actual, fresh fruit, something unobtainable in the Bulikov he remembers.

  Every once in a while they come to some old warping of the world, a bruise in reality from the Blink. Yet they’ve gently papered over these as best as they could, turning these aberrations into small parks with a little sign next to them, stating: This is what happened here, this is what we remember, and this is what we know.

  History—a thing so dreadfully suppressed and bickered over in the Bulikov he knew—stands unchallenged in the streets.

  Finally they come to the Solda River. In his day this had been a field of frozen ice, with tiny fishing shacks and shantytowns clinging to its muddy shores; yet now there are docks, piers, millworks, refineries, industry. He watches as ships and barges slowly poke their way around the winding bends of the Solda. It’s a thriving place, a place people go to toil and work and think, a place where one could live.

  “I can’t see the walls anymore!” says Taty. She laughs. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

  Sigrud turns to look back at the horizon. There’s no hint of the walls in sight: he forgot that they grew transparent once you entered them. “Oh. Right.”

  “They’re going to try to drill another aperture in the walls, you know,” says Taty, “to allow passage to the planned industrial sites beyond. Factories and new housing and a larger rail yard.”

  “Are they,” says Sigrud.

  “Yes,” says Taty. “It’s all gotten too big. Too much is pouring into the city. These giant, Divine walls just can’t hold Bulikov anymore, not since Voortyashtan and the opening of the Solda.”

  Sigrud pauses. “The opening of the Solda?” he asks quietly.

  “Yes,” says Taty. “It changed everything, you know.”

  Sigrud sits in silence, looking out on this thriving metropolis, remembering the young Dreyling woman who once told him: This is how civilization progresses—one innovation at the right time, changing the very way the world changes. It just needs one big push to start the momentum.

  Signe, he thinks, did you make this place?

  So much of the city is unfamiliar to him now—yet then they turn, and suddenly he recognizes the sight ahead.

  He knows this lane, and that alley. He remembers clinging to a speeding auto here once, long ago. The driver had tried to smash Sigrud up against the wall of a building, a fate that Sigrud barely managed to escape.

  He looks up at the building ahead. He knows this too.

  The Votrov mansion. It’s still the same, from the bars in the gate out front to every brick in the walls. It’s almost exactly as it was when he came here last, so many years ago, except it’s day this time, and the house is totally empty: no laughing dinner guests, no parties, no chauffeurs—and no Shara Komayd to accompany him.

  “This feels,” says Sigrud, “incredibly weird. To return to find this one place unchanged, of all places.”

  “I quite agree,” says Ivanya. He glances at her. She looks pale and ill, and she keeps pushing back one strand of hair that doesn’t need to be pushed back any.

  Sigrud watches her as they app
roach. She pinches the skin on the back of her hand so hard that her fingers tremble.

  He reaches across, grabs her hand, and squeezes it. “It is all right,” he says.

  “You say so,” she says. But she gives him the briefest of smiles.

  Finally they pull up before the massive front doors. Sigrud tries to open the auto door, but suddenly Choska’s there, opening it with a demure smile before hauling the giant trunk out of the back of the auto. Choska wheels it over to the manor entry and hauls open the front doors. Taty almost skips through them, and Sigrud slowly follows.

  He skulks into the entry hall, which is just as grand and strange as he recalls: the chandelier of crystal slabs, the two huge hearths, and the hundreds of gas lamps, all of which are currently unlit.

  He stares at one of the hearths, remembering how he glowered into the fire, drinking wine, thinking of his time in Slondheim. Yet Slondheim, he thinks now, would prove to be only a slight misery compared to the years ahead….

  “It’s amazing!” says Taty, staring around herself.

  “You keep saying that,” says Sigrud.

  “Well, it is amazing.”

  “You used to live in a mansion,” says Sigrud. “I’m not sure why this one is so amazing to you.”

  “You two are no fun at all,” says Taty. “Everything you see you have to glower at.”

  “We are not on holiday.”

  “You weren’t stuck on Mother’s estate for years,” says Taty. She walks up the mansion stairs, her nose in the air. “I will make do with what’s available. I’m off to find the library, and read something actually decent for the first time in months.”

  Sigrud watches her ascend and shakes his head, exasperated. “One must forgive the young,” says Ivanya’s voice behind him.

  He turns and sees she’s standing at the threshold of the mansion. “Must one?” he asks.

  “Well. It’s the polite thing to do.” She sighs deeply and walks through the door. “Shara told me about this—something Mother Mulaghesh had, and other soldiers. Battle echoes, she called it.”