City of Stairs

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “And yet intelligence work is as susceptible to its environs as anything else,” says Shara. “We operate within a set of variables that we often cannot influence.”

  “I hate it when you quote me,” says Vinya. “All right. So what? So some bumpkins took a shot at an alderman, or whatever he is. That’s not news. That’s just your average day of the week. Why would you contact me?”

  “Because I am convinced,” says Shara, “that there is some connection to Pangyui.”

  Vinya freezes. She looks away, then slowly looks back. “What?”

  “I suspect,” says Shara, “that Pangyui’s death was probably part of a reactionary movement here, meant to rebuke Saypur’s influence and return the Continent—or at least Bulikov—to its former glory.”

  Vinya sits in silence. Then: “And how would you have determined that?”

  “He was being watched,” says Shara. “And I suspect that he was being watched by agents of this reactionary movement.”

  “You suspect?”

  “I would say I deem it terribly likely. Specifically—though I cannot confirm yet—I think his death is probably related to their discovery of exactly what he was doing here. Which was not a mission of cultural understanding, as they were told.”

  Vinya sighs and massages the sides of her neck. “Ah. So.”

  Shara nods. “So.”

  “You found out about his little … historical expedition.”

  “So you do know about the Warehouse?”

  “Of course I know about the Warehouse!” Vinya snaps. “It’s why he went there, of course!”

  “You signed off on this?”

  Vinya rolls her eyes.

  “Oh. So you planned this.”

  “Of course I planned this, darling. But it was Efrem’s idea. It was just one I had a very specific interest in.”

  “And what was this idea?”

  “Oh, well, I’m sure that you being the Divine expert that you are, you probably know all about it.… Or you would, if Efrem had been allowed to publish it. His idea was not, as one says in the parlance of our era, approved. And it is still a highly dangerous idea.”

  “And what idea was this?”

  “We don’t talk much about the Divine over here—we like for such things to stay dead, naturally—but when we do, we, like the Continent itself, assume that it was a top-down relationship: the Divinities stood at the top of the chain, and they told the Continentals and, well, the world, what to do, and everything obeyed. Reality obeyed.”

  “So?”

  “So,” she says slowly, “over the course of his career, Efrem quietly became less convinced this was the case. He believed there was a lot more subtle give-and-take going on in the relationship than anyone imagined. The Divinities projected their own worlds, their own realities, which our historians have more or less surmised from all the conflicting creation stories, and afterlife stories, and static and whatnot.” She waves her hand, eager to cycle through all the minutiae.

  “Of course,” says Shara—for this is a topic well-known to her.

  One of the Continent’s biggest problems with having six Divinities were the many, many conflicting mythologies: for example, how could the world be a burning, golden coal pulled from the fires of Olvos’s own heart while also being a stone hacked by Kolkan from a mountain behind the setting sun? And how could one’s soul, after death, flit away to join Jukov’s flock of brown starlings, while also flowing down the river of death to wash ashore in Ahanas’s garden, where it would grow into an orchid? All Divinities were very clear about such things, but none of them agreed with one another.

  It took Saypuri historians a long while to figure out how all this had worked for the Continent. They made no progress until someone pointed out that the discordant mythologies mostly appeared to be geographical: people physically near a Divinity recorded history in strict agreement with that Divinity’s mythology. Once historians started mapping out the recorded histories, they found the borders were shockingly distinct: you could see almost exactly where one Divinity’s influence stopped and another’s began. And, the historians were forced to assume, if you were within that sphere or penumbra of influence, you essentially existed in a different reality where everything that specific Divinity claimed was true was indisputably true.

  So, were you within Voortya’s territory, then the world was made from the bones of an army she slew in a field of ice in the sky.

  Yet if you traveled to be near Ahanas, then the world was a seed she’d rescued from the river mud, and watered with her tears.

  And still if you traveled to be near Taalhavras, then the world was a machine he had built from the celestial fundament, designed and crafted over thousands of years. And so on and so forth.

  What the Divinities felt was true was true in these places. And when the Kaj killed them, all those things stopped being true.

  The final piece of evidence supporting this theory was the “reality static” that appeared directly after the Kaj successfully killed four of the six original Divinities: the world apparently “remembered” that parts of it once existed in different realities, and had trouble reassembling itself. Saypuri soldiers recorded seeing rivers that flowed into the sky, silver that would turn to lead if you carried it through a certain place, trees that would bloom and die several times over in one day, and fertile lands that turned into cracked wastelands if you stood in one exact spot, yet instantly restore themselves once you’d left it. Eventually, however, the world more or less sorted itself out, and instances of reality static all but vanished from the Continent—leaving the world not ruined, but not quite whole, either.

  Vinya continues: “Efrem believed that the mortal agents and followers of these Divinities had possessed some hand in shaping these realities. He was never sure how, though, because he never had access to the correct historical resources. Dangerous historical resources.”

  “Which were all in the Warehouse.”

  “Exactly. He actually wrote and submitted a paper about this theory, which promptly got sent to me, as this sort of thing is very much looked down upon. I think they expected I’d imprison him, or exile him, or something.”

  “But instead you gave him exactly what he wanted. Why?”

  “Well, think about it, Shara,” says Vinya. “Saypur is now the strongest nation in the world. Our might is undeniable. Nothing in the world even feigns to threaten us. Except … we know that Divinities once existed. And though they were killed, we do not understand what they were, or how they did what they did, where they came from, or even how the Kaj killed them.”

  “You’re thinking of them as weapons.”

  Vinya shrugs. “Maybe so. Imagine it—if a Divinity wished a land to be bathed in fire, it would be bathed in fire. They would be, in a way, a weapon that would end modern warfare as we know it. No more armies. No more navies. No more soldiers of any kind—just casualties.”

  Shara feels a cold horror growing in her belly. “And you wished … to produce one of these for Saypur?”

  Vinya laughs. “Oh, my goodness, no. No, no, no. I am quite happy where I am. I would be insane to invite in something that would wield—how shall I put this?—a greater authority than my own. What I would wish would be to prevent anyone else from getting one. That … That is something that has kept me and many a Saypuri up at night. If Efrem could answer exactly where the gods came from, and how they worked, then we could actively prevent them from recurring. And if he just happened to find some information about the Kaj’s weaponry—about which we to this day still know absolutely nothing—that would help me sleep a little better, too.”

  “Knowing how to kill a god would help you sleep better?”

  A flippant shrug. “Such are the burdens of power,” says Vinya. “Efrem was a little less eager to explore this avenue—I think it bored him, to be frank—but anything would be better than what we know now.”

  “And we would … Well. We would know why we were denied, too,” says
Shara.

  Vinya pauses, and slowly nods. “Yes. We would finally know.” Neither of them says any more on the topic, but they do not need to: while no Saypuri can go a day without thinking of how their ancestors lived in abysmal slavery, neither can they go an hour without wondering why. Why were they denied a god? Why was the Continent blessed with protectors, with power, with tools and privileges that were never extended to Saypur? How could such a tremendous inequality be allowed? And while Saypuris may seem to the world to be a small, curious people of education and wealth, anyone who spends any time in Saypur soon comes to understand that in their hearts lives a cold rage that lends them a cruelty one would never expect. They call us godless, Saypuris occasionally say to one another, as if we had a choice.

  “So we dressed it up as an act of diplomacy,” says Vinya. “An effort to heal the gulf between our nation and theirs. We only wanted to peruse the books in the Warehouse. That’s all. I … I honestly never thought Efrem was in any danger. We assumed Bulikov would continue being Bulikov—all squalor and filth—and he could simply go about his business.”

  Shara pauses, wondering how to broach the most obvious question. “And … I’m curious,” she says slowly. “Why did you not tell me about this when I first came to Bulikov?”

  Vinya sniffs and sits up. But for one second her dark eyes skitter and dance as she considers how to answer.

  Shara leans forward slightly and watches her aunt carefully.

  “This was a highly, highly restricted project,” pronounces Vinya. Still her eyes search the bottom of the pane before wandering up to find Shara’s face. “If you had caught someone, good on you. If not, we would have pursued the matter through different channels.”

  Vinya smiles haughtily.

  Lying, screams Shara’s mind. She’s lying! Lying, lying, lying, lying!

  In that instant, Shara decides not to tell her aunt what she witnessed in the jail cell. It goes against every line of reasoning she can imagine—Vinya wishes to know how to destroy any new Divinity, so of course she’d want to know Shara has actually encountered such a being—but Shara feels something is very, very, very wrong. She knows she should discount her own paranoia, of course—Paranoia of one’s case officers and commanders, as she’s told her own sources, is a perfectly natural feeling—but her aunt has not been her normal shrewd self recently, and now every instinct Shara has is shouting that Vinya is lying. And after nearly seventeen years of interviews and interrogations, she’s learned to trust her instincts.

  With no small amount of disbelief, she begins to wonder if her aunt has somehow been compromised. Could someone possibly gather enough material to own and control the heir apparent to the prime minister’s seat? A corrupt politician, thinks Shara. What a wildly unconventional idea. After all, one can’t mount the last few steps on the ladder without a lot of nasty compromises. And, more so, if one pried open any of Auntie Vinya’s closet doors, surely a whole parade of skeletons would come tumbling out.

  But Shara is surprised at how terribly guilty and ashamed she feels to make such a decision. This is, after all, the woman who raised her, who took care of her and oversaw her education after her parents died in the Plague Years. But just as Vinya is minister first, aunt second, Shara has always been an operative first and foremost.

  So Shara returns to her old maxim: When in doubt, be patient, and watch.

  Vinya asks, “Now. What is this movement you talked about?”

  Shara summarizes the New Bulikov movement in a handful of sentences.

  “Oh,” says Vinya. “Oh, I remember this. This is the thing with the man who wants to make us guns.”

  “Yes. Votrov.”

  “Yes, yes. Some ministers are really keen on it, but I’ve tried to stall it as much as I can.… I do not want us to be dependent on a place like Bulikov for anything. Especially gunpowder! So Votrov is the man who got attacked last night?”

  “Yes.” Shara measures exactly what to share now, and decides not to reveal that the Restorationists were after his steel.

  “Votrov … that name is strangely familiar, for some reason.…”

  “We … went to school together.”

  Vinya holds up a finger. “Ah. Ah. I remember now. That’s him? The boy from Fadhuri? He’s the one wanting to make us guns? I remember being terrified he’d get you pregnant.”

  “Aunt Vinya …”

  “He didn’t, did he?”

  “Aunt Vinya!”

  “Fine, fine …”

  “I don’t think he will give up on the munitions proposal,” says Shara. “Just as a note. He seems very insistent on trying to bring industry to the Continent.”

  “He can be as insistent as he likes,” says Vinya. “That’s not happening on my watch. It’s better for the Continent to remain the way it is. Things are tenuously stable right now.”

  “Not here,” says Shara. “Obviously.”

  Vinya waves a hand. “The Continent is the Continent. It’s always been that way, ever since the War. And I hope you’re not getting soft on me, Shara. You know every country in the world wants to bleed Saypur dry. And every single time they’ll claim children are starving in the streets, bloodshed of the innocent, and so on and so forth.… We hear it dozens of times every day. The wise look after their own, and leave the rest to fate—especially if it’s the Continent. But enough about this. So. You want me to extend your work there, I assume. What do you have that’s so solid?”

  “We’ll be pulling in a likely Restorationist agent for questioning shortly. Off the grid.”

  “Who’s this agent you wish to grab?”

  “A … maid.”

  Vinya laughs. “A what?”

  “The university maid! Which, I remind you, is where Pangyui worked. Cases and operations, as you know, frequently run on some of the most menial of workers.”

  “Hm,” says Vinya. “Fair point. Speaking of which, have you found anything else on Pangyui’s murder?”

  Here it is, thinks Shara. She attempts to step back into a cold veil and keep her face still. “No, not yet. But we are following our leads.”

  “No? Nothing?”

  “Not so far. But we’re working on it.”

  “That’s interesting.” Vinya’s tongue, red as a pomegranate, explores an incisor. She smiles. “Because I show you ran a check on a bank just two days ago. You haven’t mentioned that.”

  Shara’s blood turns to ice. She’s watching my background check requests?

  She scrambles for an excuse. “I did,” she says. “I was checking on Votrov.”

  “Were you?” says Vinya. “Votrov owns several banks in Bulikov. Many much larger than the one you asked for a check on. And that one he owns through a rather dense tangle of channels. So I’m curious—why that bank, in particular?”

  “For the reasons you just outlined. It seemed likely that if he had anything to hide, it’d be there.”

  Vinya nods slowly. “But looking for something like that would require a full finance check. Which you did not initiate.”

  “I became distracted,” says Shara. “So many bodies, you see.”

  Both Vinya and Shara’s faces hang in the windowpanes, staring at one another, perfectly stoic.

  “It would have nothing to do, then,” says Vinya quietly, “with how that particular bank is the closest bank to Bulikov University with safety deposit boxes, would it?”

  She knows.

  “Safety deposit boxes?” asks Shara. Her words drip with innocence.

  “Yes. That is, after all, your most preferred method of dead drops. You tend to like the finance people. They are so process-oriented, not unlike yourself.”

  “I haven’t had enough time here to do anything necessitating a dead drop, Auntie.”

  “No.” Vinya’s eyes appear to drift backward into her head, and Shara gets the strange and horrible feeling of being looked through. Suddenly she understands how Vinya has commanded so many committees and oversight hearings with complete confide
nce. “But you would have probably taught this method to Efrem.”

  I hope I’m not sweating right now. “Where are you going with this, Aunt Vinya?”

  “Shara, my dear,” says Vinya slowly, “you’re not hiding anything from me, are you?”

  Shara attempts a tiny smile. “I am not the one who is hiding things.”

  “I am your superior. It’s my job to restrict what people know. And I will tell you what this all tastes like, to me.… It tastes like you have stumbled across a dead drop of Pangyui’s, and you have yet to access it. But you do not wish to report it until you review its contents. However, my dear, I must remind you”—her words are so frosty Shara feels like she’s been slapped—“Pangyui was my agent. My operation. I don’t run many ops these days, but when I do, I make sure they stay mine. And the product of that operation, whatever it may be, goes to me first. Me, Shara. It does not get digested by another operative who just happens to be there, an agent not assigned to that operation. Not unless that operative wishes to be very abruptly pulled out of that intelligence theater. Do I make myself clear?”

  Shara blinks slowly.

  “Do you understand, Shara?” Vinya asks again.

  Though Shara is perfectly passive, in her head she is engaged in rigorous debate. As she sees it, she has four options. She can:

  1. Tell her aunt that she’s had contact with a Divinity, and thus needs access to everything Pangyui has produced. (However, this would require telling a possibly compromised official about the most dangerous intelligence breakthrough in modern history.)

  2. Withhold both the Pangyui dead drop as well as the Divine contact from her aunt and pursue her own investigation of both. (However, this would risk being pulled from Bulikov altogether, though all her aunt seems to care about now is the Pangyui dead drop.)

  3. Give up the content of Pangyui’s safety deposit box to her aunt—its contents likely being the very thing someone killed Pangyui to try to get, and failed—and continue investigating the Divine contact and Pangyui’s death on her own.

  4. Tell Vinya she isn’t going to read the material, see what the maid has to say, and then decide from there.