City of Stairs

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “he would have drowned or froze to death.”

  However, many questions remain: why did the ambassador hide her identity? Why was she so singularly adept at combating such a creature? And what does it mean for Bulikov, to have a member of the Komayd family in a position of power in the city once again?

  As of the time of this paper’s publication, the embassy has yet to make an official comment.

  Shara stares at the paper, feverishly hoping that the words will dance and rearrange themselves until it tells another story entirely.

  “Oh, no,” she whispers.

  To have one’s cover blown … To be known to an enemy, to have a dossier on you compiled in some distant and lethal department, that is one thing: all operatives are prepared for that.

  But to have your name and story splashed across the newspaper, to be known not in the secret annals of government but in the front rooms and dining rooms and public houses across the world … That is horror beyond horror.

  “No,” says Shara again. “No. That … That can’t be.”

  “Yeah,” says Mulaghesh.

  “And this is the … the …”

  “The Continental Herald.”

  “So it doesn’t just go to Bulikov, but …”

  “To the entire Continent,” says Mulaghesh. “Yeah.”

  The reality of it all comes crashing down on her. “Ohh … Oh no, oh no, oh no!”

  “Who all knew who you are?” asks Mulaghesh.

  “You,” says Shara. “Sigrud, Vo … A few employees here I’m more than I say I am, but there’s a leap between that and being …”

  “Being the great-granddaughter of the Kaj,” says Mulaghesh. “Yeah. No shit. I know I didn’t say anything. I never talk to the press.”

  “And Sigrud wouldn’t,” says Shara. “So …”

  She parses down the ideas, the possibilities.

  Vinya, maybe? Shara is no longer sure what to think of her aunt; she feels almost certain Vinya has been compromised somehow, but for Vinya, it seems overwhelmingly likely that her compromise would be political, ceding power only for the opportunity to gain more. And this would be very, very damaging, politically.

  She keeps boiling down her options, down and down, hoping to avoid what she increasingly feels is an inevitable conclusion.

  “It could only be Vohannes,” she says finally.

  “Okay, but … why?”

  Would this be some petty revenge over last night? she wonders. It seems unlikely. Or could he be punishing her for her refusal to intervene in Bulikov? Or … “Could … Could he be trying to use me to get the attention of Ghaladesh?” she asks aloud.

  “How would blowing your cover possibly do that?” asks Mulaghesh.

  “Well … It makes for a great story, doesn’t it? The great-granddaughter of the Kaj, swooping in and saving Bulikov. It gets people talking.… And talk is as good as action in the geopolitical realm. It would focus the world’s attentions all on Bulikov—and then he could make his pitch. I mean, you’ve met him. All Vo ever needs is a spotlight.”

  “Yeah, but … but that has got to be,” says Mulaghesh, “the stupidest possible way to spur Ghaladesh into doing anything! Right?”

  Shara doesn’t entirely disagree, but she doesn’t entirely agree, either. And she remembers what Vo mumbled last night: Once a Kolkashtani …

  She can’t help but feel that she’s missing something. But whatever the cause, she knows she cannot trust Vo any longer, and she thinks it was foolish to have done so in the first place: to collaborate with such a passionate, broken, divided creature was always a poor decision.

  From nearby, there’s the sound of a throat being cleared.

  Mulaghesh looks to the window and asks, “What was that?”

  But Shara knows that sound quite well, having heard it throughout her childhood: two parts impatience, one part condescension.…

  “Nothing outside,” Mulaghesh says, peeking through the draped window, “except for the crowd, of course. I didn’t imagine that sound, did I?”

  Shara glances at the shuttered window next to her desk. The bottom left pane is shimmering strangely, and the reflection in the glass is slightly warped.

  “Governor,” Shara says, “could you please … excuse me for a moment?”

  “Are you going to be sick?”

  “Possibly. I just need to … to gather myself.”

  “I’ll be downstairs,” Mulaghesh says, “but I won’t have long to wait around. There’s so much to clean up, I’ll have to return to my quarters very shortly.”

  “I understand.”

  The office door clicks closed. Shara arrives at the window just as her aunt’s face appears.

  * * *

  “I believe … that I am almost as much to blame as you,” says Vinya.

  Shara says nothing. She does not move. She does not speak. She only watches. Vinya, for her part, is just as reserved and removed as Shara. The two look at one another through the glass with expressions slightly suspicious, slightly hurt, and slightly aggrieved all at once.

  “I should have stopped you when you were younger,” says Vinya. “Your interest in the Continent was always quite unhealthy. And I have trusted you more and more, letting you go out on your own without my supervision.… But now I regret that. Perhaps I should have brought you home more. Maybe you were right. I wish you could have come here and seen exactly how things are changing here in Parliament, shifting, and … and how delicate and precarious everything is.”

  Ah. I have endangered her political career. Having faced fire and Urav last night, Shara finds it difficult to muster sympathy for someone grappling with parliamentary squabbles. In fact, Shara finds it difficult to bother to do anything in this conversation. She is content to let her aunt keep talking, allowing Shara to watch as Vinya’s intents and motives crystallize in the glass pane like fall’s first frost.

  “The discourse has changed considerably, almost overnight. For so long, no one ever even thought of engaging the Continent, but now … Now we are open to the idea. Now, suddenly, we are curious. Despite all my efforts of the past decade, the ministers are now reconsidering their stance on the Continent. And all their aides, all their assistants, are reviewing all their personal correspondence from the Continent, and they are finding one name on hundreds and hundreds of petitions: Votrov, Votrov, Votrov.…”

  A tremor in her stomach. This Shara did not expect. Could she have been right? Could blowing her cover really be a wild gambit on Vo’s part? And—even more insane—could it have worked? Right before the City Father elections, too …

  “I suppose you are waiting,” says Vinya, “for me to get to the part where I tell you what action I will be taking.”

  Shara purses her lips, blinks; beyond that, she gives Vinya nothing.

  Vinya shakes her head. “I should have told you to never enter the Warehouse,” she says. “I should have known right away that you, as obsessed with the Continent as you are, would have found the Warehouse totally irresistible.”

  Shara cocks an eyebrow. “Wait.… What are you—?”

  “But of course, the second you learned it existed, you’d try and find a way in,” continues Vinya. “You’d break in, poke your nose in it, and rifle its shelves one way or another.”

  “What! Aunt Vinya, I didn’t want to go into the Warehouse! I had to!”

  “Oh? Oh, really? Last I heard, you were interviewing a university maid about the death of Dr. Pangyui. Next, you’ve penetrated the Warehouse, the most classified building currently in existence in this world, burned it down, and then you’re battling Divine river monsters on the front of the paper! With your cover blown! I struggle to understand exactly how all that could have evolved organically, Shara! It seems much more likely that you, as obsessed with the musty dead gods as you are, simply broke in to see what was there for yourself like it was a damn museum, and you wound up getting quite literally burned and freeing some abysmal Divine creature!”

 
Shara’s mouth falls open. She is utterly and completely aghast: of all the mad things she’s experienced in the past forty-eight hours, all of them are minuscule in comparison to this. “I … The Warehouse was mined!”

  “Oh, by the Restorationists?” Vinya pronounces the name as if describing a group of illiterate potato farmers.

  “Yes!”

  “And how did they get in?”

  “They … They used a miracle!”

  “Ah,” says Vinya. “A miracle. Very convenient, those. Especially when, theoretically, most of them shouldn’t work anymore. So why would they mine the Warehouse, which was full of things they themselves held sacred?”

  “To cover their tracks!”

  “And where did their tracks lead, dear?”

  “There … There was something they wanted to steal!”

  “Which was?”

  “I don’t know! It was mined!”

  “So you set off the mine.”

  Shara is so outraged she can hardly speak. “They had been accessing the Warehouse using an ancient Divine miracle! They had been for months!”

  “And what intent would they have for whatever it is they stole from the Warehouse?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “You don’t know.”

  “No! Not yet! I know it … it has something to do with steel!” This sounds pathetic even to Shara’s ears. “I am currently investigating the situation!”

  Vinya nods and slowly sits back in her chair, thinking.

  “Talk to Mulaghesh! Talk to Sigrud! Talk to anyone here!” shouts Shara.

  “Mulaghesh’s reputation is not quite as sterling as it used to be,” says Vinya, “as the Warehouse was her jurisdiction, and is now a pile of ashes. And I would no sooner listen to your Dreyling’s word than I would consult with a rabid dog. But most of all, Shara, my dear, no other operative on the whole of the Continent has reported any hint of such a plot.”

  “That’s because these people are damn good! Unlike us! I arrived in Bulikov to find the walls swarming with rats! These machinations were well under way before I ever got here!”

  Vinya rolls her eyes and shakes her head, concerned, dismayed, as if listening to a demented relative at dinner.

  “You don’t believe me,” says Shara desperately.

  “Shara, you went to Bulikov on your own to investigate a disastrous international scandal. And now, you have caused one much, much larger. Thank the seas that the Continent doesn’t know about the Warehouse. If they knew you’d burned down hundreds of years of history, they’d want your head, and mine! Can you imagine the consequences? And apparently somewhere in the midst of all this, you somehow blew your own cover, which really does not surprise me, at this point. You are either vain and stupid, or reckless and stupid, I am not sure which one I prefer. And I notice that you haven’t mentioned Pangyui’s murder yet. Unless I am mistaken, that was the primary reason I allowed you your time in Bulikov—wasn’t it? Has your investigation into these grand, dark plots shed any light on who might have killed him, and why?”

  Shara glances at Vohannes’s white suitcase, which sits underneath her desk. “Perhaps I would have something,” she says savagely, “if you would allow me to review his dead drop material!”

  Vinya snaps forward. “And if you did that, then you would be directly disobeying a Ministry order! That material is be reviewed by me first! And if I think it could be of use to you, then I will allow you access to it! That’s how the chain of command works! It’s what our entire intelligence agency is predicated on! And I will not allow my arrogant niece to buck the system solely because she feels like reading enough dusty old books gives her more insight than any other intelligence officer! Your fascination with the Divine has always been a fault, not a virtue! And I will tell you right now, right now, that my first instinct is to rip you out of Bulikov and put you on a ship back here right away!”

  Despite the argument, despite the promise of punishment, despite everything, Shara’s heart leaps at this idea. To return home to Ghaladesh … Yet she gets the creeping sense that Vinya’s disappointment in her is a little too complete: Is Vinya actively discrediting me? She is astounded at the thought of it, yet Shara realizes she herself has done this to her own enemies many times: after all, why kill someone when you can make them out to be an incompetent fool?

  “But,” Vinya continues, “I cannot. Because of what you did. You are a glorious hero here in Saypur, Shara. The champion of Bulikov. Hail the conquering hero, grand victor over a threat she herself created! So much talk is swirling throughout the halls of power here right now, and I have no idea what the final resolution will be. I wish I could tell them exactly how terribly you’ve botched everything, but that would require telling them about the Warehouse—which I expressly cannot do. So, rather than endanger any of my functioning, productive policies, I will do nothing. I will do nothing but give them all what they want—you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. I am promoting you, dear. I am fully recognizing your status as chief diplomat to Bulikov. And I am putting you somewhere where you cannot damage any more operations.”

  Shara blanches. “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes. You will be a public creature. I am, for the moment, suspending all your intelligence credentials. You will lose all clearance to all sensitive materials, to all operations. Any requests you make to any other Ministry operatives will not be answered. You will be, in effect, the very prominent and very accessible face of Saypur in Bulikov. And I am sure you will be applauded and celebrated for it,” she says acidly.

  Shara feels sick. There is nothing—nothing—that could ever be more terrifying to intelligence operatives than being installed in public office, exposed and vulnerable to all the pleas and restrictions they could previously simply sidestep in their shadow life.

  “You will, I think, be very busy,” says Vinya. “Bulikov and Saypur very much wish to talk to one another, it seems. And they will talk through you. I don’t know if you and that man, Votrov, concocted this scheme together, but if so, you must be so proud that it worked—so I am going to make sure you shoulder the majority of the burden, for now.”

  So this is her punishment, Shara thinks. I almost would prefer to be indicted and imprisoned. But Vinya never has had a taste for mercy.

  Shara clears her throat. Increasingly, she feels like she is in a game of Batlan where her opponent is secretly playing another game, but she is willing to try anything at this point. “Auntie Vinya … Listen.”

  “Yes?”

  “If … if I was to tell you that there is a real, credible threat in Bulikov … that I have witnessed, firsthand, evidence indicating one of the original Divinities, in some form or fashion, has survived … What would you do?”

  Vinya looks at her pityingly. “Is that your great secret? Your terrible suspicion? That’s why you went into the Warehouse?”

  “Yes. I’m sure of it. I really am, Aunt Vinya.”

  “Oh, Shara … I would do the same thing I did when I heard it the last time, two months ago. And the time before that, seven months ago. And the time before that, and the time before that, and the time before that.… I receive, on average, nearly ten reports a year telling me that the gods aren’t dead, that they’re still kicking around somewhere, planning their return. We have received a steady stream of these since the War. If we stacked them, the pile of reports would be three stories tall! And all of them are always completely convinced this will happen—because the Continent is convinced this will happen. It’s their silly fable, their desperate dream, like the Dreylings and their Dauvkind. Lost kings and queens that will one day sail back … It’s nonsense, Shara.”

  “But … I am the most experienced expert on everything Divine. Doesn’t that count for something?”

  “You are the operative most obsessed with everything Divine,” Vinya says gently. “And that is something very different. You may have your interests and pet curiosities, Shara—but you are a servant of Saypur
first and foremost.”

  Shara nearly shouts, Like you? Who owns you, Auntie? Who’s gotten to you? Why is it that you’re suddenly so much more secretive, and so much more irrational, than you’ve ever been before? But she does not, of course: to tip one’s hand in such a manner would be unwise.

  “Perhaps this will be good for you,” says Vinya. “Maybe you will finally, finally learn something from this.”

  Shara nods, looking crestfallen, but thinking, I believe I’ve already learned a lot, Auntie.

  “I hate to say this, but please don’t contact me like this again, dear,” says Vinya. “Not until everything’s settled. We must be so careful in the wake of everything that’s happened. We are all being watched very carefully now. And miracles, as you know, are so terribly dangerous.” She smiles sadly. “Good-bye, my dear.”

  With a wipe of her fingers, she’s gone.

  Shara stands in the empty room, feeling suddenly more alone than she ever has in her life.

  * * *

  Shara slowly closes the window shutters. Her hands are trembling with rage. Never has she felt so utterly and completely victimized: it’s as if she watched her own character assassination take place right before her eyes, helpless to stop it. It’s too perfect, she tells herself. Vinya took me apart too perfectly. That’s why I’m so angry—she knew just what to say. This does not, however, make her any less angry.

  Shara wishes she had someone to talk to about this. But the only person she’s ever really honestly talked to about the Divine was Efrem Pangyui, for the handful of days they had together.

  She looks back at the white suitcase under her desk.

  She walks over, pulls out the suitcase, puts it on her desk, and thinks.

  Shara Komayd graduated from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs training academy with a record low number of demerits. She graduated from Fadhuri with full marks. And she has always been one of the few high-level operatives in the Ministry to actually, personally, do all of her paperwork herself—a virtue she takes pride in.

  Always the good soldier. Never a toe out of line. And look at what it’s gotten me.