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

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  She falls back into their arms: two men, maybe three. The stranger—Vohannes, yet not Vohannes—wipes his nose. “Very good,” he says. “Come along.”

  They carry her down the river walk. The fumes force their way deeper into her brain. She thinks, Why isn’t someone helping me? But the bystanders merely watch them curiously, wondering why these men appear to be miming carrying something heavy between them.

  She gives up; the fumes coil around her; she sleeps.

  Across the snowy hills

  Down a frozen river

  Through the copse of trees

  I will wait for you.

  I will always wait for you there.

  My fire will be burning

  A light in the cold

  A light for you and me

  For I love you so.

  Though sometimes I may seem absent

  Know that my fire will be always be ready

  For those with love in their hearts

  And the willingness to share it.

  —BOOK OF THE RED LOTUS, PART II, 9.12–9.24

  FAMILY TIES

  Shara wakes facing a blank gray wall. A trickle of air unwinds in her lungs before her body is overtaken with coughs.

  “Oh ho!” says a merry voice. “Goodness! She’s awake.”

  She rolls over, her brain fuzzy and hazy, and sees she’s in a barren, windowless room that is somehow familiar.

  There are two doors to the room, one closed and the other open. The stranger stands at the open doorway, now dressed in a Kolkashtani wrap. He smiles at her. His eyes are like wet stones sitting in his skull.

  “I really cannot tell,” he says, “what he could have seen in you.”

  Shara blinks languidly. Chloroform, she remembers. It’ll be nearly an hour before I’m lucid….

  “You are, as far as I can see, an unremarkable little Saypuri,” he says. “You are small, dirt brown—perhaps clay brown would be a fitting term, earthy, musky, an unsightly, not at all flesh-like darkness—with the characteristic weak chin and hooked nose. Your wrists, as is common in your sort, are terribly thin and fragile, and your arms hirsute and unlovely, as is the rest of your body, I imagine—I expect you would have to shave quite frequently to even compare to the body of any woman of the Holy Lands. Your breasts are not the dangling, ponderous piles I see so often among your breed, but neither are they particularly becoming—in fact, they hardly exist at all. And your eyes, my dear…Look at those glasses. Do your eyes function at all? I wonder—what must it be like to be such a runty, unintended little creature? How sad your life must be, to be a creature of the ash lands, a person made of clay….” He shakes his head, smiling. It is a horrible perversion of Vohannes’s smile: where Vo’s is full of boundless, eager charm, this man’s smile suggests barely contained rage. “But the true nature of your crime—the true infraction you commit, as all your kind does, is that you refuse to acknowledge it. You refuse to acknowledge your own failings—your miserable, unsightly failings! You know no shame! You do not hide your flesh and body! You do not cower at our feet! You do not recognize that you, untouched by the Divine, bereft of blessings, deprived of enlightenment, are unneeded, unintended, superfluous at worst and servile at best! Your kind holds such lofty pretenses—and that is your true sin, if creatures such as yourself are even capable of sin.”

  He is so much like Vohannes, in so many ways: many of his gestures and much of his bearing are Vo’s. Yet there is something strangely more decayed and yet delicate about this man: something in the way he cocks his hips, the way he crosses his arms….She remembers the mhovost, and its effeminate walk back and forth, mimicking someone she hadn’t yet glimpsed.

  Shara swallows and asks, “Who…?”

  “If I were to break you open,” says the stranger, “on the inside, you would be empty….A clay shell of a person, remarkable only in your semblance of self. What did you see in her, Vohannes?”

  The stranger looks to the corner of the room.

  Sitting on the floor in the corner, his arms wrapped around his knees, is Vohannes: his face has been horribly beaten, one eye swollen and the color of frog skin, his upper lip rusty from old blood.

  “Vo…” whispers Shara.

  “I had hoped that she would at least offer some temptation of the flesh,” says the stranger. “Then you could perhaps excuse your dalliance. But there is so little flesh on her to tempt you with. I honestly cannot identify any trait you found desirable in this creature. I really can’t, little brother.”

  Shara blinks.

  Brother?

  She says, “V…V…”

  The stranger slowly turns to her and cocks an eyebrow.

  Vohannes’s voice echoes back to her: He joined up with a group of pilgrims when he was fifteen and went on a trek to the icy north to try and find some damn temple.

  “V…Volka?” she says. “Volka Votrov?”

  He smiles. “Ah! So. You know my name, little clay child.”

  She tries to corral her drunken thoughts. “I…I thought you were dead….”

  He shakes his head, beaming. “Death,” he says, “is for the weak.”

  * * *

  —

  “ ‘For those who wish to know me,’ ” quotes Volka, “ ‘for those who wish to be seen by my eye, and to be loved, there can be no pain too great, no trial too terrible, no punishment too small for you to pass through. For you are my children, and you must suffer to be great.’ ”

  Volka smiles indulgently at Vohannes, but it’s Shara who speaks up: “The Kolkashtava.”

  Volka’s smile dims, and he watches her coldly.

  “Book Two, I believe,” says Shara. “His writs to Saint Mornvieva, upon why Mornvieva’s nephew was crushed in an avalanche.”

  “And Mornvieva was so shamed,” says Volka, “that he had asked Father Kolkan why this had happened, and questioned him in such a manner—”

  “—that he struck off his own right hand,” says Shara, “and his right foot, blinded his right eye, and removed his right testicle.” Volka grins. “It is so strange to hear a creature like you say such things! It’s like seeing a bird talk.”

  “Are you suggesting,” Shara asks, “that by torturing us, you will better us?”

  “I will not torture you. At least, not any more than I’ve had done to my little brother here. But it would better you, yes. You would know shame. It would remove that prideful gleam from your eye. Do you even know what you speak of?”

  “I am willing to bet you think Kolkan is alive,” says Shara.

  Volka’s smile is completely gone now.

  “Where have you been, Mr. Votrov?” she asks. “How did you survive? I was told you died.”

  “Oh, but I did die, little ash girl,” says Volka. “I died upon a mountain, far to the north. And was reborn anew.”

  He turns his hand over: the inside of his palm flickers with candlelight, though Shara can see no flame. “The old miracles still live, in me.” He clutches the invisible flame, and the light dies. “It was a trial of spirit. Yet that is why we went to the monastery of Kovashta in the first place: to try ourselves. Everyone else died during our pilgrimage. All the men, much older than me. More experienced. Stronger. They starved to death or froze to death or fell ill and perished. Only I trudged on. Only I was worthy. Only I fought through the wind and the snow and the teeth of the mountains to find that place, Kovashta, the last monastery, the forgotten dwelling place of our Father Kolkan, where he dreamt up his holy edicts and set the world to rights. I spent almost three decades of my life there, alone in those walls, living off of scraps, drinking melting snow…and reading. I learned many things.” He reaches out with his index finger and touches something: it is as if there’s a pane of glass in the doorway, and he runs his finger down its middle, the tip of his index white and flat, pr
essed against an invisible barrier. “The Butterfly’s Bell. One of Kolkan’s oldest miracles. It was originally used to force people to confess their sins—air, you see, cannot get in or out, and only on the brink of death are we ever really truthful….But don’t be concerned. That is not your fate.” He looks at Shara. “You failed, do you know? You and your people.”

  Shara is silent.

  “Do you know?”

  “No,” says Shara. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t. Primitive thing…Because there, you see, I found him.” He reaches into his wrap and holds out a charm around his neck: the scale of Kolkan. “I meditated for years, hearing nothing. And finally, one day, I decided to meditate until I died, until I heard his whispering, for death was better than that bitter silence….I almost starved to death. Maybe I did starve to death. But then I heard him, whispering in Bulikov. I heard Father Kolkan! He had never died! He had never been gone from this world! He had never been…been touched by your Kaj!” This last word is a savage growl: Shara glimpses yellow-and-brown teeth. “I had a vision: there was a whole part of Bulikov—the true Bulikov, the Divine City—that was free of your influence! Hidden from you, from everyone! And that was when I knew there was still hope for my people. There was light amidst the storm, salvation waiting for the holy and the dutiful. I could return, and free us all from captivity. It was just a matter of getting to him, of finding him, and freeing him….Our father. Our lost father.”

  “Just like old times,” says Vohannes. “Running to Daddy…”

  Volka’s beatific joy vanishes. “Shut up!” he snarls. “Shut up! Shut your filthy traitor mouth!”

  Vohannes is silent.

  Volka watches him, trembling. “Your…Your tainted mouth! What has your mouth touched, you filthy whelp? What flesh has it touched? Women’s? Men’s? Children’s?”

  Vohannes rolls his eyes. “How distasteful.”

  “You knew you were malformed,” says Volka. “You always were, little Vo. There was always something wrong with you—a strain of imperfection that should have been weeded out.”

  Vohannes, disinterested, sniffs and wipes his nose.

  “Have you no excuse for yourself?”

  “I was not aware,” says Vohannes, “that I needed any.”

  “Father agreed with me. Did you know that? He once told me he wished you and Mother had died in your birth! He said it would have unburdened him of a weak-hearted wife and a weakling son.”

  Vohannes swallows impassively. “This revelation,” he says, “does not surprise me in the least. Such a tender man, Daddy was.”

  “You slight our father’s name just to make me hate you more, as if that could be possible.”

  “I shit,” snaps Vohannes, “upon Father’s name, upon the Votrov name, and upon Kolkan’s name! And I am glad the Kaj never killed Kolkan, for now when the Saypuris slaughter him like all the other gods, I shall have a chance to climb up on his chin and shit inside his mouth!”

  Volka stares at him, briefly taken aback. “You will not get that chance,” he whispers. “I will keep you alive, you and her, so Kolkan himself can come and judge you both, and lay down his edicts. You don’t even know, do you? He has been here, in Bulikov, tallying the sins of this place. He has been watching you. He has been waiting. He knows what you have done. I will raise the Seat of the World from its tomb. And when he emerges, you will know pain, little brother.” Shara has decided she definitely knows this room, bereft of furniture and adornment: she remembers how the mhovost laughed at her, and how she flicked the candle into its chest, and the stairs of earth leading down….

  I know exactly where we are, she thinks, and where Kolkan is.

  “He’s down in the Seat of the World, isn’t he?” she says aloud.

  Volka looks at her like she just slapped him.

  Vohannes frowns. “In that rotten old place?”

  “No, no. Down underneath, where the real Seat is hidden, yards below us, where we are right now.” She shuts her eyes. The fumes from the rag have wrapped her brain in a fog, but she cannot stop the thought from thrashing up to her. “And the Divine were fond of using glass as storage space….Ahanas hid prisoners in a windowpane, and even kept a small vacation spot in a glass sphere. Jukov stored the body of St. Kivrey in a glass bead. And when I was down there, in the Seat of the World, I looked for the famous stained glass I have always heard of…but all the windows were broken. All except one, in the Kolkashtani atrium. And I thought it was so curious, at the time, that it was whole, unbroken, yet blank.”

  She opens her eyes. “That’s where the other gods jailed him, didn’t they? That’s where Kolkan has been imprisoned for the past three hundred years. A living god, chained within a pane of glass.”

  * * *

  —

  “I don’t quite know everything that’s going on,” says Vohannes chipperly, “but this is pretty entertaining, isn’t it, Volka?”

  “How do you mean to free him?” asks Shara.

  Volka stares at her furiously, breath whistling in his nostrils. “Unless,” says Shara, “it’s a simple Release miracle…one any priest would know.”

  “Not any priest,” says Volka hoarsely.

  “So it must be much more potent. Perhaps…,” says Shara slowly. “Perhaps something from a monk from the Kovashta? Something you found written down in their vaults?”

  Volka growls like he’s been struck.

  “Are you so sure, Brother,” asks Vohannes, “that she’s your inferior?”

  “And Wiclov?” asks Shara. “Will he participate? It was you who was running him, wasn’t it? You were the man who trapped the mhovost here and set it up as a guard dog.”

  “What happened to Wiclov will seem like a blessing in comparison to what happens to you,” snaps Volka. “Wiclov, he was…He was a believer. A true Kolkashtani. But once he led you to the Seat of the World, and once you realized how I had found the Warehouse of stolen items, I could not forgive him.”

  “What did you do?” asks Shara.

  Volka shrugs. “I had to find out if the Butterfly’s Bell really worked somehow. I had never seen it performed. Wiclov made…a tolerable subject. I reminded myself—we are but instruments in the hands of the Divine. I did not mind you chasing after Wiclov. You obviously had no idea I was even here, for I’d laid all my plans years before you ever arrived.”

  “Though I startled you, didn’t I?” says Shara. “When I arrived, you thought you had to hurry—so you attacked Vohannes’s house to try and force him to give you what you needed.”

  “The arrival of the great-granddaughter of the Kaj would upset any true Continental,” says Volka. “And I knew who you were.” Another flash of teeth as brown as old wood. “I had stared at portraits of the Kaj for hours, days, thinking of him, hating him, wishing I could have been there to end his life, stop history from bringing us here….And the second I saw you—saw your eyes, your nose, your mouth—I saw the past come to life. I knew you were his kin. From there, it was easy to find out who you were, and a simple thing to tell my countrymen.”

  “Wait….You blew my cover?” She glances at Vohannes, who stares at the two of them, uncomprehending.

  “Yet they did not rise up against you, nor did they hang you in the streets as I expected,” says Volka. “They praised you for killing Urav, one of Kolkan’s sacred children. I honestly cannot tell if you are actually talented, or if your inopportune appearances are all coincidence. Like today. Did you actually follow us to the real Votrov estate, or did you simply stumble into it?”

  “Oh,” says Shara. “You were in the house, weren’t you? When Sigrud and I traveled to Old Bulikov. You saw us.”

  “I wouldn’t even be performing this rite now if things had gone as I intended,” says Volka. “But again, your intrusion forces us to make haste. You went to the true Bulikov. You sa
w the waiting ships. So, rather arbitrarily, unfortunately, the new age will have to begin today.”

  “Will you destroy the city now, with your warships?” asks Shara. “Why do you need flying warships at all, if you’re freeing a Divinity? Can’t Kolkan just point a finger at us and turn us into stone?”

  “Why would we bother with the city?” Volka says. “It’s wiser to divide and conquer. Saypur is wed to the sea—its strength lies in ships. Our vessels of the air will race directly to Saypur itself and shell its harbors and shipyards before your blasphemous nation ever realizes what is happening. We wished for more ships, but I’ve no doubt that even with only six vessels, we’ll still outmatch any Saypuri weaponry. For all its might, Saypur could never expect an attack from the air. We will rain down fire from the clouds. We will shower destruction from the sky like angels. We will castrate your vile country, as it deserves.”

  Irrationally, this revelation horrifies her more than the resurgence of any Divinity. Six six-inchers a ship, probably, she thinks rapidly. Thirty-six cannons total. They could shred our infrastructure and cripple Saypur’s navy for months, even years, in a single day. We’d be fighting with both hands tied behind our backs.

  “This is good, you know,” says Volka. “This is right. The world is our crucible. And with each burn, we are shaped. You will know pain. Both of you will know pain. You must. And scourged of flesh, stripped of sin, some part of you, some shred of bone, might just be saved, and found worthy in his eyes.” He takes a breath. “And he will see you both. How pleased with me he’ll be—handing over not only one of the most monstrous betrayers of the old ways, but also the very child of the man who killed the gods.”

  Volka steps aside. Two thickset men in Kolkashtani wraps join him at the doorway. There’s a very faint pop as Volka’s Butterfly’s Bell dissolves. The two men walk to Shara and Vohannes, violently thrust both of them onto the ground, and tightly bind their hands. Shara is still too sluggish to resist much, and Vohannes is obviously quite injured.