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

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “I absolutely am. So get a move on, and if you need the toe of my boot to speed you on your way, then I will be only too happy to apply it to your dainty backsides! What are you all staring at me for? Fucking move!”

  I am lost among the seas of fate and time

  But at least I have love.

  —MESSAGE SCRAWLED ON THE COMMON ROOM WALL OF FADHURI ACADEMY

  WHAT IS REAPED

  Volka descends the stairs in the Seat of the World with a satisfied air. “I have done good works,” he says aloud. “And I think Father Kolkan shall be pleased.”

  Vohannes can’t help but scoff in disgust.

  “And now”—Volka takes the final step off of the stairs—“to bring him home.” He looks sideways at where Vohannes and Shara are trapped. “Maybe after this, we shall embrace as true brothers. Perhaps he will cleanse you. Perhaps he will show mercy.”

  “If he made you in his image, Volka,” says Vohannes, “then I very much fucking doubt it.”

  Volka sniffs and walks to Kolkan’s atrium. The Restorationists are arranged before the clear glass pane, a kneeling congregation awaiting their prophet. Volka calmly drifts through their ranks—Shara is reminded of a debutante at a ball—and stops before one man in particular.

  Shara’s bonds are growing looser. “Keep trying,” she says desperately. “Please, Vo.”

  Vohannes grunts, pulls harder.

  “The hammer,” Volka says softly.

  The man produces a long silver hammer. Volka takes it delicately, then walks to the ladder and slowly climbs up to the glass.

  Shara almost has her thumb through one loop of rope, but this has pulled another cord tight around her wrist.

  Volka holds the silver hammer to his lips and whispers to it, chanting something.

  I don’t want to see him, thinks Shara. I can’t. Anyone but him, anyone but Kolkan…

  She twists at the ropes. Something hot drips into her palm. She feels one cord slip over her pinky knuckle, then her thumb.

  The silver hammer quivers, its edges blurring as if the metal itself trembles, filled with an energy it can barely contain.

  Vohannes grabs hold of the ropes; Shara lunges forward, hoping they’ll break, but they hold fast.

  Volka holds the hammer high. The yellow-orange sunlight blazes off of the hammer’s head.

  The dribbling heat in Shara’s palm is now a trickle, thick and wet.

  Someone do something, thinks Shara.

  Volka cries out and swings the hammer forward.

  With a tinny snap, the glass shatters.

  Golden sunlight pours through, illuminating the white stone of the temple floor until it flares bright. It is a sun, a star, a blaze of light that is pure, terrible, heatless.

  Both Vohannes and Shara cry out, blinded. The burst of light is so shocking that they twist away and fall over. Something grinds uncomfortably in Shara’s wrist: a bad sprain, perhaps.

  Then silence. Shara waits, then looks up.

  The men in Kolkashtani wraps are staring at something before them.

  There is a figure standing in front of the broken window, sunlight falling on its shoulders.

  It is man-like, but it is very tall: nine feet tall at least. He—if it really is a he—is draped in thick gray robes from head to toe, concealing his face, his hands, his feet; yet his head slowly turns from side to side with a puzzled air, taking in his environs and the kneeling men before him as if awoken from a very peculiar dream.

  “No,” whispers Shara.

  “He lives,” says Volka. “He lives!”

  The robed figure turns its head to look at him.

  “Father Kolkan!” cries Volka. “Father Kolkan, you are brought back to us! We are saved! We are saved!”

  * * *

  —

  Volka scurries down the ladder and joins the men before Kolkan, who still has hardly moved. Volka drops to his knees and falls to his face, hands splayed at the toes of the Divinity.

  “Father Kolkan,” Volka says, “are you all right?”

  Kolkan is silent. One would mistake him for a statue, if the breeze did not rustle his robes so.

  “You have been away for many, many years,” says Volka. “I wish I could tell you that all the world is right and good upon your waking. But in your absence, all has gone awry: our colonies have rebelled, they have murdered your brothers and sisters, and they have enslaved us all!”

  The men around him all nod and peek up at Kolkan, expecting him to react with shock: but Kolkan is still and silent under his gray robes.

  “Vo,” whispers Shara.

  “Yes?”

  “Do what I do,” she whispers. Still bound, she rolls over onto her face, kneels, and bows forward until her forehead kisses the floor.

  “What are you—?”

  “Penitence,” Shara says quietly. “Kolkan will always recognize penitence.”

  “What?”

  “Prostrate yourself before him! And do nothing else! Anything else will be considered an offense!”

  Reluctantly, Vohannes rolls over and bows as well.

  And if Kolkan doesn’t pay much attention, thinks Shara, maybe I can finish what Vo started on my knot.

  “Voortya was killed in the colonies,” says Volka. “Taalhavras and Ahanas were slain when the colonials invaded. And Jukov, cowardly Jukov, surrendered to them, and was executed! The colonials rule over us as if we are dogs, and they have outlawed our love for you, Father Kolkan. We are not allowed to worship you as we wish, to hold you in our hearts. But we have waited for you, Father Kolkan! My followers and I have kept the faith, and worked to bring you back! We even rebuilt your atrium in the Seat of the World for you! I labored to carry the stones from Kovashta itself back to this place, so when you returned you would be met by signs of praise and worship! And we have captured the most heretical betrayer of your ways, and the child of the very man who overthrew our Holy Lands!” Volka points backward at Shara and Vohannes and does a brief double take when he sees them bowed forward in penitence. “Wise cowards, they throw themselves on your mercy. But so do we all! We all throw ourselves upon your mercy, Father Kolkan! We are your devoted servants! We have created an army of the sky to make war for you, but we fear this will not be enough! We beg of you, please, help us throw off our shackles, rise up, and bring righteousness and glory back to the world!”

  The Seat of the World is silent. Shara tilts her head up slightly to see and begins to quietly work one hand out of her ropes.

  Kolkan’s head turns back and forth as he surveys his tiny, black-clad flock.

  He shifts from one foot to the other and examines the rest of the Seat of the World.

  A voice is then heard somewhere in the temple; not heard with Shara’s ears, but somewhere in her mind—a muffled voice that could be the sound of rocks being crushed together, though there is a single word in it:

  “WHERE?”

  Volka hesitates and lifts his head. “Wh-where what, my Father Kolkan?”

  Kolkan continues staring around the Seat of the World. The voice sounds again: “WHERE IS THE FLAME AND THE SPARROW?”

  Volka blinks and glances back at his lieutenants, who are just as dumbfounded as he is. “I…I am not sure what you mean, Father Kolkan.”

  “WHEN I AM MET,” says the voice, “I AM TO BE MET WITH THE FLAME AND THE SPARROW.”

  A long pause.

  “WHY DO YOU NOT BEAR THEM?”

  “I…had never heard of this ritual, Father Kolkan,” says Volka. He rises to a kneel, like the rest of his followers. “I read so much about you, but…but you have been gone from this world for many hundreds of years. This must have been a rite that I missed.”

  “DO YOU,” asks the voice, “INSULT ME?”

  “No! No, no! No, Father Kolkan, we would never do such a thin
g!” Volka’s followers fervently shake their heads.

  “THEN WHY DO YOU NOT BEAR THEM?”

  “I just…I didn’t know, Father Kolkan. I am not even sure what they—”

  “IGNORANCE,” says the voice, “IS NO EXCUSE.”

  Kolkan steps forward and looks at his flock. His head tilts back and forth, as if seeing many things in them.

  “YOU ARE UNWORTHY.”

  Volka is mute with shock.

  The voice says, “YOU HAVE BATHED FRUITS IN THE WATERS OF THE OCEAN. YOU HAVE MIXED LINENS AND COTTONS WITH YOUR GARMENTS. YOU HAVE CREATED GLASS WITH MANY FLAWS. YOU HAVE TASTED THE FLESH OF SONGBIRDS. I SEE THESE WRONGS IN YOU. YOU ARE UNREPENTANT OF THEM. AND NOW, AS I EMERGE, YOU DO NOT MEET ME WITH THE FLAME AND THE SPARROW.”

  Volka and his followers glance among themselves, wondering what to do. “F-Father Kolkan, please,” murmurs Volka. “Please…forgive us. We followed all your edicts that we could find, that we knew. But we freed you, Father Kolkan! Please forgive u—”

  Kolkan points at him. Volka halts as if frozen.

  “FORGIVENESS,” says Kolkan’s voice, “IS FOR THE WORTHY.”

  Kolkan looks at Volka’s followers. “YOU ARE AS THE DUST AND THE STONE AND THE MUD.”

  From what Shara can see, there is no change, no flash of light; but in one instant, they are men, and in the next, they are statues of dark stone.

  Volka stands before Kolkan, still frozen, but alive: Shara can see his eyes turning in his sockets.

  “AND YOU,” says Kolkan’s voice. “YOU THINK YOU ARE NOT AS THE DUST AND THE STONE AND THE MUD. YOU WILL BE REMINDED OF WHAT YOU ARE.”

  Whatever hold Kolkan had on him is apparently lifted, and Volka falls to the ground, gasping. “I…I will,” he says. “I will, Father Kolkan. I will remem—” He gags, lurches forward, and shrieks with pain. “Ah! Ah, my stomach, it—” Shara can see his belly bulging, swelling, as if pregnant. Horrified, she turns her head back to face the ground.

  Volka’s shrieks build and build until finally they are a gurgle. She hears him fall to the ground. There is a pop! as the Butterfly’s Bell around them vanishes, and Volka is silent, though she can hear him struggling.

  “YOU WILL KNOW PAIN.”

  There is a sound like heavy cloth being torn. Helpless to stop herself, Shara glances up. Black round stones—hundreds of them—come spilling out of Volka’s open stomach, glistening in a wash of blood, the pile growing and growing even as Shara watches.

  She gags. Kolkan looks up slightly, and she turns back to face the ground.

  “HM,” says Kolkan’s voice.

  She and Vohannes are silent. She can hear Vohannes’s trembling breath beside her.

  “THIS IS A SIGHT I KNOW WELL,” says his voice. “AND A SIGHT I WELCOME. TIME MAY HAVE PASSED, BUT THOSE OF FLESH STILL REQUIRE JUDGMENT.”

  Shara feels her limbs stiffen. She wonders if Kolkan is turning them to stone, but apparently not: she is paralyzed, just as Volka was.

  There is a crack, and Vohannes begins to slide toward Kolkan, as though the stone floor of the temple is a conveyor belt. Out of the side of her eye Shara can see Vohannes look back at her, terrified, shocked. Don’t leave me! he seems to say. Don’t!

  “COME BEFORE ME,” says Kolkan’s voice. “AND PLEAD YOUR CASE.”

  Shara cannot see, but she hears Vohannes’s voice: “M-my case?”

  “YES. YOU HAVE ASSUMED THE POSE OF THE SHAMEFUL AND THE PENITENT. PLEAD YOUR CASE, AND I WILL CONSIDER MY JUDGMENT.”

  It’s like his judgments before he pronounced his edicts, thinks Shara. But Vo doesn’t know what the hells he’s doing.

  A long silence. Then Vohannes says, “I—I am…I am not an old man, Father Kolkan, but I have seen much life. I have…I have lost my family. I have lost my friends. I have lost my home, in many ways. But…but I will not distract you with these tales.”

  Vohannes nearly shouts the word “distract.” If she had the mind for it, Shara would roll her eyes. Not a particularly subtle message, Vo….

  “I am penitent, Father Kolkan,” says Vohannes. His voice grows stronger. “I am. I am sorrowful. I am ashamed. Namely, I am ashamed that I was asked to be ashamed, that it was expected of me.” He swallows. “And I am ashamed that, to a certain extent, I did as they asked. I did and, and I do hate myself. I hated myself because I didn’t know another way to live.

  “I am sorrowful. I am sorrowful that I happened to be born into a world where being disgusted with yourself was what you were supposed to be. I am sorrowful that my fellow countrymen feel that being human is something to repress, something ugly, something nasty. It’s…It’s just a fucking shame. It really is.”

  If Shara could move, her mouth would drop open in shock.

  “I am penitent,” says Vohannes. “I am penitent for all the relationships this shame has ruined. I am penitent that I’ve allowed my shame and unhappiness to spread to others. I’ve fucked men and I’ve fucked women, Father Kolkan. I have sucked numerous pricks, and I have had my prick sucked by numerous people. I have fucked and been fucked. And it was lovely, really lovely. I had an excellent time doing it, and I would gladly do it again. I really would.” He laughs. “I have been lucky enough to find and meet and come to hold beautiful people in my arms—honestly, some beautiful, lovely, brilliant people—and I am filled with regret that my awful self-hate drove them away.

  “I loved you, Shara. I did. I was very bad at it, but I loved you in my own confused, mixed-up way. I still do.

  “I don’t know if you made the world, Father Kolkan. And I don’t know if you made my people or if they made themselves. But if it was your words they taught me as a child, and if it’s your words that encourage this vile self-disgust, this ridiculous self-flagellation, this incredibly damaging idea that to be human and to love and to risk making mistakes is wrong, then…Well. I guess fuck you, Father Kolkan.”

  A long, long, long silence.

  Then Kolkan’s voice, trembling with rage: “YOU ARE UNWORTHY.”

  The Seat of the World lights up with screams.

  Shara struggles against her paralysis, wishing to rise up and run to Vo’s side, but she cannot: whatever miracle Kolkan has used holds her down.

  She wants to scream with Vohannes, even as his screams intensify—shrieks of unbearable, inconceivable pain, louder and louder—as Kolkan applies unspeakable tortures to him.

  Then the miracle breaks, and she is free.

  Shara sits up and looks: Kolkan stands before Vohannes, one long, rag-wrapped finger pressed against Vohannes’s forehead; Vohannes trembles, his flesh quaking as if the Divinity is pouring endless agony and pain into him, and has completely forgotten about her.

  Go to him! a part of her thinks.

  Another part says, He baited Kolkan into doing this in order to free you. Kolkan’s so angry you’ve slipped his mind, for now—so what will you do with this chance?

  Weeping, she rips her hands out of the loose ropes, shuts her eyes, remembers the lines from the Jukoshtava, and draws a door in the air.

  There is the sound of a whip crack. She steps forward into the Cupboard and her body vanishes from her sight.

  Kolkan looks up. Vohannes drops to the floor, pale as snow, and does not move.

  Shara shuts her eyes and doesn’t dare to breathe: Parnesi’s Cupboard does not conceal sound.

  Kolkan shuffles forward, his head sweeping the Seat of the World. Shara feels an immense pressure exerting itself on her, as if she is sinking deeper and deeper into the ocean. He’s looking for me, feeling for me….

  “THE CUPBOARD,” says Kolkan’s voice. “I REMEMBER THIS.”

  Shara feels sick with terror. Kolkan is less than four feet away from her now, and she is awed by his size, his filth, the stench of decay leaking from underneath his many cloaks.

  “I COULD CAVE IN THIS TEMPL
E,” he says, “AND CRUSH YOU. IF YOU ARE STILL HERE.”

  He looks up, into the ceiling of the Seat of the World.

  “BUT I HAVE BIGGER THINGS TO DO.”

  Then, abruptly, Kolkan is gone, as if he had never been here.

  Shara still doesn’t breathe. She stares about the Seat of the World, wondering if the Divinity could be lurking in some dark corner.

  A voice comes booming down out of the skies: “THIS CITY HAS GROWN UNWORTHY.”

  “Oh, no,” says Shara. She looks at Vohannes, wishing to go to him. Prioritize, snaps the operative’s voice in her head. Grief is for later.

  She whispers, “I’m sorry, Vo.” And she stands and sprints out of the temple.

  * * *

  —

  All across Bulikov, in the fish markets and the alleys, by the Solda and in the teashops, the citizens stare at the enormous white cathedral that has suddenly appeared in their city, and jump as the voice of Kolkan echoes through the streets.

  “YOU HAVE BROKEN COUNTLESS LAWS,” says the voice.

  Children at play stop where they are and listen.

  “YOU HAVE LAIN WITH ONE ANOTHER IN JOY.”

  A street sweeper, still holding his broom, slowly turns to look up into the sky.

  “YOU HAVE BUILT FLOORS OF WHITE STONE.”

  The elderly men at the Ghoshtok-Solda Dinner Club stare at one another, then at their bottles of wine and whiskey.

  “YOU HAVE EATEN BRIGHT FRUITS,” says the voice, “AND ALLOWED THEIR SEEDS TO ROT IN DITCHES.”

  In a barbershop beside the Solda, the barber, stunned, has removed most of an old man’s mustache; the old man, just as stunned, has yet to realize.

  “AND YOU HAVE WALKED IN THE DAY,” says the voice, “WITH YOUR FLESH EXPOSED. YOU LIVE WITH FLESH OF OTHER FLESH. YOU HAVE LOOKED UPON THE SECRETS OF YOUR FLESH, AND KNOWN THEM, AND FOR THIS I WEEP FOR YOU.”

  In the House of Seven Sisters infirmary, Captain Nesrhev, still bound up in many bandages, sets his pipe aside and calls to the nurses: “What the fuck is going on?”