City of Stairs

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “He sounds like a very wise man.”

  “Don’t try to be cute. You’re terribly bad at it.”

  “And this Wiclov,” says Shara, “would he …?”

  “Would he have been one of the biggest agitators behind the protests against Pangyui?” Vohannes smiles savagely, a surprisingly ugly expression. “Oh, yes. I’ve no doubt he’s neck-deep in all this, and I’d not weep to see you sic your dogs on him. The man is a reeking bag of goat shit with a beard.”

  “There are two other City Fathers aligned with the New Bulikov movement,” she says, “but none attract near as much hate as you.”

  “Ah, well,” says Vohannes, “I’ve become a bit of an iconic figure. I have always had a taste for fashion and architecture, you know that.… And part of it is that it’s fun to rile them up. I indulge in a bit of decadence right in the open, and offend their fusty old values of modesty and repression, and they let loose a string of hateful screeds that wins me however many new voters.” A dainty puff of his cigarette. “It’s win-win, from my perspective. They also mistrust my background, though.… Considering my education, they believe me half-Saypuri.” Then a guilty look: “But I do have … a few projects of my own that may cause friction.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well … Saypur is the largest buyer of weapons in the world, of course. But all those soldiers are stuck using bolt-shots rather than rifles, just mechanized bows and arrows. The issue, as you may know, is one of saltpeter: Saypur and her supporting nations have almost none of it, and you can’t make gunpowder without it. The Continent, however, has saltpeter aplenty.…”

  “So you want to make munitions for Saypur?” she asks, astonished. What she does not say is: How have I not heard about this?

  He shrugs. “My family made bricks. Mining isn’t that much different.”

  “But, Vo, that’s … Are you an idiot?”

  “An idiot?”

  “Yes! That’s far, far more dangerous than any political shenanigans you’ve got planned! Collaborating with Saypur in basic trade is controversial enough, but making weapons … I’m surprised no one in Bulikov has murdered you yet!”

  “Yes, well, it’s not publicly announced yet.… The nation of Saypur moves slowly on deals like this, it seems.”

  “So you genuinely wish to become a war profiteer?”

  “What I wish,” says Vohannes forcefully, “is to bring industry and prosperity to Bulikov. Saypur’s industry is war. It’s the largest industry in the world. Bulikov is terribly poor—we hardly have a decent port besides Ahanashtan, whereas Ghaladesh’s shipyards belch out another dreadnought every other month—but we have a resource of use to that great and terrible industry. I can’t change the damned geopolitical circumstances, Shara. I just deal with them.”

  Shara laughs in disbelief. “My, my … I’ve dealt with many petty bandit kings and warlords before, but never would I have thought to count Vohannes Votrov among them.”

  Vohannes pulls himself up into a regal pose. “I am doing what I must to help my people.”

  “Oh, goodness, Vo,” she sighs. “Please dispense with your rhetoric. I’ve heard enough speeches.”

  “It’s not rhetoric. And it’s not a speech, Shara! I have tried to involve Saypur and her trading partners before, but Saypur does not lend us its favor—it wants to keep things the way they are, with Saypur completely in control of everything. It doesn’t want to see wealth in Bulikov any more than it wants us chanting the rites of the Divinities. If I must nakedly prostitute myself to bring aid to my city, to my country, I will gladly do so.”

  He hasn’t changed any at all, really, she thinks, torn between amusement and shock. He’s still the noble idealist, in his own perverse way.…

  “Vo, listen,” says Shara. “I have worked with people who did the same thing you’re doing now. If I have seen one of them, I’ve seen a hundred. And most of them now feed worms, or fish, or birds, or the very deep roots of trees.”

  “So. You worry for my safety.”

  “Yes! Of course I do! This is not a game I wish to see you in!”

  “Your game, you mean,” he says.

  “Yes! I’m mostly confused why you aren’t happy where you are!”

  “And where am I?”

  “Well, it seems to me you’ve got vast wealth, a promising political future, and an adoring mistress!”

  “Fiancée, actually,” he says, with a touch of indifference.

  Something inside Shara splits open. Ice floods into her belly.

  “Ah,” she says.

  I shouldn’t care this much, she thinks. I am a professional, damn it all. What a stupid, stupid thing to feel.…

  “Yes. Wasn’t wearing her ring today. Got a rock on it like a whiskey tumbler.” He holds up a massive imaginary stone. “She says it’s conventional. Gaudy. Which it is, but. We haven’t set a date yet. Neither of us are the planning type.” He looks down at his hands. “Sorry. Probably not a fun thing to, ah”—he coughs—“to talk about.”

  “I always knew you’d go on to do great things, Vo,” she says, “but to be honest I would have never pegged you as the marrying type. I mean …”

  The silence stretches on.

  Finally, he nods. “Yes,” he says delicately. “But. Certain practices, while acceptable abroad, are not … quite so tolerated here. Once a Kolkashtani, always a Kolkashtani …” He sighs and begins to rub his hip. “I need your help, Shara. Bulikov is a ruin of a city, yes, but it could be great. Saypur holds all the purse strings in the world—and I only need them loosened a fraction. Ask me something, ask me for anything, and I’ll do it.”

  Never has the reality of my job, she thinks, seemed so unreal and so preposterous.

  But before she can answer, the screams start echoing up from the floors below.

  “What is that?” says Vohannes, but Shara is already at the window. She is just able to make out the form of two bodies resting in the shadow below the manor walls.

  “Hm,” says Shara.

  * * *

  They kick the doors in and burst into the room in unison. It’s perfect, really: a beautiful, deadly choreography, gray cloth rippling as they descend on the decadent partygoers. Cheyschek’s mask is slipping a little—the left corner of his eye is now blind—but besides this he feels glorious, resplendent, chosen.

  See these traitors and sinners quail and shriek. See them run. Look upon me, and fear me.

  One of his compatriots kicks over the bar. Bottles shatter; fumes of alcohol flood the hall. Cheyschek and his brothers in arms scream at the people to get down, down, get down on the ground. Cheyschek points the bolt-shot at the one man who looks like he has some spine and howls in the man’s face and throws him to the floor.

  To be a tool of the Divine, thinks Cheyschek, is thrilling and righteous.

  A woman shrieks. Cheyschek screams at her to shut up.

  It is over fast and easy. Which is expected from this soft, cultured sort. The polis governor, as expected, is here, though they have strict orders not to touch her. But why, why? he thinks. Why forgive the one person who’s approved so many unjust punishments?

  When the hostages are cowed, Cheyschek’s leader (none of them know each other’s name—they need no names, for they are all one) paces among the partygoers, grabbing them by the hair to pull up their heads and view their faces.

  After some seconds, he says, “Not here.”

  “Are you sure?” Cheyschek asks.

  “I know who I am looking for.” He looks among the crowd of hostages, picks one elderly woman, and lowers his bolt-shot until the bolt point hovers just before her left eye. “Where?”

  She begins to weep.

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know what you mean!”

  “Someone special is missing from here, yes?” he asks sardonically. “And where could that person be?”

  The old woman, ashamed, points at the stairs.

  “You wouldn’t be lying to me?” he say
s.

  “No!” she cries. “Votrov and the woman, they went upstairs!”

  “The woman?” He pauses. “So he’s not alone? You’re sure?”

  “Yes. And …” She looks around.

  “What? What is it?”

  “The one in the red coat … I don’t see him anymore.”

  “Who?” When she does not answer, he grabs a fistful of her hair and shakes her head. “Who do you mean?” he bellows.

  She begins sobbing now, pushed beyond answering.

  Their leader lets her go. He points at three of them, says, “Stay here. Watch them. Kill anyone who moves.” Then he points to Cheyschek and the other four. “The rest of you, upstairs with me.”

  They mount the stairs silently, rushing up like wolves through mountain forests. Cheyschek is trembling with joy, excitement, rage. Such a righteous thing, to bring pain shrieking down on them out of the cold night, on the traitors and sinners and the filthy ignorant. He had expected to find them, perhaps, in the throes of some pornographic rite, their blood polluted by foreign liquors, the air stinking with incense as they shamed themselves willingly. Cheyschek has heard, for example, of places near Qivos where—with the full allowance of Saypur, of course—women walk the streets in dresses cut so short so that you can see their … their …

  He colors just to think of it.

  To imagine such a thing is sinful. It must be excised from the mind and the spirit.

  Their leader raises a gloved hand when they hit the second floor. They stop. He swings his masked face around, peering through the tiny black eyeholes. Then he signals to them, pointing, and Cheyschek and two others fan out to search the floor while their leader and the others go upstairs.

  Cheyschek sweeps the hallways, checks the rooms, but finds nothing. For such a large house, Votrov keeps it terribly empty. Another damning indication of the man’s excesses, thinks Cheyschek. He even misuses his country’s stone!

  He comes to a corner, knocks twice on the wall. He listens, and hears a second knock-knock, then a third from farther in the house. He nods, satisfied that his compatriots are close, and keeps patrolling.

  He looks out the windows. Nothing. Looks in the rooms. Nothing but empty beds. Perhaps Votrov keeps his lovers here, one in each room, Cheyschek thinks, feeling scandalized and unclean.

  Focus. Check in again. He knocks once more. He hears one knock-knock from somewhere else in the house, and then …

  Nothing.

  He pauses. Listens. Knocks again. Once more, there’s a second echoing knock, but no third.

  Perhaps he is too far away to hear me. But Cheyschek knows his instructions, and he begins to backtrack, following the halls back to the stairs.

  Once he reaches the stairs, he knocks twice on the walls again, and listens.

  This time, nothing—no second or third knock.

  He fights the growing panic in his chest and knocks again.

  Nothing. He stares around, wondering what could be going on, and it is then that he sees:

  There is someone sitting in the darkened second-floor foyer, sprawled back in a white overstuffed chair.

  Cheyschek raises his bolt-shot. The person does not move. They do not seem to have noticed him. Cheyschek retreats to the wall, paces along the edge of the shadows with the sight of the bolt-shot on the person at all times …

  Yet when he nears, he sees they are dressed in gray cloth, and there is a gray mask in their lap.

  Cheyschek lowers the bolt-shot.

  It is one of his comrades. Yet the man’s mask is removed, and they were ordered to never remove their masks.

  Cheyschek takes two more steps forward, and stops. There is a stripe of red and purple flesh running across the man’s exposed neck, and he stares up at the ceiling with what can only be the eyes of the dead.

  Cheyschek feels sick. He looks around for help, wishing to knock, to call for someone, but there is someone or something in the halls with them, and he does not want to give away his location.

  This can’t be happening. They were all supposed to be socialites, artists.…

  Then he freezes.

  Is there a gagging sound coming from the northern hallway?

  He readies his bolt-shot. His pulse pounds upon his ears. He stalks forward, rounds the corner, and sees …

  One of his compatriots is standing in a doorway along the side of the hall, almost out of sight. His compatriot trembles slightly, jerking his shoulders with his hands at his sides, and there is something on his mask, something large and white-pink and rippled that extends outward, into the doorway, where Cheyschek cannot see.

  As Cheyschek nears, he sees that the something on his compatriot’s face is actually somethings: a pair of huge hands grasps the sides of the man’s head, yet the thumbs have been shoved deep into the man’s eye sockets, all the way up to the second knuckle.

  His compatriot gags, gurgles. Blood spurts around the thumbs, painting the wrists, the walls, the floor.

  Cheyschek sees now.

  There is a giant man standing in the shadows of the doorway, and he is murdering Cheyschek’s compatriot with his bare hands.

  The giant looks up, his one eye burning with a pale fire.

  Cheyschek screams, and blindly fires the bolt-shot. The giant man recoils, drops Cheyschek’s compatriot, and falls backward. Then the giant lies in the hallway, completely still.

  Cheyschek, weeping freely, runs to his compatriot and rips his mask off. When he sees what is below his screams turn to howls.

  He holds his dead compatriot in his arms. See what befalls the honored sons of my country, he wishes to say. See what happens to the righteous in such sullied times. But he does not have the control for the words.

  “At least I killed him,” he says to his dead friend, sobbing. “Please let that be enough. Please. At least I killed the man who did this to yo—”

  There is an irritated grunt. Cheyschek, startled, stops and looks around.

  With a curious determination, the big man slowly sits up and looks down at his hands in his lap.

  He opens his left hand. Inside it, glimmering in the light of the gas lamps, is Cheyschek’s bolt—which was apparently snatched out of midair before it could ever find its mark.

  The big man looks at the bolt with bemusement, as one would the strange toy of a child. Then he looks up at Cheyschek, and his one eye is filled with a cold, gray-blue calm, like the heart of an iceberg.

  Cheyschek fumbles to reload the bolt-shot. There is a flurry of movement. Cheyschek feels fingers around his throat, blood battering the backs of his eyes, the floor lifting away, and the last thing he sees is a glass window flying at him, breaking around him, before he is embraced by the cold night and, almost directly after, the street below.

  * * *

  Shara is ready when the two men burst into the room: she is sitting perfectly still on the bed, hands raised. Vohannes, however, does not follow the advice she just gave him, but leaps to his feet, cane thrust forward like a rapier, damning them for this and that.

  “Hands in the air!” shouts one of the men.

  “Clearly I have done that,” says Shara.

  “Get down on the ground!” bellows the other. They are dressed, she notes, in gray robes that have been tied tight around the joints and neck: it has the look of ceremonial wear, and they have strange, flat gray masks upon their faces.

  “We will all sit down,” says Shara.

  Vohannes is nothing so placid: “I will fuck the mouths of all your ancestors before I listen to one word you vandals have to say!”

  “Vo,” says Shara calmly.

  “Get down! Down!” the second attacker shouts. “Do it! Now!”

  “Grab him!” says the first.

  “Listen,” says Shara.

  “Get fucked!” shouts Vohannes. He stabs at one of the men with his cane.

  The man grunts. “Stop that!”

  “Get down, damn you!” shouts the other attacker.

  But Vohann
es is already moving for another strike. One of the masked men grabs his cane: there is a brief struggle, Vohannes lets go of his cane, and both of them stumble back.

  The attacker’s bolt-shot clicks, and Shara ducks slightly to the left as the bolt soars out, parting the air just where her neck was, before burying itself deep in the headboard of the bed.

  The three men, startled, stare at her and the quivering bolt behind her.

  Shara clears her throat. “Listen,” she says to the two attackers. “Listen to me now. You have made a terrible mistake.”

  “Shut up and get down on the ground!” shouts one of them.

  “You need to lay down your weapons,” says Shara, voice as smooth as fresh milk. “And surrender quietly.”

  “Filthy shally,” growls one of them. “Shut up, and get down.”

  “Why you—” Vohannes struggles to stand.

  “Stop, Vo,” she says.

  “Why?”

  “We aren’t in danger.”

  “Shut up!” shouts one of the attackers.

  “They almost shot you in the face!” says Vohannes.

  “Well, we are in some danger,” she admits. “But we just … We just need to wait.”

  The two attackers, she notes, are growing increasingly uncertain, so when Vohannes says, “For what?” they look a little relieved he asked.

  “For Sigrud.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “We just have to wait,” says Shara, “for him to do what he does best.” She says to the attackers, “I will help my friend up now. I am unarmed. Please do not hurt me.” She reaches down and helps Vohannes up to sit on the bed.

  “Who is … Sigrud?” asks Vohannes.

  There is a horrific scream from nearby, and a burst of breaking glass. Then silence.

  “That is Sigrud,” says Shara.

  The two masked men look at each other. Though she cannot see their faces, she can tell they are disturbed.

  “You need to put down your weapons,” says Shara. “And wait here with us. If you do, you might survive. Be reasonable about this.”

  One of the masked men, apparently the leader, says, “It’s a mind game. A filthy shally mind game. Don’t listen to her. It’s the butler making noises. Go check it out. And if you see anyone, kill them, and do so with a clean conscience.” The second masked man, still shaken, nods and begins to walk out the door. The leader grabs his shoulder, says, “Only a mind game. We will be rewarded,” and pats him on the back before sending him on the way.