City of Stairs

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “No,” says Shara. “There was no war. Because in 1442, Kolkan simply disappeared. With no explanation whatsoever.”

  A pause.

  “He just … disappeared?” asks Pitry.

  “Yes.”

  “Like with the Kaj’s weapons?” asks Mulaghesh.

  “Not quite,” says Shara. “None of Kolkan’s works disappeared. Kolkashtan remained intact. But there were a few alterations: overnight, all those who were mutilated by Kolkan’s methods were suddenly whole, and healed. Except for the ones who had passed on, of course. This is strange in its own right, but the victims could also no longer recall even being punished—it was as if those memories had been painted over in their minds.”

  “Then how …” Sigrud rolls his one eye up as he formulates his question. “How do you even know they were punished?”

  Shara nods. “A fair point. It took a while, but Saypuri historians have pinpointed 1442 as a year of great historical confusion. They’ve tracked it regionally—all historical records, journals, and testimonies in Kolkashtan and Bulikov went suddenly and completely blank for the specific years of Kolkan’s punishments. We only know what we know from texts recovered far from Kolkashtan and Bulikov—these, somehow, escaped what seems to have been a historical purge.”

  “And you assume it was the other four Divinities,” says Mulaghesh.

  “I assume so—especially because the other Divinities did not remark upon Kolkan’s sudden absence at all. We have recovered no indications of a proclamation, or explanation.… They didn’t even mention him. It was as if he’d simply never existed. Reality was edited—no, overwritten.”

  “And this …” says Mulaghesh. “Do you think it was this that you saw? A vanished Divinity, but not a dead one?”

  Shara thinks. She finally says, “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Our attackers were dressed and definitely spoke like traditional Kolkashtanis. But I have read accounts of communing with Divinities. And what I encountered in that jail cell was nothing so coherent. It was like a cacophony of voices, of images—many people in one. I do not know what to call it. Even Kolkan would have made much more sense than the thing I spoke to, I think.”

  They are silent. Sigrud belches softly. “What happened”—another belch—“to the people?”

  “The people?”

  He waves a hand. “Of Kolkan.”

  “Oh. Do you know, they more or less kept doing the same things? They wore Kolkashtani robes, followed Kolkashtani precepts, even enforced the Writs of Punishment, to an extent. They had faint memories of Kolkan, and they retained his edicts—those that were not erased—and they continued doing what they’d always done. It was never as terrible and punitive as it was under Kolkan himself, but the same perspective, the same beliefs … These persist in Kolkashtan and Bulikov even today, as you know.”

  “So the reason Votrov’s art show was so scandalous,” says Mulaghesh slowly, “is because of what some mad god believed three hundred years ago?”

  “More or less.” She checks the time, then the goat: much of the fat has rendered out. She scoops the diced meat out and allows it to drain. “I suppose these things are like momentum,” she says. “Once you get started, it’s hard to stop.”

  Fat strikes the stovetop and sizzles like lava rushing into the sea.

  * * *

  Sigrud, Mulaghesh, and Pitry eat like starving refugees. There is curried goat, soft white rice, fried vegetable pastries, pork-wrapped melon. Within minutes all of Shara’s artful displays are reduced to ravaged scraps.

  “This is”—Mulaghesh hiccups—“amazing. This is the best curry I’ve had in years. As good as at home. Where did you learn to cook?”

  “From another operative.” She sips her tea, but does not eat. “You get stuck in one place a lot, in an operation. You learn to make do with what you have.” She sits back, looks up. Smoke stains trail across the stone ceiling. There is an oily sheen to them: grease deposits, no doubt, from dozens of bubbling meals. “You are absolutely positive, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there has been no disturbance at the Warehouse?”

  “None,” says Mulaghesh around a mouthful. “I sent a runner there just now to check. But I am confident that they don’t have the resources to mount an attack on the Warehouse.”

  “Why?”

  “The attack on Votrov took a lot of manpower. It wasn’t a distraction. If anything, it smacks of desperation to me. I don’t think they could mount two such operations at once.”

  “But we will increase security at the Warehouse.”

  “Most definitely.”

  “Inside, and outside.”

  “Well, no.” Mulaghesh coughs and wipes her mouth. “We don’t have any security inside the Warehouse.”

  “None?”

  “No. No one goes in the Warehouse.”

  “Not even patrols?”

  “Even if I wanted to do patrols, I doubt if I’d be able to order anyone in there. That place is full of ghosts, Shara. What’s there, we don’t want to disturb.”

  “But you do have a list of what’s in the Warehouse?”

  “Oh, yeah. Definitely.”

  “And I don’t suppose,” she says slowly, “that you have more than one copy? Since Efrem was taking out parts of the list to study, I assume you’d want a backup in case something happened to it.…”

  “We have two copies, yeah. What are you thinking?”

  “I am thinking,” says Shara slowly, “that Irina Torskeny told me she copied around a hundred pages from the list before the Restorationists found either what they were looking for, or something that would be useful to them.”

  “So?”

  “So. We know it was the last few pages they were interested in. Once they found what they were looking for, or what would help them, they stopped. This occurred in the month of Tuva, per Irina. So we simply need to pull the segments of the list that he checked out in that period …”

  “… and we’ll know what it is the Restorationists found! Of course! Damn, that’s brilliant!”

  “No, it’s narrowing it down from a needle in a haystack to a needle in a slightly smaller haystack,” says Shara. “From what Irina told me of this list, there are dozens of entries on each page. So we would be reducing the quantity from thousands of entries to check to, oh, maybe only a few hundred.”

  Mulaghesh’s face falls. “A few hundred …”

  “It’s a starting point, at least,” says Shara. “And speaking of Irina …” She turns to look at Sigrud.

  “We are watching,” says Sigrud.

  “You’re certain of the men you hired?”

  “I know what we are paying them,” he says. “For a job this simple, it will be no trouble. She’s been returned to her house, I am told. They have left her there, alone. And we are watching.”

  “You must make sure not to miss her. She’s one of our last solid leads. And we must keep a close eye on Wiclov.”

  “We”—Sigrud pulls his knife free of the ham shank—“are watching.”

  Shara taps the side of her teacup. Sit on your leads, the saying goes,

  until they crack under your weight.

  “If you only drink tea when you work,” says Mulaghesh, “I advise you switch to coffee. I see a lot of work in our future, and coffee packs more punch.”

  “Coffee refreshes the body,” says Shara. “Tea refreshes the soul.”

  “And is your soul so bruised?”

  Shara does not respond.

  “Aren’t you going to eat?” says Pitry. “Have some before we eat it all.”

  “We could never eat all this,” says Mulaghesh.

  “Mm. No,” says Shara, through the fog of thought.

  “Why? Aren’t you hungry?”

  “That’s not the issue. I tend to find,” says Shara as she refills her tea, “that the taste reminds me a little too much of home. If I want a taste of Ghaladesh, I prefer it to be tea.”

  * * *

&nb
sp; The coffin sits inside the shipping crate perfectly, hardly an inch of space on any side. I wonder, Shara thinks, if there’s a market for crates for coffins. Do so many people die overseas?

  “Do you want us to nail it shut now?” asks the foreman. He and his three employees do not try to bother to hide their impatience.

  “Not just yet,” says Shara quietly. She touches the surface of the coffin: lacquered pine, something most Saypuris would never be buried in. “Could you give me a moment, please?”

  He hesitates. “Well … The train to Ahanashtan is set to leave within an hour. If it goes out late, then …”

  “Then they dock your pay. Yes. I will gladly pay the difference, if I make you late. A moment. Please?”

  The foreman shrugs, gestures to his men, and Shara is alone in the alley behind the embassy.

  There ought to be more ceremony than this, but there almost never is. Her operative in Javrat; the mine overseer they turned in Kolkashtan; the peddler from Jukoshtan, going door to door selling cameras, taking pictures of the residents, ostensibly as part of his pitch … None of them she ever truly laid to rest. They wander in her mind still, just as they wandered in life.

  If I could go home with you, she tells the coffin, just to see you rest, I would.

  She remembers when he first came to her in Ahanashtan, how delighted she’d been to see he was exactly the bright-eyed, nattily dressed little man she’d always imagined him to be. After a day of training, he was impressed with how well read she was: “What university did you study at? I am so sorry. I’m unfamiliar with your publications.” And when she told him that she was not published, that she would never be published, that her line of work was far outside of academia, he paused, thinking, and asked, “I am sorry, I must ask … You are, ehm, Ashara Komayd, yes? Everyone seems a little reticent to say so … but that is the case, yes?”

  Shara smiled a little, and reluctantly nodded.

  “Ghonjesh and Ashadra—they were your parents?”

  She stiffened, but nodded again.

  He reflected on this a moment. “I knew them, you know. Very distantly. Back in the reformist days. Did you know that?”

  In what sounded like a very small voice, Shara said, “Yes.”

  “They were much more active than I was. I stayed behind my desk and wrote my letters and my articles, but they actually went to the slums, to the Plague areas, setting up medical tents and hospitals.… I suppose they knew the danger—the Plague was so infectious—but they did it anyway. I sometimes think I was a coward, in light of what they did. A cloistered academic to the core.”

  “I don’t think so,” Shara said.

  “No?”

  “I think you … you changed history. You changed history when we needed it changed.”

  He grew a little stern at this. “Change? No, I did not change anything, Miss Komayd. I told what I thought was the truth. Historians, I think, should be keepers of truth. We must tell things as they are—honestly, and without subversion. That is the greatest good one can do. And as a Ministry servant, you must ask yourself—what truth do you wish to keep?”

  And after that, Shara felt he held back a little, as if he’d sniffed her out, sensed she was a creature with different values than his, maintaining an agenda and a story he knew he’d one day refute. And Shara had wished to say, No, no, please don’t spurn me—I am a historian, just as you. I seek the truth, just as you do.

  But she could not say this, for she knew in her heart that this would be a lie.

  I have never met a person who possessed a privilege who did not exercise that privilege to the fullest extent that they possibly could. Say what you like of a belief, of a party, of a finance system, of a power—all I see is privilege and its consequences.

  States are not, in my opinion, composed of structures supporting privilege. Rather, they are composed of structures denying it—in other words, deciding who is not invited to the table.

  Regrettably, people often allow prejudice, grudges, and superstitions to dictate the denial of these privileges—when really it’s much more efficient for it all to be a rather cold-blooded affair.

  —MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS VINYA KOMAYD,

  LETTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER, 1707

  Another wintry morning. As Shara opens the embassy front door the courtyard guard, up to his nose in furs, turns and says, “He’s at the front gate. We didn’t let him in, because …”

  “I understand,” says Shara. She crosses the embassy courtyard. The trees bow with what looks like layers of black glass; the embassy’s numerous corrosions and cracks are filled with pearly white, as if given fresh spackling overnight. The mug of coffee in her hand leaves a river of steam behind like a ship leaves bubbles in its wake. She reflects that it feels so much different in the day, clean and cold and glittering, than it did the night before, when Wiclov bayed through the bars like a guard dog.

  The gates rattle open. The boy stands in the embassy drive holding a silver plate aloft. He is dressed in what she recognizes as manservant clothing, but it seems he has walked some way: his upper lip is frosted with icy snot. If he were not shivering so fiercely, the expression he makes at her could almost be a smile. “Ambassador Thivani?”

  “Who are you?” she asks.

  “I … have a m-message for you.” He holds the silver plate out to her. In its center is a small white card.

  Shara fumbles at it with her cold hands and squints to read.

  HIS EMINENCE VOHANNES VOTROV

  CITY FATHER OF THE 14TH, 15TH, AND 16TH WARDS OF

  THE POLIS OF BULIKOV

  INVITES YOU TO A SPLENDID EVENING

  TO BE HELD AT 7:30 PM TONIGHT

  AT THE GHOSHTOK-SOLDA DINNER CLUB

  SHOULD BE A LOT OF FUN

  Shara crushes the card. “Thank you,” she says, and tosses it away. Of all the luck, she thinks. The one thing to break is the one thing I told Vinya I wouldn’t look at.

  “Pardon, miss,” says the boy. “I hate to interrupt, but … c-can I go?”

  Shara glowers at him for a moment, then shoves the cup of coffee into his hand. “Here. This’ll do you more good than it will me.”

  The boy trudges away. Shara turns and swiftly paces back to the embassy front door.

  A child begins crying in the street beyond the embassy. A snowball fight has taken a bad turn: one salvo contained an excessive quotient of ice, and the sidewalks fill up with pointed fingers and the persistent cries of Not fair, not fair!

  * * *

  Upon the opening of the door, the interior of the Ghoshtok-Solda Dinner Club appears to be a solid wall of smoke. Shara is perplexed by this sight, but the attendants do not seem to notice: they gesture as if this dense block of fog is a perfectly welcoming sight. The outside wind comes sweeping through, turning the smoke to swirling striae and slashing it thin, and Shara can just barely see the wink of candlelight, the sheen of greasy forks, and faces of laughing men.

  Then the overwhelming reek of tobacco hits her, and she is almost blown backward.

  As she enters, her eyes begin to adjust. The smoke is not quite so thick as she initially imagined, yet the ceiling remains all but invisible: chandeliers and lamps seem to be suspended from the heavens. The desk attendant looks at her—surprised, slightly outraged—and requests a name, as if he could not expect a Saypuri to provide anything more. “Votrov,” says Shara. The man nods stiffly—I should have known—and extends a sweeping arm.

  Shara is led through a labyrinth of booths and private rooms and bars, each stuffed with men in suits and robes, all gleaming gray teeth and gleaming bald heads and gleaming black boots. Cigar ashes dance in the fug like red-orange fireflies. It’s as if the whole place is smeared over with oil and smoke, and she can feel the smoke snuffling bemusedly at the hem of her skirt, wondering, What is this? What alien creature has infiltrated this place? What could this be?

  Some tables go silent as she passes. Bald heads poke out of booths and watch her. I am, of
course, a double offense, she thinks as she maintains her composure. A woman, and a Saypuri …

  A twitch of a velvet curtain, and a grand backroom is revealed. At the head of a table the size of a river barge sits Vohannes, half-hidden behind a tent of newspaper and slouched in a cushioned chair with his light brown (but muddy) boots propped up on the table. Behind him, in very comfortable-looking chairs, sit his Saypuri bodyguards; one looks up, and waves and shrugs apologetically: This wasn’t our idea. Vohannes’s tent of newspaper deflates slightly; Shara spots a bright blue eye peeking over the top; then the tent collapses.

  Vohannes springs up as quickly as his hip allows, and bows. “Miss Thivani!”

  He would make an excellent dance hall emcee. “It’s been less than two days,” she says. “There’s hardly need for such ceremony.”

  “Oh, but there’s plenty of need for ceremony! Especially when one is meeting … How does the saying go? The enemy of my enemy is my …”

  “What are you talking about, Vo? Do you have what I asked you to get?”

  “Oh, I have it. And what a joy it was to get. But first …” Vohannes claps twice. His gloves—white, velvet—bear smudges from the newsprint. “Oh, sir—if you could, please fetch us two bottles of white plum wine, and a tray of snails.”

  The attendant bows like a spring toy. “Certainly.”

  “Snails?” says Shara.

  “Are you fine gentlemen”—Vohannes turns to the Saypuri guards—“in need of any refreshments?”

  One opens his mouth to respond, glances at Shara, rethinks his answer, and shakes his head.

  “As you wish. Please.” Vohannes gestures to the chair next to him with a flourish. “Sit. So glad you could make it. You must be terribly busy.”

  “You have picked an interesting venue for our meeting. I believe a leper would have received a more cordial welcome.”

  “Well, I figured that if I meet you at your place of work, you might as well meet me at mine.… For though this place may look like a lecherous din of old fogies, Miss Thivani, I guarantee you, here is where Bulikovian commerce lives and dies. If one could see all the flow of finance, envisioning it as a golden river hanging above our heads, here—right here, among all this smoke and all the crass jokes, all the boiled beef and bald heads—would be where it forms its densest, most impenetrable, most inextricable knot. I invite you to look and reflect upon the rickety, shit-spattered ship that carries Bulikov’s commerce forward into the seas of prosperity.”